re: Star Trek: TOS Watchers - Season 1 Wrapup *Page 25*

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But man, the sound effects when Kirk shoots the mirror machine out sounded like something from Gilligan's island. What were they thinking?

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They wanted it to be spectacular and that was their concept of what an advanced machine failure would look/sound like. Budget concerns, as well as the technology available at the time also severely limited what they could do. They had to add hand phaser beams to the film, for example, so the actors had to stand very still (or they would freeze the frame, if necessary). Their whole concept of wired circuits did not even anticipate the widespread use of PCBs, so when you see maintenance it is always a 1960s vision of the future, along with their controls of switches, buttons, levers, etc.

The LCARS "O/S" of TNG/DS9/VOY - was actually a huge upgrade - adopted well before touch panels were common interfaces. However, these shows all insisted on retaining the "exploding" console effect to kill/injure crewmen in a spectacular fashion and to show battle damage, despite the fact this implies every control panel is a high voltage energy transmission/transforming circuit, rather than a fairly low voltage control interface.

I mean a battle scene between NCC 1701-D and the Borg is only slightly less laughable than the scene you described, including explosion noises outside, in the vacuum of space.