Two small mysteries of the Trek universe

[konitzlee]

There are two things that have always bugged me about the Trek universe the first is the following:

1. I was watching "Observer effect". Trip and Hoshi are stuck in the decon chamber. Trip stands up and goes to the console and pushes the comm button, and he says " Trip to... (long pause) whoever may be listening".

The comm system can't possibly know who you're talking to before you say the person to whom you wish to speak with or the part of the ship you want to contact. Then how is it possible that on the bridge they'd hear the whole phrase, even the first part? "Trip to... whoever may be listening"? The same applies whenever anybody is using the comm trying to contact a part of the ship.


2. The ship is traveling at high warp, so we're talking about a speed that exceeds many times the speed of light. This means that in one second we're covering an incredible amount of space. The bridge calls the captain and tells him that Enterprise is about to get to a ship. The Captain orders to drop out of warp. Now in between that order and the execution of the same command a few seconds elapse. But considering the fact that the ship is traveling at high warp, any command given with the slowness of human reaction time can mean that the ship could stop short of its goal or overshoot it by parsecs.

Is it just me or has any of the two aforementioned things ever bothered you?

 

[Tosk]

Nah, not really.

 

[hux]

I lay awake at night thinking about this.

 

[Kemaiku]

Slight delay in the comms and early warning on the navcom ahead of arriving so they can stop at the destination.

 

[Timo]

It's difficult to imagine a situation where we could see that there is no delay. If a person is calling another person over the commnet, the two most probably aren't visible in the same shot to establish simultaneity! And a cut between shots equals possible delay.

Sure, that we can see Picard saying "Picard to Riker" and then more or less immediately hear the voice of Riker saying "Riker here" does suggest that Riker heard the hail without much delay - that is, he heard at least the word "Picard" before responding. But we have seen many examples of the other end of such exchanges, so we know Riker's end doesn't really work in the rudely overlapping "Pica-" "Riker here" fashion. Nor is Picard's voice compacted in time to allow Riker to hear the full hail before responding.

But neither seeing nor hearing really tells us anything here. For all we know, the entire ship heard Picard hail Riker - there is no shot establishing that O'Brien wouldn't have heard it, say. No "routing delay" would then be necessary, and Riker could answer as if in a face-to-face conversation (which would become private between Picard and Riker after Riker's response, not before).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[eyeresist]

I was watching "Observer effect". Trip and Hoshi are stuck in the decon chamber. Trip stands up and goes to the console and pushes the comm button, and he says " Trip to... (long pause) whoever may be listening".

The comm system can't possibly know who you're talking to before you say the person to whom you wish to speak with or the part of the ship you want to contact.

From what we've seen in this and other episodes, I think the comm in decon connects automatically to sickbay.

The bridge calls the captain and tells him that Enterprise is about to get to a ship. The Captain orders to drop out of warp. Now in between that order and the execution of the same command a few seconds elapse. But considering the fact that the ship is traveling at high warp, any command given with the slowness of human reaction time can mean that the ship could stop short of its goal or overshoot it by parsecs.

The ship doesn't instantly drop out of warp at the captain's command. The helm officer would be in charge of calculating relative speeds, positions, and optimum approach to the ship's destination.

 

[shapeshifter]

pssst - it's tv show magic.

I'm kidding, konitzlee, but I really have no idea why. Good Luck.

 

[HIjol]

Bad editing?...

 

[Tim Thomason]

It's difficult to imagine a situation where we could see that there is no delay. If a person is calling another person over the commnet, the two most probably aren't visible in the same shot to establish simultaneity! And a cut between shots equals possible delay.

Sure, that we can see Picard saying "Picard to Riker" and then more or less immediately hear the voice of Riker saying "Riker here" does suggest that Riker heard the hail without much delay - that is, he heard at least the word "Picard" before responding. But we have seen many examples of the other end of such exchanges, so we know Riker's end doesn't really work in the rudely overlapping "Pica-" "Riker here" fashion. Nor is Picard's voice compacted in time to allow Riker to hear the full hail before responding.

But neither seeing nor hearing really tells us anything here. For all we know, the entire ship heard Picard hail Riker - there is no shot establishing that O'Brien wouldn't have heard it, say. No "routing delay" would then be necessary, and Riker could answer as if in a face-to-face conversation (which would become private between Picard and Riker after Riker's response, not before).

Timo Saloniemi

Maybe there's some kind of telepathy involved. Like how the universal translator supposedly works by reading brain waves or something, the communicator (at least, the 24th century version) figures out who you're trying to contact before you outright state it. So, only Riker hears "Picard to Riker" because the computer already figured out that Riker is the one to receive the message. But then, why would "Picard to Riker" be necessary (other than as a key to the audience)?

No, what you said is probably more correct. But then wouldn't the communications be constantly overwhelmed with "Picard to Riker" "La Forge to Lefler" "Vardaman to Mott" all day long? Or would only senior staff have access to shipwide broadcasts, and everyone else work on a delay?

Or perhaps, there *is* a delay, but the episodes are selectively edited to make it seem like there isn't. To the crew, they're used to the delay, so it's no big deal. But to us, it's just time-wasting, so the few seconds of them standing waiting for a response are removed. This might be how the doors work as well.

 

[Timo]

The thing is, when somebody does get paged, it's generally

a) official and urgent business, and
b) indicative that A doesn't know where B is, exactly.

General chitchat among the crew might well take place via completely different channels - the early episodes show the functionality of communications panels on the ship's walls, say, and then people have those desktop terminals. But our heroes do very little general chitchat across any sort of channels: they prefer to meet each other face to face. Which is probably what everybody else does, too.

This might be how the doors work as well.

What would require explanation about how the doors work? There's no need for telepathy or time travel there - the doors just open for people who wish to use them.

Today, automatic doors use the at least century-old technology of detecting proximity and responding to that with an opening action. But even back in the 1960s, this technology could have been replaced by one that actually tracks the potential user and defines whether he's headed for the doors on a vector consistent with an intent to go through. Today (or ever since the 1990s, really), this would simply be doable with trivial expenditure of dirt-cheap resources, rather than with state-of-the-art machinery and programming. That it isn't done just shows that there is no demand: it's not a consumer product so individual people can't be suckered into thinking they need the technology and will want to pay for it.

A webcam connected to a primitive deductive algorithm could replace smiling doormen any time we wished, in providing timely door-opening services with few "false positives". In Trek, it has. Many other realistic technologies we have failed to adopt have been adopted by them. Many others we have adopted have been ignored by them. Which is probably realistic in its own right: tech adoption ITRW is a scattershot affair.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Heghta]

Yeah I wondered about that comm thing too...it's an obvious goof but whatever it's TV. The delay is the most logical explanation.

 

[RandyS]

Answer to number 1: I could be any number of reasons.

Answer to number 2: Take Tylenol. You'll feel better.

 

[tharpdevenport]

I seem to recall we've watched scenes before in TNG where we know important places like Engineering/the Bridge/Sick Bay are communicating but we don't hear those in other parts of the ship. In fact, I now recall at least one instance (I seem to think there's been two or three) in TNG where Picard wanted to address the whole ship so he begins the communication with the Boatswain's call, implying to me at least that the communication ws important and meant to be heard by everybody.

 

[Leno's Chin]

#2 has always bothered me when theyre doing chase scenes at warp. If one ship drops out suddenly it would be near impossible to react fast enough to end up in their vicinity

 

[Go-Captain]

1. The computer starts recording the moment a person hits the communicate button. It waits for a name it can associate with a communicator. It immediately plays the recording to the recipient as it is being recorded. This would produce a small delay in the response to the opening message, but only of a second as long as the first sentence has a name mentioned toward the start. If it takes a while for someone to get to their communicator then the delay is that much longer plus the message length.

There may also be a predictive AI aspect to system, predetermining who the person will want to talk to as based on preceding context and past habits. That requires the system to always be listening, which is rather close to how modern smart phone apps and other digital services operate. That would mean the system is actually hailing the desired person the moment a person acts to call someone, not even on completion of the action, but just as it occurs. It could go so far as to compensate for the recipient's expected delays in responding, as based on current circumstances, and past habits and circumstances.

I think this is how the doors work, using highly advanced AI, knowledge of past habits, and observation with understanding of current social and physical circumstances.

2. If it is standing practice for the helmsman slow down as they approuch the destination then there would be more time to drop from warp without overshooting. A good helmsman is going to know ahead of time how easy it is to overshoot a place, so they are even more likely to just give their arrival warning with plenty of space-time to spare, and perhaps automated the stop procedure.

 

[SPCTRE]

#2 has always bothered me when theyre doing chase scenes at warp. If one ship drops out suddenly it would be near impossible to react fast enough to end up in their vicinity

I get that, but I always felt that if warp travel is possible, course corrections (even a near-instantaneous full reverse or 180 for a very short time) would be perfectly possible, so I'm fine with handwaving this with "the computer did it/helped" once the chasing ship is dropping out of warp.

 

[publiusr]

At warp a head on collision may not always be bad. As the two warp bubbles merge, both ships are in the same warp space--moving in the direction of the ship with the greater field output.

Then it is like the CSM moving towards a LEM. Slow relative velocity in the bubble itself.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I had always assumed for the TNG coms it's software based and since everyone has a com badge when Picard says "Picard to Riker" and taps his badge that initiates some kind of link up in the coms network where Picard's words trigger Riker's badge only, like dialing a cellphone.

As for Enterprise and TOS I'm not sure..... That's just my take on that.