What is this thing, and why hasn't there been an episode where crewmembers are being hypnotized by some aliens controlling it?
Swirly thing on the bridge
- Thread starter Laura Cynthia Chambers
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What is this thing, and why hasn't there been an episode where crewmembers are being hypnotized by some aliens controlling it?
In reality, it's a moire pattern made by two discs with radial lines coming from their centers, with the top disc slightly misaligned and rotated by a motor. There's a smaller one in the communicators and tricorders, as well. The tricorder's has a different pattern on it.
In-universe, I always thought it looked like the inside of a rotating torus (or donut, for the less mathematically inclined). Since it's on the science station, tricorder, and communicator, maybe it's displaying something about subspace signals or other energy emissions.
Let's see what the old fan-blueprints call it... the McMaster bridge diagrams call it "sensor sweep," which makes sense, the pattern looks a bit like a 3D version of the classic radar display with the rotating line refreshing the screen.
In-universe, I always thought it looked like the inside of a rotating torus (or donut, for the less mathematically inclined). Since it's on the science station, tricorder, and communicator, maybe it's displaying something about subspace signals or other energy emissions.
Let's see what the old fan-blueprints call it... the McMaster bridge diagrams call it "sensor sweep," which makes sense, the pattern looks a bit like a 3D version of the classic radar display with the rotating line refreshing the screen.
I still find it hard to believe you could stare at it all day on the bridge and not get mesmerized by it.
That's what safety breaks are for.
I like the Tetris game going on next to it.
I always saw it as some type of field effect display—they have evolved a bit
www.fractalkitty.com
They can actually be useful to shipping navigation—called Inogon lights
Ironically, there is a fractal zoom called the burning ship—evil cousins to Mandelbrot sets.
The Grand Illusions YouTube channel has a great video on Moire kits, and there are 3D printed moire spheres.
Moiré Play!
Moiré is an interference pattern that can occur in physics, photography, art, math, and more. As a photographer and mathematician, I have always enjoyed seeing these artifacts emerge. Today I playe…
www.fractalkitty.com
They can actually be useful to shipping navigation—called Inogon lights
Ironically, there is a fractal zoom called the burning ship—evil cousins to Mandelbrot sets.
The Grand Illusions YouTube channel has a great video on Moire kits, and there are 3D printed moire spheres.
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It's my favorite bridge display and I have a working prop version that I absolutely adore. I assume it reflects the sensor web around the ship and shows it to be operating. Of course, out of universe, it made so much noise and/or generated so much heat that one of the directors ordered it turned off and after S1, we hardly ever saw it illuminated or working again. 
I'm sure McCoy has a shot for that.
Have you come across the BizarroVision in ''SeaLab 2021?" Quite similar.
I just did a quick pass on the episodes. It was lit and spinning in Operation: Annihilate at the end of S1, Catspaw (S2E1), and Friday's Child (S2E3). It was lit but not spinning in Who Mourns for Adonis? (S2E4). I stopped checking after that, but maybe Marc Daniels needed it deactivated for the shots with Uhura and Spock working under her station. Just a thought.
Don't tell me my life is not a full one.
Don't tell me my life is not a full one.
It's the Bob Dobbs Slack calibrator
HAL 9000's prison bars.
Ditto. It's easier to accept the greater allotment of rectangular lights at face value than a panel that could double as a background for a Steppenwolf music video.
It does look like a large version of what's in a communicator device. Could it be some sort of sensor representation? It is it just a groovy 60s thing?
On the plus side, sorta, the story goes that the mechanical unit broke between seasons, so seasons 2 and 3 didn't have it twirling away, or even lit at all.
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There's also a story floating around that Nimoy asked it be deactivated because he thought it distracted from his performance while in-shot. Which, if any, of those is true is another question.
I like the Audible Motor Hypothesis. If true, any dialogue spoken with that thing rotating would have to be looped later on. I wouldn't have waited a whole season to say enough already. This little electric motor needs to be unplugged for good.
I think Lost in Space had the same issue with the Jupiter 2 elevator. Apparently it was operated by a fork lift, and that meant any scene with the elevator in motion would need its sound replaced "in post."
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