From the Star Trek Archive: Communicators and PADDs

Starfleet Tricorder
"One of my favorite props is, of course, the original series tricorder," said Denise Okuda. "One thing that's really brilliant is that you can open up it up and there's a screen. They can look at it and they can tell you everything that's going on by looking at this device, and we [the audience] believe it. We believe what they're doing. Almost 60 years ago, this is with the future. Now we have our phones in our pockets."

"The tricorder was originally conceived because one of the ongoing characters Roddenberry conceived for the very first pilot of Star Trek was the Captain's Yeoman who the captain wanted to go on landing parties," stated Mike Okuda. "What do you give this person? So Gene conceived this device to be a portable recorder, scanner, and computer so the Captain's Yeoman could keep track of the mission, could take readings, could record the captain's logs. Shortly, after this prop was built by the very talented prop maker Wah Ming Chang, who also built the communicators, the writers realized this was a very useful tool for other characters for scientific applications."

"Another thing I loved about the tricorder was the functionality of being easy to carry," added Denise. "You just put it over your shoulder. It's right there, and you don't have to use it all the time, whereas the TNG tricorder had holsters. The Original Series tricorder was just much more efficient."

Starfleet Hand-held Communicator (c. 2266)
The communicator, along with the tricorder and phasers, was a key device used extensively by Federation crewmembers. Martin Cooper, the "father" of the modern cell phone, has credited the communicator devices from the original Star Trek series as being one of the inspirations for his creation. This prop was designed by Matt Jefferies and built by Wah Ming Chang for Star Trek.

"Communicating with the ship is very important," noted Mike Okuda. "Back in the '60s, when the original pilot was made, Gene asked for two-way radios, but they were a big clunky thing called walkie-talkies that could only reach a mile or so. Roddenberry envisioned what Wah Ming Chang built, the famous Star Trek communicator, which not only provides voice links, but also gave the ship the ability to locate you on the planet so the transporter could lock onto you."

Personal Access Display Device (PADD)
Mike Okuda revealed, "Back then, they simply call it an electronic clipboard. Officers used to carry this around in the Bridge and and Captain Kirk would sign fuel consumption reports and other other important documents. The actual original prop, by the way, had some blinkies on the writing surface, which was from a children's toy. We had we had pads that have this advanced technology known as printed pieces of paper and these were this original Prop was designed by a restaurant and we had these in a couple of different sizes. Again, you see people running around to their halls with them. The extroverts that pass on top performers on next generation acoustical hall passes

TR-590 Tricorder (Circa 2360s)
"The Next Generation tricorder was designed by our friend Rick Sternbach," said Mike Okuda. "He made the whole thing so you have a handy-dandy control panel as well as a screen area. One of the great things about a tricorder is you, the audience, and you, the camera, don't necessarily know what's on the screen. The character says, 'I'm getting signs of intelligent life here,' and then the next scene is a planet that's about to explode. You almost never have to see this because you believe the skill of the actor. In the third season of The Next Generation, we redesigned the tricorder slightly. We had the prop team add a lot of blinkies so even though you don't see the screen, you can see the blinking activity so you believe that they're scanning for neutrino beams or whatever."

Personal Access Display Device (c. 2300s)
"As the technology in real-life advanced, so had the technology for props over the course of Star Trek. The PADDs for Star Trek: The Next Generation," noted Mike Okuda, who stated several sizes were created and designed by Rick Sternbach, in order for officers to pass them around while navigating the Enterprise-D.

Geordi La Forge's Engineering PADD (c. 2360s)
Denise Okuda stated, "You don't usually see the other side of the PADD when actors are carrying it this way because they're looking down, unless they do an insert. We always tried to stick something like one of the capsule label labels."

"Most of the PADDs were gray or some non-descript colors, except for LeVar Burton, who played Geordi La Forge wanted a PADD that was special," noted Mike Okuda. "He wanted one that was specific to himself. This is an Engineering PADD that was made for one of the Star Trek movies set on the Enterprise-D. And you'll notice that LeVar's PADD had extra extra details, presumably a lot more important engineering things." 

"And of course, no one does technobabble better than LeVar," quipped Denise. "You'll see the other side of this which you know you usually would say also would have to have some detail." 

For this prop, the back of the PADD continued a sticker that read, "ENGINEERING ACCESS ONLY. All warranties expire upon payment of invoice. If it jams, force it. If it breaks, it needed replacing anyway."

Cargo Labels
"This is one of the one cargo labels that I designed for Star Trek: The Next Generation," stated Mike Okuda. "We did these in a number of different sizes and colors. And whenever our set dressers came up with with interesting kinds of Starfleet cargo, we'd just slap them all over them and make them look official. These were under the under the jurisdiction of Starfleet Materiel Supply Command. Anyone here with a military background knows that 'Materiel' refers to your supplies, and such it's an actual word. A lot of people don't know that. And they use the word 'material' with an 'a.' So I spent almost all seven years of Star Trek: The Next Generation fighting against people who wanted to correct my spelling."

Okuda did a dramatic reading of an example that stated, "Environmental Systems. It's critical to components for secondary environmental support systems. Surely, you're joking, Mr. Feynman," which references physicist Richard Feynman's autobiography, "Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!"

Another read, "Do not attempt to remove this module without authorization from the duty engineering officer. I cannot change the laws of physics, Captain," plus, "Requires full operational redundancy for all primary data feeds. Will never be caught. We're on a mission from god."

Enterprise NX-01 Medical Labels
"When you work in television, film, or on the stage, you're always trying to be aware of what it is that the audience is going to see. To what level is the audience going to resolve things? This is important because you're gonna spend time and money on things that the audience doesn't see, in which case, you probably could have spent time and energy on something else that is going to pay off. One thing I knew was that these little capsule labels, which I put on virtually every panel, every compartment, every piece of equipment, you had a good chance of reading the big ID number. I knew there was a minor chance that you might read the big text, but I knew there would be virtually no chance to the small text especially in Standard Definition television. As a result, a lot of these contain gags."

Control Panel
Mike Okuda shared, "One of the great things about the graphics, which we specifically designed, was that we wanted control panels to be fast and easy to make. The easiest control panels were what we call doorbells and light switches. These resembled the the backlight control panels we had throughout the ship, except very conveniently everything was just silk screened on."

Denise Okuda revealed, "Back in the day, when we first started working, we were able to put double stick tape on the back and just stick them wherever we wanted. Then, these started disappearing, so we had to have them drill holes in them, especially Deep Space Nine, boy did those doorbells disappear. It was hard; they'd be filming it this way and then notice there's a doorbell missing. We would have to secure it more tightly to the sets."

Enterprise NX-01 Operations Manual (c. 2151)
Ops manuals like these can be found aboard the Enterprise NX-01 at several bridge stations. They are descendant of the operations manuals that had previously been utilized aboard the United States Navy ships and NASA Space Shuttles.

Mike Okuda said, "This Enterprise Operations manual is actually a day planner. But for some of the lucky ones, theirs were actual books. On set, like the one at Hoshi's console, I actually xerox'd a whole bunch of NASA manuals. So if you flip to the pages, you would see instructions on how to land the Viking lander on Mars and how to operate the reaction control thrusters on a spaceship."

A 22nd Century PADD with Operations' Cargo Manifest (c. 2151)
Reflecting on the new time era on- and off-screen for Star Trek: Enterprise, Mike Okuda said, "In real life, we were living with with that present day technology. We had flat screens that actually had animated preview displays. Even then, small handheld displays did not yet exist. But what we did have is an actual commercially-available slide here. This panel lights up so Anthony Fredrickson, our dearly departed friend, made up these transparent screens, which he sprayed onto the white surface, then this lit up. It looks like an actual credible display. If you fast forward again to the present day, like today, we all have things that look shockingly like this."

Starfleet Communicator and Starfleet Universal Translator (c. 2151)
Starfleet crews of the 2150s used this early version of the flip-top communicator, a basic Starfleet design that lasted well into the next century. The hinged lid served as the device's antenna and it could be paired with an early version of the universal translator.

Starfleet's first universal translator, although not as efficient as later models, was still a tremendous breakthrough for the crew of the Enterprise NX-01, allowing simultaneous translations of many alien languages. A standard communicator was inserted into the base unit.

Starfleet Communicator and Starfleet Universal Translator (c. 2151)
"The last major Star Trek production we worked on was Star Trek: Enterprise, which was set a set a century before the time of Captain Kirk" explained Mike Okuda. "They had earlier versions of the various equipment. The problem our prop designers had was, back in 1966, this was a micro, miniaturized, almost unimaginable tiny communication device. Now, fast forward to the 2000s when we started Enterprise, suddenly everyone had a flip phone that's actually smaller than this. So they came up with this small communicator, which didn't make sense timeline-wise, but was certainly more credible to the audience."

"One thing I thought that was very, very cool that we had done on Enterprise, which really should have anticipated on the Original Series was the device called the universal translator. This was a key concept for Star Trek. We didn't want to have the series be entirely about learning. You want to be able to speak back and forth automatically. So that you can focus more on the drama or the action. They didn't end up using the translator very often so it was a separate device. On Enterprise, we had the them so you could the device directly into each other. The challenge with Enterprise was how do you look back 100 years before and make it look primitive, but then, as you're doing television production, people expect a certain level of coolness."

Star Trek production legends Michael and Denise Okuda provide insight for Starfleet props from The Original Series and beyond.

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From the Star Trek Archive: Communicators and PADDs

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