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"Thank you for hailing the starship Enterprise, please listen closely to the following options:..."

PoorSailorsAirline

Lieutenant Commander
Red Shirt
"To order the Enterprise to withdraw, press 1. To demand the surrender of a crew member or passenger, press 2. To reach the time-travel and holodeck departments, press 3. To request urgent diplomatic intervention, please hang up and call your nearest UFP Embassy. Para español, presione 8. To hear these options again, press 9. To speak immediately with the starship communications department, press 0 or stay on the line. Thank you."

Seriously though, this is a little quirk that I just picked up on and now I can't unsee it in nearly every episode. I get there would be a quick crew response from hailing outbound and immediately saying "hailing frequencies open", but sometimes when our hero crew are trying to contact off ship, it's a little rushed on assuming the recipient was hovering around just waiting for a call. More often than not, the panel has beeped about 1-2 seconds ago and then there's a dramatic, "no reply, Captain!" How is the recipient supposed to reply after 3-5 seconds of reaction time? It works in reverse too: how many times do you get a badge tap, a "_____ to Enterprise (et al)" then less than 2 seconds later, "they're not replying!"

Obviously from a production aspect I understand that there's no point in wasting screen time while two ships or a ship and a landing party are getting connected like it's a Zoom call. But even a few more seconds of a pause would make the whole scene more believable. Either that, or by the 2300s people were wasting a lot less time on small talk anyways. Has anyone else ever noticed this and thought 'well, they might respond if you give them more than 3 seconds to receive the hail...' :rommie:
 
I imagine you can set the comms system to automatically pick up and queue hails, or alternately not pick up and trace the source of hails, and it's the comm officer's job to manually sort through the signals and decide who to answer.

If you have no settings enabled, it picks up automatically, on mute, giving you time to tell someone that you're being called, before you begin transmitting back.
 
Imagine trying to contact the Sheliak corporative, and first having to listen to an automated 85-minute message filled with all possible legalistic disclaimers ('the opinions and points of view expressed in the following communication need not be those of the Sheliak Corporative as a political entity, unless expressly so stipulated by the communicating Sheliak officer, including, but not limited to ....')
 
With ships of known design, it's perhaps possible to infer that by sensor readings. However, it also happens with alien ships of designs that never have been seen before. Then again, it's the same kind of enigma as how the Universal Translator most times is capable to instantaneously translate a never-before-encountered alien language.
 
This is a well known issue and very evident in certain tng and voy episodes in particular. It boils down to the same reason on tv everybody just hangs the phone without saying goodbye: pacing and allotted time.

I've always wondered how the communications officer could tell that "they are receiving our transmissions, but aren't responding."
maybe the receiver sends out some kind of “tone” to confirm it’s “ringing”, like phones do today.
 
I get highly bored with the computer incessantly announcing ''Lt.Fillintheblank is not in Sickbay'' during TNG and VOY.
That rarely, if ever, occurred on TOS. Back in that day, evidently the crew was trusted more and not location-monitored up the wazoo.
 
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