Did the rooms on the Enterprise have microphones in them or did you need to have a communicator on you to talk to the computer? I can't remember anyone ever talking to the computer without a communicator.
Ok, first off, which Enterprise? As in, which series?
In TOS, I seem to remember each computer unit had its own voice I/O, with an old-style speaker grille cover thingy. And no one ever talked to the computer with their flip-open communicators.
In TNG, each computer access panel had its own voice input. Take the holodeck, for example, where the people might not be wearing the chest-mounted personal communicator pins, all they had to do was say "Computer!" and they'd get the tone meaning that voice input was available.
I think the same thing went for DS9 and Voyager, but I didn't watch those nearly as much. And I have no recollection of Enterprise (the series) because I never watched it at all.
I remember reading in one of the books (it was either the Nitpicker's Guide or the History of the Future) that they had to make up some technobabble reason for why the crew members didn't always have to tap their communicators in order to get them to work (because the director and actors would often forget that little detail).
I always figured the computers of the 24th century were super smart and just knew when they were being spoken to and when they weren't. It was the easiest explanation my 9 year old brain could come up with. :)
In TOS, each room had its own panel (as well as a fair number of access panels in the corridors) that resembled current door intercoms (i.e., push-to-talk). Subsequent Enterprises all had computer access throughout the ship, voice-activated. (DS9 is, of course, a special case because the station was no Federation-built, but a Cardassian artifact.)
Plenty of aliens and people that purposely took off their communicator has spoken with the computer so there must be microphones. Think of pretty much any situation where a bad alien came on a ship and went "Computer, show me the ship's schematic" or "Computer, show me profile on Lieutenant X" or whatever.
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In TOS, I seem to remember each computer unit had its own voice I/O, with an old-style speaker grille cover thingy. And no one ever talked to the computer with their flip-open communicators.
In TNG, each computer access panel had its own voice input. Take the holodeck, for example, where the people might not be wearing the chest-mounted personal communicator pins, all they had to do was say "Computer!" and they'd get the tone meaning that voice input was available.
I think the same thing went for DS9 and Voyager, but I didn't watch those nearly as much. And I have no recollection of Enterprise (the series) because I never watched it at all.
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The more info, the better. (Though realistically I'm always going to ignore TOS)
I'll have to watch TNG again keeping an eye out for this :P
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I always figured the computers of the 24th century were super smart and just knew when they were being spoken to and when they weren't. It was the easiest explanation my 9 year old brain could come up with. :)
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