wHat happened to pockets?

posted on November 20th, 2012, 7:01 am

It appears that despite incredible leaps in technology including transporters and warp drive and phasers etc. That everyone forgot how to make pockets. It just seems a little odd that no one has them. The closest I can think of (TNG era as Enterprise still had them) is when the two Klingons were in the cell on the Enterprise D and they built a distruptor from stuff hanging off their armor.....even then the pieces weren't actually stored in pockets.

What's even more weird is that despite all the possible outcomes and all the alternate universes out there that is that they have also all forgotten how to make pockets.

If anyone is interested I have written a 35 page thesis on this very topic and could post the googledocs link.

posted on November 20th, 2012, 6:48 pm

I think B'Elanna had a pocket in her jacket in season 4 of Voyager when Roxann Dawson was pregnant....

posted on November 20th, 2012, 7:25 pm

Cadets have pockets on DS9.

posted on November 20th, 2012, 7:46 pm

Do they have to hand them in once they become commissioned officers?

posted on November 20th, 2012, 11:03 pm

i would never of noticed this. id of just assumed they never use them as they always used there belts to attach stuff.

just found this which is cool.

"Finnair’s new cabin crew uniforms take style pointers from… Star Trek?"



http://www.terminalu.com/travel-blog/fi ... rek/21017/

posted on November 21st, 2012, 10:22 pm

Let's see. Enterprise A was destroyed and crashed, Enterprise C was destroyed, Enterprised D was destroyed and also crashed and Defiant was destroyed.

I am thinking it probably wasn't a good idea to design their uniforms off of Star Trek.............On the bright side at least they didn't make them red.

posted on November 21st, 2012, 10:35 pm

to be fair i doubt Finnair will be sending its aircraft into battle like all those ships were when destroyed.

posted on November 21st, 2012, 10:56 pm

Enterprise A was destroyed and crashed

The Enterprise was self-destructed after being captured, the Enterprise-A was decommissioned (although after taking massive damage yes) . The Enterprise-B, no idea. But otherwise yes.

posted on November 21st, 2012, 11:20 pm

Enterprise A was destroyed and crashed

The Enterprise was self-destructed after being captured, the Enterprise-A was decommissioned (although after taking massive damage yes) . The Enterprise-B, no idea. But otherwise yes.

i doubt the enterprise B survived, sadly, as the excelsior class was still in mainstream service when the enterprise D was active.

i doubt starfleet would rename the ent b just because it wasn't top of the line any more.

that means the ent b was probably lost, or damaged beyond repair. allowing the name to be passed to the ambassador class ent c.

maybe it was lost in one of the fed vs Tzenkethi wars.

posted on November 23rd, 2012, 5:19 am

A site has speculated that the Lakota is the Enterprise-B after the name was assigned to an Ambassador class starship, mostly based on the observation that they are both Excelsior (refit) class vessels, and that the subclass is never seen otherwise.

posted on November 23rd, 2012, 6:53 am

A site has speculated that the Lakota is the Enterprise-B after the name was assigned to an Ambassador class starship, mostly based on the observation that they are both Excelsior (refit) class vessels, and that the subclass is never seen otherwise.

Techinally the Enterprise B wasnt a refit, it was a newly commissioned starship, she was built with upgrades and design changes. A true refit would be the original Enterprise in TMP, that ship went through a refit as they changed out most of the ship parts to bring it up to standard. And it also seems unlikely the federation wouldnt have made more as the Enterprise B varient would be a logical step in the evolution of that ship design, I would think most, if not all, Excelsior class ships made after that point woulda been of that type. Either way it just seems unlikely that Starfleet woulda changed the name of the Enterprise B just to give it to another ship, It just doesnt make sense. I doubt they would have stripped the Enterprise D's name after the sovy was launched just because they had a newer, more powerful starship on the block. Unfortunately I have to agree with Myles and assume the worst, that the Enterprise B was destroyed or so badly damaged she wasnt worth saving.

posted on November 23rd, 2012, 9:17 am

Can we please go back to topic.

My answer is quite simple: you don't need pockets anymore. Pretty much everything we store in them today, becomes obsolote in the Star Trek universe.

Isn't that a good thing to carry around less crap every day?

posted on November 23rd, 2012, 11:05 am

To go BACK off topic If we take real life as an example of practices that may well continue into Trek, then it's very feasible that an older ship be renamed in order to "make room" for a new class of ship with the same name. For example, the USS Texas (Battleship No.2) , a pre-dreadnought from 1892, was renamed to San Marco in 1911 since a new battleship was under construction (BB-35) and they wished to reuse the name. The old Texas (now San Marco) was admittedly a station ship, but it remained in commission.

Also happened with several other battleships. One was turned into a floating crane (ironically, for fitting very heavy pieces such as gun turrets, to new battleships) and so forth. And that was just the battleships, the pride of the USN. Many many more less prestigious ships were renamed toward the end of their lives and remained in service in some auxiliary role.

Remember that by the time we see the Lakota on-screen in DS9, the Excelsior is a very old design (second only to the Miranda) and it's also explicitly mentioned that the Lakota was virtually gutted and rebuilt with the latest technology as a test ship. It wasn't your average Excelsior of the period. The idea that it was the old Enterprise-B but renamed is perfectly viable, and lets face it given the prestige of the name Enterprise, if you had the chance to take an old ship out of mothballs, refit her into a modern state of the art prototype and put her back into active service, wouldn't you choose the Enterprise-B if you could?

posted on November 23rd, 2012, 5:02 pm

Techinally the Enterprise B wasnt a refit, it was a newly commissioned starship, she was built with upgrades and design changes.

I'll agree that I should have referred to the Enterprise-B-type Excelsior as a production variant rather than a refit. Bear in mind, though, that this is a variant that is unseen outside the very isolated examples we've had -- and we have seen dozens of different Excelsiors on screen. It makes more sense that the Enterprise-B / Lakota is a one-off variant that served, was retired and mothballed, and then recommissioned and refitted as part of the post Wolf-359 rebuild and Dominion threat mobilisation. What the design intent of the variant was and why Starfleet decided not to build more of them is unknown (at least in-universe; we know the production reasons why!)

As for if the Galaxy Enterprise would have given up its commissioned name for a Sovereign, I doubt it. The Enterprise-D was still in active service and the Galaxy class still had plenty of capacity in its spaceframe for keeping up with the technological status quo -- I would expect post-Dominion War refits to upgrade the launchers to be able to handle quantum torpedoes and the addition of stronger phasers, as well as continued improvements in their sensor and science suites ("All Good Things" nicely illustrated that as the 'present' Enterprise had been refitted with a cutting edge sensor instrument that was still being worked on by the Daystrom Institute as of the ship's commissioning).

While the Sovereign was new and powerful, it probably doesn't have as much scope for improvement; the Enterprise-E is the smallest to bear the name (in terms of internal volume) since the B.

posted on November 24th, 2012, 3:20 am

The reason you give for the Enterprise D not giving up its name is the same reason it would seem odd that they would rename the B to give the name to the Ambassador class version. As youve already said, we still see older style Excelsior class starships around, so why would they just decommission the B, which appears more advanced then your standard Excelsior? I mean before the Ambassador rolled off the line the Excelsior was the ship of the line for the federation, its not like the Excelsior was obsolete by then. And given how impressive the Lakota did against a Defiant class starship, I would imagine a refit of the Excelsior class would keep it almost on par with the new Ambassador class ships of the day. And just because we dont see other Excelsiors of that type dosnt mean there werent more like her. I mean how many Ambassador class starships has starfleet built? Quite a few I would think but we have only seen maybe 3 or 4. And that ships alot newer then the Excelsior.