Also something about the symbol of Starfleet being embodied in a shiny outer casing of something that used to literally cause wars but is now effectively worthless because of the _actually_ priceless technology contained within. It's like the Federation itself. It may look gaudy and fancy on the outside, but what's really important is the science-based utopia under the surface.
4:15 "wrist communicators were akk the rage" Oops Also, I'd guess a possible in-universe reason for the Enterprise-era communicator being so small was that it wasn't necessarily a subspace radio -- it might have been closer to modern technologies, and technologies that had been substantially shrunk already. Then when subspace radio technology was used in communicators, they bulked up again for the ToS era. It's also possible that Enterprise-era communicators were standard electronics, whereas the ToS era ones were probably duotronic, and maybe early duotronic equipment was larger, yet better equipped than electronic devices.
Wrist communicators probably got broken easily when you got into Kirk style fist fights.Or they were too closely associated to Dick Tracy two way wrist radios, as seen in Dick Tracy Comics.
@@a.ielimba78 the country didnt fall apart during his presidency it was only after he lost when the orange man enacted mod riots which if it were more succesfull experts believe trump would've enacted a coup d'etat
Yep. How many other shows can say that they *literally* spawned world-changing technology? As such 100% appropriate that I am watching this on my smartphone. And no doubt many others are too.
"worthless gold and silver" it's funny cause it's true in Star Trek. lol when Nelix took a bath for the first time too. Replicators making almost anything.
@@richterman3962 Seeing as they've already figured out how to clean teeth with ultrasonic waves (And have been cleaning glassware this way for decades) the sonic shower may be closer than we think...
1:29 on the sizes, I always took ENT communicators being smaller than TOS’s was that the ENT ones were a fairly old tech by 2151 and had been refined and got smaller, as our modern day mobile phones have. By TOS they were using a newer tech that was still earlier in development as so it’s components were still fairly large. 4:50 You missed that the commbadge was in use in the 2340s not just from 2360; in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Castillo uses his (a Wrath of Khan style one) as a communicator by tapping it and talking! 5:00 I always liked the commbadge idea, my favourite design being the Voyager one. It forms part of the uniform, and if whatever alien you met didn’t know, there was a chance it wouldn’t be confiscated like a phaser would be.
Different sizes may also be the result of different approaches to ergonomics. People (and after TOS that includes non-human aliens) have differently sized hands, and items like can be both too big or too small to be used comfortably - depending on the size of you hands and fingers. If I remember correctly Tellarites much bulkier fingers than humans do, and would have found a comminactor from Archer's Enterprise difficult to use. The larger communicators on Kirk's Enterprise might be bigger, because even though there are no Tellarites on Enterprise, they still serve in Starfleet, and Starfleet engineering couldn't be bothered to manufacture communicators in different sizes.
The earliest example of a com badge (excluding Discovery) is from 2344. In "Yesterday's Enterprise" Lt. Castillo from the Ent-C uses his old-style badge like a com badge during his stay in the altered timeline. Also, in "Family" a recorded message of Jack Crusher wearing the TNG com badge is shown. As he recorded the message shortly after Wesley's birth in 2348 the badge was at least in service by that time.
Indeed, Castillo’s is a blink and you’ll miss it moment, and him wearing the TOS-movie uniform and badge doesn’t help (as it was just a badge in most appearances) but it does predate the introduction of the technology by at least 20 years.
Enterprise, bog standard two way walkie talkies with decent transmission range. TOS, a multiband radio and tracker with excellent clear transmission range. Disco badges, wearable Bluetooth speakers linked to the ships computer. TNG to Voyager, ultraminiaturised super long range radio, with built in UT, transporter beacon, emergency transponder, bits of pokie stuff to make exBorg personal shields work, and more.
Sometimes commbadges were activated without tapping at all. Also, in TNG E1 "The Schizoid Man" the commbadge has extraordinary range capabilities, able to communicate with the Enterprise as it zooms off at warp. I love that the TNG manual schematics is basically featured here.
Comm badge with a 'rather weak field' can ONLY transmit 500 km. Meanwhile in the 21st century, I've seen military hand-held radios valued at a few thousand dollars a piece struggle to transmit a couple miles.
I'm surprised you didn't see miniaturized earpieces being used - especially since away team members frequently have to step away to respond to a hail in private...
In my head Canon, pre-discovery, the combadge was brought in to the Federation when a new species joined around the time of Yesterday's Enterprise. A planet somewhere near Bajor, hence why the powers in that area had adopted their own version. Its a pretty neat piece of tech and I would imagine any civilization that saw one would think "let's make us one of those" or in the case of the Farengi "let's buy the patent and licencing rights"
Thinking the ones we see in Star Trek II were special communicators for austere environments, hence the bulk, and simpler controls. Like the tricorder Saavik carried.
This is kind of my head cannon for the 2230's model, that its a ruggedized version that is designed to be tougher and more durable than the older versions
Right. You carry the standard model on normal missions and the rugged ones on missions where it's a harsh environment. Figure by the 2280s, Starfleet learned a lesson from earlier missions where communicators were damaged, etc. Maybe they even have a more powerful transmitter as well to increase range.
I always hated how the writers would use the 'comm system is down' excuse to not allow people to talk to eachother on the ship when the plot required it even though the badges can work without the ship's assistance.
I saw a fan explanation once of how the UT works that was a bit weird. The explanation went that the UT actually fiddles with the brain of the person hearing the spoken words being translated so that they would see the words being spoken in the translated tongue. Now, this is only an explanation for why we as the audience see non-English-speaking characters speaking English in the show and shouldn't really be taken that seriously. But it was interesting.
Two additional points: (1) the Klingons of the Next Gen/DS9 era also have "combadges" of a sort, though they're worn on the upper arm; and (2) the earliest canonical combadges go back to at least 2344, during the time of the Ambassador-class Enterprise, as seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise." There we saw the de-facto executive officer of Enterprise-C use his movie-era Starfleet insignia (delta with a star, circle and that stylized oblong form behind both) in the exact same way as the combadges of 15-20 years later. Also, that ship's crew wore the red uniform jackets of the original cast movies, but not the ribbed mock turtleneck undershirts, a look that was also seen in the TNG episode "Tapestry," which detailed the circumstances of how Picard got his artificial heart. We don't see the Starfleet insignia used in the commbadge manner (or any other type of communicator, IIRC), but given the use of the same modification of the OG movie-era uniform, this could date the Starfleet commbadge back to before 2327. Not only that, I think going into the second paragraph above and consulting Memory Alpha for episode details qualifies me as the nit-pickiest Trekkie of the week. What do you say? 😁🖖
conventional radio communication will be limited to emi guidelines today. this will only change as insulation from emi is used more. but emi insulated in itself causes problems being emi insulated means it can block radio signals making the who radio waves range subject a overwhelmingly complex issue. being able to use subspace will resolve these emi issues and solve so many problems with the effective range of devices we use almost all having the same range today!
Not entirely implausible that the communicator got bigger before getting smaller again. Look at how we had gotten down to tiny little flip phones, then went to gigantic smartphones, and are now down-sizing again to smartwatches and the likes.
In the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" the movie era delta was used as a communicator. I imagine it was the precursor to the TNG comm badge. I myself liked the movie era delta and rank insignia it, to me, was more classy
The TOS communicator *does* still have 2 features that our modern cell phones don't: *insanely* long range (ship in orbit to planet) *without* cell towers (they're really more analogous to satellite phones with the Enterprise as the satellite) and they aren't affected by weather or atmospheric conditions as much as cell phones are. Otherwise, give me a smartphone *any* day.
It would be a tad more modern to suggest that the "pushbutton" functionality of the comm badge is the result of proximity sensing like capacitive touch screens, or motion sensing via MEMS like accelerometers, technologies that are both already in virtually all smartphones. Since those technologies are available you wouldn't use pressure sensing as it dramatically increases the complexity of design and likelihood of mechanical failure.
I hope I'm not repeating someone else's thought here, but may I submit an idea? The "Cage" era communicator was indeed large but did it not have the ability to initiate a transport back to the ship, which future devices did not? I quote Number One: "Captain, we have transporter control now (as she flips open her communicator)." Pike: "Let's get back to the ship." Just a thought.
*and then there was the popular recreational option to play retro games like candy crush or tetris on them during those tedious and mind numbingly routine away missions while bored on watch/guard duty...although this function was later removed as a standard upgrade due to it being overly popular with members of the crew who favored wearing red uniforms*
The range of cellular phones become progressively less as the technology advances as the entire concept of cellular communication is to be only able to reach the nearest tower so that the frequencies used could be used by another communication in the next cell. My first cell phone had a 5 watt transmitter, my current one is rated in milliwatts.
Sub space is just that, the spectrum of nano frequencies, or energy signiture's. 💚💚💚💚💚💚 But like a phone in a building with no phone signal, due to obstruction's. This is a example and analogy of normal instance's of our environment. When tvs use to get static on air wave tv, or how radio signals go further away then internet signal's. It is due to how the signals interact with the environment. If one could easily communicate signals through a mountain, that's a basic example of sub space communication. When you take it out further then that to the extreme and true sub space level's. This idea of either receiving and sending sub space signal's to outer space. For long range interaction, would be possible due to the effects of that process. It seams like internet and 5g as it is, is going in the wrong direction of progress. Yes theirs more data, but their is more static, or obstruction's. That being said, radio had less obstruction's and less data. Real progress should go towards subspace communication. As their would be way more less static and way more less obstruction's. Theirs a way for plenty of data to work through this spectrum of subspace, we just got to find it. Maybe it's through the interaction's of nano microscopic structure's, that the signiture's are transmitted through between everything. In which signal's bypass normal matter, as there would be less substances in the way. I like how everything is basically matter and energy, within density of reality, it has substance, or essense.
There is mobile phone sized sat phones out there for years, with range over 600miles (to sat), they differ a lot as of provider, the closest orbital/sat communication system ever is by SpaceX new Starlink around 500km (LEO, same as ISS but just below it).
thanks rick for doing a video on communicators & combadges. please do a video about the hutts & their slaves costumes, and a video about star trek guns
EEEEEP wrong on the dates of the com-badge........ on the episode, “yesterday’s” enterprise” the uss enterprise C Launched in 2342 was seen to use com-badges 100%
Certifiably Ingame, I actually just pointed it out as I’m proud of myself for noticing something lol, but, I think they where a late edition I would say for sure the 2300’s no earlier
One thing I’ve wondered is whether the User’s Command or Security Codes are stored in their communicator. Even though subspace communications is very fast, having those codes stored in the CommBadge would certainly make it easier when going between ships, or ships to starbase, and back again.
To be fair, cell phones were smaller, but then people decided they wanted bigger screens. Maybe TOS communicators had significantly more functions or power?.
It's kind of interesting. All three forms of communicator have been built with present-day technology. I can make calls on a smartwatch, a cellphone and a combadge. But of these, only the cellphone is universal. The smartwatch has been designed as a slave device and lacks most of it's features without a cellphone to control it; and the combadge only works with $20,000 proprietary software that has yet to be duplicated. Life goals: get an LTE smartwatch and a combadge working semi-independently through a central server attached to an electric shuttle...car...ft.
2:00 I got 2 other reasons why the communicator needed to bulk post Enterprise with limited tech improvements: 1) The subspace transmitter proved to be too small to be fully effective in some scenarios (e.g. area of space or worlds with irregularly high background radiation that cause interference with subspace communications)...so Starfleet decided to boost the signal by bulking up the transmitter dish which resulted in overall larger frame 2) The initial design was just too delicate for some Alien races who join the Federation to use comfortably...afterall while the size of ENT communicator might have been perfectly fine in the hands of a Humans...it might be too small for a Kelpien
Really wish we could see more of the Wraith of Khan to Star Trek 6 communicators. And the black badge one and accompanying communicator are not Trek they're from some other show.
The blizzard's cleared up...it's a miracle! :-) Of course the whole reason for that nit is they didn't want to admit that the ship's pilot and navigator had gotten *lost*.. :-)
Here's the real question, how does Odo's communicator work? We've seen that his combadge is part of his body like his uniform, this is evident when he changes shape. Are we to believe that he can't quite manage humanoid faces but he can recreate the intricate microcircuitry of a combadge?
Great question. Haven’t we seen Odo be a console at one point? (I’m think the phaser training in Way of the Warrior when he “kills” Bashir? Maybe circuitry is easier than faces. Or have we even seen him use it to communicate? It may just be him mimicking the appearance of the badge with no functionality just to fit with the uniform. VulpisFoxfire Wouldn’t him storing the commbadge within himself prevent him from assuming a form smaller than that though? I think the smallest we see is a drinking glass and there obviously wasn’t a badge in the glass, so it can’t have been on him then at least.
@@mb2000 Yes he mimicked a large display console on the promenade, but he was just covering the surface. No one actually tried using the display. We've seen Odo use his combadge on many occasions so it's definitely a functioning communicator.
Not Dave Good point, makes you wonder what he’d have done if someone tried to use him as a console! So he must be able to perfectly replicate the commbadge then, despite not being able to do a face, so that it melts with him.
It never fails to amuse me when Star Trek tech regresses because a story needs it or because a director or writer thinks something looks too futuristic to be realistic. But then of course we inevitably surpass that tech in the real world LONG before getting to Star Trek's era.
please guide me to the nearest transporter room, and phaser vault. the show me to the nearest replicator as i'm a bit hungry. then we could hit up the holodeck for a walk! ...
The Starfleet combadges in a quantum reality of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Parallels" and in Will Riker's 'fake' future in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Future Imperfect" have one more feature: the combadge also has four bars signifying a crewmember's rank behind the Starfleet insignia...
I don't know if you "forgot" a feature or not. In Voyager, the combadge was designed to emit a signal if the casing was damaged to allow for rescue or recovery. Kind of like dog tags that announced their location when the wearer gets killed. I say I don't know if you forgot it since it's not really a communication's feature, so I'm not sure it has a place in this video.
My only qualm was that the range of the audio speaker/microphone was never quantified eg. If you wanted to send covert Comms and only wanted the recipient to hear your voice and vice versa. There was a scene in VOY where Tuvok and Harry we're sending messages to each other on the bridge but could anyone else hear their convo? It would be great if they had an inbuilt sound dampener/isolator, to aid in this.
It’s probably the same part of the universal translator that makes aliens look like their mouths are speaking English ;-) Also we often hear the offscreen caller saying “Data to Picard” or something, but how did the computer/commbadge know who to send the message to if they hadn’t said it before the channel was opened!?
You know what's weird, how they'd say "Picard to LaForge..." and on the other end LaForge (or whoever) would hear "Picard to LaForge..." immediately.... How did it know who the message was going to before it was announced? Is it more like a public tannoy that just send the message to everyone in range? On the other end of the call, how does it know when to "hang up"? I always found it odd that they would almost immediately go to an aside to whoever's in the room and I'm like "ohh you don't wanna say that the person you were just speaking to can still hear you" Is there just a hidden delay for cinematic purposes? Like how you would never script that awkward pause that happens on live news broadcasts into a movie?
I would've expected that imperceptible modulations in the artificial gravity plates could be used to constantly recharge the battery in the communicator and any other mobile devices while on a starship so the two week lifespan would only matter when not on the starship. Note that cell phones increase their bandwidth by shortening the range to the cell phone towers hence allowing other devices to use the same frequency range in neighbouring cells, hence the term cell phones. Modern cell phones have a fraction of the range that the old analog cell phones of the 80's had. My first cell phone had a 7 watt transceiver, modern cell phones are measured in milliwatts. Before cell phones only a dozen or so radio phone subscribers were allowed in a city before frequency ranges were depleted. If anything, cell phone ranges will grow progressively shorter so that more cell phones can be allowed in an area. We already use micro cell base antennas/"towers" in areas that are expected to have a dense concentration of people hence phones and the range in those areas can be a matter of feet not miles. The name "cell phones" means intentionally limited range to within cells so that more subscribers overall could be supported.
By the way, universal translators were very much smaller than communicators, to the point the Ferengi had them embedded inside their lobes... So are they much more advanced than Star Fleet, especially considering the amount of different languages they use?
The change in size of the flip top communictors isn't a big issue. In the real world mobile phone got small then grew bigger again to accommodate larger screens. May be it was manufacturers preference or retro was just back in style.
Don't the combadges also have a biomonitor? If the wearer's lifesigns halt (no heartbeat, no respiration, etc) then a starship/station computer automatically chirps somebody about the medical emergency. I'm pretty sure I've seen it happen in TNG and DS9.
I don't think the changing sizes is that strange. Cell phones got down to a couple of inches, when all they could do was make calls and tiny tech was 'sexy'. Since the proliferation of smart phones, they've gotten larger and larger, to the point of barely fitting in people's pockets.
In Tos day of dove Captain Kirk presses a button on his communicator that sends an alert signal to the enterprise and it flashes on a console. You didn't mentioned the combadge from tng yesterday's enterprise used on the enterprise c.
there should bean episode like this about phasers I alwaysthought the TNG phasers looked stupid but Inow realize they are even easier to aim with accuracy than a lugor which is by far the most ergonomic handgun I've ever used
It's possible that the one you see in the black badge in Star Trek discovery is a distress bacon only to be used in an emergency. Or maybe it's an early prototype for the combadge I mean everything existed earlier in the discovery timeline.
I've always wondered if a combadge could work as a recorder for logs, reports, etc. when not in range of a ship. I mean, if we can fit gigabytes on a chip the size of a pinkie nail, why couldn't the combadge have some kind of memory device.
Sub space is just that, the spectrum of nano frequencies, or energy signiture's. 💚💚💚💚💚💚 But like a phone in a building with no phone signal, due to obstruction's. This is a example and analogy of normal instance's of our environment. When tvs use to get static on air wave tv, or how radio signals go further away then internet signal's. It is due to how the signals interact with the environment. If one could easily communicate signals through a mountain, that's a basic example of sub space communication. When you take it out further then that to the extreme and true sub space level's. This idea of either receiving and sending sub space signal's to outer space. For long range interaction, would be possible due to the effects of that process. It seams like internet and 5g as it is, is going in the wrong direction of progress. Yes theirs more data, but their is more static, or obstruction's. That being said, radio had less obstruction's and less data. Real progress should go towards subspace communication. As their would be way more less static and way more less obstruction's. Theirs a way for plenty of data to work through this spectrum of subspace, we just got to find it. Maybe it's through the interaction's of nano microscopic structure's, that the signiture's are transmitted through between everything. In which signal's bypass normal matter, as there would be less substances in the way. I like how everything is basically matter and energy, within density of reality, it has substance, or essense.
I feel really sad for the prop designers for Discovery in treading the line between canon and reality. In 2002 it was way easier to see that small Enterprise communicator as futuristic, but nowadays it's hard to look at my smartphone and then at the TOS communicator and think what's in my hand is inferior. Or that in 200 years the best we'll do is something that's bulkier and has fewer features.
How does the universal translator function without an ear mounted speaker at least? You’d still be able to hear the original language with basically a dub coming in from your chest as they work now. The answer: its just a show, you should really just relax.
You never see com badges for left-handlers. I wonder if there are any examples as I would trigger it with my left hand. Also I would open the flip com that way.
Geosynchronus orbit around Earth is 35,786 kilometres at the equator. This will vary depending on which planet you are orbiting. Other orbits are also possible with low earth orbit being 2000 km. Though that isn't very practical for space to ground communications are you would be doing a full orbit every 130 minutes or so.
You know, there's something poetic about the symbol of Starfleet being intimately connected with "communication" in this way.
Also something about the symbol of Starfleet being embodied in a shiny outer casing of something that used to literally cause wars but is now effectively worthless because of the _actually_ priceless technology contained within.
It's like the Federation itself.
It may look gaudy and fancy on the outside, but what's really important is the science-based utopia under the surface.
@@shingshongshamalama Or as Quark puts it, like root beer.
I've always preferred cream soda myself.
@@Reddotzebra it's insidious.
@@windhelmguard5295 It's VILE!
@@goransekulic3671 "And if you drink enough you start to like it."
4:15 "wrist communicators were akk the rage"
Oops
Also, I'd guess a possible in-universe reason for the Enterprise-era communicator being so small was that it wasn't necessarily a subspace radio -- it might have been closer to modern technologies, and technologies that had been substantially shrunk already. Then when subspace radio technology was used in communicators, they bulked up again for the ToS era. It's also possible that Enterprise-era communicators were standard electronics, whereas the ToS era ones were probably duotronic, and maybe early duotronic equipment was larger, yet better equipped than electronic devices.
How about those transparent ones from " The Cage" . they had a flip open grille antenna like the later ones.
Maybe the enterprise era ones just had a terrible battery life and couldn't run the newest mobile games
John Bockelie perhaps, also, maybe different manufacturers?
Wrist communicators probably got broken easily when you got into Kirk style fist fights.Or they were too closely associated to Dick Tracy two way wrist radios, as seen in Dick Tracy Comics.
@@johnbockelie3899 "Kirk style fist fights" oh my god I'm dying-
Watching Ric play Star Trek Online is almost like watching a new Trek tv series. So glad I found this channel.
And that’s why I watch. 🖖🏻
Where is this stream?
I think Trump will cause the whole country to fall apart.
@@lemonzester12 nope
@@a.ielimba78 the country didnt fall apart during his presidency it was only after he lost when the orange man enacted mod riots which if it were more succesfull experts believe trump would've enacted a coup d'etat
Honestly I tell myself I’m not even that Into Star Trek then I realise I’ve been subbed to this channel for a long while and watch every video 😳
Preach it brother
Preach it brother
The big silver one on TWOK came with.the red field .jacket.
The content I didn't know I needed. Huzzah.
Star Trek is always a trendsetter on a technological standpoint. Because of Star Trek we have the mobile phone.😎
Yep. How many other shows can say that they *literally* spawned world-changing technology? As such 100% appropriate that I am watching this on my smartphone. And no doubt many others are too.
@@vic5015 Indeed
Don't forget Uhura wore the first bluetooth device in TOS.
@@savagebear4374 oh, yeah. Forgot about Uhura's little headset thingy.
Actually, that would probably be Robert Heinlein...
"worthless gold and silver" it's funny cause it's true in Star Trek. lol when Nelix took a bath for the first time too. Replicators making almost anything.
Sonic shower, no water
@@richterman3962 Seeing as they've already figured out how to clean teeth with ultrasonic waves (And have been cleaning glassware this way for decades) the sonic shower may be closer than we think...
@@Reddotzebra shower without water...seems not realy refreshing on hot days
@@LeXx_LeCryce I think the sonic shower used "small" amounts of water? But maybe that's me being hopeful considering the awesomeness of a hot shower.
@@richterman3962 There was a scene where Neelix was submerged in a tub of water. ruclips.net/video/IDPHW21R13E/видео.html
1:29 on the sizes, I always took ENT communicators being smaller than TOS’s was that the ENT ones were a fairly old tech by 2151 and had been refined and got smaller, as our modern day mobile phones have. By TOS they were using a newer tech that was still earlier in development as so it’s components were still fairly large.
4:50 You missed that the commbadge was in use in the 2340s not just from 2360; in “Yesterday’s Enterprise” Castillo uses his (a Wrath of Khan style one) as a communicator by tapping it and talking!
5:00 I always liked the commbadge idea, my favourite design being the Voyager one. It forms part of the uniform, and if
whatever alien you met didn’t know, there was a chance it wouldn’t be confiscated like a phaser would be.
Different sizes may also be the result of different approaches to ergonomics. People (and after TOS that includes non-human aliens) have differently sized hands, and items like can be both too big or too small to be used comfortably - depending on the size of you hands and fingers. If I remember correctly Tellarites much bulkier fingers than humans do, and would have found a comminactor from Archer's Enterprise difficult to use. The larger communicators on Kirk's Enterprise might be bigger, because even though there are no Tellarites on Enterprise, they still serve in Starfleet, and Starfleet engineering couldn't be bothered to manufacture communicators in different sizes.
I always liked the look of The Cage style communicator's it always seemed more peace oriented then other models will all the circuitry visible.
Pretty sure you're psychic. Last week I was desiring a combadge breakdown from you, and suddenly here we are (either that or it's time travel)
I liked in Discovery how the when using the communicators and translating, you could hear both languages.
The earliest example of a com badge (excluding Discovery) is from 2344.
In "Yesterday's Enterprise" Lt. Castillo from the Ent-C uses his old-style badge like a com badge during his stay in the altered timeline.
Also, in "Family" a recorded message of Jack Crusher wearing the TNG com badge is shown. As he recorded the message shortly after Wesley's birth in 2348 the badge was at least in service by that time.
Indeed, Castillo’s is a blink and you’ll miss it moment, and him wearing the TOS-movie uniform and badge doesn’t help (as it was just a badge in most appearances) but it does predate the introduction of the technology by at least 20 years.
Certafiably Ingame is my go to channel for lore. Great channel
Enterprise, bog standard two way walkie talkies with decent transmission range. TOS, a multiband radio and tracker with excellent clear transmission range. Disco badges, wearable Bluetooth speakers linked to the ships computer. TNG to Voyager, ultraminiaturised super long range radio, with built in UT, transporter beacon, emergency transponder, bits of pokie stuff to make exBorg personal shields work, and more.
Disco doesn't uses badge. They still use communicator like the TOS design, but sleeker and with screen.
@@aiosquadron the general population doesn't use them, just a super secret organisation. Very quickly mentioned at 2:40
Sometimes commbadges were activated without tapping at all. Also, in TNG E1 "The Schizoid Man" the commbadge has extraordinary range capabilities, able to communicate with the Enterprise as it zooms off at warp. I love that the TNG manual schematics is basically featured here.
Seriously loving these detail videos! This series youre doing is so good and so not being done by anyone!
Comm badge with a 'rather weak field' can ONLY transmit 500 km.
Meanwhile in the 21st century, I've seen military hand-held radios valued at a few thousand dollars a piece struggle to transmit a couple miles.
Fascinating information on the combadges from the 2150 to the 2390's.
I'm surprised you didn't see miniaturized earpieces being used - especially since away team members frequently have to step away to respond to a hail in private...
Would like to buy Rick a beer. Funny ass dude.
In my head Canon, pre-discovery, the combadge was brought in to the Federation when a new species joined around the time of Yesterday's Enterprise. A planet somewhere near Bajor, hence why the powers in that area had adopted their own version. Its a pretty neat piece of tech and I would imagine any civilization that saw one would think "let's make us one of those" or in the case of the Farengi "let's buy the patent and licencing rights"
At least we can look forward to flip-phones making a comeback for a while (must be a retro thing). 🤔
Well, Flip-phones do have the advantage that closing it shields the screen and controls from damage, unlike stick and smartphones.
Not sure that long those new folding smart phones are going to last though. They just look like they're going to break.
@@VulpisFoxfire The cracked ipad is use agrees with you. Imagine surviving a shuttle crash only for your com device to be cracked and useless.
in fact, the communicator and commbadge became a real thing, ric ^w^ which is awesome
Thank you for another informative look at the tech world of Star Trek, you always do a great job.
I love these through the years look at different Star Trek tech
I loved the enterprise era unit. Phase pistol and communicator. So good.
Another great installment, Rick! Really enjoying these tech files a lot!
Thinking the ones we see in Star Trek II were special communicators for austere environments, hence the bulk, and simpler controls. Like the tricorder Saavik carried.
This is kind of my head cannon for the 2230's model, that its a ruggedized version that is designed to be tougher and more durable than the older versions
Right. You carry the standard model on normal missions and the rugged ones on missions where it's a harsh environment. Figure by the 2280s, Starfleet learned a lesson from earlier missions where communicators were damaged, etc. Maybe they even have a more powerful transmitter as well to increase range.
There's also the possibility it was a cheaper, easier to produce design. We don't have any indication that the TOS design _wasn't_ rugged.
I always hated how the writers would use the 'comm system is down' excuse to not allow people to talk to eachother on the ship when the plot required it even though the badges can work without the ship's assistance.
Best series on YT
I saw a fan explanation once of how the UT works that was a bit weird. The explanation went that the UT actually fiddles with the brain of the person hearing the spoken words being translated so that they would see the words being spoken in the translated tongue.
Now, this is only an explanation for why we as the audience see non-English-speaking characters speaking English in the show and shouldn't really be taken that seriously. But it was interesting.
Hi Rick. I can hear you!
Two additional points: (1) the Klingons of the Next Gen/DS9 era also have "combadges" of a sort, though they're worn on the upper arm; and (2) the earliest canonical combadges go back to at least 2344, during the time of the Ambassador-class Enterprise, as seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise." There we saw the de-facto executive officer of Enterprise-C use his movie-era Starfleet insignia (delta with a star, circle and that stylized oblong form behind both) in the exact same way as the combadges of 15-20 years later.
Also, that ship's crew wore the red uniform jackets of the original cast movies, but not the ribbed mock turtleneck undershirts, a look that was also seen in the TNG episode "Tapestry," which detailed the circumstances of how Picard got his artificial heart. We don't see the Starfleet insignia used in the commbadge manner (or any other type of communicator, IIRC), but given the use of the same modification of the OG movie-era uniform, this could date the Starfleet commbadge back to before 2327.
Not only that, I think going into the second paragraph above and consulting Memory Alpha for episode details qualifies me as the nit-pickiest Trekkie of the week. What do you say? 😁🖖
God damn I love this channel wish you had of expanded Battlestar Galactica more tho. Ohh well. I'm here for Star Trek
3:58 why does your STO character have a really buff left arm? But not on the right
Eh...I won't be naughty now, I'll just say...tennis? They're known for arms of different sizes.
conventional radio communication will be limited to emi guidelines today. this will only change as insulation from emi is used more. but emi insulated in itself causes problems being emi insulated means it can block radio signals making the who radio waves range subject a overwhelmingly complex issue. being able to use subspace will resolve these emi issues and solve so many problems with the effective range of devices we use almost all having the same range today!
Not entirely implausible that the communicator got bigger before getting smaller again. Look at how we had gotten down to tiny little flip phones, then went to gigantic smartphones, and are now down-sizing again to smartwatches and the likes.
In the episode "Yesterday's Enterprise" the movie era delta was used as a communicator. I imagine it was the precursor to the TNG comm badge. I myself liked the movie era delta and rank insignia it, to me, was more classy
The TOS communicator *does* still have 2 features that our modern cell phones don't: *insanely* long range (ship in orbit to planet) *without* cell towers (they're really more analogous to satellite phones with the Enterprise as the satellite) and they aren't affected by weather or atmospheric conditions as much as cell phones are. Otherwise, give me a smartphone *any* day.
It would be a tad more modern to suggest that the "pushbutton" functionality of the comm badge is the result of proximity sensing like capacitive touch screens, or motion sensing via MEMS like accelerometers, technologies that are both already in virtually all smartphones. Since those technologies are available you wouldn't use pressure sensing as it dramatically increases the complexity of design and likelihood of mechanical failure.
I hope I'm not repeating someone else's thought here, but may I submit an idea? The "Cage" era communicator was indeed large but did it not have the ability to initiate a transport back to the ship, which future devices did not? I quote Number One: "Captain, we have transporter control now (as she flips open her communicator)." Pike: "Let's get back to the ship." Just a thought.
*and then there was the popular recreational option to play retro games like candy crush or tetris on them during those tedious and mind numbingly routine away missions while bored on watch/guard duty...although this function was later removed as a standard upgrade due to it being overly popular with members of the crew who favored wearing red uniforms*
I liked this episode my favorite communicator was the ToS
Gotten the Bluetooth one?
That photo of the stand-alone 1st gen Universal Translator looked like a other Franchise’s preferred melee weapon of Space Wizards.
The range of cellular phones become progressively less as the technology advances as the entire concept of cellular communication is to be only able to reach the nearest tower so that the frequencies used could be used by another communication in the next cell. My first cell phone had a 5 watt transmitter, my current one is rated in milliwatts.
Sub space is just that, the spectrum of nano frequencies, or energy signiture's.
💚💚💚💚💚💚
But like a phone in a building with no phone signal, due to obstruction's. This is a example and analogy of normal instance's of our environment. When tvs use to get static on air wave tv, or how radio signals go further away then internet signal's.
It is due to how the signals interact with the environment.
If one could easily communicate signals through a mountain, that's a basic example of sub space communication. When you take it out further then that to the extreme and true sub space level's. This idea of either receiving and sending sub space signal's to outer space. For long range interaction, would be possible due to the effects of that process.
It seams like internet and 5g as it is, is going in the wrong direction of progress. Yes theirs more data, but their is more static, or obstruction's. That being said, radio had less obstruction's and less data.
Real progress should go towards subspace communication. As their would be way more less static and way more less obstruction's. Theirs a way for plenty of data to work through this spectrum of subspace, we just got to find it.
Maybe it's through the interaction's of nano microscopic structure's, that the signiture's are transmitted through between everything.
In which signal's bypass normal matter, as there would be less substances in the way. I like how everything is basically matter and energy, within density of reality, it has substance, or essense.
I never noticed until just now that the 2250 communicator used vacuum tubes.
There is mobile phone sized sat phones out there for years, with range over 600miles (to sat), they differ a lot as of provider, the closest orbital/sat communication system ever is by SpaceX new Starlink around 500km (LEO, same as ISS but just below it).
I love your videos, dude.
I like how much data is in these lore videos.
Is he though?
Nice puns/jokes!
thanks rick for doing a video on communicators & combadges.
please do a video about the hutts & their slaves costumes, and a
video about star trek guns
I like to think the enterprise communicator doesn't have a subspace transceiver because they aren't compact enough yet, it's just a powerful radio.
I just realized that in the TOS episode Wink of an Eye the Scalosians use some kind of "combadge" tech on their neck. Just a thought.
EEEEEP wrong on the dates of the com-badge........ on the episode, “yesterday’s” enterprise” the uss enterprise C Launched in 2342 was seen to use com-badges 100%
chalk that up more to that episode's continuity error rather than faulty "history"
Yeah, we don't have an exact date for the start of the combadge, but I did overlook the Enterprise C Combadge.
Certifiably Ingame, I actually just pointed it out as I’m proud of myself for noticing something lol, but, I think they where a late edition I would say for sure the 2300’s no earlier
The C was launched in 2332. She was destroyed in 2344.
I was searching the for this in the comments! the twok badge is the best looking in my opinion. 2344 would be the earliest we could date the combadge.
One thing I’ve wondered is whether the User’s Command or Security Codes are stored in their communicator. Even though subspace communications is very fast, having those codes stored in the CommBadge would certainly make it easier when going between ships, or ships to starbase, and back again.
Looking at the thumbnail, I first thought this might be a Mr. Mobile video.
To be fair, cell phones were smaller, but then people decided they wanted bigger screens. Maybe TOS communicators had significantly more functions or power?.
Honestly, the ent communicators are probably my favourite. Dunno why.
It's kind of interesting. All three forms of communicator have been built with present-day technology. I can make calls on a smartwatch, a cellphone and a combadge. But of these, only the cellphone is universal. The smartwatch has been designed as a slave device and lacks most of it's features without a cellphone to control it; and the combadge only works with $20,000 proprietary software that has yet to be duplicated.
Life goals: get an LTE smartwatch and a combadge working semi-independently through a central server attached to an electric shuttle...car...ft.
2:00 I got 2 other reasons why the communicator needed to bulk post Enterprise with limited tech improvements:
1) The subspace transmitter proved to be too small to be fully effective in some scenarios (e.g. area of space or worlds with irregularly high background radiation that cause interference with subspace communications)...so Starfleet decided to boost the signal by bulking up the transmitter dish which resulted in overall larger frame
2) The initial design was just too delicate for some Alien races who join the Federation to use comfortably...afterall while the size of ENT communicator might have been perfectly fine in the hands of a Humans...it might be too small for a Kelpien
Really wish we could see more of the Wraith of Khan to Star Trek 6 communicators. And the black badge one and accompanying communicator are not Trek they're from some other show.
Also don't forget that the enterprise version of the communicator was able to interlink with a universal translator after it was 1st introduced
Maybe the Enterprise era communicators were smaller because the uniforms had pockets, and the communicator needed to fit in the pockets comfortably.
4:48 chekovs face is hilarious....
5:04 Janeways hand is kind of missing the com badge....
The blizzard's cleared up...it's a miracle! :-) Of course the whole reason for that nit is they didn't want to admit that the ship's pilot and navigator had gotten *lost*.. :-)
Make sure you make a video on Subspace itself... then you can make a video series of Starfleet specifications... would be good for try hard fans.
I the first episode with the Ferengi. They say gold is one of the most valuable metals. But Quark calls gold worthless in DS9.
Obviously times change as does the value of commodities.
The first episode with Ferengis was S1 TNG. It's probably best to forget most of S1 and S2 TNG. It's just easier on the mind.
How about the communicator that Dr.McCoy accidently forgot in Jo jo Krackos office in "A PIECE OF THE ACTION"?.
Here's the real question, how does Odo's communicator work? We've seen that his combadge is part of his body like his uniform, this is evident when he changes shape. Are we to believe that he can't quite manage humanoid faces but he can recreate the intricate microcircuitry of a combadge?
Either that, ot it's something he absorbs into his mass for storage.
Great question. Haven’t we seen Odo be a console at one point? (I’m think the phaser training in Way of the Warrior when he “kills” Bashir? Maybe circuitry is easier than faces. Or have we even seen him use it to communicate? It may just be him mimicking the appearance of the badge with no functionality just to fit with the uniform.
VulpisFoxfire Wouldn’t him storing the commbadge within himself prevent him from assuming a form smaller than that though? I think the smallest we see is a drinking glass and there obviously wasn’t a badge in the glass, so it can’t have been on him then at least.
@@mb2000 Yes he mimicked a large display console on the promenade, but he was just covering the surface. No one actually tried using the display. We've seen Odo use his combadge on many occasions so it's definitely a functioning communicator.
Not Dave Good point, makes you wonder what he’d have done if someone tried to use him as a console! So he must be able to perfectly replicate the commbadge then, despite not being able to do a face, so that it melts with him.
It never fails to amuse me when Star Trek tech regresses because a story needs it or because a director or writer thinks something looks too futuristic to be realistic. But then of course we inevitably surpass that tech in the real world LONG before getting to Star Trek's era.
please guide me to the nearest transporter room, and phaser vault. the show me to the nearest replicator as i'm a bit hungry. then we could hit up the holodeck for a walk! ...
The Starfleet combadges in a quantum reality of the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Parallels" and in Will Riker's 'fake' future in the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Future Imperfect" have one more feature: the combadge also has four bars signifying a crewmember's rank behind the Starfleet insignia...
I don't know if you "forgot" a feature or not. In Voyager, the combadge was designed to emit a signal if the casing was damaged to allow for rescue or recovery. Kind of like dog tags that announced their location when the wearer gets killed.
I say I don't know if you forgot it since it's not really a communication's feature, so I'm not sure it has a place in this video.
My only qualm was that the range of the audio speaker/microphone was never quantified eg. If you wanted to send covert Comms and only wanted the recipient to hear your voice and vice versa.
There was a scene in VOY where Tuvok and Harry we're sending messages to each other on the bridge but could anyone else hear their convo? It would be great if they had an inbuilt sound dampener/isolator, to aid in this.
It’s probably the same part of the universal translator that makes aliens look like their mouths are speaking English ;-)
Also we often hear the offscreen caller saying “Data to Picard” or something, but how did the computer/commbadge know who to send the message to if they hadn’t said it before the channel was opened!?
Great content! Do continue! Request: something Warhammer 40k related.
You're after Templin Institute then
You know what's weird, how they'd say "Picard to LaForge..." and on the other end LaForge (or whoever) would hear "Picard to LaForge..." immediately....
How did it know who the message was going to before it was announced?
Is it more like a public tannoy that just send the message to everyone in range?
On the other end of the call, how does it know when to "hang up"? I always found it odd that they would almost immediately go to an aside to whoever's in the room and I'm like "ohh you don't wanna say that the person you were just speaking to can still hear you"
Is there just a hidden delay for cinematic purposes? Like how you would never script that awkward pause that happens on live news broadcasts into a movie?
I would've expected that imperceptible modulations in the artificial gravity plates could be used to constantly recharge the battery in the communicator and any other mobile devices while on a starship so the two week lifespan would only matter when not on the starship.
Note that cell phones increase their bandwidth by shortening the range to the cell phone towers hence allowing other devices to use the same frequency range in neighbouring cells, hence the term cell phones. Modern cell phones have a fraction of the range that the old analog cell phones of the 80's had. My first cell phone had a 7 watt transceiver, modern cell phones are measured in milliwatts. Before cell phones only a dozen or so radio phone subscribers were allowed in a city before frequency ranges were depleted. If anything, cell phone ranges will grow progressively shorter so that more cell phones can be allowed in an area. We already use micro cell base antennas/"towers" in areas that are expected to have a dense concentration of people hence phones and the range in those areas can be a matter of feet not miles. The name "cell phones" means intentionally limited range to within cells so that more subscribers overall could be supported.
very fun to watch but i think ya kinda forgot the Discovery era 32nd century advanced comm badge though but no worries
By the way, universal translators were very much smaller than communicators, to the point the Ferengi had them embedded inside their lobes... So are they much more advanced than Star Fleet, especially considering the amount of different languages they use?
the funny thing about nitpicking communicator sizes is that in the real world cellphones have been getting bigger for the past decade
The change in size of the flip top communictors isn't a big issue. In the real world mobile phone got small then grew bigger again to accommodate larger screens. May be it was manufacturers preference or retro was just back in style.
Thanks!!
They made a real working com badge you can buy it
It doesn't work very well though, it's pretty much junk.
IIRC, isn't that a Bluetooth speaker and mic that links to your smartphone, similar to the TOS repl;ica one?
Don't the combadges also have a biomonitor? If the wearer's lifesigns halt (no heartbeat, no respiration, etc) then a starship/station computer automatically chirps somebody about the medical emergency. I'm pretty sure I've seen it happen in TNG and DS9.
Back in the day, I bought a clamshell mobile just so I could do the flip. Good times.
I don't think the changing sizes is that strange. Cell phones got down to a couple of inches, when all they could do was make calls and tiny tech was 'sexy'. Since the proliferation of smart phones, they've gotten larger and larger, to the point of barely fitting in people's pockets.
New technology that was added to the communicator would maybe orginally be more bulky then scaled down in future models.
In Tos day of dove Captain Kirk presses a button on his communicator that sends an alert signal to the enterprise and it flashes on a console.
You didn't mentioned the combadge from tng yesterday's enterprise used on the enterprise c.
there should bean episode like this about phasers I alwaysthought the TNG phasers looked stupid but Inow realize they are even easier to aim with accuracy than a lugor which is by far the most ergonomic handgun I've ever used
It's possible that the one you see in the black badge in Star Trek discovery is a distress bacon only to be used in an emergency. Or maybe it's an early prototype for the combadge I mean everything existed earlier in the discovery timeline.
Or maybe it's just kurtzman 'MY show has to be the best EVER!' bullshit.
I've always wondered if a combadge could work as a recorder for logs, reports, etc. when not in range of a ship. I mean, if we can fit gigabytes on a chip the size of a pinkie nail, why couldn't the combadge have some kind of memory device.
Please do a subspace video. And I'm referring to the physics term...
Sub space is just that, the spectrum of nano frequencies, or energy signiture's.
💚💚💚💚💚💚
But like a phone in a building with no phone signal, due to obstruction's. This is a example and analogy of normal instance's of our environment. When tvs use to get static on air wave tv, or how radio signals go further away then internet signal's.
It is due to how the signals interact with the environment.
If one could easily communicate signals through a mountain, that's a basic example of sub space communication. When you take it out further then that to the extreme and true sub space level's. This idea of either receiving and sending sub space signal's to outer space. For long range interaction, would be possible due to the effects of that process.
It seams like internet and 5g as it is, is going in the wrong direction of progress. Yes theirs more data, but their is more static, or obstruction's. That being said, radio had less obstruction's and less data.
Real progress should go towards subspace communication. As their would be way more less static and way more less obstruction's. Theirs a way for plenty of data to work through this spectrum of subspace, we just got to find it.
Maybe it's through the interaction's of nano microscopic structure's, that the signiture's are transmitted through between everything.
In which signal's bypass normal matter, as there would be less substances in the way. I like how everything is basically matter and energy, within density of reality, it has substance, or essense.
Do quantum torpedoes? 👍🥰
I'm watching this on my smart communicator.
I feel really sad for the prop designers for Discovery in treading the line between canon and reality. In 2002 it was way easier to see that small Enterprise communicator as futuristic, but nowadays it's hard to look at my smartphone and then at the TOS communicator and think what's in my hand is inferior. Or that in 200 years the best we'll do is something that's bulkier and has fewer features.
I never got the impression they were treading any lines, just doing whatever they wanted and screwing the canon anyway they could.
How does the universal translator function without an ear mounted speaker at least? You’d still be able to hear the original language with basically a dub coming in from your chest as they work now.
The answer: its just a show, you should really just relax.
You never see com badges for left-handlers. I wonder if there are any examples as I would trigger it with my left hand. Also I would open the flip com that way.
@7:30 you say 6K but your diagram shows 60K, just wondering which is accurate?
Geosynchronus orbit around Earth is 35,786 kilometres at the equator. This will vary depending on which planet you are orbiting. Other orbits are also possible with low earth orbit being 2000 km. Though that isn't very practical for space to ground communications are you would be doing a full orbit every 130 minutes or so.
Yes but, how do you fit the babel fish inside the com badge?
Like the Ferengi, you just jam it down your ear.
Can you do a cultural index on the Terrans or Protoss from Starcraft?
The guy who invented the cellphone was inspired by Star Trek.
There is a typo at 2:04 (full universal translators will still separate devices)
...auido...AUIDO!