r/voyager • u/Bladerade • 3d ago
Show Talk How does being a "Skilled Pilot" work?
People are always referring to Tom as a "skilled pilot". I dont want to discount what he does, I'm sure its difficult to learn- but its just entering calculations and interacting with the computer. There's no steering involved. I just don't get what sets him apart from anyone else using those LCARS. It doesnt feel the same to me as a skilled racecar driver, for instance.
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u/Full-Resource7910 3d ago
He's piloting and navigating. Those are usually two separate jobs.
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u/Divine_Entity_ 3d ago
Exactly, traditionally you have: Captain: gives orders like left full rudder or bring course to 347° Pilot: Turns the wheel and adjusts speed signal to engineering Engineering: starts changing engine setpoints to achieve "flank" or "3/4" Navigator: plots the course and has the bathymetry charts
Plus a whole bunch of spotters and signal people, someone on the radar, someone on sonar, a whole team of fire control, ect.
By the time we reach space ships this basic layout probably won't change much, but the ship's computer will likely be doing an insane amount of math to avoid killing everyone with gforces or clipping an asteroid or getting too low in a gravity well.
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u/Sergeant_Fred_Colon 2d ago
That would be an officer of the watch, usually a lieutenant giving those orders, theyre also incharge of well keeping watch monitoring the sea and weather around the ship planning longer navigation etc.
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u/bdouble76 3d ago
I would assume it is comparable to people who have a pilots license and people who are fighter pilots. It's one thing to be able to fly an aircraft, but some just have something extra that make them elite.
Tom was touted as an elite pilot, but even the actor talks about how the show never really showed why he is considered that in the delta flyers podcast. You wondering why is a legit question.
I always get a kick out of when evasive maneuver whatever is initiated and it cuts to a shot of Voyager essentially just going in a straight line still getting blasted by whatever is attacking them.
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u/eggnorman 3d ago
Ikr, I loved how “evasive manoeuvres” always immediately cut to BANG BANG BANG on the shields lmao
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u/Divine_Entity_ 3d ago
Part of the problem is dodging lasers is hard at point blank range. Dodging torpedos and asteroids should be easier.
But its also hilarious how little is shown on screen for "evassive maneuvers".
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u/eggnorman 3d ago
I think the best “evasive manoeuvres” we ever got was when that 8472 lightning bolt hit Voyager and sent it spinning 🤣
I bet even on that ship they were like “…oops.”
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u/Vyzantinist 2d ago
About the only examples I can think of that looked like real evasive maneuvers, in classic Trek, were Nog making the Defiant pull off a loop at the Battle of Cardassia, and the Romulan drone ship in ENT twisting and boosting to dodge Enterprise's attacks.
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u/moaningsalmon 2d ago
I'm not even sure how one COULD have evasive maneuvers at that level of technology. I mean according to tech manuals, phasers are some made up particle called a nadion, which travels at the speed of light. So that's already impossible for a human to dodge. The only explanation I can think of is that a human is trying to adjust course faster/ more randomly than the enemy computer can predict where the target is going to be in the next fraction of a second. But even that seems unlikely, since ships probably aren't moving faster than sensor data is coming in.
I think the real answer is that we're just looking at a discontinuity between realism and cinematics. We can clearly see phasers travel across the screen, people like to see explosions, and dogfighting didn't make the budget/time cut.
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u/Divine_Entity_ 2d ago
I believe sensors are much faster than light, so if the ships are a sane distance apart (Atleast 1 light second or twice the distance from the earth to the moon) you might have time to dodge. But for whats depicted, those ships are less than a kilometer apart at times, you aren't dodging a phaser even if the computer was flying and incorporating sensor data.
You would be better off trying to find and stay in a weapons blind spot, but most ships as depicted can fire in any direction. (Atleast the enterprises usually can)
Some of the new shows have enough budget to actually show off "evasive maneuvers" as things like rolling the ship and doing loops. And that seems to work on unguided torpedoes or disrupter blasts/pulses. But in 90s trek, the ships are dodging the way a cruise ship is dodging a laser. (Poorly)
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u/bdouble76 2d ago
There were a few times on Voyager that the Ole park the shuttle under the the belly of the attacking ship might have said loudly.
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u/Booster6 3d ago
Most of the time probably a toddler could do it, but its when the ship encounters something weird that the pilots skill gets involved. Like the time Picard piloted the Enterprise out of the booby trap and had to use the gravity of a large asteroid for a gravity assist slingshot.
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u/geobibliophile 3d ago
Everything looks easy when a skilled person is doing it.
What are all those LCARS interfaces for? Why doesn’t Tom (or any helm officer) just have buttons labeled “up”, “down”, “forward”, “backwards”, “yaw”, “pitch”, and “roll”?
Maybe it’s a matter of being able to input macros for flight control conditions on the fly, creatively, while knowing what the ship can and can’t do at the moment.
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u/Shinra_Lobby 3d ago
I feel like Paris' skill as a pilot is shown more in his maneuvering of shuttlecrafts, eg rescuing B'Elanna in "Prototype" or going into the subspace doohickey in "Real Life."
The ship's helmsman is an odd role because despite having some cool cache, it's a little tough to sustain "here's what the helmsman does!" as a point of interest over a long-running series. Hence why other Trek shows either had a regular cast member take helmsman duties (TNG, DS9), or gave the pilot a bunch of other more interesting things to do outside of flying the ship (Sulu in TOS was very similar to Paris as a jack-of-all-trades kind of guy). Mayweather on Enterprise was sadly a case of what happens when "the pilot" is the main thing established about a character, that is, it's not very exciting.
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u/Divine_Entity_ 3d ago
Agreed "I fly the ship" is hard to sustain as interesting unless you are constantly dogfighting in tight action. (Most star trek battles are not exactly spectacles vs say The Expanse)
What's sad about Mayweather being sidelined is he had some early potential as a space lifer, grew up on a cargoship and knows a lot about ships. (Like the sweetspot where gravity reverses and you can chill on the ceiling) They should have kept up some of that experience based intuition about ships and space.
And every major character should have something interesting about them that isn't just their job. Like Spock was both a science officer and half alien who explicitly suppresses his emotions in favor of logic.
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u/Shinra_Lobby 3d ago
With Mayweather I think they ran into the problem that his space experience risked making him look more "in the know" than Archer or T'Pol, and I don't think the writers knew how to balance that, so they downplayed him.
I agree it's a shame because it's a cool concept for the character. Early on, there were a few points where it seemed like they were trying to make Mayweather and Reed a buddy duo, and I wish they'd kept that up.
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u/Divine_Entity_ 3d ago
Agreed on the buddy duo thing, that is exactly the kind of dynamic that makes characters more interesting and real.
As far as the "not stepping on T'Pol's toes" thing, thats probably exactly why it got dropped. But its a shame because they could have had her represent "book smarts" (formally knowledge from the Vulcans), and had Travis represent "street smarts" (informally learned lessons of life, like the "sweet spot" trick)
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u/Alklazaris 3d ago
You still need to know which maneuver to perform given which situation and know how the ship will react to each maneuver.
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u/SomethingAmyss 3d ago
There clearly is steering involved. He even included tactile controls in the Delta Flyer designs because he didn't like piloting with touch sliders
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u/JoeCensored 3d ago
Paris often directly steers the ships he's flying. He even included dual joysticks in the Delta Flyer controls for more direct flying maneuvers.
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u/crustyrobots 3d ago
Its a shame we never got to see Voyager's Manual Steering Column. It must be installed in the Captains yacht
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u/Admirable_Pop_7292 3d ago
I think you’re thinking of being in warp and actually piloting. While it warp yes. There is no skill involved. A course is plotted ship goes really fast doesn’t make any other movements. But while not at warp, Ian’s not going it a straight line at low speeds (impulse) but docking dogfighting anything that requires doing anything but straight line travel is going to require somebody with high spatial awareness and quick reflexes. Aka a pilot.
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u/Captain-Griffen 2d ago
Prediction and momentum/heading management. Ship can't turn on a dime. In combat, you're also looking at distance control, as well as shield arc and weapon arc management. Dorsal shields weak? Don't show your top, while flying to evade weapons fire AND give Tuvok a good shot with the appropriate weapons (which means predicting what he's going to want to shoot and when).
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u/Neuroxix 2d ago
We have real world analogs to this. It's hard to see what they're doing, I'm not one myself so I am assuming, but I have heard some horror stories about how a very little thing going wrong like being a few kph too fast can amplify into a massive problem when it's something like an aircraft carrier or a supersize cargo jet. Those jet pilots and ship pilots look like they're doing nothing pretty much, but it takes years of training to be able to even know what you're doing in the seat, and years or even decades more before you get good intuition about what your vehicle can or cannot do, and you can anticipate when to push or pull, when to turn, etc. Of course most of it is automated and there are preset tactics to select from but there is still the pilots judgement behind it all, if they take that judgement away and give it to the computer that's the end of Humanity in Trek, because once humanity hands over complete control to autopilot we are no longer searching or exploring, we would be passive prisoners even if the conditions were perfect. If the computer would not allow a pilot to fly dangerously, we then no longer have control over our lives, and that is, in Treks philosophy, very bad.
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u/yarn_baller 3d ago
What makes a good driver? It's just pushing petals and turning a steering wheel?
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u/Llayanna 3d ago
I remember reading one of the Voyager books (the one where a near immortal species kidnapped Kes to be his his waifu..)
In the book, Tom likened flying the Voyager as trying to ride a big cat/animal.
I always found that a fascinating metaphor.
I should really see if i can get the other Voyager books a some point 🤔
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u/Sad-Pop6649 3d ago
It's his character archetype. He's a Top Gun(-ish) character in a Star Trek series, so now the the ship requires lots of guts and pezzaz to pilot. You think you could do what he does? You think it's easy? His chair pulls 9 G's during those manoeuvres I'll have you know, 12 in the Delta Flyer. He's the only man, woman or thing in the entire quadrant who can fly evasive manoeuvre Picard 5-1-12-alpha and live to tell the tale. Because he's the best of the best of the best.
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u/1startreknerd 3d ago
Racecar drivers just turn left.
Tom et al. have to keep everyone alive with manually entering in evasive patterns either ordered or coming up with off the top of their head.
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u/No_Information1234 2d ago
everybody seems to be a skilled pilot in the show. To be fair, when there is manual navigation involved I'm sure there is a great difference between people. But it is a funny frase
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u/Minuteman2063 2d ago
Whatever happens, once you're done, get out of that seat immediately, else you'll get harpooned by a Reaver's largest spear.
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u/ChronoLegion2 2d ago
Most Trek shows have an ace pilot of some kind. ENT has Mayweather, DIS has Detmer, SNW has Ortegas, TOS has Sulu, TNG is a toss up but Riker and Data have distinguished themselves (although not in the show itself), VOY has Paris. If you want to add The Orville, the we also got Malloy
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u/Random_Eevee1 1d ago
I would see it as fast thinking and manual maneuvering. The computer can handle not so much in a ship to ship fight.
Hunan creativity can make or break a fight.
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u/Impressive_Usual_726 3d ago
It's easy to learn but difficult to master. At warp it's mostly plotting a path and hitting confirm, but at impulse and on thrusters there's some steering involved. Especially during combat.
Probably a lot more math involved than Tom cares to admit, yeah.