Exploding bridge consoles ... of DEATH!

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-01-05 12:27pm

Notice, however, that in Star Trek TV shows, regular crewmen may as well not exist. Why cut away from the bridge to show crewmen being killed and bravely fighting to save the ship, when even damage control is handled by fucking touch-screens on the bridge? Why have a crewmen in engineering desperately trying to seal off a blown pipe when you can have O'Brien say "I'll have to reroute the EPS flow around the overloaded conduit" and then punch a couple of buttons?

They did cut away to crewmen fighting to save the ship in later Enterprise episodes - watch Azati Prime for a good example. It was quite refreshing, and *far* more dramatic then people punching buttons on the bridge.

Skylon · Post by **Skylon** » 2006-01-05 01:34pm

Darth Wong wrote:Whenever I hear people talking about how they have technical advisors on set (which is an exaggeration of the tech advisors' roles anyway), I have to wonder whether these tech advisors ever admonished the writers about this stupid exploding-console thing.

Doubt it as by this point it's become a standard sci-fi thing. Though I found it refreshing that while listening to the audio commentary for Alien, director Ridley Scott noted that the Nostromo "doesn't hold up to close scrutiny" in regards to consoles sparking and CO2 randomly getting sprayed everywhere. It's a dramatic tool, that while fake works, but was way too overused by Voyager and Enterprise.

Look at ST2: they didn't show Enterprise bridge crew dying in the battle with Khan, although a couple of people suffered burns. They showed deaths belowdecks, with crewmen and Scotty's nephew dying as a result of battle damage. And that was sufficiently dramatic; there's no need to have an exploding console for fuck's sake.

I always found those situations conveyed more tension than seeing one guy get fried on the bridge. In "Q-Who" one of the most effective scenes is when the Borg cut out a few decks of the Ent-D which was more than effective in conveying "holy fuck". Also in BoBW pt 1 engineering is breached and when Geordi gets the the bridge he reports how many people they lost was still more effective in illustrating the severity of the situation than a couple guys getting fried on the bridge.

brianeyci · Post by **brianeyci** » 2006-01-05 02:39pm

It's annoying that the least dramatic most ridiculous things become brainbugs rather than powerful images. I would rather Star Trek ships have had paper thin hulls and the ST:VI with the exploding kitchen and battle damage have become a brainbug than the consoles.

What the fuck is wrong with cutting away to a jeffries tube and having crewmen rush to fix it only to have a torpedo explode right in the crewman's face? Or show more hull breaches. Combat should be combat.

And what is with phasers that hit the walls and no damage happening to it. I'm reminded of Full Metal Jacket and the patrol shooting up a concrete wall with their M-16's. That was a "holy fuck" moment, if phasers actually exploded walls in a shower of sparks and people got injured by shrapnel wouldn't they be much more dramatic. The sanitized version of phasers being almost like a hospital surgical tool never worked for me. It didn't work in B5 either and sure didn't work for Star Trek.

Brian

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2006-01-05 02:54pm

An exploding kitchen that was a direct result of a hit to that section of the hull

Bounty · Post by **Bounty** » 2006-01-06 05:36am

They did cut away to crewmen fighting to save the ship in later Enterprise episodes - watch Azati Prime for a good example. It was quite refreshing, and *far* more dramatic then people punching buttons on the bridge.

Screenshots :

Crewmen putting out a fire in Engineering

Redshirt on fire

Explosion in corridor

More bleeding redshirts

Redshirts getting sucked into space

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-01-06 06:35pm

Probably the most vicious thing about this particular brainbug is that it's jumped over to other series. Babylon 5 had exploding consoles (notably, in the fourth season when the Omega destroyers get pounded), as did Seaquest (well, it was almost never Seaquest herself, usually other ships that got hit). Hell, neo-BSG has even had an exploding console, due to a computer virus.

Patrick Degan · Post by **Patrick Degan** » 2006-01-06 08:05pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Probably the most vicious thing about this particular brainbug is that it's jumped over to other series. Babylon 5 had exploding consoles (notably, in the fourth season when the Omega destroyers get pounded), as did Seaquest (well, it was almost never Seaquest herself, usually other ships that got hit). Hell, neo-BSG has even had an exploding console, due to a computer virus.

I remember consoles sparking from damage and overload and a fire breaking out on the command deck on Capt. Hall's flagship in "No Surrender, No Retreat" but not actual killer explosions such as we've seen in TNG-era Trek.

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-01-06 08:37pm

There was a huge exploding console on the Cortez in Rising Star that wasn't in the script (and so didn't kill anyone). The director thought it would be cool. I believe JMS had words with him.

B5 did use the shaky-cam quite a bit, but I think EVERYONE does that.

Edit Just remembered. An exploding console injures Sheridan and kills or KOs a woman standing next to him in C&C in Severed Dreams, but this is because a superheated mass of debris that had very recently been a Starfury slammed directly into the facility's blast doors.

Nephtys · Post by **Nephtys** » 2006-01-06 09:37pm

Uraniun235 wrote:Probably the most vicious thing about this particular brainbug is that it's jumped over to other series. Babylon 5 had exploding consoles (notably, in the fourth season when the Omega destroyers get pounded), as did Seaquest (well, it was almost never Seaquest herself, usually other ships that got hit). Hell, neo-BSG has even had an exploding console, due to a computer virus.

Aside from like.. two cases of minor exploding consoles, the only real one I can think of is when Ivanova got hospitalized. Which was for pretty good reason. (Actual physical impact)

Skylon · Post by **Skylon** » 2006-01-06 11:39pm

Nephtys wrote:
Uraniun235 wrote:Probably the most vicious thing about this particular brainbug is that it's jumped over to other series. Babylon 5 had exploding consoles (notably, in the fourth season when the Omega destroyers get pounded), as did Seaquest (well, it was almost never Seaquest herself, usually other ships that got hit). Hell, neo-BSG has even had an exploding console, due to a computer virus.
Aside from like.. two cases of minor exploding consoles, the only real one I can think of is when Ivanova got hospitalized. Which was for pretty good reason. (Actual physical impact)

B5 had plenty. More than a few times on the White Star. The Battle in "Endgame" had the EAS Aggamemnon's bridge get pretty beat up and CnC was trashed at the end of "A View From the Gallery", I always assumed from the "exploding consoles of doom".

BSG hasn't had them much. With the computer virus, but also during the final battle in the miniseries. Though at the very least in that somebody cared about the fact that their consoles were sparking. After said station sparked Tigh calls for a "Function check on the damage control console".

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-01-07 01:50am

Which was for pretty good reason. (Actual physical impact)

Yeah, I wouldn't call that an exploding console at all. The whole bridge was smashed in by a piece of debris.

B5 had plenty. More than a few times on the White Star.

Lots of sparks, but I don't recall the Star Trek syndrome of "severe crew casualties because we have volatile plasma stored behind every surface."

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2006-01-07 03:26am

Alright. 'Exploding' was poor word choice on my part, I apologize. I'd forgotten that the focus of the thread was on killer consoles and not just overdramatic bridge damage in general.

It should be noted, however, that a fire aboard a spacecraft can potentially be very deadly.

Srynerson · Post by **Srynerson** » 2006-01-07 11:16am

brianeyci wrote:It's annoying that the least dramatic most ridiculous things become brainbugs rather than powerful images. I would rather Star Trek ships have had paper thin hulls and the ST:VI with the exploding kitchen and battle damage have become a brainbug than the consoles.

What the fuck is wrong with cutting away to a jeffries tube and having crewmen rush to fix it only to have a torpedo explode right in the crewman's face? Or show more hull breaches. Combat should be combat.

I'm sure that budget issues drive the brainbug in large part. You want to shoot an episode on as few sets as possible and for your "battle damage" to be easy to install/show. A Seaview explosion on the bridge is very, very cheap.

18-Till-I-Die · Post by **18-Till-I-Die** » 2006-01-07 11:31pm

I'm wondering...

Why do they explode? They cant just spontaniously combust there must be some kind of flamable materal exploding to cause whole walls to vaporize like in that Generations picture. What on Earth (or space...) can do that and why put it, of all places, some place vital like the ship's comamnd center?

So like...what? Was it ever explained? Do they pack their walls with TNT in a futile attempt at ablative armor? Antimatter fuel lines? (ok that would be retarded even for the Federation but i'm grasping at straws)

A if this question has been asked before, my bad, but i dont know much about Trek technology outside of the big stuff like phasers and transporters.

Kenoshi · Post by **Kenoshi** » 2006-01-08 01:44am

I took the exploding consoles to mean that they must have high voltage power lines running through them for some odd reason. Why consoles would be desinged to include high voltage power lines is a mystery to me....maybe all that ultra-sophisticated future technology is really power hungry.

ngc7293 · Post by **ngc7293** » 2006-01-08 02:29am

Said in different words: "drama" at the expense of "intelligence"
It might have been smart if the lights just went out "Captain, I just lost helm control. All the lights went out." "Damn it!" Kirk says, "We'll have to get Scotty to take over from engineering. You just sit there and look dumb....er"
"Wait, Captain, there IS this high voltage power line running under my feet. I could rig helm control with that" "OK, that sounds stupid.....er but better....er do it." Soon, helm is up and running.

Then, the ship is hit by a floating Ford Pinto. Helm Explodes and the crewman is thrown from his chair, smacking his skull on the railing. They quickly go to commercial and wipe the blood from the railing. The show comes back. An overjoyed Bones is on the bridge, waving his C-cell battery over the deadman, "He's Dead Jim."
And the show goes on.

See, a typical Trek episode explained. (appologies for too many words)

Anguirus · Post by **Anguirus** » 2006-01-08 11:40am

So like...what? Was it ever explained? Do they pack their walls with TNT in a futile attempt at ablative armor? Antimatter fuel lines? (ok that would be retarded even for the Federation but i'm grasping at straws)

You're close. They're actually powered by "plasma conduits" and it's those that explode.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-01-08 11:47pm

This business of the bizarre possibility of large amounts of energy traveling through these consoles has me wondering...

Onboard real warships, especially submarines, surely the designers and engineers must account for the possibility that electrical equipment will at some point be submerged, or at least sprayed with water. I cannot recall a film or TV show where a flooded section of a ship results in the electrocution of nearby crewmembers. How is this potential issue handled? Anyone know? Are there built in safety breakers? There should of course be mechanical backups (spin a valve to shut the flow in a pipe instead of pressing a button to do the same thing, etc.) which might mitigate this problem, but surely there is lots of electrial equipment in spaces that could be flooded.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2006-01-08 11:57pm

FSTargetDrone wrote:This business of the bizarre possibility of large amounts of energy traveling through these consoles has me wondering...

Onboard real warships, especially submarines, surely the designers and engineers must account for the possibility that electrical equipment will at some point be submerged, or at least sprayed with water. I cannot recall a film or TV show where a flooded section of a ship results in the electrocution of nearby crewmembers. How is this potential issue handled? Anyone know? Are there built in safety breakers? There should of course be mechanical backups (spin a valve to shut the flow in a pipe instead of pressing a button to do the same thing, etc.) which might mitigate this problem, but surely there is lots of electrial equipment in spaces that could be flooded.

Usually hermatically sealed moduals. barring that circuit breakers.

They also probably make use of DC circuits as they require much more current to kill compaired to AC circuits. and in the case of water its not as deadly as on might think since salt water has a pretty low resistence. as such the current will not go through you as readily. Current tneds to go to ground which is the hull of the sub.

FSTargetDrone · Post by **FSTargetDrone** » 2006-01-09 02:32am

Isolder74 wrote: Usually hermatically sealed moduals. barring that circuit breakers.

They also probably make use of DC circuits as they require much more current to kill compaired to AC circuits. and in the case of water its not as deadly as on might think since salt water has a pretty low resistence. as such the current will not go through you as readily. Current tneds to go to ground which is the hull of the sub.

D'oh, of course, salt water. Forgot about that.

Good stuff, thanks.