That makes no sense. Logs are traditionally kept during a voyage. Their function is to chronicle events as they happen. The only time they were dictated ex post facto was in Court Martial, and it stood out there.
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That makes no sense. Logs are traditionally kept during a voyage. Their function is to chronicle events as they happen. The only time they were dictated ex post facto was in Court Martial, and it stood out there.
I thought about that, but the angles, and the way the camera shifts and zooms, nothing like a survalance cam.
They didn't make Khan with the anticipation that Spock would be resurrected in the next film. If they had, I'm sure they would have shot the scene with appropriate camera coverage so it looked like there was some sort of security camera in a corner of Engineering taking everything in.
But multi-angle, zoom-function camera is perfectly consistent with what was shown about TOS era surveillance and recording technology.
And in "Court Martial", visual evidence is used for establishing the hand movements of people operating the machinery. This sounds like a natural use for visual recording technology in deciphering the course of events post-disaster - and at Main Engineering, one would definitely need the sort of zooms we get in ST2/3 in order to catch all the hand movements on consoles.
As for the timeliness of log recording, I'm sure there's constant visual and aural recording going on, perhaps also with away teams (through their tricorders), but there won't be constant narration. No doubt an important part of postmission routines for away teams is to fill in the missing narration on their recordings, and no doubt Kirk has to update his logs at least twice a day. But he can't do it at every dramatic turn of events, so some of it is always retroactive.
That is, unless people in the 23rd century have AIs that they can personally program to do the narrating for them, constantly, in real time. But they'd still probably want to review and veto the results.
Timo Saloniemi
And in "Court Martial", visual evidence is used for establishing the hand movements of people operating the machinery. This sounds like a natural use for visual recording technology in deciphering the course of events post-disaster - and at Main Engineering, one would definitely need the sort of zooms we get in ST2/3 in order to catch all the hand movements on consoles.
As for the timeliness of log recording, I'm sure there's constant visual and aural recording going on, perhaps also with away teams (through their tricorders), but there won't be constant narration. No doubt an important part of postmission routines for away teams is to fill in the missing narration on their recordings, and no doubt Kirk has to update his logs at least twice a day. But he can't do it at every dramatic turn of events, so some of it is always retroactive.
That is, unless people in the 23rd century have AIs that they can personally program to do the narrating for them, constantly, in real time. But they'd still probably want to review and veto the results.
Timo Saloniemi
Computer simulation based on sensor data? We can do that, I wouldn't be surprised if a starship 300+ years from now could do it too.
We should also note that these recordings often aren't objective recountings of facts and events. Rather, even in the context of the fictional universe, they are dramatic retellings of a story, with specific propagandist aims.
In "Court Martial", the material is zoomed and edited to make Kirk's guilt evident to the court, no doubt by Areel Shaw. In ST4, the Klingon Ambassador is cutting and pasting material he has obtained in order to make Kirk's guilt evident. He probably thought it would be a good idea to show, rather than tell, how Kirk blew up his starship and in the process murdered half a dozen Klingon warriors. Thus, he added an official or unofficial simulation of the self-destruct exterior visuals onto the snippets of internal log videos for greater dramatic effect. Little did he realize that the sympathies of the audience would be on the side of the dying starship...
Timo Saloniemi
In "Court Martial", the material is zoomed and edited to make Kirk's guilt evident to the court, no doubt by Areel Shaw. In ST4, the Klingon Ambassador is cutting and pasting material he has obtained in order to make Kirk's guilt evident. He probably thought it would be a good idea to show, rather than tell, how Kirk blew up his starship and in the process murdered half a dozen Klingon warriors. Thus, he added an official or unofficial simulation of the self-destruct exterior visuals onto the snippets of internal log videos for greater dramatic effect. Little did he realize that the sympathies of the audience would be on the side of the dying starship...
Timo Saloniemi
Sensor drones left in the area by either the Enterprise or the Grissom could have recorded the destruction of the 1701 as well.
OTOH, many visuals gathered by Starfleet devices seem to defy the laws of optics. And most of them are created without the benefit of an obvious lense or other such aperture anyway (*).
It seems that the ability to create a "virtual vantage point" is a standard feature from the 23rd century onwards, so that as long as there are at least two or three camera angles on the target, any additional angles can be computer-created at will. The recording systems of the Klingon BoP may have done that to the disintegrating Enterprise.
Timo Saloniemi
(*) Lense- and mirrorless imaging devices are reality today, though. By using micro- and nanoscale structures, one can create tiny camera obscuras and diffraction optics on computer chips, and eventually one might spray one's imaging devices on the walls in the form of paint. When we see lenses in Trek, they tend to be in clumsy civilian recording devices (like the VOY holocamera or the device recording the wedding in "Balance of Terror"), and may have largely nostalgic value.
It seems that the ability to create a "virtual vantage point" is a standard feature from the 23rd century onwards, so that as long as there are at least two or three camera angles on the target, any additional angles can be computer-created at will. The recording systems of the Klingon BoP may have done that to the disintegrating Enterprise.
Timo Saloniemi
(*) Lense- and mirrorless imaging devices are reality today, though. By using micro- and nanoscale structures, one can create tiny camera obscuras and diffraction optics on computer chips, and eventually one might spray one's imaging devices on the walls in the form of paint. When we see lenses in Trek, they tend to be in clumsy civilian recording devices (like the VOY holocamera or the device recording the wedding in "Balance of Terror"), and may have largely nostalgic value.
Later in the same movie, Uhura gets a video from the whales' radio transponder.
Marian
From the dialogue, it doesn't seem like the video on screen is just a forward view from the BoP, either. Plus, radio. However they do it, it seems clear they have the technology to do some funky things with video.
Marian
You can see that original intent in the earliest episodes of the first season, particularly "The Man Trap," where the logs are narrated in past tense rather than the present tense favored by the majority of the logs after the first season, the movies and ModTrek.
I think that shot is fairly obviously just a long range visual scan by the BoP. We've seen 'magnify' used on Trek viewscreens a hundred times, often over distances far in excess of 600 nautical miles.
May have been written that way, but check out the actual film - the 'it's radio' part never made it to film. Gillian's line in the finished product is merely "How can you do that?!"
The intention of the scene remains intact--showing technology incomprehensible to Gillian. That dialogue plain does not make sense if it's just a magnification. Combined with the three other examples mentioned upthread--the flight recorder data in "Court Martial" and STIII, the Klingon video in STIV--it seems conclusive that the "magic camera" technology exists.
EDIT: I just watched the scene again, and found another reason to discount the magnification argument: in the image Uhura puts up, the "camera" is moving much slower than the BoP's flight speed.
Marian
EDIT: I just watched the scene again, and found another reason to discount the magnification argument: in the image Uhura puts up, the "camera" is moving much slower than the BoP's flight speed.
Marian
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I really don't see how the dialogue (even in the unaired form) would have contradicted the idea that Kirk just zooms ahead. Our heroes pick up the transmitter that gives them the location of the whales. Kirk asks for a zoom. Gillian makes an ill-informed comment that is not relevant to the 23rd century technological reality. Our heroes ignore that comment. And that's it.
(And of course, the zoom would be stabilized the best Uhura can make it. No point in having a focus that speeds along the wavecrests at mach 6 or whatever.)
Sure, the BoP visual acquisition technologies are superior to what exists today. But there's no reason to think that our heroes can somehow divine an image out of the beep-beep of a silly little radio tag, any more than we should suspect that Kirk gets beamed up to his starship by the strength of the wrist movement that he uses to flip open his communicator.
Timo Saloniemi
(And of course, the zoom would be stabilized the best Uhura can make it. No point in having a focus that speeds along the wavecrests at mach 6 or whatever.)
Sure, the BoP visual acquisition technologies are superior to what exists today. But there's no reason to think that our heroes can somehow divine an image out of the beep-beep of a silly little radio tag, any more than we should suspect that Kirk gets beamed up to his starship by the strength of the wrist movement that he uses to flip open his communicator.
Timo Saloniemi
Another example of recorded message that seemed strange to me, when I was a kid was the log recording of the leader of the scientific team in "And the Children Shall Lead" (Starnes?). He is seen full frontal with his tricorder (supposedly the data-recording instrument) strung around his neck. So I thought: "Where is the camera, if not in the tricorder. So why do we see it then? Does he have to erect a stand and put a video-camera onto it first, then pose in front of it each time he wants to make a log entry?"
So nowadays I assume that in the day and age of Star Trek, one does not need a camera as we know it anymore. Rather the area is scanned and the image is composited out of the gathered data in the way one wants it to look. Maybe it is an extension of today's holographic photography, which also is done without any lens or mirror camera.
Well, the Starnes expedition had to consist of more than just these people, their clothes, their tricorders and a silly banner. There must have been shelters, instruments, supplies of all kinds, probably vehicles and weapons as well. Odds are, Starnes would be recording these logs while standing next to his regular desk which, among other things, has one of those viewscreen/camera thingies found in the offices of our Enterprise heroes...
But the ability to reconstruct visual imagery from an arbitrary vantage point would still explain that particular scene just fine. It's the other implications of "camera-in-tricorder" that worry me more, though: why is this feature never put to practical use?
I mean, it's not so bad in TOS, where the landing parties seldom depend on communications with the mothership, and usually act quite independently. But in TNG, our heroes regularly run into a situation where character A has to describe something he or she has found to character B over comm channel, and typically fails miserably. Why not pipe some live video to B?
The problem is implicit in most of TNG, but painfully explicit in "Heart of Glory" where our heroes jury-rig a visual device out of LaForge's VISOR. This device is obviously of great value to our heroes - it's essentially a tricorder feeding directly onto the starship's viewscreen. Yet the heroes complain that the feed is not ideal for all purposes, that there's too much information there. Why not pipe in simple visuals from a tricorder, then, either to complement or to replace the VISOR feed?
In "Identity Crisis", we see a dedicated camera, of head-mounted type. It's a somewhat "magical" device, though, as its imagery can be used to produce a complete 3D simulation on the holodeck, good enough for forensic use; a non-magical camera would leave "shadows" everywhere, causing most of the 3D simulation to be unreliable guesswork. I have no problem with the existence of a few special devices of this nature to complement the visual recording abilities of the tricorders. I hate it when the tricorder abilities are ignored, though.
Timo Saloniemi
An idea just popped into my head about how it might work. What a camera lens--or the human eye--"sees" is light bouncing off the object and hitting the lens, right? The light is going off in all directions, but the lens can only see those photons that bounce off at the right angle to hit the lens. So, suppose they've replaced the lens with some kind of sensor that can "see" the light radiating out in other directions as well?
EDITED to add: could we postulate that the device is too bulky or otherwise inconvenient to be carried by a landing party? I haven't seen "And The Children Shall Lead", so I don't know about that one, but for the other examples the sensor would be ship-mounted. That would eliminate at least some of the inconsistencies.
Marian
EDITED to add: could we postulate that the device is too bulky or otherwise inconvenient to be carried by a landing party? I haven't seen "And The Children Shall Lead", so I don't know about that one, but for the other examples the sensor would be ship-mounted. That would eliminate at least some of the inconsistencies.
Marian
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A sensor that observes non-incident radiation (a camera that gets even the light that doesn't fall on it) would be of great use for cloaked vessels, too. They could maintain a perfect cloak around themselves, then, without the need to sap at least part of the incoming light for sensing purposes and thus leave a telltale shadow. Instead, they could create the shadow elsewhere, hundreds or thousands of meters away from the ship, by sensing the light that went there. Or the magic that allows them to observe non-incident radiation might actually leave that radiation untouched somehow.
As for specific examples, I'd argue we've seen a "non-incident" camera aboard a shuttlecraft. The view in ST5, piped up to the Enterprise when our heroes step onto the planet of God, could well be coming from the shuttlecraft's visual systems, but it is clearly not being filmed from a location that would be part of the shuttlecraft. Instead, it's filmed from a meter or two to the right of the shuttle.
Or then it could be the doing of the God down there, of course...
Have we seen "non-incident" sensors smaller than that? I might argue that "The Enemy" features a very compact one. Remember how Wesley devised a neutrino beacon that would be visible through the storms of Galorndon Core. Now, neutrinos are extremely penetrating and should not scatter sideways when fired in one direction - and the beacon clearly fired neutrinos upward in a straight beam. Yet LaForge's VISOR was able to see the beam from the side with ease.
Either the VISOR can pick up radiation that doesn't fall on it, or then the crazy weather on Galorndon Core was capable of scattering neutrinos. And I'd argue that the latter would be the more magical feat.
If small spacecraft and the VISOR can do it, tricorders probably could, too. It may simply be that the few cases in TNG where an away team communicates with the mothership and fails to transmit crucial visuals are a result of a doctrine where away teams don't depend on the mothership and don't exchange information with it except in carefully prepared reports (that may include visuals).
Visuals are part of some reports of this sort in TOS, to be sure - say, the film on the Capellan weapons in "Friday's Child" could well have been shot with a tricorder.
Timo Saloniemi
As for specific examples, I'd argue we've seen a "non-incident" camera aboard a shuttlecraft. The view in ST5, piped up to the Enterprise when our heroes step onto the planet of God, could well be coming from the shuttlecraft's visual systems, but it is clearly not being filmed from a location that would be part of the shuttlecraft. Instead, it's filmed from a meter or two to the right of the shuttle.
Or then it could be the doing of the God down there, of course...
Have we seen "non-incident" sensors smaller than that? I might argue that "The Enemy" features a very compact one. Remember how Wesley devised a neutrino beacon that would be visible through the storms of Galorndon Core. Now, neutrinos are extremely penetrating and should not scatter sideways when fired in one direction - and the beacon clearly fired neutrinos upward in a straight beam. Yet LaForge's VISOR was able to see the beam from the side with ease.
Either the VISOR can pick up radiation that doesn't fall on it, or then the crazy weather on Galorndon Core was capable of scattering neutrinos. And I'd argue that the latter would be the more magical feat.
If small spacecraft and the VISOR can do it, tricorders probably could, too. It may simply be that the few cases in TNG where an away team communicates with the mothership and fails to transmit crucial visuals are a result of a doctrine where away teams don't depend on the mothership and don't exchange information with it except in carefully prepared reports (that may include visuals).
Visuals are part of some reports of this sort in TOS, to be sure - say, the film on the Capellan weapons in "Friday's Child" could well have been shot with a tricorder.
Timo Saloniemi
This reminds me of a question I had as a child. "Dad...if he's the first man on the moon, who's shooting the video of his first step off the LeM?"
Of course an automated (remotely controlled) camera was lowered first on a swingarm to record the event for posterity.
It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility for small ship's probes to be deployed in certain circumstances just to record for the ship's log (remember the "old style ship's recorder" that had been jettisoned in WNMHGB?). So perhaps we've never WITNESSED any such order given to deploy such a device, but that doesn't mean it isn't a possibility...certainly as a logical extension of what we are already capable of accomplishing with video monitoring equipment as of right now.
Of course an automated (remotely controlled) camera was lowered first on a swingarm to record the event for posterity.
It wouldn't be outside the realm of possibility for small ship's probes to be deployed in certain circumstances just to record for the ship's log (remember the "old style ship's recorder" that had been jettisoned in WNMHGB?). So perhaps we've never WITNESSED any such order given to deploy such a device, but that doesn't mean it isn't a possibility...certainly as a logical extension of what we are already capable of accomplishing with video monitoring equipment as of right now.
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