Exploding consoles make sense if you think of them like battleshorts: circuit breakers intentionally bypassed so that the ship and its systems can remain operative under emergency conditions.
Sure, an operator being knocked out for a minute is terrible, but imagine if the enemy could just disable your entire bridge by hitting the right wire with an energy beam. You wouldn’t get plasma burns on your hands, but you would be dead a few minutes later. Even with shields at maximum, you see people flying everywhere.
Imagine a Trek battle where every panel that explodes how would safely shut down and become inoperative instead. You’d need a huge team of mechanics waiting next to the bridge working on the ship under fire to keep the helm controls working!
Almost every time a console explodes, someone resumes operating it a minute or two later. Sometimes the helmsman dies and the captain has to step in but the damn ship still works. Better to disable the circuit breakers the moment the ship goes to yellow alert than to die in space.
This theory doesn’t work entirely, though, because you also see exploding consoles on ships being fired at from cloaked vessels, with no reason to have battleshorts engaged.
Wouldn’t blowing up also render the console inoperative? I would think safely shutting down would be preferable to exploding if the end result is still a dead console.
I think it depends on what blows up. If the warp coil check engine light blows up, the ship remains operable.
I don’t know enough technobabble to explain how this happens, but you see blown-up panels getting used again without repairs quite often in Trek, sometimes after being dead for decades.
That’s true. In modern times if your phone or tablet touchscreen breaks with enough explosive force to knock you over and require medical intervention, that phone or tablet is toast and probably won’t work ever again.
On Star Trek, after a console explodes, the person who was using it is helped away and someone just slips into their seat and keeps using that same console without issue. Maybe the downside to extremely robust electronics is that they’re prone to explosions. Like, you get the world’s most robust, bulletproof mechanical keyboard, but the downside is that it requires a 240v high-power power supply. For… reasons.
This is one of the better explanations for the exploding consoles I’ve seen. It still doesn’t justify them, but at least it’s something.
The main issue is that there’s no reason that consoles should explode. These are effectively touchscreens. If you push a touchscreen beyond its operational parameters, it should glitch, it should have trouble recognizing inputs, but it shouldn’t blow up. If it was pushed beyond what was safe it should either break or be annoying to use. Not dangerous.
Even with 21st century technology, a touch-screen type thing basically sips power. Smart phones can sometimes explode, but that’s only because they contain a relatively huge battery. These things are hooked into the ship’s power so they should only be drawing a few watts.
Still, if we combine your suggestion about battleshorts with the idea that for some ridiculous reason they run everything on the ship on plasma that comes directly from the warp core, then maybe…
I will steal this Other Place meme from the Other Place website, because it applies here as well:
This is the best I could come up with. Why the hell their touchscreens work on the equivalent of 10kV power lines, I have no idea.
I think we can theorise all we want, but the simple truth is that some SFX guy thought the sparks looked cool and would make battle scenes less boring. When you stop glancing over the technobabble, nothing in Trek makes sense. There are some common patterns (“transporter buffers”, “warp core”, “plasma conduits”) but eventually a whole episode will be about inverted theta radiation chronotron fields that just looks like a pink blob in space. No theory will ever fully explain why the consoles explode, they just do; many important Trek tropes were made up on the spot and are later recalled for consistency.
As an Other Place fan whose experience with trying to befriend Star Trek fans IRL has hit the tragic third - thank you for being reasonable. I’ve met some people pretending that the Other Place is “space wizards for children”, while Star Trek is “real science fiction”. While in fact they’re the same - for most part space magic and for the select few areas, yes, real science fiction.
I like both myself. Both are very much critiquing political systems and politics in general, though SW does it with a lot more action sequences than SW, or at least they did until the Abrahamsverse.
SW started out as “brave Rebels fight the space nazis” and ST started out as “cold war, but in space, but also let’s not be racist/sexist okay”. I think ST got a lot more politics done, to the point of boring the audience to death, because ST got a load of screen time while SW only got three movies initially.
Since the original series, both have had elements of “we’re the civilised people trying to bring order to the chaos”, both have had trade negotiations and blockades, a war of which the worst villains had infiltrated the depths of the military and political powers, and diplomatic struggles to get planets and systems on side.
For every “there are four lights” there’s a concert, and for every “you were like a brother” there’s a “i don’t like sand”. There are strengths and weaknesses in both franchises and I don’t really get the culture wars between them. Hell, both shows feature space wizards and ghosts (though I dint think Leia ever fucked a jedi space ghost like Crusher did), whether you call them the result of spatial anomalies or midichlorians.
I know it sounds cringe, but I’ve always wondered how an interaction between the Federation and the Republic would be like. Would the Federation join the much larger, more corrupt Republic? Would the two be at odds? Would the Orions and Hutts fight for control over their slaver empires, or would they thrive and gain a political stronghold on both sides? Would the Federation call on the mighty Republic army to fight the Borg, risking their forces spreading closer to the border?
I think the “realistically corrupt but mostly well-intentioned” Republic before Sidous’ plan and the “holier than thou, hiding the blemishes” Federation would lose an interesting dynamic for commenting on society: what we know should be slamming straight into what we know deep down is the reality of our world. Leave the Q and the Jedi for what they are, there’s a more interesting show waiting if we send the Enterprise through a DS9-like wormhole to Corusant!
I saw someone once theorize that the console designers knew their creations would get dumped with tons of heat and current under battleshort conditions, and had to come up with some fallbacks. So they just filled it with a ton of mass to soak it up as long as possible, a big hunk of basalt. Unfortunately, when it gets overloaded, it tends to explosively fracture. But that’s better than cooking every ensign to touch a panel when under fire
would get dumped with tons of heat and current under battleshort conditions
But, why? If it were part of the engine, or a pump, or a transformer, or something that requires a lot of power that would be one thing. But, there’s no reason that the consoles should be part of a circuit that draws a lot of power or heat or anything.
Filling it full of rocks makes sense if soaking power was an issue, but this is just a basic UI element.
Ok, how about this: it’s critical that consoles like security, navigation, steering, etc. always be available. Because of that, they can’t risk any downtime in a battle, so they need to be able to self-repair. Their solution to this is to embed replicator technology into each console, so that any damage can be instantly fixed. Unfortunately, replicators need to be able to draw huge amounts of power / energy, which means the consoles need access to a lot of power. That’s why when they get damaged there can be a big explosion, but also why they’re never broken in those explosions. They self-repair so that someone can take over the console and immediately start using it again. Maybe it also explains the rocks – raw material for the replicators to use when repairing.
Exploding consoles make sense if you think of them like battleshorts: circuit breakers intentionally bypassed so that the ship and its systems can remain operative under emergency conditions.
Sure, an operator being knocked out for a minute is terrible, but imagine if the enemy could just disable your entire bridge by hitting the right wire with an energy beam. You wouldn’t get plasma burns on your hands, but you would be dead a few minutes later. Even with shields at maximum, you see people flying everywhere.
Imagine a Trek battle where every panel that explodes how would safely shut down and become inoperative instead. You’d need a huge team of mechanics waiting next to the bridge working on the ship under fire to keep the helm controls working!
Almost every time a console explodes, someone resumes operating it a minute or two later. Sometimes the helmsman dies and the captain has to step in but the damn ship still works. Better to disable the circuit breakers the moment the ship goes to yellow alert than to die in space.
This theory doesn’t work entirely, though, because you also see exploding consoles on ships being fired at from cloaked vessels, with no reason to have battleshorts engaged.
Wouldn’t blowing up also render the console inoperative? I would think safely shutting down would be preferable to exploding if the end result is still a dead console.
Depends on your proximity to Scotty/LaForge/O’Brien
I think it depends on what blows up. If the warp coil check engine light blows up, the ship remains operable.
I don’t know enough technobabble to explain how this happens, but you see blown-up panels getting used again without repairs quite often in Trek, sometimes after being dead for decades.
That’s true. In modern times if your phone or tablet touchscreen breaks with enough explosive force to knock you over and require medical intervention, that phone or tablet is toast and probably won’t work ever again.
On Star Trek, after a console explodes, the person who was using it is helped away and someone just slips into their seat and keeps using that same console without issue. Maybe the downside to extremely robust electronics is that they’re prone to explosions. Like, you get the world’s most robust, bulletproof mechanical keyboard, but the downside is that it requires a 240v high-power power supply. For… reasons.
This is a really great comment and I learned something today!
This is one of the better explanations for the exploding consoles I’ve seen. It still doesn’t justify them, but at least it’s something.
The main issue is that there’s no reason that consoles should explode. These are effectively touchscreens. If you push a touchscreen beyond its operational parameters, it should glitch, it should have trouble recognizing inputs, but it shouldn’t blow up. If it was pushed beyond what was safe it should either break or be annoying to use. Not dangerous.
Even with 21st century technology, a touch-screen type thing basically sips power. Smart phones can sometimes explode, but that’s only because they contain a relatively huge battery. These things are hooked into the ship’s power so they should only be drawing a few watts.
Still, if we combine your suggestion about battleshorts with the idea that for some ridiculous reason they run everything on the ship on plasma that comes directly from the warp core, then maybe…
I will steal this Other Place meme from the Other Place website, because it applies here as well:
This is the best I could come up with. Why the hell their touchscreens work on the equivalent of 10kV power lines, I have no idea.
I think we can theorise all we want, but the simple truth is that some SFX guy thought the sparks looked cool and would make battle scenes less boring. When you stop glancing over the technobabble, nothing in Trek makes sense. There are some common patterns (“transporter buffers”, “warp core”, “plasma conduits”) but eventually a whole episode will be about inverted theta radiation chronotron fields that just looks like a pink blob in space. No theory will ever fully explain why the consoles explode, they just do; many important Trek tropes were made up on the spot and are later recalled for consistency.
Sure, but that explanation isn’t interesting.
As an Other Place fan whose experience with trying to befriend Star Trek fans IRL has hit the tragic third - thank you for being reasonable. I’ve met some people pretending that the Other Place is “space wizards for children”, while Star Trek is “real science fiction”. While in fact they’re the same - for most part space magic and for the select few areas, yes, real science fiction.
I like both myself. Both are very much critiquing political systems and politics in general, though SW does it with a lot more action sequences than SW, or at least they did until the Abrahamsverse.
SW started out as “brave Rebels fight the space nazis” and ST started out as “cold war, but in space, but also let’s not be racist/sexist okay”. I think ST got a lot more politics done, to the point of boring the audience to death, because ST got a load of screen time while SW only got three movies initially.
Since the original series, both have had elements of “we’re the civilised people trying to bring order to the chaos”, both have had trade negotiations and blockades, a war of which the worst villains had infiltrated the depths of the military and political powers, and diplomatic struggles to get planets and systems on side.
For every “there are four lights” there’s a concert, and for every “you were like a brother” there’s a “i don’t like sand”. There are strengths and weaknesses in both franchises and I don’t really get the culture wars between them. Hell, both shows feature space wizards and ghosts (though I dint think Leia ever fucked a jedi space ghost like Crusher did), whether you call them the result of spatial anomalies or midichlorians.
I know it sounds cringe, but I’ve always wondered how an interaction between the Federation and the Republic would be like. Would the Federation join the much larger, more corrupt Republic? Would the two be at odds? Would the Orions and Hutts fight for control over their slaver empires, or would they thrive and gain a political stronghold on both sides? Would the Federation call on the mighty Republic army to fight the Borg, risking their forces spreading closer to the border?
I think the “realistically corrupt but mostly well-intentioned” Republic before Sidous’ plan and the “holier than thou, hiding the blemishes” Federation would lose an interesting dynamic for commenting on society: what we know should be slamming straight into what we know deep down is the reality of our world. Leave the Q and the Jedi for what they are, there’s a more interesting show waiting if we send the Enterprise through a DS9-like wormhole to Corusant!
I saw someone once theorize that the console designers knew their creations would get dumped with tons of heat and current under battleshort conditions, and had to come up with some fallbacks. So they just filled it with a ton of mass to soak it up as long as possible, a big hunk of basalt. Unfortunately, when it gets overloaded, it tends to explosively fracture. But that’s better than cooking every ensign to touch a panel when under fire
But, why? If it were part of the engine, or a pump, or a transformer, or something that requires a lot of power that would be one thing. But, there’s no reason that the consoles should be part of a circuit that draws a lot of power or heat or anything.
Filling it full of rocks makes sense if soaking power was an issue, but this is just a basic UI element.
Ok, how about this: it’s critical that consoles like security, navigation, steering, etc. always be available. Because of that, they can’t risk any downtime in a battle, so they need to be able to self-repair. Their solution to this is to embed replicator technology into each console, so that any damage can be instantly fixed. Unfortunately, replicators need to be able to draw huge amounts of power / energy, which means the consoles need access to a lot of power. That’s why when they get damaged there can be a big explosion, but also why they’re never broken in those explosions. They self-repair so that someone can take over the console and immediately start using it again. Maybe it also explains the rocks – raw material for the replicators to use when repairing.