Today’s random thought - I asked myself just how, on Star Trek,they plan the right place to beam people down to, when they’re off to random planet of the week that doesn’t have a transporter pad?
I grew up with TOS’s levers and knobs, and TNG’s LCARS touchpanels, but I’m not adverse to modern versions of Trek. In my opinion, it should track with current and currently imagined technology. Easy to manipulate holograms seem like (from my current perspective) the obvious way to go - so I imagined the ship sensor suite putting together a 3d model of the target area, and the transporter chief dragging a cursor into position. That could be a pretty neat ‘behind the scenes’ bit of action to see on screen some time.
After a minute though, my mind stumbled towards the next image - the little holographic representation of the away team, shaded red because the computer fears they will clip into the structure if you beam them there. The transporter chief drags them a little to the right, a little to the left, looking for that icon to turn green so he can hit the button and get the away team… away on their mission.
Next thing you know, they’ve dragged the icon 3 miles away from the target and hit that transport button the second it turns green, and all of a sudden a lot of episodes with seemingly pointless hiking from the transport point makes more sense.