On 3/11/26 21:34, B 9 wrote:
Gene Roddenberry was a fan of WWII movies and used many of the movie "submarine" sound effects in the original Star Trek.
I was JUSt talking about specifically that the other day. Not Gene's personal history, just the sub & ship noises themselves.
My wife decided she wanted to watch TNG, but is a completist and so decided that she must complete TOS first. So we are in the middle of that, and I was JUST talking about that the other day.
She's normally only casually into sf so she never watched much Star Trek. She was asking about the various noises, specifically the bosuns whistle (except she didn't know that's what it was).
And going on from there I said I think this other noise is supposed to evoke the feeling of sonar pings in a submarine. A space ship, especially one out in the deeps alone on the Enterprise's kind of mission, has about 99% of the same qualities as a sub. And even though this is not a sub and it makes no sense for there to actually be anything like a sonar ping, that you actually hear, they just need to create the same sort of atmosphere as a sub. So it's purely an environmental mood thing.
But I was wondering about the actual effectiveness of a noise like that to evoke the desired feeling if the observer has never been a part of a submarine crew, and probably specifically a submarine crew in the 40's or 50's or something because I can only assume that the tech advanced and subs didn't continue to have guys in a can holding their breath listening to the other sub pinging through the walls.
I know sonar is probably still a thing even now but I just imagine they have better mics and better signal processing so they don't need to make as loud pings, and probably don't still make the same kind of simple pop sound but something that blends in with the environment better and only your own computer that generated the noise knows how to compare it to the environment to image the difference. So probably only the hydrophone guy hears it in his head phones these days, and maybe not even him but just the computer.
It's funny that it does somehow set a mood even though it should be a meaningless noise. Maybe you just pick it up from context like how everyone on the bridge shuts up while something chancy is happening. Like even if it IS meaningless to you at first, you start to form the subconscious association on your own, and then it does go the other way and become one of the things that creates the feeling later.
I can only try to imagine because even though I'm not a war buf I am still male and so have watched a fair number of old war movies just by default even if I don't seek them out, and basically grew up on TOS. So I'm just trying to imagine not having done any of that, what does this show look and feel like then?
-- bkw
