Star Trek Computers

On Star Trek, especially Next Generation, whenever anybody has any serious questions to work out on the ship computers, they give verbal commands and the computer talks back to them.

This would logically lead to a situation akin to sitting on a bus or in a store full of people talking on their cell phones--stray bits and pieces of conversation colliding to create a noisy, discordant background noise.

But when you enter the bridge or the engineering room, you don't hear a dozen muffled conversations, just the hum of machinery. So what the hell are people working on?

Excuse Me While I Turn Down the Awesome

Courtesy of my friend Geoff. This is what being the commander of a starship is supposed to be like. And some days I feel this good.

It's also why, even though The Next Generation ultimately ended up being a wiser and better written show, and the boots, highwater pants, and mini-skirts are about as dated a futuristic look as you could conceive of today, if I had a chance to play a Star Trek rpg (and I own two of them, by Last Unicorn Games and Decipher, both out of print), I would still totally go Old School Trek. For the awesome.