The Romulan War

The Romulan War by Pope Torak

The Romulan War brings many fearsome new types of fighting to humanity and its allies. Drone ships that impersonate the various races are supplemented by crewed ships being used as kinetic suicide weapons (even at WARP, devastating entire planets), and most insidiously: information warfare techniques are used to take over the heavily automated integrated systems on ships so the vessel becomes an enemy to the crew. Life support is reconfigured to knock out crew so the ship canattack allies without interference, gravity is turned up and down to pin or fling people, inertial dampeners are selectively tuned to leave their crews bloodied messes and more.

As the war winds to an end it leaves both a massive list of casualties and a new distrust for smart automation. Gone are the days of sophisticated computerized systems that control vital engine and environmental controls, and no starship designer will consider allowing computerized controls when a human hand can do the job.

Fail-safes appear. Engine rooms see a dramatic shift to manpower heavy settings where simple computers are commanded to set intermix ratios and manage fuel issues. Bridge controls likewise tie into 'dumb' systems and auxiliary control is where much of the implementation of helm controls and weapons firing takes place. There is a concerted effort to 'dumb down' the role of automation in ships until that future day when systems can be better protected against the information warfare menace.

This brings us to the TOS Enterprise. All of the above are now a very normal part of day-to-day life. Spock commands the only access to a real 'smart' computer system and even that is as isolated from direct control of hardware as possible. Sulu flies the ship and perhaps his inputs go straight to different systems but as we see, there are people down below implementing some of the big things. Perhaps his helm station is more akin to a steamship's bell system that signals the captain's intent to the engine room below where the actual levers are pulled. The weapons are controlled from a weapons room, torpedoes are loaded manually, etc. This is why we don't see LCD monitors all over the TOS Enterprise. This is why the NX-01 appears so much more sophisticated in terms of IT, because it is. This is a deliberate choice.

The turbolift control is a dead-man's switch. The turbolift is given enough automation to be able to answer commands for destinations, but like all the systems above, a human must be in the loop. The crew doesn't even think about it, their culture is about the threat of computers that control physical systems that requiring a human to hold a lever to bridge the intent of the computer and the action of the lift is totally normal.

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