So I'm told that there are a lot of Trek fans over here, and I've been asked to relate some of my stories of when I was working on the first "Star Trek" film -- "Star Trek: The Motion Picture" aka ST:TMP (1979).
I do this with some trepidation, since this was not overall a very positive experience in my life (though there definitely were some high points) and also because I've related these stories many times over the years in different online venues reaching all the way back to pre-Internet Usenet. But what the hell ...
Here's a story selected at random.
Have you ever wondered about those silly *round* screens on the panels of the reimagined U.S.S. Enterprise as shown starting in that first film? Though they were definitely not my idea, in a twisted way I bear a bit of the responsibility for them. Here's why.
One of my roles on the production was to act as a sort of "sounding board" to opine on whether or not various aspects of the technology shown in the film were "reasonable" for the time period -- as if I could really predict tech in the 23rd century with any degree of accuracy. This was actually not a role for which I had specifically signed on -- but my involvement changed in strange directions for a variety of reasons.
Anyway, when I saw the drawings for the new Enterprise bridge I noted those round screens and thought that they were ridiculous. They looked like 1950s console televisions, and of course a round display wastes space around it.
So I brought this up with the powers-that-be. I argued that in the 23rd century displays would probably be holographic, but at least they should be efficiently rectangular on the Enterprise bridge. (Interestingly, current incarnations of series in the Trek franchise do feature holographic displays and controls.)
So I made those arguments about the displays -- and the powers-that-be agreed! The displays would be changed from round to rectangular!
But of course when you watch the movie they're round. Why?
A few days after I convinced them, I got word back. "Sorry Lauren, a good idea, but they're staying round."
The reason? It turned out that the Paramount property department had already cast the round displays in fiberglass and there was no budget to redo them as rectangular. If I'd been able to move on this a bit earlier before they had been fabricated, they probably wouldn't have ended up as those silly round screens that you see in the film.
Oh well, I tried. That's showbiz! -L
@lauren Amazing.
I have a love-hate relationship with the idea of the holographic displays in the new Star Treks---they look great, and I can imagine they would be a beautiful way to provide an interface for fundamentally three-dimensional data, such as spatial position.
But then they go interacting with them physically, and it takes a suspension of disbelief on par with the automatic opening doors to assume that the interfaces don't just get massive input noise every time the ship takes a hit and people have to wave their hands around to brace against the impact. I believe it'll be a good long while before tactile interfaces go away in machinery designed for flight controls in vehicles that withstand turbulence---I see the glass panels in SpaceX's capsules, and they give me pause. No idea how they are supposed to operate if the capsule is shaking heavily on reentry, for example.
(But there was one bit in a recent episode of Star Trek Prodigy that I loved: using the tactile holographic projector to overlay older generation controls on top of the post-next-gen-era holo panels so that operators familiar with the old system could use them. I remember a similar concept was mentioned in the Next Generation technical manual that the glass panels could run older versions of the interface in special circumstances, and it was fun to watch a similar idea used on-screen).
