In the second pilot of the original series, the transporter technician used a panel of buttons to initiate transportation. The buttons were pressed in a certain sequence. There were no levers.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Lever control props were probably too expensive to make :0)
Another interesting note is that, on Enterprise, alot of things seem to have some sort of lever control in it. Transporters and Helm definitely do. I haven't gotten a real good look at the other consoles.
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
What scene are you refering to? I can't find the scene where they show the controls being manipulated. At the end of BB2 the scene does not show the transporter controls and in BB1 they clearly show the transporter being operated by sliders.
Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
Grokca,
I believe you read my entry incorrectly. When I was referring to the "original" series, I was making a point to the first Star Trek series. Yes, the one with James T. Kirk and Spock.
People are often comparing this series with Enterprise. I am including a piece of historical fact, in 2265 transporter technicians were operating a console different from future consoles (or past consoles as may be the case), without expressing an opinion. I left the opinions to be made or not made to the reader.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Interesting observation in any case. FWIW, in ST:TMP it seemed that each transportee had a sliding control dedicated to his or her personal well-being, while TOS and TNG had just three slides for six pads. ENT seems to have three slides, right? But that machine can only handle three people, right ("The Andorian Incident")?
I'll have to rewatch "Where No Man", really. I seem to remember slides from "The Cage", and it would seem odd for the prop to have been changed and then changed back...
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Sorry I did miss read it.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
quote:Originally posted by targetemployee: I am including a piece of historical fact, in 2265 transporter technicians were operating a console different from future consoles (or past consoles as may be the case), without expressing an opinion. I left the opinions to be made or not made to the reader.
What opinions would people have? Oh, boy, trasnsporter operation didn't remain identical for a hundred and twenty-five years. The only possible opinion you could be trying to encite is that the producers of Enterprise are contradicting the "flow" of the transporter by including levers too early. Am I right?
The helm console in The Motion Picture had a throttle controlling warp speeds, not present in the original series, and also not present after The Search for Spock. Things change, sometimes in unexpected ways.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I think he was just making a set decoration/technical observation. I didn't take it as a gripe at the producers or creators of Enterprise. Just an observation for discussion.
Posted by OnToMars (Member # 621) on :
Ya, geez people. What the hell is it with defending Enterprise at all costs? At the slightest hint of possible complaint against the all powerful 'c' word in Enterprise and ya'll jump down somebody's throat. Please, try to be a little more rational and less easily instigated.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
quote:Please, try to be a little more rational and less easily instigated.
...says the pot calling the kettle black. That's good advice for both sides of the Enterprise debate. It's not just pro-Enterprise people doing this. The anti-Enterprise folks are doing it too.
However, TargetEmployee, you're still being unclear about the transporter console. Were there no sliders at all on the panel or were they just not used? I also remember there being sliders in "The Cage," and I find it very unlikely that the transporter console was changed so significantly between the two pilots since the transporter room was a minor set. All the redesign monies had to go to the Bridge.
There's also the other possibility that, if there were no levers, then that wasn't the usual control console. The Enterprise had to raid the Lithium cracking station of control consoles; you can see engineers installing new ones on the bridge. Considering the massive damage inflicted by the barrier, Engineering might have needed a temporary console in order run the unit.
Posted by targetemployee (Member # 217) on :
Siegfried,
The transporter console had no levers. There was a console of buttons. (At times like this, I wish I knew how to scan an image and then present that image to you guys. ) On these buttons, there were words. The words are not readable.
This console was not from Delta Vega. We are shown the console before Kirk and company beam to the planet.
As I stated before, this is an observation. Do with it as you please.
Posted by Malnurtured Snay (Member # 411) on :
quote:The words are not readable
Then what the hell are they there for?!
"Hey, Scotty, lets put a lot of unreadable words on all our consoles so our tech guys can go 'huh?' and pull out their dictionaries!"
"O', aye, Cap'n, ye a diabolical bast'ad, aren't you, sir?"
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
I wasn't real clear in the earlier post. I was suggesting that if the panel was different from the familiar unit, it could be that Engineering swiped a control console from somewhere else on the ship to get the transporter unit operable. Thus, maybe the console was nicked by a technician from Waste Management Tank #4 and "reassigned" to molecular transportation.
I don't remember any words on the panel, but it definitely looks like I'm re-watching "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "The Cage" when I go home for the holidays. This is certainly piquing my interest.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Jeff: I would think he means they're unreadable on the TV screen, not that they're unreadable to someone standing two feet away from them in reality.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Observation or not, it doesn't appear to actually involve "Enterprise" the television show in any way...
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Still, it gives us something to type while we wait for the next episode...
Yeah, the console was quite a bit different in "Where No Man", both from the "The Cage" variant and the eventual TOS one. What was in the unseen central depression of the "Where No Man" console, though? Perhaps the slides were all there, and Scotty didn't need to use them while beaming aboard the inert recorder marker... When he beamed down the live crew, I think we didn't see where his hands went at all. So we can insist that even that console in fact had the slides if we weally weally want.
Timo Saloniemi
(I mean, this is the very best look we get at the "WNMHGB" control panel. The depression where Doohan is hiding his missing finger could also house other secrets...
[ December 20, 2001: Message edited by: Timo ]
Posted by Grokca (Member # 722) on :
Seem like the unseen depression is some form of display. Probably to see which co-ordinates the t/p is set to. I never liked the slide things anyway, seems they were just put in for television effect, the whole thing should have been computer controlled and not need sliders. Of course they do come in handy in episodes like Mirror,mirror where the t/p has to be operated manually.
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
Well if you are looking for something to do, find 'The Cage' and describe the trans. console and procedure in great detail please
Posted by Woodside Kid (Member # 699) on :
Just did a quick run through of "The Cage" and "Where No Man..." It's the same console; neither one has sliders. The best view you get is when the crew attempts to beam down to the Talosian complex and only Number One and Yeoman Colt go. There are no sliders on either side of the console; there's just a flat space below the upper rows of buttons. What purpose the flat area has, your guess is as good as mine. Interestingly enough, transporter operation seems to be a two man job, since we see the same two operators over and over again.
As for the console in WNMHGB, the only differences from the first pilot seem to be brighter coloration and the deletion of the gooseneck monitor screens.
Posted by mrneutron (Member # 524) on :
Regarding the transporter consoles in "Where No Man Has Gone Before" and TMP. In the former, (and "The Cage"), I seem to recall the transporter console was the helm from the bridge, propped up to a different height. I have an old photonovel of WNMHGB and I'll check this.
The TMP transporter did have six (horizontal) sliders, but according to the plans drawn up for the console (in the Enterprise Flight Manual)these sliders are "distance controls" (who know what this means) and were apparently not meant to be used as the beaming controls a la the original show. On the other hand, int he upper left hand corner of the console there's a "manual fine-tuning handle" which one might say is analagous to the old series sliders.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
Hmmm... Quite interesting. It looks like I didn't remember "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before" as clearly as I had thought. It is amazing that the transporter console and the helm/navigation console appear so similar in the early shot. I agree that it's likely it doesn't have sliders and that the depression is more than likely a screen or coordinate plotter.
Even more interesting is that the transporter seemed to need the two operators in the pilot episodes. This would seem to indicate a more complicated system in use. This could be due to the differences between Enterprise's prototype system and TOS's refined system. With the one large transport pad, I'm wondering if this means that everyone's patterns are mixed together in the buffer. If that's so, then the TOS transporter can keep those patterns all seperate since each person gets his/her own pad to stand on. With that, a second operator was needed to, say, monitor the pattern integrities as the first operator managed the transportation process. Then advanced computer controls were added which simplified the process to just one operator.