posted
Soooo . . . I've basically been utterly p0rning out on control panels for a little while, and (pretend to be shocked) about 800 of my 2500 images are Star Trek control panels, heavily leaning on the 3-D bridge models at Roddenberry.x.io.
I've found only a handful of things wrong with the recreations, most notably in regards to the typefaces used on TOS consoles, but I've also had opportunity to research and make discoveries using that resource. I've also discovered that I really dig the original TMP-era consoles in a way I never did before.
That said, for Star Trek IV's introduction to the Enterprise-A, the console structure was retained but the actual control panels were replaced with the O.G. Mk. I Okudagrams.
I refer to this as the blue/white oval type, and it features green monochrome dynamic display areas. There are various other unique aspects to this style, such as the buttons that occur on the borders separating different areas . . . I tend to assume those are mode switch buttons, but that's mere supposition.
For Star Trek V, the bridge was re-done completely, and now featured large black panels reminiscent of the original Excelsior bridge from Star Trek III but with a much different interface style.
Most of the white coloration is gone in favor of a strong blue-green palette. Almost gone completely are oval-shaped buttons, with somewhat boring rounded squares (squircles ... literally the real word for that) supplanting them.
I'd assumed that the blue/white oval style went away fairly quickly, but was surprised to realize that the Stargazer, NCC-2893, featured the ST4 helm console, complete with some remaining blue/white oval controls.
Even on a dimly lit routed prism bridge console that Data used to pull up the final log on some godawful UI, the control panel itself was a reuse of the ST4 style.
I'm working on a little survey of the timeline of late-TMP era control panels showing up in Trek, e.g. the Hathaway, Bozeman, et cetera, but it's interesting to me that the Enterprise-C featured a weird return of the ovals on its lower console surface, even after ST5 had changed the game. I'm not sure why that is.
All that said, it seems that the original Okudagrams and the late-TMP-era version existed for awhile side-by-side. Personally, I prefer the ovoid version, but I find that both rather nerfed the information available to the user. The TMP control panels gave information by color and button shape, whereas the later touchscreen stuff with its limited palette was basically monochromatic by comparison.
Thoughts so far?
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
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