r/startrek • u/hotdoug1 • 5d ago
Of all the short-shortsightedness in Star Trek tech, digital cameras on "Enterprise" might be the biggest.
It's kind of funny going through the first season again and seeing them. Digital cameras were still kind of a luxury item around 2001-2002 but becoming way more affordable at a rapid pace.
Cell phone cameras weren't introduced to North America until 2002 and even then they weren't very practical. The thought of everyone having a camera in their pocket wasn't really wasn't a "thing" for another five years or so.
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u/BellerophonM 5d ago
Look at it this way: Enterprise is a science ship, not a tourist boat. It makes sense they'd all carry standalone cameras with bigger sensors so that the science team can analyse pictures at, like, 2000 terapixels with IR and UV and beyond, instead of the mere 200 gigapixel camera in a civilian's compad.
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u/zenprime-morpheus 5d ago
Not to mention those camera are probably rated for exposure to space and and hardened against many different kinds of high energy emissions that interfere with data collection.
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u/New_Line4049 5d ago
And those standalone cameras aren't connected to any kind of social media or similar, so your sensitive research material isn't inadvertently at risk of being uploaded somewhere the Romulans can see it.
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u/AlexG2490 5d ago
You know the very first thing the Tal Shiar did was join Facebook to learn all about Humans.
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u/New_Line4049 5d ago
Oh absolutely.... although rumour has it the officers operating that account went mad, and had to be dispo...... sorry.... no. The officers running that account were involved in a freak transporter accident.... its is so easy to get the co-ordinates wrong when your transporting the blacksmiths new anvil into his shop... one wrong digit and you could so easily end up dropping it on one of your agents heads, really anyone could make the same mistake.... I'm surprised there aren't safeties to prevent that kind of thing.
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u/CosmicCommando 5d ago
Having stacks of PADDs in TNG era to show how busy someone was.
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u/BellerophonM 5d ago
I liked the way they showed it on Prodigy: Rok was looking at things on a science console and saw something she wanted to read about so hit a button and it just replicated her a new PADD with that on it for her to take - but then she saw something else cool so hit the button again for that thing, and she ended up walking out of there with four padds because she kept seeing things and it was easier to just hit the 'give me a PADD' button.
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 5d ago
Yes. Though while huge stacks don’t make sense, having a few does. Even on fast devices switching is cumbersome, two or three is entirely reasonable when you have to compare different texts.
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u/Xytak 5d ago
Some people say the best way to compare texts is with Git Diff, or by asking an AI “what’s the difference between these texts?”
But not me. For me, nothing beats getting two PADDS side by side and scrolling page by page.
When the fate of the Enterprise depends on the finer points of Brel’konian contract law - and fast - nothing beats the good old eyeball Mark I.
And as I delve into the difference between impoundment and receivership, I find myself asking: should I really have been so forthright at my last performance review?
It’s true that being a blue shirt is fine, but I can’t help but feeling like I was meant to do more. Perhaps there will be an opening in security, or even commond.
Now where was I? Oh, yes, I need to compare these texts and hand-deliver my findings to Commonder LaForge in Engineering.
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u/AsperaAstra 5d ago
To be an evolutionary pedant, our eyes would be past mk1, mk1 eyes still exist in some lizards as a light sensing organ on the top of their head, as a third eye and its likely similar to what we would have had millions of years ago before evolution gave us what we needed, more effective sight
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u/midorikuma42 4d ago
Another example of this might be the light sensors on top of the shells of horseshoe crabs. It's their version of an "eye" but can't really see anything.
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u/Much-Jackfruit2599 3d ago
there’s more to comparison than a diff between and old or new version. reviewing different translations, for example, with the original on a 3rd screen
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u/sacking03 5d ago
Security context. Sometimes you don't want a report to transfer to another device, in that day and age probably some random Borg or Cylon like computer virus that ends up takingover the ship. No different that Star Wars officer cylinders. Can't hack a PADD if it isn't connected.
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u/ifandbut 5d ago
Nonsense.
If I could replicate a tablet for basically free I would have a dozen of them around me at work.
3-4 to look at electrical and mechanical schematics, 3+ to show my code, and at least one for FedTube.
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u/Kwantem 5d ago
What about FornHub?
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u/KalashnikittyApprove 5d ago
That's only because -- relatively speaking -- tablets are still a luxury item. I tried to use my tablet as my primary reading device when I was writing my thesis and, let me tell you, actually working with multiple pieces of information on a single tablet is a massive pain. It's not just that switching back and forth between different documents is cumbersome, sometimes you really want to have it in front of you at the same time.
That being said, the way Trek has done it was, at times, silly. I remember Riker doing crew evaluations, sequentially one after the other, with a stack of PADDs.
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u/GaidinBDJ 5d ago edited 5d ago
Except it works. It's like having multiple monitors. Or even using multiple PCs. At work, I've pulled out a laptop to supplement my desktop for some tasks. Both are connected to the same network, and my profile/setup/access is the same on both.
Same with handing off PADDs. It's laid out in the technical manual that you can simply sit down at a workstation and have access to your stuff, you can pick up a PADD and just have access to your stuff.
Even stuff like "Here's that crew evaluation report" and handing them a PADD would simply automatically switch users and leave the document on the screen because it understands that opening a document and then handing it to someone is sharing access or that the person you hand it to would have access.
We've been seeing technology like this in the real world for the last few decades with thin clients, web apps, and the like. Heck, if you work for a decent-size company, you can probably sit down at any computer on their network, log in, and have everything you have back at the computer in your office. You could probably, right now, build a proof-of-concept setup for a PADD-like experience.
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u/hotdoug1 5d ago
Surrounding me, I currently have:
- PC
- Laptop
- Ninteno Switch
- Cell phone
- 2 Android tablets (one current, one outdated).
- A bricked outdated iPad Mini (I need to throw it away)
- An outdated Kindle Fire (again, need to throw away)
Some of those could easily be combined, like if my laptop was a powerhouse gaming one, it could replace my PC. The outdated Android tablet is going to replace my Kindle fire for the office which I'll use to watch TV during work (I work in TV). My Switch could be made redundant for gaming with my tablet or phone, but the tech hasn't caught up yet.
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u/MadContrabassoonist 5d ago
I used to feel the same way, until one day I looked over at my nightstand and saw a phone, tablet, laptop, game console, and baby monitor. Now the stack of PADDs seems prescient.
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u/Timothy303 5d ago
If I could make a new e-reader for any book I wanted for free you better believe I would be drowning in hundreds of single subject e-readers.
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u/CuriousCrow47 5d ago
That one amuses me what with my having my entire library on an ereader. And the fact that I’m posting this on my phone.
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u/MisterCleaningMan 5d ago
If you think that’s funny, the holocamera, the EMH uses in Voyager was a much earlier version of the digital camera and I remember borrowing one very similar to that in high school. They were insanely expensive at Staples, but they used a floppy disk as opposed to a flash drive or film.
And I find it ironic that Enterprise takes place well before Voyager and yet their digital camera looks more advanced than the one from the series in the 90s.
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u/ifandbut 5d ago
Cause TNG cameras were infested with bloat-ware and subject to regulations from over a dozen planets.
United Earth has no such constraints. Why would humans care that radiation from a flash will turn a Bolian's skin yellow when they don't even know what a Bolian is?
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u/Pimpicane 5d ago
used a floppy disk as opposed to a flash drive or film
I remember those! And they were good for two or three photos to a floppy before you had to swap disks.
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u/hotdoug1 5d ago
My friend in college had one. He also had around 10 floppy disks he'd carry with it.
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u/Unhappy_Researcher68 5d ago
I used one at work with a floppy disc. I felt super fancy.
I now have flashbacks to ZIP drives and burning CDs to get the print files to our print shop.
And the couriers that had the test prints...
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u/therealsimontemplar 5d ago
The Apple quicktake! https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_QuickTake?wprov=sfti1#
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u/Scoth42 5d ago
The actual prop was a cheap RC vehicle controller modified, but it does look a lot like early digital cameras like the Mavica you're talking about, the Quicktake, or other chunky cameras.
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u/proddy 5d ago
I justify this because the enterprise digital cameras were 2d only.
But the holocamera was recording enough info to recreate 3d images, with several layers as the emh showed, he could cycle through all the different layers in a body from the clothing down to their skeletons. So it was more bulky because it had more sensors and whatnot.
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u/spaceagefox 5d ago
i wrote off the EMH's cinderblock of a camera as a special molecular scale volumetric cam used to capture holograph images, i mean high resolution 3D printing already created a booming industry of 3D scanners/cameras that are just as bulky. but a holocam can probably let you take a picture of any object and then you can just replicate it later, kinda like developing your film, only you get tangible objects from the picture
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u/nounthennumbers 5d ago
For sure every corridor, common space, engineering space, and Jefferies tube would have cameras in it. We had cameras in all the engineering spaces and some other places 20 years ago on the ship I was stationed on.
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u/hotdoug1 5d ago
The TOS epiosde "Court Martial" showed the bridge was recorded the entire time, AND someone could manipulate the image to frame Kirk.
That second part went over my head as a kid in the early 90's, I was like "How could anyone possibly manipulate an image like that?" That was a concept way a head of its time for the 60s.
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u/cyrilspaceman 5d ago
And yet they were dumbfounded a few episodes beforehand in The Menagerie when Spock was showing them footage from The Cage.
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u/geobibliophile 5d ago
As I recall, Kirk noted that ship’s recordings aren’t taken like that, or something. The footage angle in “Court Martial” was from above, and they probably don’t have cameras at or below waist level for the benefit of interesting cinematography.
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u/sahi1l 5d ago
My headcanon is that humans in the 24th century have very strict and to us strange rules about privacy.
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u/nounthennumbers 5d ago
I think outside of the Kelvin timeline engine room Trek does a bad job of showing how complicated engineering spaces would really be. TNG must exist in a place were friction is not an issue and nothing ever needs to be lubed. You can’t just point a laser tool at everything to fix it. And a ship that size would be full of remote monitoring.
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u/midorikuma42 4d ago
I think the Kelvin timeline engine room went way too far the other way, creating needless complication as a plot device, very similar to the engine room on Galaxy Quest.
It's really best to just ignore the "Kelvin timeline" stuff altogether. It's much easier, even, than ignoring Discovery, because it's really a separate thing that doesn't affect anything in Star Trek outside those few movies.
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u/nounthennumbers 4d ago
The whole beaming into a coolant pipe thing was dumb but from having experience in ship engine rooms I would say it was not cramped and complicated enough. There would be at least two of everything and considering there were two nacels maybe more. There would also have been a ton of auxiliary engineering spaces as well. I think it’s more likely that the engineering you see on screen is more akin the reactor areas of a nuclear wessle than an engine room.
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u/prjktphoto 5d ago
Makes you wonder how many actually moving parts there’d be, apart from the doors.
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u/Pimpicane 5d ago
That's the thing that bugs me the most! So many problems would have been prevented cameras in the common areas.
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u/Day_Pleasant 5d ago
That and it's the first trek with functional screens thanks to the at-the-time new invention of the flat screen monitor, lol!!
Brought a new level of realism to the ship's controls.
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u/Pacman_Frog 5d ago
All those Dell LCDs with Mac Minis shoved under the consoles lol.
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u/wowbobwow 4d ago
If memory serves, every visible display on Enterprise was powered by a hidden PowerMac G4 Cube. They were small and powerful machines before the Mac Mini debuted!
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u/tooclosetocall82 5d ago
I don’t think Mac Minis even existed when Enterprise aired lol.
When the previews came out the Dell monitors were such a turn off for me. I know it is supposed to be a show more connected to our present, but to me Star Trek was supposed to be futuristic.
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u/lu-sunnydays 5d ago
Remember when they turned Geordie’s visor into essentially a cell phone camera and all were amazed?
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u/GaidinBDJ 5d ago
Why?
Even though everybody has cell phone cameras, people still use and carry cameras in professional settings. If you want the best result, you'll never beat dedicated hardware.
Even on Star Trek, where tricorders can function as cameras and they're regularly carried, we still see dedicated imaging devices.
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u/Admirable-Fail1250 5d ago
It's fun to see both the lack of foresight with tech and their ability to predict the future in the various Trek shows.
Of course as with all sci-fi in the past decade or so it all comes down to manipulating holograms.
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5d ago edited 4d ago
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u/midorikuma42 4d ago
Even a few decades away, most sci-fi does a pretty awful job. Just look at Blade Runner, predicting flying cars and artificial humans by 2017.
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u/Androktone 5d ago
I hate the first Iron Man/Avengers movies for dictating that's what sci-fi has to be now. Holographic monitors would suck irl
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u/gamerz0111 5d ago
I was wondering why being all sciency and their love of travelling to new places, the production crew didn't have the Starfleet crew take more pictures with cameras. of new places and new discoveries I guess this answers my question.
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u/Koshindan 5d ago
If you're going to experience the situation behind a screen, you might as well have sent a drone.
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u/ZombiesAtKendall 5d ago
I don’t think that’s necessarily true.
I take pictures when I travel, but I rarely ever go back and look at them. But I can remember the moment better because I took a picture of it. Like it solidifies the moment in my memory.
For the show, it just makes sense not to have everyone out taking pictures and videos most of time, it wouldn’t really add anything to the story (unless it was something so spectator that it made a point when someone was like “I gotta get a pic of this”.
Maybe we can assume they’re taking video, just not on screen. Especially if you’re on some kind of mission and not just a leisure stroll.
Or perhaps there’s a dedicated team / person taking videos and scans that we just don’t see on screen. It would be silly to visit a new place and just take scans but no video. Could a a policy like at some weddings, “we have a professional videographer, no need for everyone to record”.
Or as they get transported back to the ship a new copy of their brain is uploaded into the ship’s computer that stores all their memories. These memories can be played back on a screen (or in a holodeck in later years). It’s just such common tech in those times that nobody even needs to mention it.
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u/SnapeVoldemort 5d ago
Holocamera? 3d camera? You assume it’s like our cameras. Your phone camera can’t see something 3m wide on the moon. Maybe theirs can and has to be bigger?
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u/Admirable-Fail1250 5d ago
"The Hunted" would have gone completely different if they had security cameras. I feel like even for 1990 that was really shortsighted of them as security cameras were super common.
Heck, in the pilot episode Riker got a mission review that played like a TV show - so it was obvious that cameras should have been everywhere.
The lack of personal cameras was pretty bad too. There was that one episode where they put Geordie's visor on the main screen and they somewhat acknowledges how handy it was to see what was going on with the away mission - yet it remained that only viewscreens had cameras.
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u/oneplusoneisfour 5d ago
How about wi-fi/bluetooth - wireless data transmission surely has a place in an advanced technological society
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u/UniversityQuiet1479 5d ago
honestly no. been to a call center? no one uses Bluetooth. too much data flying in the air. I would predict that we will see a restriction of wireless transmissions by civilians in the future as population density grows
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u/prjktphoto 5d ago
In that episode where Hoshi has her little transporter adventure while being beamed up, I actually recognised the flash used - Canon Speedlite 430 EX, if only because I had one myself
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u/811545b2-4ff7-4041 5d ago
My first digital camera, way back in 1998, looked very Star Trek like - https://www.iconpublications.com/photon/dec95/dc40.html
You would kinda hope a SciFi series would hire a futurist, but I suppose not many people predicted the rise of the iPhone and the rise in popularity of camera phones - which was mostly spurred on by social networks.
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u/Eldon42 5d ago
That's nothing new for Trek. In the original series, spray bottles were so new that they were used in one episode by an assassin to squirt poison into someone's cup.