The niggly things

[beccaelizabeth]

One thing that's bugging me with this scriptwriting thing:
INT DAY
Or INT NIGHT
On a spaceship.
Technically it's day on half the ship and night on the far side. Or it's day everywhere all the time. Or it's night everywhere. How do they know? It's a spaceship! They're in a corridor or a cargo hold and there's more corridor and cargo hold next to them. Day and night are just a bit irrelevant!

I'm typing INT DAY because it's easier. But I'd rather type INT GREAT BIG SPACESHIP.

Comments

[mcamason.livejournal.com]

I don't know if it's ever been dealt with in any of the shows I watch, but I always figured that big, city-in-space ships, like the Enterprise(pick a letter) would have cycling light conditions to allow for ease of keeping one's circadian rhythms going. Dropping the light level by about fifteen percent between eighteenhundred and nineteenhundred, and bringing it back up starting around ohsixhundred. Having temperature cycle about a degree at the same time.

I always thought of ships having distinct day and night cycles because they are products of human thought, and human thought itself is the product of a planet with distinct day and night cycles.

This isn't meaning small vehicles like the Millennium Falcon or Serenity, nor Imperial Star Destroyers (for Emperor Palpatine sneers at Circadian rhythms) but for peaceable installations like B-5 or DS 9 or K-7 or other combos of letters and numbers.

I don't think "day" or "night" would be irrelevant because I think we'd bring them with us. I see second shift on a spaceship as being much slower-paced, more relaxed, and I see third shift as being manned mostly by volunteers and loners who like the stillness, and people who want the labs all to themselves. And the occasional person who pissed off the first officer assigned third shift as punishment detail. ;)

[beccaelizabeth]

There's different systems for dealing with the circadian rhythms thing. I would see the different shifts as being different self contained social groups, each of them considering their own cycle to be 'day'. I've read books with that assumption, and I've read books with a fixed day and night imposed.

The particular ship I'm writing on doesn't actually have a crew, so day and night are completely irrelevant.

And then you get into ships that aren't actually run by humans, or have mixed species crews. Enterprise never to my knowledge mentions what it does about crew with a rhythm that don't fit with human average.

[mcamason.livejournal.com]

The only problem I have with three shifts being self-contained social groups is that it makes it hard for the ship as a whole to be one self-contained social and political group.

To me, three-shift ships works fine for, say, generation ships and such, that are out of touch with the rest of humanity for long periods of time, but it still strikes me as weirdly divisive and risky behavior for humans to do such things.

Also? I'm a night owl who's always been happiest working when other people are asleep. no where for me to run for quiet in such a place! meep!

[beccaelizabeth]

True, about the social drift thing. And, also, potentially useful...

So true about the sleep escape thing.

[mcamason.livejournal.com]

why, they knuckle down and suit the hegemonic human average, of course! Just like vulcans have to deal with human temperature comfort ranges by layering.

I reckon if a person has a way-enough off Star-trek standard rhythm or a completely inflexible one, they just have their own personal day and work that, depending on the job and work field.

And yeah, an uncrewed ship kind has no need for human constructions of time.

Hell, it doesn't even need hallway lights. Or, really, hallways..

stop breaking my brain early in the morning!

[beccaelizabeth]

Initially my cargo ship was just a bunch of containers connected together, like the cargo containers for sea ships but more airtight. Then they'd get pushed up to speed and netted at the other end. But for plot reasons it was just easier to have a hallway and some rooms with a view. Still, cheaper to film everything in one cargo container redressed a few times...

[beccaelizabeth]

also? Your 'early in the morning' is my 'going to sleep now' and my neighbours 'work end soon'. Which pretty much proves how a 3 shift would work, only with more distant geography. Humans do this already... and we're always kind of seriously divided...