Transporter console slider controls

[Timo]

Deela would have had hours if not days to find out how the device is operated... Remember how her team rummaged through the ship right after Kirk's party first beamed up? Admittedly, though, she would only have witnessed the last moments of a beam-up process firsthand, but there would presumably be manuals (physical ones can supposedly be read in Scalosian time, despite the inertia of turning the pages, and the computer agrees to work at Scalosian speeds, too). And Scotty would have been testing all sorts of things when wondering about the malfunctions caused by the rummaging...

Lazarus is just plain weird, on so many levels. And Bele and Lokai are apparently able to interface with machinery rather directly.

McCoy is indeed a most curious case, though. Shouldn't the effort of beaming down to a specific spot not preselected by anybody more skilled, in the middle of a time storm, require more than the simplest possible set of keypresses and actions? (Does the overdose on stimulants make people supersmart and capable of digging up tiny details from their subconscious memory?)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[drt]

I suppose one could make the arguement in "City"/McCoy's case that the transporter operator had taken the liberty of setting coodinates near the disturbance on the assumption that if anybody was going to be beaming down, that's likely where they'd be going.

 

[Mytran]

Maybe the sliders are on the far side of the Transporter Console in those episodes? I don't think we ever get a clear shot of them anyway (probably to prevent viewers realising it's the Helm/Navigation unit from the Bridge)

Of course, the 'Transporter console' in both pilots was nothing but the helm/nav console relocated from the bridge set.....

Didn't I just say that?


As to the controls, maybe that button is the real trigger mechanism and the sliders are more like final stage "commit" authorizers?

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The real answer is: "Because it looks cool." Anything else is technically just fanwanking.

According to the first fanwank (the Star Fleet Technical Manual), the controls are:

-Photon ionization control
-Neural paralyzer control
-Magnetic field control

It says underneath, "controls are operated simultaneously" which makes you wonder why they don't just have one lever perform all three functions...

Apologies for the thread reanimation, but I have a correction to make regarding this information. This information does not appear in the Star Fleet Technical Manual, and it is not due to Franz Joseph.

Instead, it is due to Geoffrey Mandel, and it originally appeared in The Starfleet Handbook Issue 12, on page 12, in this drawing: thumbnail/full. (At the time of this post, I know of no link to an online copy of this issue. The location of the images is described below.)

There are at least three causes of the confusion about this drawing.

First, the drawing is (undoubtedly deliberately) rendered in the same style as the Star Fleet Technical Manual (SFTM) pages. However, the page is not actually in the SFTM, and its technical order number isn't even in the contents (unlike some missing pages that are), although it logically fits into the gap following the 6 person transporter plan; it is in fact the first unused number in the contents after the 6 person transporter plan.

Second, the Star Trek LCARS Blueprint Database at Cygnus-X1.Net includes Mandel's page on its SFTM webpage. (That's where the images I linked to above are.) Unfortunately, they do not credit Mandel for it, although note that the page is out of sequence, evidently as the "bonus page" that it is.

Third, people have (no doubt unintentionally) propagated the error around the web, such as on this page. And in the post I am responding to.

This is a significant page in the tech manual area of fandom, and I'm just setting the record straight here (naturally, only to the best of my knowledge), so that credit can be given where credit is due. Thanks!

P.S. I think this may have come up before. I know that I found out about The Starfleet Handbook Issue 12 on the board somewhere. I couldn't find the thread, though.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Apologies for the thread reanimation, but I have a correction to make regarding this information. This information does not appear in the Star Fleet Technical Manual, and it is not due to Franz Joseph.

Instead, it is due to Geoffrey Mandel, and it originally appeared in The Starfleet Handbook Issue 12, on page 12, in this drawing: thumbnail/full.

Thanks for the specific info as to where that page came from. It was always obvious to me that FJ had not drawn the Transporter console. It is not up to his standards of professional draftsmanship, and I'm sure he would have been unhappy, probably angry, if he had ever seen it attributed to himself.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Thanks for the specific info as to where that page came from.

You're welcome.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

It was always obvious to me that FJ had not drawn the Transporter console. It is not up to his standards of professional draftsmanship, and I'm sure he would have been unhappy, probably angry, if he had ever seen it attributed to himself.

One other thing needs addressing, I believe.

I'm not in a position to agree or disagree with what you are saying, because I have never seen an original printed copy of the page. However, I have seen another electronic copy from a different source, and I can assert that what's posted at Cygnus-X1.Net is a particularly bad reproduction. For one thing, the pattern for red doesn't show up in the legend of the reproduction, and yet the red pattern, which takes up the bulk of the console, looks particularly messy in the actual figure. This tells me that, in all likelihood, the page is more competently drawn than the images at Cygnus-X1.Net might lead one to believe. I'd doubt that Mandel himself would be pleased with the reproduction, because it looks really bad. But again, whether the page is as competently drawn as Franz Joesph's work, I cannot say.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Maybe I was criticizing the repro and not the drawing to a large extent.

If there is one thing I would change about the Transporter console page, it's the thick arrow lines sticking into it all over the place. Those lines should be thinner than the lines of the console itself, and they don't need arrowheads.

One difficulty he faced, and this was the pre-computer-art era, was to replicate the exact style and finesse of Franz Joseph's drafting, using different tools.

I did the arithmetic (if imdb is right and he was born 1959), and Mandel would have been 19 or younger when he did this drawing. That means he was 18 when he drew the Space: 1999 Eagle blueprints for Starlog, and those are amazing.

He also might have done Starlog's Robby the Robot technical poster, which I don't have.

Geoffrey Mandel was great from the word go.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

While we're on the subject, I'm just wondering if we can list all the top, vintage sci-fi draftsman who gave us older guys our first blueprints:

Matt Jeffries: Enterprise exterior plans in The Making of Star Trek.

Franz Joseph: Book of General Plans, Star Fleet Technical Manual. Did he invent the genre?

Geoffrey Mandel: 1999 Eagle (Starlog #7), Moonbase Alpha Technical Notebook, and he re-drew the Enterprise nacelle to match FJ, but showing an internal arrangement (Star Trek Giant Poster Book, Voyage 13).

Shane Johnson: Jupiter 2 blueprints, Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (TMP-era trade paperback).

David Kimble: cutaway technical posters of the Enterprise and Enterprise-D.

Am I forgetting anybody?

 

[Metryq]

Shane Johnson: Jupiter 2 blueprints, Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (TMP-era trade paperback).

And Weapons and Field Equipment Technical Reference Manual

I don't know about that "first of its kind" claim, though. The book was published in 1984.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

While we're on the subject, I'm just wondering if we can list all the top, vintage sci-fi draftsman who gave us older guys our first blueprints:

Matt Jeffries: Enterprise exterior plans in The Making of Star Trek.

Franz Joseph: Book of General Plans, Star Fleet Technical Manual. Did he invent the genre?

Well, before FJ's work came out, I was cracking the spine of my The Making of Star Trek at the drawings, but FJ's were the first dedicated sci-fi blueprint publications that I ever knew about.

Geoffrey Mandel: 1999 Eagle (Starlog #7), Moonbase Alpha Technical Notebook, and he re-drew the Enterprise nacelle to match FJ, but showing an internal arrangement (Star Trek Giant Poster Book, Voyage 13).

Shane Johnson: Jupiter 2 blueprints, Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (TMP-era trade paperback).

David Kimble: cutaway technical posters of the Enterprise and Enterprise-D.

Am I forgetting anybody?

Michael McMaster: Klingon D7, Enterprise bridge, and Romulan "Bird of Prey" blueprints; Star Trek Maps.

Shane Johnson: Jupiter 2 blueprints, Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise (TMP-era trade paperback).

And Weapons and Field Equipment Technical Reference Manual

...

I don't know about that "first of its kind" claim, though. The book was published in 1984.

Starlog Photo Guidebook Science Fiction Weapons, Volume 1 was published in 1979, but it was mostly photos and it had only six plans IIRC, a far cry from 80! There is a box in the basement crying out to be opened!

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Michael McMaster: Klingon D7, Enterprise bridge, and Romulan "Bird of Prey" blueprints; Star Trek Maps.

I can't believe I forgot him. I love his blueprints.

There is a box in the basement crying out to be opened!

Yes, and there is still stuff to create decent scans of. One of these days I'll scan the Mandel Eagle poster. Awkward because it's big and will have to be stitched together.