Noooooo!
USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?
- Thread starter EJD1984
- Start date
Yes
That's true, but they didn't use the bridge window for it
I wonder how discussions about screen vs. window would look like if they had used the bridge window for that telescope scene.
Consider the following scenario:
The Enterprise is attacked and disabled (perhaps mortally) and Picard yells, "I need to know what's out there! Can you see anything, Geordi?" Or "I need to know what's out there! Geordi, the turbolifts are out too, so you'll have to crawl through the Jefferies Tubes to Ten-Forward, look, out the window, and report back to me, wasting precious time!"
And, as @fireproof78 just noted, OH-MY! had to resort to targeting Reliant with visual cues anyway, it probably would have been nice not to have all that static in the way. There's just no accounting for the human factor. Every other piece of Star Trek Tech has some kind of manual redundancy to it. And even if the viewscreen is 10 bazillion super-uberduber-mega pixels or whatever, that doesn't help in a crisis.
And people just like looking out windows. Since the rest of the ships are covered in them, gazing out at the cosmos (as characters are shown to do whenever they have to ponder big decisions) is obviously still preferential. So why isn't there one in the room where a good number of people spend most of their time? Even if the picture quality is beyond immaculate, as I just suggested, it's ultimately still artificial. A facsimile. It's not the same. I mean, digital music is at a point where -- insofar as the human ear could ever tell -- it is perfect. And yet people are buying vinyl in the largest numbers since the medium went out of style. And I'd argue Khambatta's many faces would have felt more authentic had there been a window back then.
So, even if this effect is a complete placebo, it clearly still exists, and it's very possible that there's a psychological effect to it, especially when you consider hours a day, every day, for years. Clausterphobia is a problem with submariners, which is why they can only stay under for so long without resurfacing -- save for extreme wartime situations, of course.
Ultimately, the window -- like Lorca's holograms -- is a 'well duh' technology. That is, if Star Trek hadn't existed before 2009, the display window would have felt so obviously absent. The only reason people are arguing against it is that it doesn't match canon or whatever. But that's a backward way of looking at things.
The Enterprise is attacked and disabled (perhaps mortally) and Picard yells, "I need to know what's out there! Can you see anything, Geordi?" Or "I need to know what's out there! Geordi, the turbolifts are out too, so you'll have to crawl through the Jefferies Tubes to Ten-Forward, look, out the window, and report back to me, wasting precious time!"
And, as @fireproof78 just noted, OH-MY! had to resort to targeting Reliant with visual cues anyway, it probably would have been nice not to have all that static in the way. There's just no accounting for the human factor. Every other piece of Star Trek Tech has some kind of manual redundancy to it. And even if the viewscreen is 10 bazillion super-uberduber-mega pixels or whatever, that doesn't help in a crisis.
And people just like looking out windows. Since the rest of the ships are covered in them, gazing out at the cosmos (as characters are shown to do whenever they have to ponder big decisions) is obviously still preferential. So why isn't there one in the room where a good number of people spend most of their time? Even if the picture quality is beyond immaculate, as I just suggested, it's ultimately still artificial. A facsimile. It's not the same. I mean, digital music is at a point where -- insofar as the human ear could ever tell -- it is perfect. And yet people are buying vinyl in the largest numbers since the medium went out of style. And I'd argue Khambatta's many faces would have felt more authentic had there been a window back then.
So, even if this effect is a complete placebo, it clearly still exists, and it's very possible that there's a psychological effect to it, especially when you consider hours a day, every day, for years. Clausterphobia is a problem with submariners, which is why they can only stay under for so long without resurfacing -- save for extreme wartime situations, of course.
Ultimately, the window -- like Lorca's holograms -- is a 'well duh' technology. That is, if Star Trek hadn't existed before 2009, the display window would have felt so obviously absent. The only reason people are arguing against it is that it doesn't match canon or whatever. But that's a backward way of looking at things.
Yes. It was a really stupid scene. If the sensors somehow couldn't detect ordinary visual frequencies, even when an ordinary human eye still could, that sounds like a serious design flaw. IMHO the whole telescope story element would've worked just as well (if not better) as just a sentimental keepsake, without trying to pretend it had practical use.
Yes, I don't get the argument that "if sensors won't work, then eyes won't work either" because why would that be universally true? Same for "the lights are bright inside so you would just see a reflection"... but it's future tech not-glass, we don't know how it responds to light or much of anything about it aside from the fact that we can see through it. Likewise, I assume the hull is not made of aluminum or plywood or plastic or whatever just because sometimes it looks like that. I liked a viewscreen just being a viewscreen and not a window, but I have no problem with them being windows as well. If it's a retcon moving forward, then it adds one more thing to the big pile of "tech that we used to tech but then at some point we didn't tech anymore or forgot about that tech and tech reasons or maybe tech not reasons tech and also Romulans shouldn't have lumpy heads because that intrinsically defeats the whole they-could-be-Vulcans thing" which is pretty much par for the course with Trek.
Using the telescope was solid storytelling. Having a window is fine. Not sold on the Take The Telescope when we abandon ship thing though...
Welcome to politics.
I was thinking that they maybe came back later, but considering the war and that they just left the ship there that does seem unlikely.
Appreciate the reply. Your points seem to boil down to three: there are conceivably emergency situations where a human (or at least a human with a Visor™) looking out a window could substitute for a broken viewscreen; people subjectively prefer a window even to a superior "artificial" image; and in terms or IRL aesthetics, "if Star Trek hadn't existed before 2009, the display window would have felt so obviously absent."
Only the first posits an actual purpose for the window, but FWIW I disagree with all three of those.
The first is simply a vanishingly unlikely scenario (especially given that on most ships you have no crewmen with Visors, so you'd be limited to what an unaided human eye could detect, which as I've repeatedly mentioned is "nothing").
I see no evidence for the second, and the entire history of onscreen Trek tends to contradict it: the bridge crew are totally comfortable with technology, and prefer to see an accurate, detailed view of what's around them as they work, rather than a sentimentally affirming window.
And I frankly just don't understand the third: there is nothing about any version of Trek, before or after 2009, in which I felt that a window "obviously" would have made sense. On the contrary, it felt jarringly out of place in ST09, for all the reasons I've mentioned about it being useless, which are IMHO self-evident after a few seconds' thought. My thinking mirrors that of Trek's original creators, who included the following in the TOS Writer's Guide:
"...the Bridge Viewing Screen... is not a window; it is an electronic viewing screen which can be pointed outside in any direction and with various magnifications. Most often it is aimed in the direction of ship's travel and shows the stars passing as we make our way through space." (emphasis in original!)
With respect, just because it is self-evident to you, does not make it so. I have articulated my reasons as much as a I possibly can, even granting that the scenarios are limited in their application and scope. Regardless, I'll boil it down to my own personal self-evidence: human beings like windows. This is a tradition that goes as far back as all my SF readings with Heinlein and Apollo mission pictures. There is something appealing to a human being of having a window. And, in my own opinion, providing a small comfort to a human shouldn't be that big of an issue.
This is entirely rooted in confirmation bias.
G
Gonzo
Guest
Quite true if Starfleets opponents like the Dominion thought and acted with the same benevolence but they don't.
Section 31 exists in the Star Trek universe because it is needed, just as we in the real world have agencies who act in a similar fashion.
I appreciate that you don't see it that way, it doesn't change anything though.
One of Trek's most fundamental messages is that we can be better than our enemies. It's not realistic, perhaps, but it's a show about spaceships and pregnant rocks. That's an environment where optimism can and should survive, IMO.
Here's the thing: for the telescope bit to make sense, you have to suppose that the ship's sensors, notwithstanding whatever other super-sophisticated Treknology they may incorporate that's subject to the interference, for some reason do not include ordinary cameras capable of detecting ordinary visible light through an ordinary lens. Because anything an eye and a telescope can do, a camera can also do. And I just can't swallow that supposition; it's a bridge too far for me.
Well, maybe. But the context of this was a discussion about whether or not Trek still upholds optimistic, idealistic values... and in that context, I do not want Trek telling me that the UFP and Starfleet are just as flawed as present-day political institutions. I want it presenting a better future, one where people actually stand up for the principles they espouse.
How so? Confirmation bias involves selectively ignoring evidence, and I didn't do that. You proposed hypothetical purposes for the bridge window; I rebutted them.
Honestly, I think the only reason this debate is even happening is that a guy who's a Star Wars fan rather than a Trek fan got his hands on the property in 2009, and he thought ships looked cooler with windows, plus he wanted to be able to do long tracking shots toward the ship that zoomed in through said windows. I don't think any of those are good reasons to change the previous four decades of logic behind Trek bridge designs.
Rebecca Romijin is playing the Original "Number One".
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Just because not everyone has a VISOR, doesn't mean that there isn't tech laying around (or replicate-able) that someone could use in case of emergency. Yes, we've not seen that to be the case, but Trek is full of things like that.
It could be argued that it's not a bridge window, it's a screen that can become transparent or somesuch (though I have no idea why it need ever be transparent from both sides - hello docking control, hello Klingons, yes you can literally see our captain). As for the writer's guide, the intent is clear that they wanted to distinguish the fact that it could see more than just straight ahead, that it could show behind, or magnify, or show charts, or communications, etc. But the fact that they even bother to say, "Most often it is aimed in the direction of ship's travel and shows the stars passing as we make our way through space" means it functions as a virtual window "most often". If it walks like a duck most of the time and talks like a duck most of the time, it might be something like a duck most of the time even if it's not actually a duck at all.
But ultimately I agree with you that it was better storytelling to have the crew clearly comfortable with the technology rather than a window, helping to reinforce the "these are professionals" vibe that was intrinsic to that Trek feeling (and success). And we can try (whether or not we succeed) to rationalize the change, but ultimately it's a window because the producers want to visually connect the interiors and exteriors and fly the camera back and forth because its cooooool (with very diminishing returns).
In general, I agree. But, part of SF is also showcasing problems that are very real and a part of the present society in which the fiction is crafted. In that instance, DS9 did very well. It is a unique paradox.
Nevertheless it's true. You can't build a strong state like the Federation, surrounded by militaristic empires, without having the means and the willingness to protect it.
That's a very nice platitude and I'm sure it would work well at the polls, but the reality is different. Did the allies uphold their principles in WWII? No. They did what they had to do to win. They didn't stoop to the same level as the Axis, sure, but they went farther than they would've liked to, because they had to.
You're arguing from ideology; I'm arguing from pragmatism.
Sorry, I tend to address the stuff I see. It's unfortunate that it's not as easy as it should on a web forum to split discussions and keep those involved following all those threads.
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Gonzo
Guest
Absolutely but it's nice to see a bit of reality every now and then.
Makes it a little bit more believable as a living breathing fictional reality.
Indeed; unless of course there's something nearby that is affecting the ship's electrical or plasma systems in a way that it doesn't affect human eyeballs or neurons.
See above. Cameras use electricity. Telescopes do not.
Absolutely. However since this show is made for people who live in the real world, a bit of realism can make it more compelling.
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