Vision in the 24th Century

[Shamrock Holmes]

I still think it looks a lot more like one of these painted with metallic paint:

If the prop was made from an air filter, how would Levar Burton see through it?

While the VISOR does look somewhat like an air filter, I definately recall a hairband being mentioned as the source/inspiration for the prop.

 

[Unicron]

fedCentauri, I edited the images in your post to links because we prefer you not to hotlink (steal bandwidth). You could upload them to an image host though if you want to display them for thread purposes.

 

[Avro Arrow]

^ Didn't realize those were hotlinked. I've edited my quoted reply to fedCentauri to use the links from your edit instead of the original inline images. My apologies for propagating the original problem.

 

[Unicron]

No worries. I tend to check the URLs in images, as I can usually tell when it's not a free image host. Most posters are pretty good about not hotlinking.

 

[fedCentauri]

It's definitely a banana clip, for anyone who's interested here's a video (couldn't embed):

The making of TNG Props, Geordi's VISOR

 

[fedCentauri]

fedCentauri, I edited the images in your post to links because we prefer you not to hotlink (steal bandwidth). You could upload them to an image host though if you want to display them for thread purposes.

Thankyou for the clarification, won't happen again!

 

[Unicron]

Not a problem.

 

[Go-Captain]

I'm not sure about the uniform issue - but I guess the point here is that Starfleet is. If camouflage isn't going to work 100% or even 20%, perhaps it's tactically much preferable to be highly visible so that ground action can be coordinated? It's not for serious mental illness in the leadership that the armies of yore wore brightly colored coats: wearing dull grey or green might have meant defeat through loss of cohesion to units and, even more seriously, through total loss of IFF.

Timo Saloniemi

Visual identification is useful if you want to avoid civilian casualties. It is why uniforms and national identification are considered important in Western combat, and why non-uniform combatants can be executed in the field. That might not be a realistic system in Star Trek considering various alien nations can be brutal. I don't buy the reasoning for brightly colored uniforms being for coordination in the field, radios really defeat that reasoning.

It might be an assumption that camouflage is obsolete. Tricorders make camouflage obsolete, but then sensors trickery makes tricorders less effective, making visual identification useful once again. I wouldn't be surprised by camouflage, textile patterns, being a forgotten technology.

Not only that, I couldn't see why baldness still existed then. Picard wore it well, but I don't understand the Doctor's "horseshoe head" type of baldness. He complained about it more than once. As a hologram, he could have altered his appearance in any way he chose. And if he could stimulate Seven of Nine's hair follicles and give her a full head of hair after 18 years as a bald Borg, then he certainly could have done the same for any male crewmember with male pattern baldness.

The Doctor kind of liked complaining, and like you write, he could have changed his hair if he really wanted, it would have been trivial. I believe the notion we are supposed to accept is future humans don't care about appearances when those appearances are just a part of life. So, someone who is 100+ years old will just accept their age and the loose skin which comes with it. Picard went bald, and just accepted it as an unimportant part of his biology. Even the admiral in Insurrection didn't care about looking young, he wanted to be young, as in possess longer life, more vigor, and youthful strength.

At the same time, they get hair cuts, wear clean uniforms, and so on. They want to put forward a decent image since they respect themselves.

 

[Timo]

Visual identification is useful if you want to avoid civilian casualties. It is why uniforms and national identification are considered important in Western combat, and why non-uniform combatants can be executed in the field.

Well, as the last phrase specifies, it's actually vice versa: visual identification is useful if you don't want to be killed by civilians, i.e. desire a permit to kill them before they kill you.

I don't buy the reasoning for brightly colored uniforms being for coordination in the field, radios really defeat that reasoning.

Radios play virtually no role in squad-level coordination today (although they probably should tomorrow), and squad size is the largest Trek ever has to deal with.

I wouldn't be surprised by camouflage, textile patterns, being a forgotten technology.

...And a forgotten doctrine: nobody in Trek ever tries to improvise a visual camouflage for the battlefield.

Also interestingly, Starfleet heroes in general don't feel the need to take cover when fighting on location. Which is logical: no natural phenomenon can really serve as cover when your opponent has a phaser. Starship bulkheads might be heftier stuff, and the guns inside the spacecraft at a lower setting for obvious reasons, explaining why cover still serves a role in fights indoors.

Picard went bald, and just accepted it as an unimportant part of his biology.

Heck, perhaps he liked bald? After all, we see him shave his head smooth for the photograph in ST:NEM, even though we know he sported full hair just a few years (or even months) later in "Tapestry".

(Or was that a photograph of Crusher's old flame and Picard's rival (or vice versa) who looked uncannily like Shinzon and therefore was dug up from Picard's chest of memories? There's very little resemblance to "young Picard" there, after all, and even the uniform isn't that of a cadet as far as we can tell.)

Timo Saloniemi