On the series Star Trek, they have combadges to communicate with other people on the ship instantly. However, what got me all confused is that on the show the computer sends the message through before the individual designates whom the message should be sent to. For example, if Picard said, “Captain to Engineering” his voice would seem to appear in engineering before he says “Engineering.” Is the message delayed without showing the audience? Is there some secret code to where the computer knows by what button they hit? I know I spent way too much time thinking about this. Any answer would be appreciated.
Sign, A person who has way too much time,
Aaron:confused:
I have been pondering this myself for quite some time. I see a few possibilities:
Whenever you hit your combadge, your voice is broadcase to the whole ship. Of course, for reasons of Television, we only see the area in the ship where the other character is, so he can respond. I don’t think this is likely though, since then we would constantly be hearing other crew members calling other people all over the ship.
The computer waits for the name of the person (or persons,) locates them, and sends the message to that area, with a slight delay. Only problem there is that there are several scenes where we don’t cut directly to the person answering, and the answer always comes immediately.
It’s Hollywood, and they didn’t think of the details of how it works and came up with a special effects system that doesn’t work anything like a real system would.
IMO, this is the best answer. In “real life” there would be a delay, but they don’t show it because it’s television and they want to keep the pacing. Since the characters are used to it, they think of it as if it’s happening in real-time.
A similar and probably better example is in the trial scene in Star Trek VI. They don’t use universal translators between Klingon and English, but instead have living translators like at the UN. However, this is only shown for a couple of sentences, and thereafter, all the Klingons are speaking English. (Kirk and McCoy still hold the translation speakers up to their ear, though.)
I think you’re just supposed to understand that what you’re seeing on the screen is just effectively the same as what’s “really” going on. It’s funny, though, in a translation scene like this, when one character interrupts the other. How do they do that if they’re not actually talking at the same time?
everytime a comm badge is activated, a tiny time bubble is created, giving the computer and the UT enough processing time to route the transmission to the proper person/ship/godlike lifeform. It just seems like real time to us.
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Maybe the signal goes through a local subspace field, allowing faster-than-light communication such that the message gets there before it is even sent.
