I didn't realize one of the spin-off series was set in a time before TOS. Shows how much I know.
Somewhere, long ago, I had read something written by Gene Roddenberry, the producer of the Star Trek franchise, and he alluded to gravity "being maintained" on the ship, but offered no explanation. The use of super-dense "plates" to create gravitational pull makes some sense. But here's a question for you, Mr. Science Man ...
When gravity is being maintained, and the plates somehow have enormous mass that creates the artificial gravitational pull, it would presumably mean the entire ship's mass would be greatly increased. What effect would that have on the ships propulsion systems? Would it then take proportionally more thrust to move the ship?
There's a writer for one of my right-wing-rant sites (www.nationalreview.com) that insists that the Holodeck was a device invented for the show because the writers were running out of ideas. This writer -- Jonah Goldberg -- insists that any episode that used the Holodeck as its main plot device was an episode where the writers were just lazy. His thesis was that in the Holodeck the writer could be unconstrained by reality, and therefore just do crazy things.
Even in TOS they had the ability to transport at least from the bridge of the ship. And I think they had the capability of transporting from and to places without the transporter being involved, but perhaps it would be akin to me FTP-ing a file up to the mainframe and you FTP-ing it down to your server.
I can't believe we're seriously discussing Star Trek transporter mechanics! :-)
Another mystery from TOS:
After the Federation "acquired" (read: "stole") the cloaking device from the Romulans, you'd think they'd reverse engineer the thing and provide cloaking technology for the entire fleet ... yet we never saw that. Why?
That's enough for now ... :-)
1 comment:
Hey,
To my eternal shame, and in a flagrant display of geekery, I do know why they never used the cloaking device for the rest of Starfleet: they agreed not to. Part of the deal (the Treaty of Algeron) with the Romulans was that they could have the technology if they agreed never to use it. The ultimate "you can't have your cake and eat it" arrangement suited the Federation fine since they were all about the exploration and not about the domination allegedly. Any number of questions abound: "Why bother?" the Feds must have asked, but really "What were the Romulans thinking?" is more pressing; they gave away the power of invisibility to a group who said they'd never use it. How did they plan to police that arrangement? The Romulan Star Empire are clearly a bunch of mugs and unworthy of their position as indomitable Alien foe. For shame.
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