Omnicompetence

[Captain Picard's Hair]

This is another one of those little problems, not unrelated to omnicommunicability. Whenever SF crew moves onto an alien ship, or an alien crew comes aboard the hero ship, they are (usually) able to operate the alien controls as if they've been doing it since they were children. There have been exceptions: the captured Klingon ship in STIII, the Iconian control room and when the Ferengi tried to take over the E-D. Of course, as in the previous cases, there must be some suspension of disbelief so that the episode doesn't get bogged down in technical details like this. However, this being DITL, the issue isn't above consideration.

[Reliant121]

Yes, this does seem stupid. I can only deduct that SF officers recieve a little training to recognise what systems might be on a Klingon or Cardassian ship say. Perhaps control panels are designed fairly uniformly that can be recognised.

[Mikey]

Perhaps control panels are designed fairly uniformly that can be recognised.

That's always been my assumption. Since we assume that warp propulsion works similarly between major species, I always felt that control interfaces were similar enough to be operable, aside from ergonomic concerns.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

That's a reasonable enough supposition, though it does get stretched a bit once we get into the Dominion/Starfleet crossovers and the instances involving Voyager in the DQ. It's easier to believe when we're talking about Alpha (or Beta) quadrant races that exist alongside one another; it becomes a bit more of a miraculous coincidence with the Gamma/Delta quadrant races.

[Blackstar the Chakat]

I guess this boils down to universal ideas. With video games, while the controls aren't always universal, if you're familier with that style of game(like first person shooter or flight sim) it's usually easy to figure it out for all games in that area. Or another example is piloting airplanes. If you can fly a 747, there's a good chance you can fly a small civilian(non-commercial) plane. It might be more difficult the other way around, but some control concepts are universal I guess.

[Monroe]

I watched the making of an episode of Enterprise and they realized they kept doing that and put some show time into learning how to operate the craft. Think it was the Xindi ship or the Suluban.

[Captain Picard's Hair]

I guess this boils down to universal ideas. With video games, while the controls aren't always universal, if you're familier with that style of game(like first person shooter or flight sim) it's usually easy to figure it out for all games in that area. Or another example is piloting airplanes. If you can fly a 747, there's a good chance you can fly a small civilian(non-commercial) plane. It might be more difficult the other way around, but some control concepts are universal I guess.

This would seem to be an artifact of the fact that most Trek species are humanoid, if true. The Trek species thing is another little nit that's not realistic, but quite understandable. "Realistic" aliens incomprehensible to humans wouldn't play well for this kind of show.

[Mikey]

That would be something we'd have to chalk up to, "If they did it any other way, the show would be unwatchable." Doesn't help in-universe, but this one is close enough that I can live with it.

[Bryan Moore]

I have to stand by the idea of compatibility. If the engines are similar, the types of technology are similar, so then would the controls. A car is a car/plane is a plane as people said. Also, if you notice, its usually senior crew. Chalk it up to good training! Yes, unrealistic w/ the Delta/Gamma but how often do we really see Voyager use other technology en masse?

[Aaron]

How could they read the language? If they are similiar OS, they could operate some things but at some point their not going to be able to do anything because it's in Cardassion. Try operating Winblows in Croatian and see how you do.

Which brings me to DS9. They shouldn't have been able to operate anything without knowing the language or are we to believe that Cardie computers have an English setting? I could see O'Brian being able to read it given his history as well as Kira but the rest should have been SOL until the Chief could load up a new language setting.

[Captain Seafort]

The impression I got from Emissary was that, while the Cardassian withdrawal was pretty recent, it wasn't a case of the E-D coming in to take over right on the heels of that last departing Galor. There was therefore a bit of time for the Bajorans and Feds to move in, transfer control of the station, and upload any patches needed to translate the consoles into Bajoran or English.

[Mikey]

In addition, I'm sure it would be an easy matter for the computer to display any control terminology in any language in its database.

[Aaron]

That explains DS9 but not the ships, SF I can understand why they have a bunch of languages on their vessels but the other empires are all one race so why would they have the ability to change their OS language?

[Mikey]

That explains DS9 but not the ships, SF I can understand why they have a bunch of languages on their vessels but the other empires are all one race so why would they have the ability to change their OS language?

Well, the major languages would obviously all be in the ship's database; and a better analogy would be changing the GUI, not the OS - which should be nothing for a 24th century computer. In other words, we're talking about overlaying a different language on the interface, not changing the entire system.

[Aaron]

Jeebus I'm tired of having to invent explainations for Trek writers. Perhaps the UT projects a translation of the interface on to a contact in the SFer's eye!