Star Trek: Pitch & Guide> Guide part 7–Terminology part 2

Like I mentioned last time, knowing the terminology of your world is important, especially if there are a bunch of writers who need to keep a coherent and continuous reality between them. Science fiction and fantasy has more rules to worry about than a lot of other genres because the audience needs to believe it’s a reality that could exist with a few alterations from our own rules here in the “real world”. (I’m not convinced the butterfly isn’t having a nightmare.) Your technobabble, magic systems, and whatever are important to make the unrealistic believable. Comedy can change a rule if it’s funny, but you still have to know which rules to break before it becomes obvious you care about events rather than stories.

In part one of this look into the…eight pages? And I only got through a page and a half last time? This is going to be a few parts. The point of going over this is to see officially what words had been used to describe what, and how that’s changed or remained the same not only in the last two seasons of this version of Star Trek but the shows and movies that would follow. Does what it mean here match up to how we’ve come to use it? Granted I have little exposure to the current “Prime” timeline because I don’t have Paramount Plus and when CBS did show Discovery I found it devoid of much of what sets a Star Trek show apart from any show about traveling around space or matching that world, and most of what’s come out since seems to have the same issue in tone or presentation. However when I did Next Generation‘s writer’s guide I needed four parts to go over terminology/technobabble.

Always remember, the geekier/nerdier your intended audience. There’s some truth to that old Saturday Night Live sketch of Trekkies asking William Shatner what he thought Kirk’s favorite breakfast is. When we use call something a boat, a television, an apple, those are words used to describe things. Calling them something else without being silly or speaking a foreign language would confuse anyone. These are normal words to people living in the Star Trek timelines, and not using them right would be us calling a boat a submarine. Unless it actually is a submarine or can function as both you wouldn’t call it that, because we’ve all agreed to call the boat a boat and the submarine the submarine. Words mean things and that shared naming system for things they have that we don’t helps enforce that sense of believable fictional realities. The fact that we call teleporters “teleporters”, and Star Trek’s teleporters “transporters” while on Doctor Who they’re “transmats” shows the nature and importance of fake words seeming real by everyone agreeing to use those words unless the character specifically disagrees for whatever reason matters to the characters. With that, let’s check out the next batch of old Star Trek terms to see if they still hold up.

We ended on the Transporter. We start on…

VIEWING SCREENS

The most important of these is the Bridge Viewing Screen. This 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.

Which is not only visually appealing for the audience but shows them what direction they’re going and what they’re about to run into. Computers back then didn’t have monitors, which is what we’d call them today tied to a computer. Most likely they got the name from television screen. “On screen” is the usual command in the franchise to show something on the main screen. I’ll summarize the next two paragraphs, which also refers to the in-room intercoms with pictures, which they refer to as a “video-telephone hookup” to explain it. Now that device in our pockets can show us the people we’re talking to. Well, maybe you. I can’t figure out how to do it and I rarely have need of it anyway. The following paragraph also notes the screen above Spock’s head on the bridge. Not mentioned is the one in the briefing room, that big box in the center of the table. In later shows that was moved to a screen on a wall but for this and the cartoon it’s the box with multiple screens so everyone can see what you’re showing, with Spock running the screenshare.

SENSORS

One of our most useful devices. “Sensor” is our generic term for any equipment aboard the U.S.S. Enterprise capable of “sensing” or “reading” almost any kind of information in our stories. This can include composition of an object met in space, its dimensions, if a vessel, the presence and number of human or alien life aboard, the geological age of a meteoroid, almost anything. Mr. Spock is generally in charge of the ship’s sensors and takes most of these readings from his hooded screen at his Library-Computer Station.

The next paragraph notes that tricorders have sensors for use on the planet, and various specialty sensors for navigation or medical work. It exists for an exposition dump, to tell the characters everything they need to know to move the story forward. Then there’s this comment at the end:

Never try to explain or describe the sensors, simply use them–they’re real because they are there and they work.

It’s future tech. We don’t have to explain it. Actually, they don’t. We know what they do. We don’t need to know how they do it. The characters aren’t going to ask that question. All they need to know they learned at the Academy. Your average person probably couldn’t tell you the deeper details of how a microwave works and probably doesn’t care. “Microwaves. Now let’s have popcorn!” There is some truth to Linkara’s running gag “it’s magic, we don’t have to explain it”. It does have to have rules to govern it, and the same for future tech. If sensors can’t pierce a particular shield on Tuesday it better not suddenly be able to on Thursday unless you come up with an explanation. Just make the technobabble an answer we can accept and doesn’t run counter to a previous situation and we’re all good here.

DEFLECTORS

The primary “defensive shield” of the U.S.S. Enterprise. It is, in effect, an invisible force barrier around the Enterprise which protects the vessel from anything but the most sophisticated and powerful weapons. It is automatically activated by the ship’s sensors when an unknown danger approaches. Note: the ship’s Transporter cannot be used while the deflector screen is operating.

At least not until the 24th century and even then it’s due to advancements in transporters and still very risky, a loophole they created to write themselves out of a corner they put themselves in. As for being automatic, it can also be raised manually if it seems more dramatic, when enemies approach. Actually, we rarely see them come up automatically, do we? Force fields of various kind wasn’t new to science fiction but Star Trek did make them cool and easier to put together. It’s a sci-fi staple now and while they didn’t create it, they did innovate the concept.

If the vessel should be under attack, the power of the deflector screen can be considerably increased, but at a commensurate loss in ship’s power and at maximum shielding can only be maintained for a limited time.

Also, deflector screens seem to work in sections. You can have a section battered so much that they lose that particular screen (not to be confused with viewing screens, obviously), exposing one area of the ship. Some stories even have them diverting power from one screen to another and not drawing power from elsewhere. Also, nothing seems to disturb holodecks in later stories. I guess they run on their own power grid or something.

The ship also has “navigational deflector beams” which, guided by “navigational scanners”, sweep out far ahead of the vessel’s path through space, deflecting from the ship’s course meteoroids, asteroids, or space debris and other objects which would cause damage should the vessel strike them at this enormous speed. These are all fully automated, operated by the vessel’s computers.

That’s Asimov levels of scientific detail. In the anime series Planetes, we follow a crew of people who clean space debris for safe space travel, and I don’t think they got further than Mars in that timeline. They note that a single screw lost off an old satellite or damaged shuttle could be deadly if it hits a window. They didn’t develop anything like deflectors, and some real world scientists actually see this as a possibility. Not so much the defensive shields due to various factors, but something to safely sweep space dust out of the way? Quite possible. Star Trek wasn’t really hard science fiction, which is funny when you think of how much modern science and technology was inspired by some scientist wanting to make Star Trek tech a reality. The show creators focused more on action and morals, so this much attention to scientific detail while still teching out a solution is nice to see.

TRACTOR BEAM

Something of the reverse of the deflector, i.e., a beam that grabs and pulls rather than deflecting and pushing something away. this beam has a maximum range of about 100,000 miles. It can be used to hold a firm position alongside another vessel, pull a smaller vessel toward the Enterprise or tow another ship out of danger. Also, the vessel’s tractor beam can pull small space objects within transporter range, whereupon they can be beamed aboard into the Transporter Room. In short, the “grappling hook” and “towing line” of our future century.

Unlike ideas like the force fields for prison cells, this actually makes more sense than the analog version, at least in space. A towing beam would be easier to utilize than an actual rope or cable in space, at least for really big ships and objects. Atmosphere and gravity only exist in Space Ghost’s galaxy or the SilverHawks’ Limbo Galaxy. Oddly it wouldn’t be until the 24th Century where a teen genius suffering from an intoxication like virus would figure out how to put a reverse switch and push something away with a bit more control than a deflector. The power of plot convenience.

The next two need to go together but I’m not sure I’ll have room for both before my word count gets out of hand. So we’ll stop here for now. Next time, we get to learn about computers. Won’t that be exciting, kids?