I love sci-fi so this is not meant to make fun.
(O.K. maybe just a little)
Most or the Star Treks I have seen (which counting all the spin offs is quite a lot) have a battle scene in which the bridge crew get thrown around the bridge due to enemy fire. You see Kirk/Pacard/Janeway bouncing off the bulkheads. In “Generations” the frontal disc of the Enterprise crased onto a planet. The crew were flying around like they were in a cuisenart.
My question is this: With all the detail that went into these shows (a friend of mine has the “blueprints” to the original enterprise) why couldn’t the Federation install a few frelling seatbelts?
Breaking news:
Captain Kirk sues starfleet command and the klingon empire, claims whiplash sustained during attack left him partially disabled.
More after this break!
Exploding consoles, falling bulkheads, destructing warp cores. Those ships are accidents waiting to happen
P.S. Any word yet if the redshirts are returing in the upcoming series
I think we all know the “real” reason there aren’t any seatbelts is for dramatic purposes. I mean, can you imagine Picard striding onto the bridge, sitting in the comfy captain’s chair, buckling himself in …clickita clickita click clink “Engage!”
It’s worth pointing out, however, that school buses, and for that matter regular buses too, don’t have seat belts. A large tippy vehicle filled with fragile children, and not a single seat belt in sight.
Part of it may be that on the Enterprise, the inertial dampeners which prevent the crew from being splattered against the scenery when accelerating to warp are expected to reduce the need for restraints, but they never seem to be effective against explosions and impacts, even when the impact is anticipated.
Dragonblink (I can’t believe I’m sitting here at this ungodsly hour talking about freaking inertial dampeners)
Yes!!! I’ve thought this was stupid for years. High tech ship, inertial dampers frequently fail under attacks & no seat belts/full body webbing crash harness.
For the argument about less dramatic, it could be done as an “We’re under attack!” “Battlestations everyone” and then they put their belts on as a combat readiness thing.
BTW, Dragonblink, in the UK, seatbelts are required for school buses and new coaches. They finally legislated for it. New ones are built with a different style of seat such that it has sufficient strong attachment points for seat belts.
The first Star Trek movie featured restraints on the captains char - the chair arm consoles closed over Kirk’s legs when they went to alert status. It looked dumb. They dropped it after that.
I don’t buy the “not dramtic enough” excuse. Granted I haven’t been in too many crashing starships, but my experience with violent lurches in various vehicles tells me that, even if the crew were securely strapped in you’d still have lots of loose stuff flying around. Which is one thing that now bothers me about ST that didn’t used to. Why isn’t there loose stuff flying around and rolling across the floor with the crew? You know - loose change, pens, small pocket computers, comunicators, phasers, combs, other personal hygiene tools…
The real reason, of course, is that it’s the actors rolling around the floor and flinging themselves about while the camera gets shook. I guess it never occured to anyone to launch debris into the mess.
When you fly airplanes, you make darn sure evrything onboard is well stowed, so that it can’t bounce around in flight, and so that it doesn’t dmage things or jam the controls or instruments, etc. Before any manoevre likely to involve unusual attitudes, you check all of those things again, to make doubly sure nothing will fly around. It’s called an ‘ASCOT’ or a ‘HASEL’ check.
I can only assume that similar procedures would be in place aboard a starship, particularly one serving with an organization like Starfleet.
Notwithstanding, there are times when you see things being disloged during spaceflight; Captain Sulu’s coffee in Star Trek VI, chairs on the bridge in episodes of the old series, and lab equipment in the Generations film.
“Luke and Ben began strapping themselves into the vacant seats in the passageway.”
“Luke and Ben were already undoing their acceleration straps as Solo walked past them, moving toward the cockpit with the easy, loose-limbed stride of the experienced space.”
“‘We’re losing a deflector shield,’ Solo informed him with the air of a man about to have a tooth pulled. ‘Better strap yourselves back in.’”
Oddly enough, Wing Commander, the completely unnoticed sci-fi epic, had two things that made the whole movie worthwhile for me.
The seats in the ships had entire restraint systems. It looked cool as hell to see them strapping themselves in, as if they were going into combat. The Enterpirse bridge kinda makes me think that any moment, a wine-tasting party might break out.
Also, the interiors of the ships looked like subs. Small, cramped, dark, and with lots of pipes and wiring around. The way I think military ships will really look for a long time to come.
