Another flurry of emails for your pleasure, this time including Floyd friend BAG:
Just read your colloquy on the Star Trek movie. Entertaining stuff. Two points:
BAG: 1. Dan is correct in that there’s a parallel universe angle to all this. The various Star Trek incarnations have all made use of this device, but usually only for an episode or two. JJ Abrams trots it out here specifically for the purpose of the reboot. Thus, most of the events we see in the new movie represent a parallel universe/timeline, and that’s why none of this happened in Old Spock’s timeline, because he didn’t enter the universe/timeline we’re watching until his first trip through the black hole. This is what allows JJ Abrams to now give us the young characters of the original series however he wants to present them as his movies go forward. He doesn’t have to kowtow to Trekkie canonicity because he’s created a parallel universe, where he can decide what happens.
2. If your question about windshields was regarding the Enterprise, then it’s answered by pointing out that what we see on the bridge is not a windshield, but rather a view screen. But perhaps you were talking about the Romulan mining ship. I don’t remember if it had a windshield or not.
Dan: I was talking about the Enterprise. Windshield or not, cracks in your vessel can’t be good for cabin pressure.
Here’s a question. Since they use viewscreens and not windshields, why is the bridge always located at the top of the ship? Why don’t they move it to a more protected location, where it can’t be hit by a photon torpedo or whatnot?
BAG: Floyd just e-mailed me and I was about to make the same point in reply. It’s always amazed me how much damage the Enterprise bridge takes. A couple of photon torpedoes, or a few phaser hits, and suddenly ceiling joists are falling and little multi-colored fireworks are shooting out from various instrument bays (why do they keep 4th of July fountain fireworks under the instruments?). Why the hell hasn’t the bridge been moved to the middle of the ship? The entire brain trust, minus the chief of engineering and the doctor, are stationed there.
Floyd: Actually, isn’t the bridge of the Enterprise in the “stem” that connects the disk to the engines?
And in the future they’ve invented “hull fluid,” which works kind of like that stuff you put in your bike tire that’s supposed to clog holes as soon as they form so you don’t lose air.
Dan: You think I wouldn’t do my homework on something like this?
“On Starfleet vessels, the bridge is usually located on Deck 1, on top of the vessel’s primary hull.”
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Bridge
BAG: The craptastic design is probably due to the design stagnation caused by the socialism of the Federation when they nationalized Boeing and Lockheed-Martin in 2023.
Floyd: I’ve been lied to. I’d always thought the bridge was in the stem, and I’m positive I didn’t come up with that on my own. I stand corrected.
The bridge of the Enterprise is notoriously poorly-constructed. That’s what happens when you award starship work to the lowest space-bidder.
BAG: That’s what happens when you build starships in the middle of f*cking Iowa.
Dan: “Where are we going to locate the Starfleet Academy?”
“San Francisco”
“Okay. Where are we going to build our starships?”
“Iowa”
“Really? Huh. Okay, well, I guess there’s a lot of open space in Iowa to work with.”
“Yeah, it’ll work great. And we’ll have shuttles to send new recruits from Iowa to San Fran.”
“Why don’t we just send all the recruits directly to San Fran?”
“Because I’m TYLER PERRY, jerkface! Watch out or I’m going to turn into my hilarious Madea character!”
Right? Or am I to believe that O’Hura is Iowan?
Floyd: Can’t they just beam the recruits back and forth? Travel and distance isn’t nearly the hindrance that it is in our time, Dan. Because IT’S THE FUTURE. Also, Iowa is full of blacks in the future. Obama broke the racial barrier, and Iowa started letting black people move in several decades later.
BAG: Speaking of the future, my iPhone 3G S is supposed to arrive via FedEx tomorrow. Teleportation? There’s an app for that.
Do you guys think Apple makes the tricorders? (iCorders?) From the looks of the Enterprise bridge and given Starfleet’s San Fran HQ, I’m guessing Apple’s pretty heavily involved in Federation design.
Floyd: Do you find it funny that people still have to press a button and hold up the tricorder to their mouths in the future? We already have better technology. What happened, Bluetooth technology didn’t survive? Or was it deemed “too douchey” by future generations?
BAG: They figured out it causes cancer. And even though millions of Federation citizens still use Bluetooth in the future because “it’s cool” and “it’s habit,” all Starfleet facilities and ships have a strict No-Bluetooth policy.
Dan: The Next Generation had Bluetooth. They pressed the insignias pinned to their chests to open a line of communication.
You’d think pre-Next Generation also had that technology. I mean, they could monitor vital signs of their captain before Nero killed him (didn’t “TERMINATED” pop up on the viewscreen? I remember chuckling.) remotely, in real-time. Someone should have thought to put a microphone next to the biorhythm tracker.
