So I've been thinking about this thread...
I work as an Accelerator Operator* at a rather large particle accelerator. The job is roughly analogous (but considerably less... exciting?) to the bridge crew of the starship Enterprise. We operators would be equivalent to the extras that enter and sit down on the bridge whenever the main characters head off as an 'away team' to cavort on some exotic planet with blue-skinned women (more on that later).
Our job is to... well... operate the particle accelerators. In addition, we are the 'first line of defense' should an emergency or failure occur. Whereas Captain Kirk says, "Warp 9, Mr. Sulu... Scotty! We need more power to the shields!" and they reply, "Aye, Captain," the poor post-docs at the experiments call us up and say, "We'd like two turns of protons every ten seconds on our secondary target, using the minus 50 GeV tune," and we reply, "Sorry, we've got a water leak in the power amplifier on station 3 in the Linac, it'll take four hours to fix it, and we've got techs replacing a bad voltage regulator on an RF modulator in the Booster, but that shouldn't take long. We'll give you a call when we're ready to send you beam."
Anyway, the job gives me a unique perspective on Sci-fi movies and television... Please allow me to address a few points that have been brought up, so that I can compare and contrast the fictional future version with the actual present-day version.
On Polarity and Reversing It:
At the Lab, we use massive electromagnets to steer our charged beams (H- ions, Protons, or Anti-protons, depending) in the direction we want them to go and focus them tightly, so they don't scatter and disperse. The magnets necessarily have poles, as all magnets do, and as electromagents that are only magnetic by virtue of being hooked into high volatage/high current power supplies, it is possible to reverse their polarities. For most magnets, it simply means telling the power supply to run a negative current. For others, we have 'reversing switches' or 'polarity switches', which are simply mechanical switches that atuomatically swap the leads to the cables that draw power from the supply (much like putting in a battery backwards). For a very few, one must actually unbolt the two primary power cables that are attached to the magnet itself, swap them around, and rebolt them.
It is something that happens all the time here, and the only real significance is that the beam now turns left instead of right, or down instead of up. We cannot generate an entirely new type of miracle field or particle by reversing polarity.
On Frequency:
Electric fields oscilating at radio frequencies (RF) are what we use to accelerate our charged particles to just a little less than speed of light. The frequencies must be precisely tuned, or the beam will accelerate the way we want it to. There are, of course, many little tricks we can play with frequencies to make that beam dance like a puppet on a string. Which brings us to...
On Phase and Its Modulation:
In a nutshell, the phase of the generated RF must be precisely tuned like cogs in a wheel. Otherwise, the beam splatters all over the place, when we try to accelerate it or transfer it from one machine to another.
For example, when the beam is going fast enough that the Relativity effects break even with Newtonian effects, we have initiate a 'phase jump' to keep the beam accelerating properly.
Or, for another example, we sometimes begin with a set of RF generating stations 180 degrees out of phase of each other. Half of them accelerate the beam and the other half decelerate it, so that the beam sees no net acceleration. We then slowly bring the stations into phase with each other, so that the beam begins to accelerate. That's called 'paraphasing'.
On Blue Swirlies:
Unfortunately, the vast majority of stuff that happens in science, especially space, is invisible to human sense. Fortunately, we've got false color computer enhancement. We've got a lot of monitors in our Control Room, each of which can display a multude of 'blue swirlies'. Unfortunately, if you were to go look directly at any of the actual effects, you wouldn't see anything.
On Catastrophic Failures and Their Effect on Unrelated Systems:
You. Would. Be. Surprised.
Despite the oodles of circuit breakers and fuses we have here, it is not uncommon for us to experience catastrophic distasters involving electrical sparking, smoke, fire, gushing water, cryogenic liquids, spatters of molten metal, airborne mechanical components or any of the possible combinations thereof.
More often than not, the original cause of the failure has nothing to do with the actual device that blew up.
Granted, we've never had anything explode in the control room. The closest we've come is having one of our display monitors burn out resistor or capacitor.
On Spectrums, Commodore 64s and Outdated Computing Systems:
Our controls system runs off of 20 year old VAX/VMS systems.
On Replacement Parts:
We have entire roomfuls of spare modules for every piece of equipment in the Lab. When something breaks, if we, the operators, cannot fix it immediately, we simply replace the broken module with a fresh spare. The spare gets tagged and stored, and then gets fixed at the leisure of the apprpriate specialist technician.
Only if the operators cannot fix the problem within a reasonable amount of time (10-15 miutes), do we call in experts (like Scotty or Geordi) to fix it for us.
On Scanners:
We do have scanners, though not in the generic sense that most sci-fi shows use the terms. All of our scanners have a specific purpose that involves taking measurements that systematically span a wide range (the definition of scanning). Amongst others, we have SWIC scanners and wire scanners. We also routinely perform "aperture scans" and "target scans".
On Randomly Flashing Lights:
We have thousands upon thousands of (seemingly) randomly flashing lights. Most of them are red or green. Every single one of them means something, and flashes for a good reason, though it usually isn't apparent should you look at them from across a room.
On Away Teams:
We don't have "away teams", we have "remote operators". Very often, something breaks that we cannot fix from the control room. Consequently, we have to send someone out to find out what went wrong and how to fix it.
Now, normally, our Crew Chief doesn't go along. He's the guy who's got the Big Plan, so he stays in the Control Room unless something Really Important has gone wrong (like a burning building). Otherwise, we send two operators... One veteran to get the job done, and one rookie to learn how to get the job done.
So, you see, the shows and movies are quite as bad as you might think on some of these things... Though some shows are certainly better than others.
Considering some of the more recent series, SG-1 and Battlestar Galactica have some of the more reality-sensible control rooms and procedures I've seen. The Millenium Falcon looks and acts surpisingly 'realistic' from the inside (ignoring the super-psuedo-science gadets necessary), though Star Wars falls flat on many other accounts. Star Trek, on the other hand, is mostly a load of tripe.
*Operator in the Rifts RPG Occupational Character Class 'general technician' sense, not the answer the phone and say, "How may I direct your call" sense.
