Zorac (zorac) wrote,
Zorac
zorac
  • Music: The Firm - Star Trekkin'

Trek X

Went to see Star Trek Nemesis this afternoon (no repeat viewing of TTT as it was still completely sold out 3.5 weeks after release). Pretty good as Trek movies go - fairly light and humorous at the start, moving on to a darker, action-packed final section. I now understand the comparisons with The Wrath of Khan, but hey - it wouldn't be Star Trek if they weren't doing their bit for the environment by recycling old plots ;-) Plus there's at least one segment which could almost have come straight from a Bond movie. Look out for wilwheaton's (sadly much reduced) cameo - while I was as much of a Wesley Crusher hater as the next reader of certain newsgroups, read Wil's blog and you find a nice guy.

  1. Surge Protectors: How many times have crew members been injured by exploding control panels? A simple surge protector on each one could help prevent these tragedies.
  2. Seatbelts: Whilst the inertial dampening field compensates for normal ship movements, in combat conditions, they're not sufficient to stop people being thrown around the bridge. Some form of seat restraints would surely help reduce casualties.
  3. Put the bridge somewhere sensible: They use a viewscreen. There's absolutely no need for it to be sitting slap bang on top of the saucer section where any old enemy can take pot-shots at it. Even today's sea-going warships have an external bridge for navigational visibility and the main control-room is safely in the bowels of the ship.
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  • 2 comments

pengolodh_sc

January 19 2003, 16:58:35 UTC 18 years ago

I think you're not the only one who's wondered about the fallacies of starship-design. Sev Trek has some interesting looks at it, for instance.

Surge Protectors: How many times have crew members been injured by exploding control panels? A simple surge protector on each one could help prevent these tragedies.

Or they could switch back to electrical circuits....

Sev Trek on Exploding Panels

Seatbelts: Whilst the inertial dampening field compensates for normal ship movements, in combat conditions, they're not sufficient to stop people being thrown around the bridge. Some form of seat restraints would surely help reduce casualties.

But then when you get a breach of the plasma-circuits in the control-panel, you get a lapful of 50,000 centigrade hot ionised gas.... Ouch! Of course, with electrical circuits that would no longer be a hazard.

Sev Trek on seatbelts

Put the bridge somewhere sensible: They use a viewscreen. There's absolutely no need for it to be sitting slap bang on top of the saucer section where any old enemy can take pot-shots at it. Even today's sea-going warships have an external bridge for navigational visibility and the main control-room is safely in the bowels of the ship.

Such as the almost never used battlebridge of USS Enterprise NCC-1701D? The main problem for most ships seen in Star Trek, is that they do not really have deep bowels to speak of, although locating the main bridge in the centre of the saucer certainly would help a bit.

zorac

January 20 2003, 01:55:05 UTC 18 years ago

Loff the comics :-)

IIRC, the battle bridge was right on top of the engineering section, so equally exposed once the saucer section was separated (don't have tech manual here, so can't be sure). You're right about the lack of bowels, though - although given the lack of toilets on board, this is probably a good thing ;-)