70 Things You Didn't Know About Technology In Star Trek

[Music] phasers have been a staple of Star Trek since the original series they may look similar to typical laser weapons seen in a lot of sci-fi but they're actually much more powerful and complicated starting with archaic lasers Starfleet weapons evolved into early phase pistols and phase cannons in the 22nd century which led to the standard handheld and ship mounted phasers that we've seen since if you ignore the laser weapons that pik's crew used in the first pilot though you can argue you that laser was just used at this time as an anachronism for phaser similar to calling them guns these devices have been made in many different varieties and have several interesting features that rarely come up in the franchise here we're going to look at some of the most outstanding facts about phaser technology and learn everything we can about starfleet's main weapon along the way with all that being said I'm Bri from Tre culture and here are 10 things that you didn't know about phasers number 10 phaser overloads phasers require a huge amount of energy to function and if one is configured to release all of its stored energy at once it will overload emitting a high-pitch noise and exploding violently someone attempted to assassinate Captain Kirk by hiding a phaser set to overload in his cabin in the episode The Conscience of the king upon hearing the distinctive sound Kirk began ordering an evacuation of the whole deck and calling for a double Red Alert which is is like twice as bad as a normal Red Alert Kirk was eventually able to find the overloading phaser and proceeded to drop it in a waste shoot in the cidor likely murdering several unfortunate red shirts in lower decks later in the episode that which survives Kirk's phaser had its overload triggered while in his hand forcing him to throw it away like a grenade an overloading phaser even showed up in the next Generation episode The Hunted where a man named Roga dinar tried to use them as bombs aboard the Enterprise D number number nine phasers as survival tools Starfleet hand phasers have many uses as survival tools of course stranded officers could use them to hunt for food but they could also be used to heat up rocks as Wesley did in the episode final mission to keep himself and Captain peard warm as well as several other examples if the phaser was turned up to a higher setting it could completely vaporize The Rock allowing officers to drill themselves out of a cave if the entrance is collapsed they could also be used in more unique survival situations in discovery's first episode Captain Geo used a phaser to reopen a well letting the water flow again lege used one to melt silver ore into climbing equipment in the Next Generation episode The Enemy to get himself out of a pit aside from their use as tools Starfleet hand phasers got their energy from small power cells which could be used to power Communications equipment and other machines number eight transporter phasers in the the final episode of Star Trek Bard the last generation seven and rafy's team came up with a new phaser modification they were able to retake the bridge of the Titan a by connecting their phasers to the transporter systems anyone who was shot was sent to the transporter buffer a standard gun setting probably wouldn't have worked well on these drones so that was a great way to incapacitate their assimilated crew members without harming them after retaking the bridge s joked that they may have just invented the portable beam me up but this actually wasn't the first time we've seen something like this in Star Trek in the Next Generation episode Gambit peard was captured by mercenaries who shot him with a transporter connected phaser to make it appear as though he was vaporized the crew of the Enterprise all mourned his death before discovering that he was actually still alive number seven power levels hand phaser power levels range from a light zap enough to clean graffiti off of ship's walls or cause slight skin irritation all the way up to Total vaporization in between the two extremes phasers could also burn targets but more interestingly the famous stun setting allows users to harmlessly incapacitate most species when in combat a phaser would need to be modulated carefully to a very specific frequency depending on the mission's requirements for example in the DS9 episode Homefront they found a frequency that was low enough to cause no permanent harm but high enough to force a changeling to revert to their liquid form many may not not know that Starship phasers can actually be set to stun as well allowing a ship to stun an entire city in one blast however we've only seen this in action once in the original series episode a piece of the action number six the science of phasers the exact way phasers work has only been explained on screen through sparse references to beam intensity naon particles and other confusing technobabble but the Star Trek next Generation technical manual from 1991 went into a bit more detail according to the reference book the term phaser was short for phased energy rectification and a phaser beam was generated by a complicated interaction between plasma and superc conducted lithium copper that would cause a so-called rapid nadon effect dissolving the strong nuclear force in the plasma from there a stream of energy would then be fired in pulses through a special superconducting crystal in the emitter the intensity and frequency of these pulses would determine the effect of the blast from heating to disintegration all of this is consistent with what we've seen on screen apart from the fact that phasers are generally referred to as particle beam weapons which fire fictional rapid naon particles rather than a beam of electromagnetic energy people have gone into a lot of work trying to describe the way phasers function but the way they originated was much less scientific in the cage the first Star Trek pilot featuring captain pik's crew Starfleet used laser weapons these were changed to phasers 2 days into filming the second pilot and in the reference book The Making of Star Trek released in 1968 Jee rotenberry explained that the reason was that he knew people would be yelling lasers can't do that at their screens whenever the weapons were used for Fantastical things like stunning people or vaporizing targets without damage to the surrounding area by creating an entirely fictional technology they were able to avoid scientific inaccuracies by just making it all up number five ship phaser variants in the Next Generation we got to see a new Evolution of the Starship phasers in the form of phaser strips phaser strips are long lines of large numbers of phaser emitters that run all across a ship's Hall energy would travel along these lines and Converge on the best possible spot for targeting a Galaxy class ship like the Enterprise D came equipped with 12 separate phaser strips allowing them to fire in almost any direction we don't know when exactly Starfleet switch from primarily using phaser Banks like those on Kirk's Enterprise to phaser strips like in the Next Generation but the earliest ship we've seen with phaser strips is the ambassador class Enterprise C from the year 2344 which we saw in the Next Generation episode yesterday's Enterprise some ships such as the defiant came equipped with pulse phaser cannons which rapidly fired concentrated bursts as opposed to the steady beams of particles that shoot from standard phaser arrays number four handheld phaser variants handheld Starfleet phasers can generally be classified into three main types type one phasers are the smallest variants resembling remote controls and are referred to as Cricut phasers in the Trek Community type two phasers on the other hand more closely resemble the design of a pistol and type 3es were more like rifles in appearance different phaser types have different power levels and firing modes but all were capable of both stunning and disintegrating Targets in addition all types could fire either a steady beam or concentrated blasts the TV remote design of the type ones reinforces the idea that these devices are tools as well as weapons and the type twos are apparently more combat focused explaining the gun-like look in the original series era type 1 phasers could actually be slotted into type twos for some reason type three rifles seem to be employed mostly in times of War they showed heavy use both during the Dominion War and the federation's engagements with the Borg all three types of hand phasers have been redesigned countless times in tre history but they usually stick to these categories a phaser bazooka also appeared in a holographic program in the lower de episode crisis point but these probably aren't a real thing despite how cool they would be although there was that one shoulder cannon that Warf sported in Star Trek insurrection number three the difference between phasers and disruptors phasers and disruptor weapons differ in several key ways for starters a phaser can be set to stun whereas a disruptor is a purely Lethal Weapon this difference was an easy way to show the contrast between the violence of alien Empires like the Klingons and the comparatively Humane Federation also as mentioned earlier phasers fire pulses of fictional particles called nions whereas disruptors seem to be much more blunt simply disrupting the molecular bonds of their targets and while both phasers and disruptors are capable of disintegration disruptors often do so in a much slower and more painful way however Starfleet still used disruptors occasionally in the original series episode Obsession we learned that type 2 Starfleet phasers actually have a Mode called the disrupt B setting suggesting those specific weapons combined both phaser and disruptor Tech number two wide beams and phaser sweeps hand phasers are typically seen firing one narrow highly accurate beam but they could be configured for many more firing patterns by adjusting the width and height of their spread phasers could actually shoot wide beams or a cone-shaped phaser sweep wide beams also called Full spread could be used to quickly take out a whole room of opponents phaser sweeps however were most effective when you needed to hit every single part of a room Starfleet used phaser sweeps throughout DS9 in episodes like home front and the adversary to locate changeling infiltrators as we mentioned earlier these sweeps were set to a specific frequency that would cause any changelings disguised in the room to revert to a liquid it's likely that these settings aren't typically used in large scale firefights like the siege of ar-558 simply because they can assume way more power than a direct beam number one they're totally not guns in volume 2 issue 12 of Star Trek the magazine Herman Zimmerman explained that Gene rotenberry took issue with how some phasers looked similar to guns specifically the rifles and the pistol grips of the type two phasers presumably he preferred the Aesthetics of the type 1 crickets this all tracks with Jean's history of promoting nonviolence in the franchise however logically it's all a bit confusing seeing as even type one phasers were vastly more dangerous than even a modern military tank despite looking like something you'd use to unlock your car of course the stun setting allows Starfleet officers to non-violently resolve conflicts in a way that a gun never could but in the wrong hands they have the potential to cause unimaginable destruction after all a single misplaced phaser could disrupt the Power Balance of an entire pre-warp civilization you know them as that cool little thing what sits in your hand and you can check the internet and everything on the no I'm kidding it's of course not your smartphone it's the tricorder it's been around in Star Trek since 1966 and you might be a bit surprised to find out where the idea for the tricorder originally came from thank you so much to the wonderful Jack Kylie for writing the original article upon watch this is based I'm Sean feric for track culture and here are 10 things you didn't know about Tri quarters number 10 a brief history of the ones that occasionally explode the world's most famous scanning device has a three-fold name but the story of its creation is twofold the original impetus for the idea came from Jee rotenburo expand the role of the yman in a membo to Robert H Justman from the 14th of April 1966 as cited in the mating of Star Trek Roden noted it has been suggested that she meaning the captain Zen carry as part of her regular equipment some sort of neat over-the-shoulder recorder electronic camera haven't given much creative thought to what this would look like such thought went to Oscar winning artist designer and sculptor waming Chang as brilliant as he was prolific Chang had already designed the toian heads for the cage and later created the m113 salt creatures the balock Effigy the Gorn the tribles the Vulcan loot the Romulan bird of prey the classic flip communicator and built the phaser props based on Matt jeffy's design for his tricorder design and build Chang charged deso Studios a mere $275 a piece his initial sketch that can be found in inside Star Trek the real story is both elegantly simple and finely detailed featuring The Familiar screen information discs top pivot and push buttons that make the device iconic with or without a certain tendency to explode number nine naming magic according to the Starfleet medical reference manual tricorders are in practice a small sensor computer recorder or a tri function recorder the fact that the meaning of the name has never been discussed explicitly on screen gets the Star Trek lower deck treatment in the soon Tobe released USS citos crew handbook as enen ruford States good old triy they call it a tricorder cuz it cords so many more than three things in Star Trek enterpris they were just called hand scanners of course simpler times what it does cord as a matter of advanced future science fact does just as well to be mostly indistinguishable from Magic a handy device to move the plot along we're never actually shown the tricorder operations manual occasionally TV magic also clashes with inworld practi itic alties just how did Voyager get those tricorder upgrades in season 2 if you believe Rick sternbach they had them in the cargo bay all along the original series era tricorders weren't given a model number until perhaps most recently in those old scientists when boyler suggested that ts22 might be the model's true name with the ts20 being a predecessor tracks following Century then gave us a whole new series of names for a brand new series of Tri quarters number eight next gens from start Tre the Next Generation onwards we've had the TR 566 the TR 587 the TR 5910 and 11 the Admiral Janeway future erased ones the relatively Slimline ones tr8 905 those Nemesis pan pilot ones and the purple stripe ones amongst other tricorders the farthest far future of scanning is all about what you can cram into a TR combat and in Star Trek insurrection we also got the sneakiest of Peaks at the wrist tricorder where Tech that'll never catch you on it is sadly not true that Martin Cooper's original mobile phone was inspired by Star Trek but Motorola did give a knowing nod to the original series Communicator when they named their first clamshell phone the star Tac in 1996 art imitated life imitated art when the 25th Century Tri quars got a very 21st century upgrade in Star Trek Bard's season 2 they were Samsung Z flip phones in a case a medical version with a detachable hand scanner was also seen in Picard season 3 all the flip tricorder designs in the Next Generation Voyager and Deep Space 9 were the work of senior production illustrator designer Rick sternbach who also co-designed Deep Space 9 the Intrepid and Prometheus class the runabouts and the Delta Flyer number seven uses misuses and abuses there's a big red bit labeled emerge emrg on the TR 560 580 and 590 tricorder modules you might think that this was to send a distress call but according to the next generation technical manual it's actually the emergency dump everything to the ship button pressing it will send the tri corder's entire memory up to a range of 40,000 km disabling all scanning functions for about 0.875 seconds and draining half the power as well aside from ensuring Starfleet has all your data before you die there are plenty of things you can do with a standard tricorder packed full of mechanical electromagnetic and Subspace sensors all tricorders from the start of the Next Generation to at least Star Trek Nemesis had three input settings Geo for geological bio biological and met as in meteorological for all your scanning needs tricorders can't detect neutrino emissions however so connect to a visor instead the Star Trek Voyager technical manual gives a rather blunt description of how to use your tricorder simply point it at whatever it is you want to study if you're after exact detail on how to use one to cause localized seismic disruptions or anesthetize a patient then check out the Starfleet Survival Guide note that to really mess with the tricorder you'll need a thoron generator number six medical tricorder we have Beverly Crusher or rather gates mcfaden to thank in part for the gloriously detailed TNG eror tricorder technical information available to us mcfaden a stickler for getting medical procedure as accurate as possible as they put it in the Star Trek the Next Generation technical manual requested a set of consistent operating guidelines that were then devised by designer Rick sternbach from the manuals we know that the Next Generation era medical Tri order is basically a standard Tri recorder with a specialized medical peripheral on top this attachment adds 86 electromagnetic devices designed for medical use the removable hand sensor has 15 highresolution devices capable of active and passive scans of the entire body internal organs infectious microorganisms and more the TR 590 tricorder X introduced in Star Trek Deep Space 9 and Voyager had the detachable hand scanner in the back the original series medical tricorder was also a standard tricorder with Benefits according to the Starfleet medical reference manual the medical tricorder was outwardly similar to other modules but came equipped with a diagnose analyze and record modes as well as the remote scanner larger than its 24th century counterparts the to Medical tricorder had the handy advantage of a lower compartment with emergency surgical kit number five Klingons have HRA 2 so focused are we on our favorite Starfleet models we often forget that other alien species in Trek have their own versions of the tricorder even the war your race needs to scan things all they're better to batle you in the end the first time we saw a klling on tricorder HRA singular in the language on screen was in Star Trek 3 The Search for Spock when croge whipped one out on the Genesis Planet the piece was designed by industrial Light and Magic who also created the Klingon bird of prey Communicator deck tag knife and the updated starfly tricorder for the film the reference book The Art of Star Trek has the preliminary sketch of the Klingon tricorder with springloaded on mechanism as as well as practical lights and a note stating will have one or two lights in the back as well the first Romulan tricorder to be named as such in dialogue appeared in Star Trek generations and was designed by John EES EES also designed the distinctly less Hefty ghadar Dominion tricorder for the Star Trek Deep Space 9 episode Hippocratic Oath his original concept art showing the tricorder with velcro prop attachment for a ghadar forearm was auctioned for $200 By icollector.com Number Four toys and tape record ERS if you grew up in the 1970s you probably had your eye on the Migo corporation's first ever Star Trek action figures and a companying Enterprise Bridge playset with spin around transporter and a whole two stools did The Spar figurine talk to you in a dream as well as getting your transporter in a Twist you might have spent 1976 begging your parents for the Migo Star Trek tricorder essentially a jazzed up tape recorder with a microphone the Migo tricorder did have a flip top lid and a relatively recognizable rotating Mo display screen it also came with a cassette that on one side played 30 minutes of audio from The Menagerie Parts one and two the other side was left blank allowing children overgrown or otherwise to tape their own Adventures as a commercial from the time put it why was it blue daa da damned if I know the design of toy replica tricorders has certainly improved over the years the Playmates and diamond select varieties certainly look the part and the technology is keeping up too the wand company is set to relas release a functional original series Style tricorder with actual sensors and Sound Recorder a working display screen and interchangeable data discs number three whatever happened to the psycho tricorder this isn't the name of a bloodthirsty censured tricorder that will stab you in the shower it's an offshoot of the medical model that only ever featured in one episode of the original series wolf and the fold the psycho tricorder as seen in that episode was also just a standard Tri order prop capable of scanning and recording memories and of psychological examination more generally the psycho tricorder could be operated by a medical technician although they might get killed by Jack the river before they can get to the bottom of any hysterical Amnesia the psycho tricorder has appeared in a smattering of beta cannon works in the original series muds Angels short story the business as usual during altercations we even get a psycho historian with a psycho tricorder but that's about it it is possible that the functions of the psycho tricorder were later incorporated into the standard medical Tri order or made redundant by other techniques in the Star Trek Voyager episode night the doctor uses a medical tricorder to help diagnose helix's anxiety attacks as nyop phobia the fear of nothingness number two Raspberry Pi in the sky back in the day you could transform your pan pilot or pocket PC remember those I'm so old into a rudimentary tricorder then there was naturally an app for that although not without a few Cent assists from CBS taking full advantage of the miniaturized computer power of the Raspberry Pi fans have also built their own impressive multifunctional models neatly nicknamed pie cords Chris detective zero Barrett or obso 1337 on YouTube is one such fan who took a diamond select to science tricorder and turned it into much more Barrett disassembled the toy added in the Raspberry Pi a display screen battery and a sense hat board originally developed for use on the ISS equipped with an accelerometer magnetometer gyroscope barometer and temperature and humidity sensors not only does Barrett's to Tri porder TR 108 and his naming system look like the real thing it works like one too capable of recording sensor data from the environment and translating it on screen as close to the original series Graphics as possible and if that weren't extraordinary enough his next project the porder 2 TR 109 was based on the Next Generation TR 566 model with functional buttons a display screen lights a thermal camera and an environmental sensor package this gu is awesome and I would like to be his friend number one take your sci-fi art scan a broken heart what medical professionals do today by employing array of tests techniques and Technologies has been pretty much scaled down to the one belt clippable or over the-shoulder carriable in Star Trek the vision of such diagnostic ease has inspired many to translate the onscreen dream of the medical tricorder into a real life Lifesaver in 2012 the xprize foundation a nonprofit that does its best to promote a gene rodeny EST equitable able and hopeful future of abundance for all launched the Qualcomm tricorder X prise teams were challenged to create a tricorder like device that could accurately diagnose 10 core medical conditions such as atrial fibrillation and abnormal heart rhythm diabetes or stroke and three elective conditions including hypertension moncos lular fever and HIV the device also had to be capable of monitoring five vital signs in real time 5 years later no particip had met all of the criteria for the $10 million grand prize but the trly named final frontier medical devices won the first prize of $2.6 million for dxer an atome medical instrument kit with AI diagnostic app voyagers EMH Robert Bardo even opened the awards ceremony with the required please State the nature of the medical emergency Starfleet combadges were first introduced in the Next Generation as a more efficient and easily carried replacement for the communic ators used before and during the original series films since then however they've become a staple of Star Trek these devices have gone through a number of slight design changes over the years but always feature the same iconic Starfleet Insignia that was originally seen in to com badges are primarily known as communication devices which is of course where the prefix com comes from but they also have a variety of other uses that come up less often in this list we're going to take a look at a few of these abilities as well as some general trivia about com badges that few people actually notice we're going to start off with details that are a bit more well-known and gradually get more obscure as we go on with all that being said I'm Brie from Tre culture and if I sound sick it's because I am slight head cold aside here are 10 things that you didn't know about com badges number 10 the universal translator one of the most important devices inside the com badge were the universal translat these devices can scan brain waves of most sentient aliens to translate their words into the users's native Lang language in real time the universal translators were invented shortly after the launch of the nx1 Enterprise they could be handheld or built into many ship systems but incorporating them into com badges made them much simpler to use as the whole process was basically automated and available at any time with a universal translator on them at all times Starfleet officers were much more prepared in emergencies and while own away missions members of other species such as the frangi also kept Universal translators on them at all times but in the form of small devices inserted into their ears as we saw in the Deep Space 9 episode Little Green Men but the combadge design seems much less invasive and easier to replace and repair number nine com badges as identification every com badge has unique markers that could be used as personal identification in the Next Generation episode drumhead we learned that the Enterprise's computers could actually tell who was using a console at any specific time by interfacing with their combadge ID additionally in the episode The Hunted it's revealed that com badges from this era also include a record of their assigned users fingerprint data which allows access to be restricted to them alone this security feature prevents stolen identities and is very similar to fingerprint scanners on Modern smartphones it's also very likely that an officer's com badge could be used as a more futuristic form of real life military dog tags that were used to easily identify casualties as most fans already know Starfleet Transporters can also lock on to specific people using unique markers on their combadge and to be honest there's probably many other forms of ID included in them that we haven't even seen on camera yet number eight modifications into a distress Beacon combadges transmit using Subspace frequencies this is the same technology that allows for faster than light communication between Starships because of this if Starfleet officers ever get lost or stranded alone it's actually possible for them to modify their com badges into a Subspace distress Beacon the range of these beacons is very limited compared to Dedicated Subspace transmitters but any ship passing by close enough to a planet would be able to detect a signal from the surface and conduct a rescue operation this function has probably saved countless lives and Trek as almost every officer stranded on an alien planet would still have their combadge on them we also know that an emergency distress signal would be activated from the badges if their outer casing was ever damaged this is likely either to let the officer ship know that they were in danger or to help crew locate fallen officers number seven their use as a a transporter Aid as most fans know Starfleet Transporters are some of the most buggy devices in Star Trek a passing eyon storm a thick atmosphere and many other things can block the signal and make beaming much more difficult if not impossible one of the ways in which Starfleet counteracted this was by locking onto the com badges rather than the people themselves apparently com badges give off a much stronger and more easily detectable signal that can cut through Distortion there have been a number of times in Trek when this technique was used for example when a bomb was planted on the Enterprise in the Next Generation episode The High Ground Jordy attached his combadge to it to help the transporter room beam it into space it can be assumed that combadges must have some sort of easily distinguishable rare materials inside of them or some form of high-powered energy emitter that makes it easy to detect them even with huge amounts of interference number six discovery's new Tricom badges the crew of The Discovery were introduced to a lot of new technology after traveling to the 32nd Century including Tricom badges this is an invention that replaced Starfleet combat badges at some point before their arrival in the future in addition to a Sleek new design and addition of rank markers the tricon badges also include several built-in devices to help with life in the final frontier these devices were activated by hand gestures and tapping and included a personal transporter interface a tricorder and a holographic pad to connect to the computer archive in much the same way that the original com badges removed the need for handheld communicators tricon badges cut down on the preparation needed for away missions and made life much more convenient in Starfleet by combining multiple devices into one the discovery crew took a while to get used to their upgrades but soon embraced them along with all the other 32nd Century technology that they acquired number five non- Starfleet combadges combadges have a reputation for being used by Starfleet but there are actually a ton of other alien societies and private citizens that use similar devices most notably the Klingon Empire and the Boran militia both had combadges in the shape of their own insignias the Klingons attached Theirs to the side of one of their arms typically and the bajorans kept them on the left side of their chests the side opposite of where Starfleet com badges go additionally Cristal re from Star Trek Bard had his own personal combadge with a custom emblem which he provided to passengers aboard Las Serena there have also been dozens of other alien badges seen in Star Trek that could be com badges or just simple insignias it's unclear whether the Federation was the first organization to invent com badges or whether some alien Empire had come before them but by the 24th Century the tech was commonplace pretty much all throughout the Galaxy number four the origin of the design The Familiar shape of starfleet's com badges was canonically an evolution of the Starfleet logo that some officers used to wear as patches on their arms around the time of Star Trek Enterprise eventually Starfleet dropped the background leaving just the yellow pointer at the center much like how modern real logos seem to simplify over time the old United Earth logo itself seems to be an evolution of NASA's logo it has the same circular shape Starry background round and pointer at the center but slightly simplified Was the removal of the white orbital shape and letters NASA and other modern-day space organizations are about as close as we're going to get to Starfleet right now so it makes sense that certain design elements from them would make their way into the future also in a great example of reality mirroring fiction the United States recently revealed the logo for its new space force which includes an arrowhead design much closer to the look of combadges than NASA's logo this design was probably taken from elements of the shield for the Air Force space command that was created in the 1980s but it's unknown whether or not the original design was inspired by Trek or is merely a coincidence number three section 31 combadges the Federation secret organization section 31 often gets access to powerful new technology before Starfleet does one example of this is combadges during the first two seasons of Star Trek Discovery Starfleet officers are still using communicators however in the episode Saints of imperfection we saw Ash Tyler now now an agent for section 31 tap his badge with his hand and speak into it to hail Leen Pike was just as surprised to see this as we are and asked Tyler what the hell kind of Communicator is that the section 31 com Badges of this era look exactly the same as the Starfleet badges but with black coloring on one side some members of Starfleet recognized the black badges as a symbol of authority but few knew their true meaning or that they doubled as communicators so far it's unknown why it was that section 31 decided to keep combadges a secret for so long number two the altered future combadge one particular combadge design with two gold lines behind a silver outline of the Starfleet Insignia appeared in a number of possible Futures we saw it in the Next Generation episode all good things the Deep Space 9 episode The Visitor and the voyager episodes Timeless and endgame these possible Futures never came to be so neither did the badges but Star Trek peard gave us a new combadge design that looked very similar it too had the outline of the Insignia in front of two lines but this version was slightly different for example the top corners seemed to be shaved down and the left line was made larger than the right it's very likely that these badges appeared slightly different from the ones we saw in possible Futures because of the changes made to their timeline in the episodes that were mentioned earlier number one the earliest Starfleet combadge we've seen as mentioned in the intro combadges were first seen in the Next Generation in the original series and the to films the entire Federation apart from Agents of section 31 used communicators instead which were small phone- shaped devices however there's one scene that gives us a hint that they were introduced long before Picard's time in the Next Generation episode yesterday's Enterprise there's a scene where we see Lieutenant Richard Castillo a time-traveling visitor from the Enterprise C tapping on his com badge and talking into it Lieutenant Castillo came from 22 years in the past back when Starfleet still used the stylish red uniforms from the to films which makes one wonder when exactly that change was made from the ordinary B badges to the com badges this scene was probably just included because the team behind the episode simply forgot that the badges from the to films were never used as communicators but the characters from that episode came from a point in time decades after the Enterprise B launched in Star Trek generations so combad is being invented within this period fits into the timeline well enough for us to consider it Canon outside of warp drive these magical Creations are probably the most well-known piece of technology to come out of this franchise and also to make us all really really upset whenever we have to queue for a plane or a bus or a car or pay for petrol with that in mind I'm Sean fic for Trek culture and here are 10 things you need to know about Transporters number 10 they were invented to save money and time the earliest pitches for Star Trek had to deal with the challenge of getting the crew down to the planets each week support shuttles were suggested as was Landy the Enterprise itself though both would have proven prohibitively expensive in the beginning so the producers were backed against a war and came up with the idea of the matter transporter this became part of the pitch and part of the reason that Stark was given the green light twice it helped to sell the cage first of all now rather than committing to large scale models for the pilot that may or may not take off spoiler it didn't this fantastic new technology could be used instead when the cage failed to make any traction the show was given a new pilot where no man has gone before though it was actually the Man Trap that helped Star Trek survive the depiction of the transporter in that episode excited the network so much much that they bumped it up for broadcast meaning that it was shown to audiences before the first episode number nine the first transporter was achieved with practical effects the actual look of the transporter beam is quite striking in its various iterations and is most often achieved by means of CGI starrik Voyager and starrik Discovery heavily redesigned the original transporter beam adding a slower blue dissolve in the former with a golden circular pattern appearing in the latter the original series achieved The Look by dropping aluminium powder between the camera and a black background this was then superimposed on the images of the various crewmen who were then dissolved out of the shot this was most often achieved with the actual footage being frozen as it would be a little later in the franchise before technology would allow people to move while in transport between that wall and the brightly lit floor and ceiling pads the transporter set was able to overpower the stage lights allowing an easier transition for overlaying the shots of the beam itself number eight the Heisenberg compensator the Heisenberg compensator is part of the transporter that's specifically deals with wner Heisenberg's uncertainty principle in quantum mechanics the principle is any of a variety of mathematical inequalities that place a limit on the accuracy that certain pairs of physical quantities of a particle can accurately predict so what does this mean in English first published in 1927 German physicist Heisenberg posited that the more precisely an object's location can be determined the less likely it is to predict its momentum after initial findings this theory was then put into the makeup of the transporter in Star Trek in the episode realm of fear Barkley and O'Brien are seen examining the Heisenberg compensator which is shown to be a component of the overall device this is their workaround for Heisenberg's Theory now it goes without saying that the compensator is an entirely fictional invention while the transporter itself does have a basis in reality more on that later the compensator also became a handy plot point something that the crew would look to when there was an issue with a transport that was either out of their control or an easy scapegoat when trying to stall the mariarti hologram in shiing a bottle number seven Transporters can be used as Weapons the transporter has a very dark capacity while remaining the easiest method of travel in Star Trek's Universe once an area is unshielded it can serve to pluck any living thing from its location and beam them wherever the operator chooses for example there are several occasions in the original series when some poor red shirts stepped onto the transporter pod only to find themselves floating in space moments later the transporter can be co-opted as well in the darkness and the light while Dax and Warf are attempting to beam a member of Kira's old resistance cell to their Runabout the transporter pattern is scrambled this is deliberate the deranged Kardashian silin prin had been systematically wiping out the shakar cell he hit a tiny pattern Scrambler on the poor victim which ended up killing her in a horrible fashion all while Dax and Warf looked on unable to stop it more recently seven of nine used the Transporters aboard larena to beam several neorg drones into the foundations of Shadow bicard killing them instantly as they rematerialized with half of their bodies fused to the stone own number six emergency Transporters the first obvious use of the emergency transporter came at Star Trek Nemesis this was used by data to rescue Captain bicard though at the cost of his own life it was a small device fitted with its own power source giving it the ability to send a signal back to the Enterprise E without having to rely on either that ship or the Scimitar power sources by that year it was still considered a prototype due to its limitations earlier incarnations of emergency Transporters were closer in design to those standard Personnel Transporters found most starships and star bases these were designed to send larger groups at a time often used during evacuation procedures by the 32nd Century these smaller Transporters have become standard practice embedded into Starfleet combadges Starfleet discoveries third and fourth Seasons seem to have done away with the standard transporter rooms altogether as the combat contains enough power to send the wearer from ship to Planet whereas this was beyond the capabilities of earlier models a combination of the personal Transporters and the pattern buffers allowed the crew of The Discovery to escape disintegration as the ship exited a void as part of their search for the cause of the dma number five no beam me up Scotty was never said out loud though now it's well known the exact phrase beam me up Scotty was never actually said on screen in Star Trek many variations of the command were issued throughout the years including near misses like Scotty beam me up the Mis quote started to appear on popular media roughly 10 years after Star Trek's debut it was both connected to the franchise itself and became slang that was used in other contexts perhaps unsurprisingly for the period i the 60s and '70s it quickly became associated with taking mind altering drugs allowing the user to disappear into another place mentally James Dohan used the phrase as the title of his autobiography in 1996 and the quote was so connected to him that it's included in his oritur despite the actor never having spoken the lines nor responded to them William Shatner did however include the line in an audio recording of his novel Ashes to Weeden the rebooted Kelvin films have continued the tradition of almost using the quote as there are several examples where Kirk and other characters quickly bark the order Scotty Beam us out number four transwarp beaming transwarp beaming was demonstrated in the Kelvin timeline films to a mixed reaction in the film it's Montgomery Scott who perfected the theory though in the time that Spock Prime travels back to Scotty has yet to master it much to the shagrin of Admiral Archer and his prize beagle Spock shows him the theory required however this has a KnockOn effect in Star Trek Into Darkness Rogue section 31 agent John Harris definitely not can uses it to escape Earth and travel all the way to Kronos though the film depicts this as a single beam the novelization States the device used didn't have enough power requiring can to beam to a ship then use that ship to beam to the Klingon home World though this miracle device would seem to make Starfleet obsolete it had actually been suggested by Gene rodeny in the initial development of Star Trek the Next Generation he put it forward as another cost-saving method removing the need for a Starship at all thankfully writer David Gerald shot that idea down straight away the Enterprise is the hero he said delaying this technology for about a further 20 years number three does the transporter send the atoms and the bits or just the bits the Canon definition of the transporter states that it sends both the atoms of the person or item along with the information around said atoms to put it another way the transporter is said to send the original file in whole instead of a copy now with that being the case there's a number of issues in how this is depicted in the franchise in the episode The Enemy Within Captain Kirk is split into two halves there is the passive good Kirk and the highly aggressive evil Kirk though a fun story written by Richard mat no lless if one is to follow the cannon explanation of the transporter this would be impossible theoretical physicist Lawrence Krauss wrote in his book the physics of Star Trek that if the atoms and the information are being sent in a transporter beam then splitting into two distinct people would be impossible as the beam could only rematerialize the exact same number of atoms to split Kirk in this fashion the poor man would have to be bifurcated however if the transporter only sends the information each time then transporter clones are entirely possible this would account for evil Kirk Thomas rker and William Boer all of whom were created as transporter copies along the way number two God bless the pattern buffer the pattern buffer is the part of the transporter that stores the information due to be sent from one location to the next this combined with the Doppler compensators allowed the device to factor in any changes during transport that may have occurred after hitting send with that said there were many more uses for the component Beyond its initial design the most well-known jury rigging of a pattern buffer came when the Enterprise D discovered the downed USS Janan on the Dyson Sphere with that ship all but destroyed Captain Montgomery Scott and another crewman Matt Franklin programmed the pattern buffers to lock into a continuous diagnostic cycle effectively keeping them in stasis the theory was only half successful Scotty rematerialized but Franklin went the way of the red shirts the pattern buffers also stored all information from each transport which in turn allowed them to keep something of medical history for travelers in favorite Sun the crew of Voyager were able to determine the truth behind Harry Kim's supposed return home as alien DNA is traced back through his trips in the transporter the buffers could be extended to carry several dozen Travelers at a time though this was rarely advised as too much information could cause them to malfunction number one teleportation in reality the idea that led to the transporter namely teleportation itself is a far older phenomenon than Star Trek the first usage of the term was coined by American writer Charles Fort in his 1931 novel low though in the novel he prefaces by saying that many will accuse him of making of nonsense he proceeds to at least attempt to Define it the term comes from the Latin words for remote te and carry portar Fort was using the term to describe the strange disappearances and appearances of anomalies a similar idea had existed in fiction for a while with examples as early as 1897 combining both teleportation and time travel though at that time the word had not yet been coined quantum teleportation suggests that it is possible to transmit the information of a subject across distances without actually moving them this would tie in with Lawrence krauss's theory that it would allow for transport of clones now while there's no conclusive verifications of this type of transport to date in 2014 researcher Ronald Hansen and colleagues from the Technological University deled in the Netherlands demonstrated information teleportation between two entangled quantums that were 3 m apart now the aviation and motor Industries can relax as this may not be a precursor to matter Transportation just yet but it is certainly a wrong on that same letter Jordi leforge from Star Trek the Next Generation was born without eyesight but thanks to Starfleet Medical Science he was able to see even better than those with normal human Vision using his signature visor which stood for visual instrument and sensory organ replacement Jordi received his first visor shortly after turning five it basically gave him superhuman abilities as he could see things that would be invisible for others but the device wasn't without its issues throughout his starle career it caused Jordy a fair amount of trouble and made the job a lot harder for ofar Burton who had to play the character with his eyes almost completely covered the visor has also become greatly iconic in pop culture and has inspired a lot of Real World creations but there are plenty of facts about jordy's visor that fans may have have missed or forgotten over the years remember the visor was so much more than just a fashion statement so with that in mind then I'm Ellie with Tre culture here with 10 things you didn't know about jordi's visor number 10 what Jordi can see the colors that humans see are actually just different wavelengths of electromagnetic radiation with red being the longest and violet the shortest however visual light is only a small segment of the electromagnetic spectrum longer wavelengths contain types of radiation like for red light microwaves and radio waves and shorter wavelengths contain types like ultraviolet light X-rays and gamma rays with his visor Jordi was able to see much more of the electromagnetic spectrum meaning he could detect Heat by looking at infrared light and sometimes see through objects or clouds that would appear opaque for anyone else he also saw the world in much more detail than the average person he could detect tiny details in people's heart rates and perspiration which sometimes even allowed him to tell if someone was lying there have been several scenes that have given us representations of jordy's way of seeing but with ordinary human eyes it's actually physically impossible to even comprehend what it would be like to see anything other than visible light number nine how it affected Lavar Burton's acting in an interview with the television Academy Foundation Lavar Burton discussed the difficulty of playing a character who was supposed to have such enhanced Vision while in reality he had about 85% of his view completely blocked off by the visor apparently at the beginning of the Next Generation Burton was constantly knocking into things able only to see what was directly in front of him over time he got better by learning new ways to navigate the sets with the visor on like using light stands and other points of reference that stood out Burton was nearly completely blinded during filming which made his job a lot harder beyond that with a large part of his face covered Burton also had to try way harder to convey emotion with just his mouth and Body Language despite all of these limitations though Burton was able to pull the whole thing off brilliantly for seven whole Seasons before Jordie finally got his upgrade after Star Trek generations number eight why Jordi stopped using his visor we first saw jordy's ocular implants in the Next Generation finale or good things after the timeline was changed in that episode he ended up getting this new tech shortly after Star Trek generations but they were actually invented far earlier in the episode loud as a whisper Dr palaski revealed that she had actually done several surgeries to install these kinds of implants and offered to replace jordy's visor with them Jordi decided not to go through with the procedure because he believed that the technology of ocular implants was not yet on the same level as the visor he would have basically been sacrificing visual range for a bit of added comfort and a more natural look but apparently by the time of first Contact either those devices had Advanced far enough or Jordi simply decided that Aesthetics and comfort were more important to him though the ocular implant still did cause him headaches from time to time of course Lavar Burton often argued to have his V replace with something more natural but it wasn't until after the Next Generation ended that he finally got what he wanted number seven why Jordi declined treatment jordy's visor actually caused him a lot of discomfort he would often get headaches and become overwhelmed by all of the information his brain was receiving the data from the sensors was transmitted into the brain through short pulses rather than all at once which made it a bit easier to process but he still experienced constant pain in his day-to-day life an encounter at Faro Dr Crusher offered to either give him painkillers or a surgery to numb the affected parts of his brain but he declined both options because he believed that they would cause the visor to be less effective keeping the visor at Peak Performance was really important to Jordy he used his Advanced sight in his engineering work constantly hopefully Jordi will have found an effective way to treat these symptoms when we see him in the third season of Star Trek Picard though number six other visor in Star Trek Jordy wasn't the only character in Star Trek history with a visor nor was actually the first in fact in the discovery episode Brothers we saw a staff lead officer from about a 100 years before the Next Generation wearing an earlier model of the same device this retrovisor looked much bulkier and wrapped around the entire head instead of just the eyes probably to more easily reach different parts of the brain we also saw two officers with visors in the lower decks episode second contact the first could be seen when tendy went aboard the shuttlecraft on the ceritos and the second appeared as a member of The Landing party visiting the galdoni later we got a visor wearing teddy bear in the episode Cupid's erand arrow as well ocul implants were probably a more common technology than visors because they worked as well as normal eyes and felt far more natural but for those who wanted a bit of an upgrade a visor was the way to go number five Rihanna's visor in 2016 Rihanna developed a new line of sunglasses in collaboration with Dior which the pop star said were directly inspired by jordy's Unique Style I've always been obsessed with his eyear Rihanna said while explaining her design process she continued and when I got to Dior and saw all the materials I could play with it all just came together it didn't take long for Rihanna's drawing rings to be translated into a physical prototype and the line was released later that year in June while her sunglasses are definitely more fashion focused than jordi's visor you can kind of see the similarities if you really squint the connected lenses are really the best giveaway Brianna's always been a big Star Trek fan something she's mentioned in the past she even made a song and music video called Sledgehammer to promotee Star Trek Beyond it's actually really nice to see her get the opportunities to just nerd out about Star Trek to her fans number four Jordi almost gave the visor up for love we first saw en and Sonia Gomez in the Next Generation episode Q who when she accidentally spilled her drink on Captain peard and she later appeared in the episode Samaritan snare then years later in the lower decks episode first first Contact as a captain however her role in the show was originally planned to be much bigger the writers have plans to make Gomez into a new love interest for of Forge they wanted a reason to have Jordi undergo a dangerous surgery to replace his fisa with something more natural so the idea was that the two would start to get closer eventually leading to a romance and Jordie would decide to go through with the surgery in order to see her beauty through human eyes the writers soon decided that Jordi and Sonia were not meant to be likely because they gave the actors no indication that the characters were supposed to be into each other and so Jordy never had a reason to risk his life to see naturally number three visor live video feeds visor could actually be linked to a computer which could generate a live video feed of the devic's point of view onto a screen now this may seem like a cool ability to have for the Enterprise crew but it was actually a major security issue in Star Trek generations and the episode The Mind's Eye which we'll talk about again in a moment Jordi was captured and unknowingly had his visor linked to his captor computers this allowed the Klingons to learn the Enterprises Shield modulation in generations and helped the Romulan monitor Jordi in the Mind's Eye some fans even theorize that these two events are actually what inspired Jordi to switch to ocular implants after Generations as they had no external interfaces which could be used to hack them like the visor having someone else spy on him through his own eyes on two occasions has got to be pretty traumatic number two the Mind Control powers of the visor Jordi leforge was captured by romulans while on vacation in the episode The Mind's Eye using the visor interface with jordy's brain they were able to force him to see horrible images and eventually conditioned his mind to follow their orders using this mind control method the romulans hoped to get Jordi to assassinate a Klingon named vag in order to spark conflict between the Klingon Empire and the Federation which they nearly succeeded at luckily data began detecting strange eband emissions aboard the ship and was able to figure out that they were being used to interface with the visor it was later discovered that Cal one of the Klingons visiting the Enterprise was actually a Romulan conspirator who was feeding Jordi commands through e bands it's truly terrifying to know that the same technology that allowed Jordi to see could also be used to command his brain number one real life visors we don't have anything as advanced as jordy's visor in the present but we're getting closer every day we already have devices that can see far further than us and detect parts of the electromagnetic spectrum that we can't see with our eyes add that with the fact that technology that interfaces with your brain has been getting way more advanced recently and it seems like it may not be that long before technology becomes real funnily enough there actually was a real Vision aiding device released in the late '90s that was called Jordi for joint Optical reflective display in honor of Jordi leforge the Jordi device was based on NASA Tech and used cameras to allow people with limited Vision to see further it even had a zoom function but it wasn't directly linked into the brain and only worked if the person had some level of sight in their eyes but still it's interesting to see Star Trek inspiring real life Innovation even if it may be a while before we can see anything like the visor travel in the Star Trek universe is more dangerous and interesting than you know with that in mind I'm Sean faric for trike culture and here are 10 things you need to know about warp drive number 10 humans were very late to the game everybody knows that Humanity achieved their first independent warp flight on April 5th 2063 on this day zepim Cochran piloted the Phoenix the ship that he created from the shell of a nuclear missile breaking the light speed barrier for the first time this attracted attention widening Humanity's view of the universe the Vulcan survey ship to Planet hath was passing through the soul system was alerted to the flight they made first contact with Earth beginning the process that would eventually lead to the formation of the Federation for the Vulcans however this achievement came almost three Millennia after they had broken the light speed barrier themselves it was roughly the 9th century BC Earth Reckoning when the Vulcans achieved warp drive however according to Ronald D Moore Cochran is still credited as inventing warp drive as it is understood in the Star Trek universe this could mean that the Vulcans had been using a less sophisticated form of propulsion similar to the Romulan method of forced Quantum singularities That Was Then abandoned after meeting with Cochran in the 21st century number nine the Phoenix wasn't always Humanity's first warp ship although accepted Canon now has the Phoenix as the first human warp capable ship this wasn't always the case Starry Deep Space 9 had a model of the Bonaventure c221 in K O'Brien's School room appearing in two episodes it was a cylindrical vessel shown once in a diagram and a second time as a physical model according to its designer Doug Drexler it was a forerunner to the Bon Aventure NCC 10281 that had previously appeared in the Animated Series episode the time trap in fact The Bonaventure was the name of the first warp ship long before the Phoenix was ever conceived in the novel Federation by Judith and Garfield ree Stevens Zep from Cochran traveled to Alpha centu aboard the Bonaventure with his later personal vessel being named The Bonaventure 2 at the time of release in 1994 this still remained in Cannon with the TV series as Star Trek first Contact was not released until 1996 number eight don't mess with the antimatter containment pods warp drive at least a board of federation Starship was achieved by the controlled release of matter and antimatter via the warp core however if the two substances were ever to meet they would destroy each other releasing a wave of pure energy most often referred to as a warp core breach a breach invariably resulted in the destruction of whatever ship it occurred on the USS yumato fell victim to an iconian probe that drained power from the antimatter containment pods once energy levels fell below 15% they failed resulting in the antimatter escaping containment and destroying the ship the Enterprise D almost succumbed to the same fate though captain bicard and Commander Data were able to prevent it in time they only bought the ship a few years though battle with a Klingon bird of prey commanded by the duros sisters resulted in catastrophic damage to the antimatter containment units and the coolant systems though the crew managed to escape to the sorcerer section which separated the drive section was consumed by the breach with the resulting shock wave crashing the saucer into the surface of a rant in three number seven antimatter does a lot more than make ships go warp drive is powered by antimatter and matter however antimatter is far more durable than simply serving as one half a futuristic diesel in fact it has been shown to have a strange relationship with standard SpaceTime any original series episode The Naked time the ship is able to travel backward through time using controlled implosions of antimatter while this of course is a very handy trick for getting out of a tight spot it is rarely referred to again the Enterprise does travel through time via warp drive more times though without using this method in the Next Generation episode we'll always have Paris antimatter served in the opposite role data had to use antimatter to realign one of Dr Paul manheim's experiments as it begun to deteriorate resulting in disruptions in SpaceTime here antimatter actually set the flow of time to wrs again it has other uses outside of propulsion as well including being a component of photon Torpedoes had the Enterprise B been carrying a complement of photons during its maiden voyage they would have been able to detonate an antimatter explosion near enough to the SS laul and SS Robert Fox freeing them from the Nexus however the torpedo didn't arrive till Tuesday number six those ample nay cells most vessels stick to a standard two nayel design these nay cells taking their name from the similar propulsion components on air and watercraft created a Subspace Distortion field around the ship allowing vessels to ride through the Distortion at extreme velocities they were usually separated from the rest of the ship by large pylons an idea stemming from Matt Jeff the designer of the original Enterprise he felt that when in use the na Sals will be flooded with dangerous levels of radiation and that no crew member should be near them this rule was relaxed by the seventh season of The Next Generation as a control room was built into them later ships like the defiant and steamrunner class had the Nels built directly into the main hle these Nels were still a weak point on their ships damage could be catastrophic such as an alternate timeline that saw the Enterprise D explode following a collision with the USS Bosman by the 31st Century starf had begun to design ships with detached Nels while this was said to make warp drive and these vessels more reliable it also served to protect the ships from direct damage due to impact with the Nels several ships including the freedom class Hermes class saladan class and in the alterate timeline Kelvin class were also able to operate with only one warp Nile number five one Crystal to rule them all dilithium crystals were the main source of powering the warp cores of Starfleet ships along with many other races in the Galaxy the Klingons Kardashians and the Breen all sought these Rare Minerals for their propulsion systems and much like the fossil fuel crisis that Earth faces today these were a finite resource leading to raiding parties and trouble between Powers by the 2250s Starfleet was already aware of the dwindling supplies though it would not become acutely critical until the 31st Century experiments in Spore Drive technology were initiated in the hope of replacing the crystals though they were deemed a failure another issue facing them was that through a process known as decrystallization they would effectively run out of power Spar and Scotty managed to devise a way to recharge them during a temporal mission in 2286 which was then implemented through the rest of the fleet by the 24th century the discovery of a planet made of dilithium in the vuan nebula may have served to help Starfy get back on its feet by the 32nd Century though many more experiments in Alternative forms of travel were badly needed to replace this already dwindling Supply number four warp 10 in the original series at the time of the Enterprise's famous 5year Mission the Galaxy operated on a different warp scale to that which was used in the Next Generation onward for example it was possible for ships to travel in excess of warp 10 without occup Ying every point in the universe instantaneously though it was still considered an unsafe velocity the Orion routinely traveled at these speeds as according to spock at least they were unconcerned with safety modifications to the Enterprise allowed it to travel in excess of the speed as well including the changes made by The Nomad probe and by the Kelvin perhaps the greatest sustained velocity observed by the Enterprise at this time was that of Carla 5 in the counterclock incident thanks to the extreme time delation effects of a black hole and her own natural reversed Universe her vessel was recorded traveling at water 36 a speed that was theoretically impossible at the time generally Starships kept their speed below the warp 10 barriers for the safety of ship and crew though they were at that time capable of breaking this speed limit number three salamander speed in the 21th century the warp 10 barrier was redesignated to become infinite velocity which meant that in theory no ship should be able to break this barrier this was tested on a number of occasions first the Enterprise D traveled at speeds that neared warp 10 when both the traveler and cinski came aboard the ship the Traveler's modifications allowed the ship to reach Galaxy m33 commander rker and Captain Bard theorized that breaking the warp 10 barrier would allow a ship to travel back in time which according to them was how the shuttlecraft elbaz had managed such a feat the following year the most significant experiment on reaching warp 10 occurred in the Delta quadrant thanks to the discovery of an extremely rare form of dilithium Tores and Paris were able to fit the shuttlecraft Cochran with a warp 10 coil the experiment was a success with a sting in the tale while Paris did break the barrier he then underwent a hyper Evolution which saw him evolve into a giant salamander before reaching his final form he kidnapped Captain Janeway taking her on a warp 10 flight the experiment was deemed too risky to repeat even though both officers were returned to their normal forms number two the great experiment in the 228s Starfleet had begun a series of experiments that began with the USS excelsia nx2000 this ship said to have transwarp capabilities was captained by Styles a deeply AR an commander who stepped over Sulu for promotion he received a nasty shock when the exceler suffered a total system shutdown after Scotty sabotaged their propulsion systems though little was said of the transwarp experiment again it was said that these trials were deemed a failure the exceler was retrofitted with a conventional warp drive entering service later that decade Starfleet would not manage to achieve transwarp until the 2370s however perhaps failure is too strong a word as the discoveries made while testing the exceler led directly to the upgrading of their engines and the advanced pulsion systems on board the Ambassador class ships both classes of vessels remained in service well into the 24th century thanks primarily to their durability in action in fact both were seen as strong enough to Bear the name Enterprise a refit of the exceler class became the Enterprise B while an ambassador class ship became the Enterprise c number one transwarp slipstream and Beyond there are of course other forms of Transport in the Star Trek universe the Borg have managed to successfully achieve transwarp capability which allows them to suddenly appear at the drop of a hat there system of transwarp corridors linked by Hogs dotted throughout the galaxy has greatly contributed to their terrifying reputation they primarily use transwarp coils and a chroniton field to achieve these speeds as the gravimetric shear that a cube creates could in theory tear it to Pieces while Federation ships can use transwarp coils finding them was extremely difficult as the Borg were not known for their generosity an alternative appeared in the form of a quantum slipstream drive aboard the USS dauntless though this too turned out to be too dangerous this was supplied by an alien named arturus and he was hellbent delivering Voyager to the Borg slipstream drive relied on benomi crystals as opposed to dilithium these were even rarer to find though a small Supply was secured the year after first discovering The Dauntless while Voyager was only able to shave 10 years off their Journey this way by the 32nd Century it was a standard system aboard ships such as books I'm uh I'm Carl one of the best intro lines in quite a while in Star Trek we are going to go through one of the most fascinating devices or beings that was introduced in the original series and we saw again in Star Trek Discovery I'm Sean fic for Tre culture and here are 10 things you didn't know about the guardian of forever number 10 it seems to enjoy testing people we see in the episodes terrafirma of star Tre discovery that Carl or the guardian puts Emperor Georgio through quite a rigorous test to see if she's quite frankly worthy enough of being saved if we go back to the original series episode the city on the edge of forever in which the guardian of forever was introduced you see McCoy Kirk and Spock travel through time and although McCoy Alters the future Kirk and Spock put it to rights when they return home the guardian says I am the Gateway many such Journeys can be made as though inviting them to do this again Kirk's grief at the loss of Edith Keeler is still too near and so they Buck it out of there somewhere in that Millennium between it seems that the Guardians criteria for use has changed and that is probably to do with the temporal Wars by the time we get to Burnham and Georgio arriving at the guardian the test seems to have changed not now to see if you know someone can be trusted to fix a mistake but if someone can be trusted to do good George O saves the life of suu in the Mirror Universe and Carl s are back to a time when it will be safe to exist number nine it's both sensient and Alive while also being neither in the city on the edge of forever when Kirk and Spock meet the guardian on the planet they ask are you alive are you a machine and effectively the guardian responds yes and no they comment on the fact that this is slightly confusing to which the guardian responds and I love this line basically I'm putting it as simply as your little Minds can understand that type of wit was something that you would see return years later with Carl and this there is a if you like sort of a biting satire in the way that he interacts with georgeo and Burnham in the way that maybe it wasn't as obvious back with Kirk and Spock but it was still there in way I feel like this might be a hold over from the original draft of the script when it was both a machine and simply a tool number eight Harlen Ellison going behind the scenes now Haren Ellison was commissioned to write the original screenplay for the city on the edge of forever the version that he turned in which I'll go into in a bit more detail in a few minutes was deemed by both rodeny and the production staff to be not what they were looking for it it was a bit too dark it was a bit too adult and it was a bit too out there so as often happens with scripts in the production process it underwent a series of rewrites now what they didn't do was consult Ellison when Ellison saw what had been done with his script he was not happy he felt that it had been eviscerated and even though the episode would go on to win the 1967 Hugo award which is a big deal he effectively wanted his name offer it would take quite a few years in fact it was 1993 when a bound version of the original script with a large essay written by Ellison was published and released to the public this didn't really hold anything back and it detailed the fact that this Feud that existed between Haron Ellison and the makers of the episode outlived many of the people involved in the story years later again IDW publishing ran a comic series in 2014 which does Ellison's original script in comic form number seven it has the power to cross universes as well as time there was nothing in the past that specifically contradicts this it just hadn't been explored so if we look at it this way it meant that the guardian of forever in the city on the edge of forever and later in yester year would have had the power for these people to visit the Mirror Universe this poses an interesting question which is there an equivalent on the other side if so why haven't we seen anyone else come over with it there's maybe an obvious answer for that is that if you move too forward in time when you're Crossing universes you start to undergo a pretty pain ful death which is what Georgio is going through before Carl saves her but I think most importantly what this does is it opens the door to hop between universes now while the Mirror Universe has been done to death at this stage Kelvin Universe hasn't number six the Guardians of the time Vortex the original script by harlon Ellison ran something like this a crewman on board the Enterprise Beckwith was dealing drugs to the Enterprise crew and he was discovered by another crewman called Lebec however Beckwith murdered Lebec and escaped down to the surface of the planet he was pursued by Kirk and Spock although much like mcoy did he hops through the guardian of forever and prevents the death of Edith kler Beckwith escapes down to the planet there he meets the 9 ft tall time Vortex Guardians so the guard Guardians in this instance they were a race of aliens who were tasked with controlling this time Vortex now they agreed to send him through but they also agree to send Kirk and Spock through then the episode plays out relatively similarly um Beck with prevents the death of Edith kler and then Kirk crucially at the very end fails to stop him so Spock has to step in and ensure Edith's death they come back to the future and later there's this incredible line that when Kirk is grieving in his quarters Spock says no other woman was promised to the universe for love I mean that's hell of a line try following that one for several reasons this script was deemed too expensive and particularly the Guardians of the time Vortex these 9ft tall aliens it was just way outside the budget that was available to the episode at the time number five you you've heard its voice before in terrafirma we get Paul Gil foil playing the human version of Carl and in yester year the Animated Series episode it was voiced by James Tu and it was probably one of the 47 voices he was doing in that episode that week but in the city on the edge of forever and Via archive recording in terrafirma Bart Laro was the voice of the guardian of forever Bart laru had such a distinctive baritone voice that he was was often hired to do voice over roles on Star Trek he did appear twice on screen once in bread and circuses and once as a newscaster in the episode patterns of force you would also have heard his voice as Train's father in The Squire of gothos he was one of the providers in the gamesters of trellion and he was also an escalan in the Savage curtain laru was a character actor who worked in quite a lot of Hollywood Productions in the 60s and70s he was an independent writer and filmmaker which he continued to do up until his premature death at the age of 57 in 1990 number four Spock's Family Ties to the guardian in the novel yesterday's Son by AC crisen Spock travels back using the guardian to sidon the episode that we first saw in all our yesterdays now that is a late episode of season 3 of the originalist series but hold on don't let that put you off just yet in that episode Spock McCoy and Kirk traveled through time and Spock ends up enjoying some ponar shall we say with Zara Beth a a native of saridon 5,000 years before in the beginning of this story a drawing of a Vulcan face is discovered on SAR piden Spock reckons that okay yeah I think that might have been my fault he petitions tipa and gets permission to use the guardian of forever to travel back in time and collect his son this he does his son is named Zar and he brings him into the modern times as well now unfortunately the romulans have become aware of the guardian of Forever by this point and there is a space battle overhead between the Enterprise and the Lexington and some romulans while down on the planet quickly Kirk and Spock are captured and tortured by romulans Zar has slightly Advanced telepathic Powers he is able to you know find his father and his father's greatest friend basically his uncle using only his mind he does elect to go back to serp Heiden though at the end but not before sharing a mindmeld with Spock number three it has ties to the Q Continuum now this is another beta Cannon entry so just beta Cannon warning there but in the novel the Q Continuum Ser of novels by Greg Cox it's revealed that the Q we know and love the John Deany Q is actually well aware of the guardian and in his youth relative youth had in fact tried to use the guardian to just discover something new this ties in to of course the episode Death Wish from Voyager which shows the Continuum is old and Dusty and they're bored they've done everything thing now it does in the novel Universe it opens up the Milky Way galaxy to utter Devastation Q meets a character called o o is completely genocidal and unfortunately has the power to back it up thanks a bunch Q now thankfully obviously that is rectified but there is one statement that really sticks out and it's really important for the history of the guardian and that is Q's line that says about the guardian at least our ancestors knew how to make things thus implying that the ancestors of the Q Continuum built the guardian of forever number two what's a little copyright theft between friends when Kirk Spock and the rest of the landing party are on the Guardians planet and they're looking at the device they see something like a showreel of images from the past in the middle section of the Guardian these comprised of clips that were largely owned by desil Studios at the time but not all of them the clips are all from Paramount films and RKO pictures Productions as well now RKO was founded in 1929 by David sof but by 1959 it had closed up his doors it had it had shut down much of ark's Holdings were bought by desilu Studios but crucially its past inventory of films its by catalog wasn't there are a couple of scenes in this showreel in the guardian including there's a sailing ship firing cannons now that is from the RKO film the Spanish man from 1939 that was not used with permission there was a bit of a legal gray area there but to be fair Desu did not own that image to share it as any content creator will know you know you you've got to you've got to have the rights to use images if you're going to or that's got to be released under fair use laws neither of those were the case back in 1966 and 1967 so yeah this is one episode that at least legally hasn't aged very well number one sarak and Surak The Untold yesterday's Enterprise the original idea for the episode that would become yesterday's Enterprise actually focused on a very different story altogether there would still be time travel and this is where where the guardian of forever is brought in but instead of the Enterprise sea traveling through any Rifts it would see sarak traveling through the guardian back in time now once again you've got people studying the guardian of Forever This Time It's a Vulcan science team they accidentally erase Sorak from vulcan's past they accidentally accidentally kill him now the problem with that is Sorak is the person responsible for the vulcan's current logical and peaceful way of life he led them in the time of Awakening without him the Vulcans effectively make the romulans look like kittens sarak elects to go back in time and take the place of Sorak in history basically becoming him taking his name and setting everything to right this was an idea that would at least thematically be reused again in the Deep Space 9 episode past tense which unfortunately did not feature the guardian but did feature Cisco taking on the role of Gabriel Bell you can see as well the way some of the themes carried over into the released yesterday's Enterprise gone was the guardian of forever but kept was this idea of a contemporary character traveling back in time although rather than the Vulcan cak it was of course tashar traveling back on the Enterprise C

Channel: TrekCulture

Views: 249,115

Keywords: Star Trek, Original Series, Animated Series, Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, Voyager, Enterprise, Discovery, Picard, Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Prodigy, TOS, TAS, TNG, DS9, VOY, ENT, SNW

Id: exlJiaohbnM

Length: 80min 19sec (4819 seconds)

Published: Tue Mar 19 2024