Warp core engineers: we need redundancies and safeguards here, here, and here
Bridge console engineers: don’t forget the high-voltage rail and the concussive feedback blasters
Chair engineers: fuck seatbelts wooooo
Also: this console doesn't have enough rocks inside of it. And you call that a ceiling? I don't see a single loose girder in there!
"Commander, I did a level 5 scan of the bridge turbolift controls, and I noticed there's a couple of unnecessary and dangerous flamethrowers in there. So I thought..."
"Stop asking stupid questions. This is why you're still an Ensign, Harry."
Safety studies showed that seatbelts lead to a lot of injuries to helms staff being struck by the rocks they fill the LCARs control boards with.
If they were going fast enough for that to happen they would be launched toward the front of the ship anyway, and we don't see that happening.
Bridge console engineers: .... oh wow look at this guys ... liquid napalm is a great electrical conductor ... we should use this amazing liquid to power these consoles
Wouldn't blowing up also render the console inoperative? I would think safely shutting down would be preferable to exploding if the end result is still a dead console.
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That's true. In modern times if your phone or tablet touchscreen breaks with enough explosive force to knock you over and require medical intervention, that phone or tablet is toast and probably won't work ever again.
On Star Trek, after a console explodes, the person who was using it is helped away and someone just slips into their seat and keeps using that same console without issue. Maybe the downside to extremely robust electronics is that they're prone to explosions. Like, you get the world's most robust, bulletproof mechanical keyboard, but the downside is that it requires a 240v high-power power supply. For... reasons.
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This is one of the better explanations for the exploding consoles I've seen. It still doesn't justify them, but at least it's something.
The main issue is that there's no reason that consoles should explode. These are effectively touchscreens. If you push a touchscreen beyond its operational parameters, it should glitch, it should have trouble recognizing inputs, but it shouldn't blow up. If it was pushed beyond what was safe it should either break or be annoying to use. Not dangerous.
Even with 21st century technology, a touch-screen type thing basically sips power. Smart phones can sometimes explode, but that's only because they contain a relatively huge battery. These things are hooked into the ship's power so they should only be drawing a few watts.
Still, if we combine your suggestion about battleshorts with the idea that for some ridiculous reason they run everything on the ship on plasma that comes directly from the warp core, then maybe...
As an Other Place fan whose experience with trying to befriend Star Trek fans IRL has hit the tragic third - thank you for being reasonable. I've met some people pretending that the Other Place is "space wizards for children", while Star Trek is "real science fiction". While in fact they're the same - for most part space magic and for the select few areas, yes, real science fiction.
I saw someone once theorize that the console designers knew their creations would get dumped with tons of heat and current under battleshort conditions, and had to come up with some fallbacks. So they just filled it with a ton of mass to soak it up as long as possible, a big hunk of basalt. Unfortunately, when it gets overloaded, it tends to explosively fracture. But that's better than cooking every ensign to touch a panel when under fire
The warp core was originally a space babble replacement for a boiler on a steam ship, since it was based on WW2 navy ships. On old steam ships literally almost everything ran directly on auxiliary steam. As a result of probably not revisiting this since the 60s: everything in trek runs directly on warp core plasma.
WW2 Iowa class battleship had steam turbines
Yup almost 3000 liberty ships with triple expansions and heavy oil fired boilers were built during the war boss.
Circuit breakers don't work for plasma conduits.
And it is crucial because of the [insert technobabble] that the consoles are powered by plasma.
Circuit breakers don't work for plasma conduits.
Why not? Plasma moves like a fluid, and we are perfectly capable of shutting off or limiting the flow of a fluid in an emergency.
They wouldn't employ a technology across an entire fleet of starships, and practically every corner of civilisation on and off world, if they weren't able to manage it to am extremely high degree of safety.
Just look inside the armoured citadel on a battleship for examples of how every single thing no matter how small are designed to ensure the crew remain unharmed and the vessel functional.
Anyway, the real problem is that we fill our consoles with rocks.
The real problem is they don't reinforce those damn plasma conduits enough. Your running plasma for your fucking power grid. Don't put it right behind a stupid panel or console. The terminal does not need that much electricity!
The Federation's original technical manual was written by Tim "The Toolman" Taylor. [Low grunting ensues]
Allen Rickman really should have gotten a part in some Star Trek. They got the Klingon Doc Brown to give them his souped up Bird of Prey time machine. The least they could have done is offered Allen Rickman the part of Kahn in the reboot movies.
Also, it's damn near criminal that Tim Allen's character didn't get the line "More Power" grunt grunt grunt.
It would destroy all their terrible plots though.
Picard: "Shut down the holodeck!"
Data: "Holodeck controls are not responding"
Picard: "Pull the holodeck MCB!"
Data: "Holodeck systems shut down"
Credits.
Also I love how there were instances where power was of the essense, but the holodecks were explained to have their own, independent power supplies so it wasnt relevant to shut down.
I mean, given what a holodeck does, basically a sustained, massive, active energy to matter transport, one would think it would be useful to design the ship to tap into it in important instances. Holodecks are great, but when life support is failing and phasers are down to 13%, not super relevant.
Like wouldn't voyager prefer to use that energy to make food from their replicators?
Ooh! I have headcanon for this: An uncontrolled holodeck shutdown turns the holomatter into effectively high speed razor wire.
Which means in my headcanon, some holodeck engineer once met a very grim ending - so that Moriarty could later amount to any more than a simple reboot.
Discovery had actual god damn flamethrowers in the bridge walls. Missing circuit breakers are nothing compared to that horror.
And seatbelts. When they get shot, the whole bridge (but not the whole ship? or there'd be dozens of casualties every time) goes flying. But not when the ship spins around in a tactical maneuver. Do the stabilizers just go out with every hit?
I'd guess the ag field can adjust for maneuvers, but not unexpected jolts from battle? And yeah why do we never hear about the shattered tanks in hydroponics, people falling into the warp core, and doctors getting stabbed by their own scalpels every time a laser hits the ship?
It's not unreasonable to think that the inertial dampeners can perfectly compensate for any planned movement, but when you've got the equivalent of a hundred nukes going off a few tens of metres away when a torpedo hits, it might take a couple of nanoseconds to react, and that kind of force for a couple of nanoseconds would jostle things about a bit.
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And yeah why do we never hear about the shattered tanks in hydroponics, people falling into the warp core, and doctors getting stabbed by their own scalpels every time a laser hits the ship?
Generally this is glossed over. First off, red alert procedures mean preparing for battle conditions, so it probably means halting non-essential operations that would be high risk during a battle, as well as increased precautions by essential personnel.
Second, we get immediate damage and casualty reports, which includes a fly by mention of damage and injured crew. That probably covers most of what you are thinking of. It's all repaired by the next episode anyway.
No engineer would build a system like that purposely, so they must be required to have high-energy plasma in them in order to work.
My headcanon is that the high energy plasma in the consoles sends signals FTL, using something like subspace but in the conduit. This is necessary because the ship is moving at superliminal speeds, and regular electronics won't work due to the subspace field.
That's really good headcanon!
Of course, the first person to wire a 5 volt button to their photon torpedo launcher in prep for a non-subspace battle will become a powerful warlord.
But that's still at least pretty logical for a vehicle whose primary purpose is interstellar exploration.