MovieChat Forums > Enterprise (2001) Discussion > One Thing That Bugged Me About The NX-01

One Thing That Bugged Me About The NX-01

posted 10 years ago by JesseJamesDean
6 replies | jump to latest

Is the fact they had to push a button to open the doors. There have been automatic door openers since the late 20th century, and today they are controlled by motion detectors...But for some strange reason, Humanity built a spaceship that for the most part has all the bells and whistles for it's time, scanners, phaser cannons, and EVEN a transporter,but for some reason the engineers could not build a ship with automatic doors. My grocery store has more advanced doors on it than all the doors in the NX-01. Now I know I'm not the only one who has thought about this. :-)

BTW..I love the ship, it's just that one thing that is a pet peeve.

[–] Juaqino 10 years ago

Technically, the large vessels we have today(planes, battleships, aircraft carriers, etc.) could all have automatic doors. Why don't they?

The doors from your local grocery store would be pretty terrible on the NX-01. Since they have no intelligence, they are entirely proximity-based. How well do you think that would work on the NX-01 with its narrow hallways and tight quarters? Doors would be flying open constantly just from people walking by. At least the Enterprise-D had big enough corridors that it might make sense.

Not that you're wrong, it's just that I'm typing this as I am falling asleep, which is apparently nearly as bad as being drunk.

[–] JesseJamesDean 10 years ago

Juaqino - Falling asleep or not, you made very good points. Especially about how today's planes and ships don't use the technology. I never looked at it from that point of view. Thanks for the comment!

[–] Juaqino 10 years ago

To further elaborate on what I was talking about, their original plan was to make the NX-01 much more like a modern-day submarine with clanky manual doors, no viewscreen, tiny windows, etc. The UPN didn't want this so they ended up making a ton of concessions, but they were able to keep the doors somewhat manual to make the NX-01 seem more primitive than the TOS Enterprise. I think it just ended up being confusing because it really doesn't make much sense to have something in-between automatic and manual; why even go with a button when it has almost no advantage over just having a door knob?

[–] brifitz1980 9 years ago

I think it just ended up being confusing because it really doesn't make much sense to have something in-between automatic and manual; why even go with a button when it has almost no advantage over just having a door knob?

I don't know about that. The doors are probably heavy and air tight so that they can seal in the event of a hull breach as the ship is made to operate in the vacuum of space. They aren't exactly the swinging bedroom door at your house with a knob on it.

Also the doors slide rather than swing. Manual sliding doors can be a pain in the butt. I once lived in an apt with a manual sliding door between my bedroom and the hall to the bathroom. A push button would have been nice. I wouldn't have wanted an automatic door that opens it every time some drunk friend of my roommate walked by it to use the bathroom.

[–] I_Guard_Tanelorn 9 years ago

There's lots of dumb stuff about this Enterprise. They have to invent the red alert like it's something that hasn't existed for a few hundred years at that point? Whatever.

"I said no camels, that's five camels, can't you count?"

[–] Nexus71 9 years ago

They have to invent the red alert like it's something that hasn't existed for a few hundred years at that point? Whatever.

NX-01 was the first starship of Starfleet so yes it did not exist before that.But sure it wouldn't be the first ship to have a red alert,the point was before that episode it was shown that NX-01 was designed to be a ship of "exploration"(Degra mentions when he sees the scans of the sphere of how detailed they are and archer says that his ship was designed for exploration).She left space dock without any of her weapons systems on-line it is only after a few unfriendly encounters they decided to arm themselves.Another point is that the crew on board was not exclusively a military crew and that the lack of discipline and the bad results during drills was always a point of dispute between Archer and Reed.
Also the point of the episode was not to show that Enterprise "invented" the red alert but to show that all members were acting obsessively;Archer with his Speech,Hoshi with her family recipe,Trip with the captains chair,Phlox investigating Mayweather and Malcolm with his alarm.But since the alarm Re(e)d alert(lol) worked so well on getting everybody on time at their stations that Archer decided to keep it.