We wrote about the Hewlett Packard Enterprise/Star Trek Beyond collaboration last week, but now we’ve got some more info on exactly what these devices are supposed to do, plus some visuals go to with it.
Caution: BEWARE OF SPOILERS!
The key to it all is that HPE’s product designer, Chris Carlozzi, is a Star Trek fan, and says he used that to help shape his design process, even channeling Scotty to ask himself what he’d be doing if he were in the movie, and how would he be doing it.
They still haven’t filled him in on any super secret plot details, or told him exactly how the devices he designed fit into the story, but he did share his original sketches with cnet, and they added some photos from Paramount Pictures to speculate on exactly what’s what. If you consider any of these to be spoilers, read no further. If you’re curious, read on.
THE QUARANTINE
Sketch of the quarantine
This doesn’t appear to be a medical device after all. Instead, it’s an information center, with the potential to gather up massive amounts of almost touchable data, and report back on it across light years and solar systems.
Could this be how it looks in the movie?
Possible shot of the quarantine as seen in the trailer
THE BOOK
Sketch of the book
Think of this one as an iPad that bends. It’s not about scanning and transmitting information, but more about creating a way to access information that’s already out there, with infinite depth and scope. Definitely a useful tool when Spock’s not around to tell you everything about everything.
DIAGNOSTIC WRAP
Sketch of the diagnostic wrap
Also somewhat iPad-ish is the Diagnostic Wrap, which takes on some of the functionality, and then some, of the medical tricorder. This looks like an evolution of what we’ve always seen on Star Trek and envied, stuck as we are in a world of pokey needles and invasive, painful internal procedures. (Apparently you’re supposed to get colonoscopies ROUTINELY after a certain age, which makes me long for Star Trek medical technology to become reality, and soon.) It scans, then accesses a wealth of stored information to come up with a diagnosis, and hopefully, a treatment as well.
Still of the diagnostic wrap as used on screen in Beyond
Very smart that they’re tapping into real technology experts to design these gadgets for the movie, especially since we know Star Trek has a history of inspiring the creation of tech out here in the real world. Martin Cooper, who invented the first “non-vehicular” cell phone, said he was inspired by the communicator used by Captain Kirk in the original series. MIT has been developing hyposprays, Google Translate is a giant leap towards the universal translator, and we have body scanners in use in hospitals, airports, and our X-Box Kinects. And the iPad seems an awful lot like the PADDs those Next Gen crew members carried around.
Siri, of course, is a logical extension of Star Trek-inspired technology, and when Google started developing their version of her, they initially called it Majel. While tech experts tell us that the transporter isn’t anything they can see as a reality, there are tricorders in development, and enough holograms to fill a holodeck or two. Inspiration and innovation go hand in hand.
So I think that means I can hold out on the colonoscopy, right? The Diagnostic Wrap is right around the corner.
I though for a moment there that we were looking at an interactive 3D stellar cartography hologram simulation!
… quarantine is cool too though. I suppose.
Great to see more real science in the new movie!
What “real science” are you specifically referring to?
I am curious too…
Please, Please no product placement in Star Trek! OK, we can retcon the old M5 as an HP product if they insist.
Maybe they’ll shove in tons of turquoise rectangles, since that appears to be the HPE logo
I think Trek should just bite the phaser beam and start writing like there’s no tomorrow (that is, like the writers are not worried about running into limits set by TNG.) We need fresh gadgets to gawk at in this movie and in the new series.
Their are no limits from TNG that’s a totally separate timeline from the new movies. TNG as we know it can not exist for this timeline.
It’s funny but this “diagnostic wrap” seems like a step back in some respects, and mostly designed to pander to the audiences in the same way the stun/kill “flippy” phaser thing does. Yes it’s this cool technology we first saw depicted in TMP, and here it is again in a portable form, but McCoy has to carry around this large scroll-like thing that he has to spread out over the patient, which just seems silly as we see it being used when he’s running for his life. In this case, it literally reveals the horrors developing inside the crew for the audience. And that’s all well and good, until you realize that the budget and technology constraints of the 1960s actually gave us devices far more futuristic — was there nothing McCoy couldn’t diagnose with his handy dandy portable salt-shaker — I mean scanner? There’s no reason he needs to see inside a patient when such a device can just give him the information. And if he did need to see it, he can whip out a Tricorder, conveniently strapped over his shoulder so he doesn’t lose it when he’s running for his life.
But that’s not as cinematic as a portable Cat-scan device.
Guess we’ll have to wait and see– maybe it’s like a portable bio-bed so he can do surgery with a full view of the patients innards. So, while he can diagnose with a tricorder, this is the next step to aiding field surgery?
I’d think the diagnostic wrap would also be real handy for non-medics to quickly access situations too instead of having to know how to interpret swirly rainbows on a tricorder screen
Yes, but even that wouldn’t need to be the size of a scroll from the Library of Alexandria. A simple handheld device like a smartphone would do the trick with the ability to zoom in for a better look at something of interest. The more I think about it, this is strictly pandering to the audience with a cinematic device.
:-D :-D
I see there is my holographic 3D display…from the chapter 1 of ST Crisis.
:-D :-D
But I don’t know what is there…this can’t be the MilkyWay.