Tractor Beams: Are they so easy to switch to Repulse?

[Patrickivan]

In The Naked Now, Wesley has to bypass the watchmacallsits in the tractor beam system to repluse an object. He does this using his own intuition, because the Engineers can’t just see it in their heads… Hard!!!

But in Who Mourns for Adonais, Kirk orders Sulu to switch the forward tractor beams to repulse. Sulu does it with the flip of a switch. Simple!

With the exception of for the sake of drama, why did the older Enterprise have the ability to do something so quickly and easily, while the new one needed extensive bypass surgery? Followed of course by Data re-installing all them purdy isolinear chips.

I am not really confused- just trying to initiate some discussion. That and I can't find my TNG tech manual!!!

 

[Meredith]

I think in the old days it was easier to flip a switch and have scotty plug a few vaccum tubes in backward and listen to him bitch about how the captain was wanting to destroy his ship, than it was to hack the Javascript code that seemed to run the Enterprise D.

 

[Patrickivan]

 

[shipfisher]

Back in the sixties they never let technobabble get ahead of the story telling. They just flicked the switch, slid the lever or cracked out the "universal don't think about this too much-a-lator" and got on with it.

 

[Timo]

On the other hand, technology in the sixties was simpler, too. It did some things, it didn't do others. But it often featured fairly simple plug-it-in-backwards functionalities. Modern tech may be more specialized, with safeguards in place to specifically prevent "reverse plugging".

And the E-D feels like a more fine-tuned machine than the E-nil overall. It wouldn't surprise me much to find out she's fundamentally more inflexible as well. An old aeroplane piston-prop engine could be started the wrong way, accidentally or deliberately, turning a puller into a pusher... No way that could happen with modern engines!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Patrickivan]

When watching TOS, it seems that this was a system of the Enterpise- That going to push was as matter of fact as pull.

If you think about the functions of a tractor beam in general, it seems that you would need the ability to constantly micro control whatever you are tractoring. This would mean the ability to push and pull, rotate...

That being said, you would thing that the E-D would have such a function of their everyday operating abilities. And because of the advanced nature of the E-D, they should have back-up systems, re-routing, redundancies, that 1701 could only have wet dreams over- though that would only mean extra work and complaining for Scotty when everything failed.

So maybe the E-D did have the ability to do it, but everyone was so snookered on space wobbly pops, that they just couldn't remember? On top of that, systems were compromised by drunken crew blundering. That would explain why Wes would have to re-route that, and by-pass this... Sure, Wes made it seem like pushing off the asteroid was a marvelous new idea inspired by his little tractor beam toy, but then again it was his first time getting loaded.

Damn those writers and proofers! Why do they screw everything up!??! They aren't getting paid well enough... ouch.