I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.
BUT… why arent they using drones to explore planets? why are there not more drone-spaceships? why does enterprise need a crew to begin with? Why is there so little automation? Why so few uses of AI in general?
I am saying this as a star trek the next generation person. I’d also expect them to have full video and sensory streams of any surface mission teams.
The in-universe answer re: drones would be that people want to explore. Sure, it’s dangerous, but it’s also exciting, fascinating, and fulfilling. That said, I feel like a responsible captain would make much more extensive use of probes than any of the shows.
Re: data streams, I don’t have a good in-universe explanation. I have a similar question of why they don’t have security cameras in all the hallways and public areas.
Also, using the transporter to go down to a planet always runs the risk of some storm or an orbital threat stranding your party. Why not use the shuttle as SOP? It gives your away team more resources, both for their mission and for an emergency.
The cameras are more of a privacy issue that I imagine the Federation tries to uphold.
There was an episode of TNG where a “passenger” got onto ship’s comms and was contacting Picard on the bridge. When Picard told the guy that the comms were reserved for ship’s business, the guy asked why they weren’t restricted, if that was the case. Picard said that was unnecessary as people in Star Fleet generally just…behave themselves.
That did change overtime though. They mentioned in Lower Decks that they beefed up security after the Pakleds attacks, which leads to Boimler not even being able to open doors (or activate emergency systems lol)
It’s a military / government ship. There is no real privacy.
Everyone can read your personal logs if there’s a good enough reason. Anyone can just ask the computer where anyone is at any time. People can just barge into your holodeck program. Anyone, from civilians to bartenders can just call up the bridge and talk to the captain whenever they want. People are just expected to control themselves.
I think of it like how people don’t need to carry defensive weapons now, while a knife was very common in the past. People are just expected to control themselves and not rob random strangers today.
An important distinction is that they aren’t military. Government, yes. But SNW recently had an episode establishing that a crew member’s personal log is sealed and it took the crew member’s death and a surrounding investigation to unseal them. The Federation clearly values privacy.
So then the lack of cameras seems like a huge security oversight.
I can’t remember who said this in the show in Universe; maybe Janeway? But I think a similar question was posed, and the answer was that nobody would have anything to do if exploration was entirely automated. It’s fun and exciting and gives people’s lives meaning.
My headcanon is that many mundane things are automated, and we don’t see them because they aren’t plot-relevant.
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I hate that this was the first thing I thought of. :)
1 argument against the use of drones:
See also: any time an AI has been given command of a vessel (except Data, and even then he caused problems a couple times).
Before that, M5 was one of the worst disasters in Starfleet history.
And although it was probably at least partially covered up control wasn’t exactly great.
Please explain, this is a starfleet drone attacking a starfleet ship? Was the drone highjacked or just went rogue on it’s own?
Option B
Rogue AI hidden in code.
Thats drone ships going bad from lower decks
And more importantly, the drone MISSED data that revealed the planet was inhabited!
Not Star Trek, but the Three Laws of Robotics is the textbook on why AI and any strict programmatic interpretation of Rules is a flawed goal.
They tried to, but the exocomms became sentient and they couldn’t be used as slave labour anymore.
Why invest in tech when there are so many red shirts around?
😂
In a similar vein, I’ve been rewatching TNG and find myself thinking that they really should have put a cctv camera in engineering. Could have saved them a lot of trouble.
Probably because the butlerian jihad forbade them.
butlerian jihad
dune is a trip! 😂
Drones can’t negotiate the if they trespass or make accidental contact in uncharted territory.
They aren’t?
Enterprise sends out probes (drones) just about every other episode, especially in TNG. Almost everything is automated on the ship, controlled through the computer interface.
In the original series episode I just watched, they reference that they’ve sent out tons of unmanned drones/probes to map out systems and planets, but starships are enormous and better equipped, so they follow up on any readings from the probes that seem interesting. If there’s an in-universe answer that isn’t “it makes better television”, I’d say it’s a combination of:
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Space is really, really big, so probes are only covering small areas anyway.
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Their mission is to explore and contact new life, which is more likely to be successful with a human touch.
which is more likely to be successful with a human touch.
Andorians and Tellarites: “Are we a fucking joke to you!?”
Vulcans: “We must expend great effort to suppress our feelings of amusement at all of you.”
*Federation civil war begins
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It’s fun to see what modern tech is missing from decades old Sci-fi.
One of the most interesting ones for me, is that there aren’t any screens with text on them shown in the original star trek. That’s because when TOS was made, computers communicated by teletype/printout. TOS is older than the concept of text on a screen.
That said, I feel like a drone would be part of a tricorder. I have a DJI drone with a good camera, and I use it a lot for getting pictures of things that are out of my reach, if you had one paired with a tricorder, you could look at things out of your reach.
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I mean, the Borg are right there on the poster!
They live in a post-scarcity world with insane science fiction technology, but they keep the executive decisions in the hands of crew members.
I know this is how people in the 80s and 90 imagined the future and a lot of concepts were probably too far fetched for them.
You also have to consider that TV executives were also considering this, and punting any ideas they thought wouldn’t be accepted by a TV watching audience of the 80’s/90’s. Like the planned gay characters who were scrapped.
I mean, think about that, being gay in the future was too much for some television executives to accept, I really wouldn’t be shocked if they gave thumbs down on lots of more esoteric and abstract episode concepts simply because they thought it would be too above the heads of a 90’s TV audience.
And to be fair, they were probably right. The communicator seems less amazing now that we live in a world with cell phones, but back then a personal communications device that was on your person at all times seemed definitely in the realm of sci-fi. Now we all have a near-equivalent in our pockets, as well as it being general purpose computing device that can be used as a personal communicator and much more. Our communicator is also a primitive tricorder.
Some of the ideas they did let pass were either already accepted tech from the original series or were close to existing civilian or military hardware that was in it’s infancy.
So a combination of “this was the extent of human imagination about these concepts back then” combined with “television executives are keenly aware of ideas the general public won’t understand, and doesn’t like confusing audiences, and thus will cut any content they deem too abstract or confusing” is what I think actually happened. One part actual limitation of imagination, one part purposeful limitation of imagination as to not to confuse the audience.
Which, honestly, is fair. Do you think sci-fi series like Rick & Morty would exist as they do without all previous sci-fi series laying down frameworks we understand for it to be based on? Human knowledge and ideas do build on themselves, and so, in a way, the TV executives are half-right that you can’t overexpose an unexposed audience. You kind of have to slowly spoon feed them ideas over time.
Like, what if we tried sending Rick & Morty as a show back to the 1960’s, and how many of the ideas would be entirely over the audiences heads? Simply because they didn’t have 60 years of sci-fi media relating different iterations of these various ideas until “the multiverse” is just talked about like it is just a given thing that exists, and nobody questions it. At least a few would have trouble wrapping their minds around it, because while many of these ideas were pioneered in the Original Series, their lack of depth might leave audiences back then really confused about some of the ideas presented.
You probably hit it on the head about the limits of people’s imagination in the 80s/90s, but also I wonder if it had anything to do with Roddenberry and his opinions of what was / wasn’t going to show up in Star Trek? He famously forbid interpersonal conflict between federation people, making it annoying AF for the writers on TNG. Plus drone ships exploring everything might not make for captivating TV
You are right, it would remove all the stakes, but then I feel that is just bad/lazy writing, If you really went into such a future with your imagination, I am pretty sure it might even raise the stakes as there might be probes hiding/sleeping in places you do not expect or in general all of that while making exploring a planet more secure, it could then make for a great twist if all of the sudden a swarm of drones dropped out of hyperspace right on top of them.
I seem to remember at least one episode about a rogue drone missile (nuke?) of some type that they had to board / disarm, but yeah that aspect of things was really ignored. Same thing with space infrastructure / communication relays and all that, never hear about it unless its a hook for a specific episode…
I also don’t understand why they use elevators instead of just asking to be beamed to whatever part of the ship they need to go. At least the captain could probably be beamed around.
This drives my husband insane. He can’t figure out why anyone bothers to walk anywhere. Why do they still use bathrooms when you can just transport the pee from your bladder into the replicator recombinator or whatever?! I assume the transporters must use an amount of energy that makes it inefficient to use for every little thing.
transporters must use an amount of energy that makes it inefficient to use for every little thing. that makes a lot of sense
Transporter technology constantly evolves across all the series and eras.
So in the 32nd century, yes they do just use the transporters built in their com badges to zip around the internal volume of the ship, but there are protected areas. The Transporter room is more like a formal entry.
In TOS, internal site to site transport was dangerous, so only used in emergencies. You’ll note that they almost always transport to outdoor locations.
In TNG, less dangerous but not generally enabled. Used under emergency or ideal conditions only. There are a lot of situations on planets where portable pattern enhancers are used to improve functionality and safety - kind of a take it with you transporter pad set up.
