Question: Whenever anyone wants to contact someone else from another part of the ship, they hit their badge and say (for example), "Picard to Engineering." In no episode ever is there an instance where we hear somebody call someone else who is not involved in the current scene. We should assume, therefore, that when communication like this is initiated, it is only heard by the recipient of the page. So the question is, how can the ship's communication system know ahead of time who the person is paging? In other words, if Picard says, "Picard to Engineering," what keeps sickbay from hearing his call? There can't be a time-delay (i.e., the computer does not make the page until it hears the entire page, and then directs it only to the intended recipient) because in many episodes we hear the reply right away. Can anyone explain this? Are we simply "lucky," in that we only hear pages made by or sent to people in the scene we're watching?
Dan23
21st Jun 2004
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
30th Dec 2009
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
Question: Something that's bugged me ever since becoming a Star Trek fan: Why do none of the ships featured in this or any other Star Trek series have seat-belts or some futuristic equivalent for their bridge crews? Practically every time, for example, the Enterprise comes under heavy attack, consoles and panels start exploding and crew members are thrown from their chairs and shown flying through the air. To me this seems a very obvious oversight.
Answer: The ships have inertial dampeners, they don't really need seatbelts. And consoles aren't really supposed to be exploding. When the do, would you really want to be lashed in place so your face and torso take the full force of it?
There is a deleted scene in Star Trek nemesis where Captain Picard captain's chair get a seat belt and he makes a comment about them.
1st Oct 2014
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987)
Question: Near the end when they are in the holodeck for the memorial ceremony for Lt. Yar, Dr. Crusher's uniform is green and seconds later it is blue. After watching it several times, it does not appear to be a trick of the light. What happened here? Why would she have on a green uniform in the first place?
Chosen answer: The uniform does indeed change colour. It may be due to the need for a green screen in part, or perhaps some lighting altering our perception. That being said, it certainly looks green at the start, blue thereafter.
The show has been done in HD now and not sure if they fix this problem.
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Chosen answer: Enterprise's computer directs the call to the aforementioned department. It is then answered by the ranking member of the department. For instance, if Engineering was contacted, and Geordi was in sickbay or off duty, the call would be answered by whoever was "officer of the watch" in Engineering. Mainly, it wouldn't do much for the show to say, "Picard to engineering", "This is engineering, go ahead." "Yes, I'd like to speak to Geordi about some more phaser power, please", "One moment, I'll transfer you."
Grumpy Scot
There is a episode of Voyager where someone calls someone on their combadge and it gets rerouted to another station and someone else answers. Due to a communications error being fixed. The comm signal was rerouted.
Dan23