The Cage Printer

[CorporalCaptain]

Fax machines have been around for a long time. Here's one being used in 1936's Charlie Chan at the Opera. At that time, fax was used mainly by government, big business, and news organizations.

They had a character explain how the machine worked since the technology might have been unfamiliar to a good portion of the audience. (Scene starts at 47:08.)

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That was around the time AP's Wirephoto was established, based on technology that had been tested in the preceding decades but refined and made practical only in the preceding few years. The truly groundbreaking Telediagraph was a 19th century invention.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wirephoto
http://www.forgottenfutures.co.uk/fax/fax.htm

 

[Timo]

It's explicitly stated by Pike in the scene between Doctor "We both get the same two kinds of customers" Boyce and Pike in Pike's quarters.

Yup. So it's pretty obvious how the situation here was supposed to be interpreted in context:

1) Pike is the type of hero who is shy with women and often humorously unaware that he's in fact considered extremely attractive by them - both a Hollywood trope and a real-world possibility.
2) Colt's appearing behind the command chair is an unwelcome and jarring reminder of what Pike just lost.
3) The sum total of the two leads into a statement we're supposed to consider hilarious, especially as it then leads Pike into digging an even deeper hole for himself, and everybody on the bridge rolling their eyes.
4) This is also supposed to cater for further hijinks where we can laugh at Pike's psychological discomfort, as he fails to cope with his shyness and clumsiness with women.

However, Trek ended up reusing the character of Pike, now shying away from the above Hollywood trope because shying away is fashionable while showing shy men is not. So we are now supposed to interpret this slightly differently:

1) Pike is normally a cool guy who has no problem whatsoever with women, men, letters of the alphabet, assorted aliens or animals, etc.
2) It is even more pronouncedly just the mental distress from the stressful Rigel adventure that makes him temporarily vulnerable when Colt shocks him with her not-being-Pike's-usual-lad'ness.
3) We aren't allowed to laugh at Pike's distress because, well, we aren't. We're supposed to condemn the rolling of eyes, too. In fact, we should refrain from levity in general.
4) Further hijinks are definitely off the table, too, as Pike now is a different character who won't be seen so distressed in general - and because (in a departure from Hollywood tropes) he is likely to have learned from his humiliating experience and now devotes major mental resources to never slipping up again. Perhaps the cool guy act is the result of that? (Or perhaps there's a pill for it in the 23rd century?)

Add homoerotic backstory with the yeoman if you really must.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

Honestly the closer we examine classic Trek, the more I think they'd have been better off with a full-on reboot, as opposed to the weird semi-reboot we got.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Honestly the closer we examine classic Trek, the more I think they'd have been better off with a full-on reboot, as opposed to the weird semi-reboot we got.

Semi-reboot? Do you mean when the show went to series ("Corbomite"), or when J.J. settled for Star Trek because Star Wars wasn't available?

 

[F. King Daniel]

Semi-reboot? Do you mean when the show went to series ("Corbomite"), or when J.J. settled for Star Trek because Star Wars wasn't available?

I was referring to Discovery season 2 and the forthcoming Strange New Worlds.

 

[Timo]

I for one would have appreciated the exact opposite. Mad Men did extremely well, say; having contemporary Trek take place in a pseudo-1960s environment would definitely be a move truly worthy of science fiction. (Complete with printers that push out yellowish paper-analogue!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I for one would have appreciated the exact opposite. Mad Men did extremely well, say; having contemporary Trek take place in a pseudo-1960s environment would definitely be a move truly worthy of science fiction. (Complete with printers that push out yellowish paper-analogue!)

Timo Saloniemi

Star Trek: Phase II and Star Trek Continues did exactly that, but in some episodes, they couldn't resist having the main characters mouth socio-political sentiments of the 2000s and 2010s.

We're also touching on retrofuturism. TOS doesn't look like Captain Proton or Amazon Women on the Moon, but its styles are very vintage now:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Retrofuturism

 

[Timo]

Musk's Starship is unabashed retro, too. For all we know, real interstellar spacecraft will end up looking like TOS after all, from the inside - not merely for stylistic reasons, but for practical ones as well, just like Starship somewhat surprisingly is best made of steel with round portholes and Flash Gordon fins.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[jackoverfull]

Not to mention pure design choices…An important point roddenberry insisted on for the enterprise-d was that by then humanity wouldn't need to design a starship's look solely following function, but could afford designing something pleasing to the eye.

 

[Kor]

It's explicitly stated by Pike in the scene between Doctor "We both get the same two kinds of customers" Boyce and Pike in Pike's quarters.

"My own yeoman and two others dead, seven injured." The line is a bit mumbly, though. I never understood the first few words until I watched with subtitles on.

Kor

 

[ZapBrannigan]

"My own yeoman and two others dead, seven injured." The line is a bit mumbly, though. I never understood the first few words until I watched with subtitles on.

Kor

That's odd. The line has always sounded crystal-clear to me. We run into this from time to time: different posters have a very different perception of what you would think is the same exact thing.

 

[jackoverfull]

"My own yeoman and two others dead, seven injured." The line is a bit mumbly, though. I never understood the first few words until I watched with subtitles on.

Kor

yeah, and of course until recently I had only seen the episode in the Italian version, I can only imagine how they translated that (the translations for TOS and the movies were...let’s say quite creative!).

 

[Neopeius]

I think people overestimate what would have been "jaw dropping" for an audience. People are not so easily wowed by something like a piece of paper coming out of a machine, especially on a show with ray guns and transporters. If such a thing were seen IRL in 1966, yeah, maybe that would be a "wow" but not on TV.

Indeed, it actually feels like very current (1964) technology, like the teleprinters in newsrooms around the country.

 

[Neopeius]

Line printers and teletypes were actually not that new in 1964 per se - one that could print a full page at the speed that one did though would be considered amazing as most line printers and teletypes that day averaged 1 printed character per second.

Nooooo... that's way too slow. The ASR-28 and 33 did about 10/s. The former dates to the beginning of the 1950s.

 

[publiusr]

Printers...how quaint.

If it isn’t paper, it isn’t real.

Now, I see a return to photo guide books with each sheet of electronic paper being a GIF hard-fibered into the sheet. A perfect broadside for being nailed to poles and boards for the advertising of bands, candidates and such off-line fare.

Factsheet Five meets Johnny Mnemonic.

 

[Maurice]

Misread earlier post. Mods delete this post please.

 

[Methuselah Flint]

View attachment 21497

D'oh! Silly me! Thanks!