(Probably down in Engineering, poking around with warp coils. In Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Barrett voiced the Federation computer system. Heck, if you just wanted to go hang out with Geordi La Forge but didn't know where on the ship he was, a simple query to the ship computer would tell you where he was hanging out. In Star Trek: The Next Generation and Star Trek: Voyager, Barrett’s voice was the default voice of the ship’s computer. If trouble popped up, transporter room engineers could quickly lock on to someone and beam them out of there thanks to the combadge. Like the smartphones of today – with their telephony bundled in with other versatile uses – the combadges that took over for the handheld communicators were used for audio communication as well as a constant homing beacon. So small, in fact, they weren't even there. While the phasers of The Next Generation got bigger, the communicators got smaller. Yeah, you don't have to be a top of your class at the Daystrom Institute to figure that one out. The most popular model from the mid-90s actually flipped up with an agreeable snap just like a TOS communicator. The first cell phones had limited battery power and were enormous (my first cell was heavy enough to fell a Gorn), but as time moved on the Motorola company looked toward Trek again. (Which was still a fairly novel thing as late as the 1980s. Text to Phonetics /tekst t fnetks/ Phonetic keyboard /fnetk. Kirk's ability to be mobile and stay in touch with his crew was what drove Cooper beyond the limiting range of even a car phone. 41 years! That's five months older than Star Trek's animated adventures! That's 10 years older than Walter Koenig was when he first appeared in TOS' season two!Ĭooper has stated many times that watching Original Series Star Trek was absolutely an inspiration for his vision. Indeed, today marks the 41st anniversary of the first mobile phone call. While mobile phones only became affordable for average people in the 1990s – and today are so vital that the actual voice communication aspect of the ubiquitous devices feel like an afterthought – cell technology has been around a lot longer than you might think. But the communicator was more than a walkie talkie and it was more than a phone, and the way it flipped open, chirped and then hung on a crewman's belt made it irresistible. ![]() Much like the giant visual screens and the portable data-rich “computer tapes,” the communicator was a gadget that grabbed everyone's attention because it wasn't THAT dissimilar from the technology that already existed. Warp drive, holodecks and replicators still dazzle us, but back when Star Trek first aired a lot of what we now take for granted seemed like it came from a strange, new world.
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