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Explosive Instrumentation is extremely common in Star Trek. Sometimes it seems like more people died on the bridge of the various Starships Enterprise from exploding duty stations than were killed on away missions. Occasionally, the bridge consoles will even explode before the shields get under 30%, which makes you wonder what the shields are for. Went hand in hand with Trek's Impact-TiltCam and Flying Bodies.

  • Word of God from some who worked on the show is that the production staff knew that it was more accurate to have things like the ship being hit by weapons fire indicated by the lights briefly dimming and someone reporting on the effect of the incoming fire, but Executive Meddling by the studio/network insisted on more 'visually interesting' explosions and sparks instead.
  • Star Trek: Voyager:
    • Weaponized during the Seska arc, during which several people were injured or assassinated by exploding console!
    • In "Prey", the Hirogen take out Voyager's port warp nacelle, causing the console to the left of Tom Paris to blow up. They then take out the starboard nacelle, causing the console to his right to explode. Good thing Voyager doesn't have a central nacelle, or he'd have copped it right in the face!
  • The technical manuals of the Star Trek universe try to handwave this as a result of the inherent danger of using speed-of-light transmission between consoles and systems for faster response time, though the fact that the human response time will void any benefit gained from such a design makes this highly dangerous setup dubious at best. Also, a case of bad science. Real world fiber optic cabling provides speed-of-light data transfer between networked devices, but the amount of actual energy in the fiber is negligible, not even enough to blind a person if they pull out the wire and look directly into the connector. So really the explanation is just Artistic License – Physics meets Rule of Cool.
  • On at least one occasion, a console was demonstrated to still be functional after exploding. That's some kind of durable design.
  • The very first battle on Star Trek: Discovery has the ops console on the Shenzhou explode when The Bridge takes a glancing torpedo hit, knocking its operator, Ensign Connor, to the floor with (non-fatal) burns.
  • Federation starships are said to be powered by "EPS conduits" - the electro-plasma system draws plasma off from the engines and distributes it around the ship as a power supply. Why have boring old electrical wiring when you can have pipes filled with actual lightning, or even antimatter, or freakin' antimatter lightning?!
  • Played for laughs in Star Trek: Strange New Worlds, where the time-travelling Boimler gushes over Doctor M'Benga's tricorder, noting that they never improved on the design although they did get smaller, more powerful, and "arguably less likely to explode," to M'Benga's consternation.

Films

  • As with the small-screen entries, the Star Trek film series features this trope in abundance:
    • While Star Trek: The Motion Picture doesn't have any consoles outright explode, Chekov's console gets sufficiently electrified by V'ger's energy bolt that he sustains a nasty-looking burn from it.
    • An unusual variation occurs in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan—during the Unwinnable Training Simulation, whenever a console sparks, whoever is operating it falls to the deck and plays dead until the simulation is over. During the actual battle—the Enterprise takes a torpedo hit from the Reliant and half the bridge seemingly explodes, but there are no obvious injuries that result from it. During the final battle, the Reliant itself has one console explosion take out Khan's right-hand man and then later another one kills almost the entire remaining bridge crew; however, the former happens after the bridge of the Reliant is struck directly by phaser fire, and the latter results from the Enterprise blowing off one of her warp nacelles, which is implied to kill everyone on the ship except for Khan himself (and even he only survives a few more minutes).
    • Star Trek III: The Search for Spock has a straightforward example when the Enterprise manages to catch Kruge's Bird-of-Prey off-guard with some torpedoes right after it decloaks, albeit the only actual casualty is Kruge's pet. Not long afterwards, we get a different variation when the Enterprise helm console blows up in a shower of sparks and flames; however, this doesn't injure Scotty or Sulu, who are manning the console, but rather signals that the ship's primary systems have just been irreparably fried. And not long after that, every console on the bridge blows up along with the bridge itself, as the result of Kirk activating the auto-destruct.
    • Star Trek V: The Final Frontier sees the transporter blow up after Klaa's Bird-of-Prey ambushes the Enterprise-A with a torpedo. From the scene on the bridge afterwards it seems that a console or two exploded, though not with any consequences worse than inflicting the odd concussion and mild burn.
    • Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country follows in the footsteps of II and III, where console explosions do happen, but are just used to signify systems starting to break down rather than actively being dangerous to their operators.
    • Star Trek: Generations has perhaps the most over-the-top examples of this in the entire franchise, and certainly in the film series. In short, every Starfleet casualty in the film except for that of Captain Kirk is the direct result of an exploding console, with some of the explosions being so big that they launch crew members literally halfway across the bridge.
    • Star Trek (2009) only uses this in the teaser where the entire USS Kelvin is falling apart, thus somewhat justifying the trope. Otherwise it completely averts this, as do Star Trek Into Darkness and Star Trek Beyond.

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