Kirk had to ask the ships computer to recognize him, and it said it did.
TOS Turbolift
- Thread starter Koloth TOS
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From Wolf In The Fold:
Apparently, the turbolift is usually in "automatic" or computer controlled mode where you speak the deck number and twist the handle. It can be put in manual mode which I assume isolates that turbolift from the central computer system, but you still speak the deck number and twist the handle to make it go same as in automatic mode.
That whole freefall scene is a mess; it's goofy and poorly executed. Something weird and unclear happens with the doors as they walk through them, getting the captain's attention. The cab then goes into freefall and Kirk orders Spock to switch to manual, yet seems to do the switching to manual himself using buttons that Spock doesn't have access to. (All Spock does is barely rotate his control handle, which wasn't even activated because he didn't turn it on when he entered; he only held it.) Then Kirk apparently stops half a ton of plummeting mass with his sheer strength by overdramatically torquing on the control handle like it's a handbrake, treating it as a mechanical rather than an electrical control. Spock does nothing else with his handle, and it eventually lights up its own light, after the cab has started ascending normally. Then they proceed ahead as if the cab can be completely trusted now.
It's one of the worst uses of the turbolift in the series, in my book. I've wondered if this is one of those cases where Shatner exerted some influence on the direction of the scene in order to make Kirk seem more heroic. Or maybe it was just poor writing and/or directing. Either way it's a weak, cringy scene that feels out of character in more ways than one. Even Nimoy seems like he's not sure why Shatner is hamming it so much.
It's one of the worst uses of the turbolift in the series, in my book. I've wondered if this is one of those cases where Shatner exerted some influence on the direction of the scene in order to make Kirk seem more heroic. Or maybe it was just poor writing and/or directing. Either way it's a weak, cringy scene that feels out of character in more ways than one. Even Nimoy seems like he's not sure why Shatner is hamming it so much.
See, the technology was so confusing and new that not even Gene could get it straight,
How is that implausible? The driver of a car whose brakes are out can slow it manually by pulling up on the parking brake, which is why it's also called an emergency brake. (My father sometimes told a story of how his brakes went out on a road trip and he relied solely on the emergency brake for miles, including on curvy downhill roads.) If it can work with an automobile, it should be able to work with an elevator car. After all, if it worked anything like a modern-day elevator, it wouldn't require much force to move the brake lever against the rail, and friction would do the rest.
Yes, cars have mechanical parking brakes, but in your father's car that mechanical lever did not also control the starter, shift lever, radio, or anything else. It was a one-function lever that's literally, physically connected to a physical braking mechanism. The handles in the turbolift are clearly activators for electrical components that convey the cab's speed, route, destination, etc. and that take almost zero effort to engage. There's no way that tiny gray lever directly imparts physical stopping power against the sides of the turbolift shaft. The fact that the captain was "cranking" on it with brute strength made no sense in the Star Trek future. It would be like if Scotty were pulling on the transporter console slide-levers with all his might to yank Kirk off the Defiant; that's just not how anything on this starship works.
Of course it wouldn't require much effort at all to turn a handle that trips a relay which forces an emergency friction device against a shaft wall. But that's not what Kirk's doing in this scene; he's throwing his physical force into the handle, and that's simply not going to be enough to slow down a half-ton cab, let alone stop it. If something else is providing the physical force, then the captain should have been able to activate it with his fingertips.
But we can agree to disagree. If you think it looks great and I think it looks goofy, there's plenty of room in the universe for both of us.
Of course it wouldn't require much effort at all to turn a handle that trips a relay which forces an emergency friction device against a shaft wall. But that's not what Kirk's doing in this scene; he's throwing his physical force into the handle, and that's simply not going to be enough to slow down a half-ton cab, let alone stop it. If something else is providing the physical force, then the captain should have been able to activate it with his fingertips.
But we can agree to disagree. If you think it looks great and I think it looks goofy, there's plenty of room in the universe for both of us.
People do things that won't make a bit of difference because it makes them feel like they're doing something. In many cases, pulling harder (on a shutting door, a dangling rope, etc.) would accomplish something. It's an emotional reaction, not a logical one.
Please don't put words in my mouth. I never said it looked great, just that it's unreasonable to say "Kirk apparently stops half a ton of plummeting mass with his sheer strength," because there is abundant real-world precedent for systems that could brake a massive vehicle through friction while requiring relatively little strength to activate. Even if I think something deserves criticism, I will challenge criticisms that are not factually or logically valid.
I think we're not having the same conversation, actually. Your phrase "relatively little strength" is not what I see depicted. If he had done what he did with "relatively little strength" then we would not be disagreeing at all. I don't even disagree with him using the lever to activate an emergency stop; I criticize the way it was performed by Shatner, which (to me) implies that he is using his physical strength as a slowing/stopping force. Again, we don't have to interpret it the same way, but I hardly think my interpretation is factually/logically invalid; it's just different from yours.
The key word there is "relatively," as in, relative to the amount of strength it would take to literally stop the entire momentum of the turbolift with muscle power alone, which is what your phrasing implied Kirk was doing. What I'm saying is that Shatner, or the director, was not trying to suggest that Kirk was strong enough to stop a turbolift with his bare hands, simply that he was performing by analogy with, say, a scene of a railroad engineer pulling desperately hard on the brake lever to slow a runaway train. Yes, maybe that's illogical in the context of a mechanical analysis of how turbolift controls probably work, but a television drama is not an engineering treatise. Drama communicates meaning and emotional impact to an audience through familiar tropes and patterns. The image of a runaway vehicle's operator pulling hard on the brake lever is one that actors, directors, and audiences at the time would have quite been familiar with, so it's entirely understandable that Shatner and/or director Joseph Pevney would have evoked it to convey a similar sense of danger and urgency to the audience. If he'd just gently turned the lever, it wouldn't have conveyed the same emotional impact, so they employed dramatic license.
That photo shows a nerd-detail that I noticed in my exhaustive turbolift survey (just finished today, as it turns out). I've been closely studying the button panel, so I can build my physical scale model to allow redressing for the various configurations:
- swirl window center with two mesh windows left and right (vast majority)
- mesh window center with two swirl windows left and right (handful of instances)
- 1 red button situated on viewers' right (1x02 Corbomite, 1x06 Naked, 1x09 What, 1x21 Tomorrow)
- 4 colored buttons situated on viewers' right (2x20 Piece, 2x21 By Any, 3x02 Elaan, 3x07 Is There)
- 4 colored buttons situated on viewers' left (2x07 Wolf only)
- There's a 45°-ish bevel (behind Kirk's head) that was intended to blend into the cab's front wall when the button panel is in its normal position on the other side. Every other curved panel meets and covers the flat, light blue "window" panel with a 90° edge, not a bevel.
- The button panel overlaps the blue window panel much farther than any of the other panels do in any configuration (and much more than it does in its normal position). Put another way, the "margin" of light blue on the left of the motion-display window is much narrower than it is on the right (or anywhere else in any other cab, for that matter).
That would seem to confirm that the turbolift walls were indeed a set of detachable panels that could be struck and moved around as needed. Although we already knew that, since it's the only way they could've gotten camera angles from the sides.
Well, not to be pedantic, but they became optional. They were introduced in production order with "The Corbomite Maneuver." Kirk walked in, twisted the handle and activated the interface, then gave the destination command. After speaking to Spock, he changed his mind and a split second before the scene changes, Kirk twists the handle in the other direction.
In "Mudd's Women," even Harry Mudd and his ladies grab the handles (insert obvious joke here) when they head to Kirk's cabin. Why they all needed to is a question, other than straphanging.
The probable intent was for the handles to be mandatory, but TV production being what it is, it was sometimes forgotten and became inconsistent, necessitating an "in-universe fan explanation." Kind of like the combadge taps in later Trek. They made it clear when TNG started that you had to tap the badge to open the channel or respond but often it was dropped.
The movies eliminated the handles and either resorted to voice commands (TMP) or pushing buttons (TWOK and TSFS).
I guess it depends on the scope of that mandatory. If you mean "at least one occupant" then I can go as far as maybe; but if you mean "everyone in the cab," then I have to say no. There are three possibilities for what the intended rule was:
- Nobody has to grab a handle
- Somebody has to grab a handle
- Everybody has to grab a handle
- TCM 05:30 Kirk in what I call "Turbolift H" (shared set area w/hangar deck): somebody or everybody.
- TCM 14:09 McCoy arrives on bridge, already standing in center of cab and not holding a handle before the doors even open: nobody.
- TCM 14:20 Kirk & McCoy enter bridge lift and only Kirk takes a handle: somebody.
- MW 07:38 Mudd, women & Spock all grabbing dongles: everybody.
- MW 10:25 Sulu & Farrell both empty-handed: nobody.
- MW 49:07 Scotty holding: somebody or everybody. (These latter two bridge arrivals are very similarly shot, and contrast what it looks like when handles are, or are not, being held upon arrival.)
Now that the "straphanger" analogy has occurred to me, I think it was probably the intent -- that if people are standing up in a moving carriage that can rapidly change speed or direction, it's a good idea for everyone to have a handhold, but the carriage will still move if they don't. So I don't think it's required for everyone to hold one, just recommended.
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