Space is dangerous. It’s full of strange phenomena and aliens that can cause harm to
a Starfleet ship and its crew. Not all the time, in fact the day to day life aboard a
starship was fairly dull, and these encounters were often as wondrous as they were intimidating,
but nonetheless, risk was part of the business. This was a lesson learned early on in Starfleet’s
lifetime and soon a series of ship-wide alerts were made standard procedure for vessels.
Hi, Ric here and this lore-nugget of a video looks to explain these alert status. Back
in 2152, Starfleet’s first deep space exploratory vessel, the Enterprise NX-01 often encountered
hazardous situations. It wasn’t long before the Chief of Security and Tactical Armoury
officer, Lt Malcolm Reed began testing drills to measure the crew’s response time to potential
danger. Admittedly he was a bit too engrossed in the concept at the time as strange things
were happening to the rest of the crew, but that’s beside the point.
The drill was eventually scaled back to a more manageable level and was termed the “Tactical
Alert” over other suggestions including a “Reed Alert.” On execution of a tactical
alert, a ship-wide notification was sounded which meant that all crew were to report to
battle and emergency stations post haste. This alert was more than a simple order to
ready yourself for action however as it incorporated a number of ship functions that were triggered
automatically. The hull plating of the NX-01 was polarized and power supplied to the phase
cannons and torpedo launchers. Security was also tightened around critical systems, which
I imagine included the activation of computer firewalls.
This was a starship version of a fight-or-flight response and this command was adopted into
standard operating procedure for every future Starfleet ship. Over time it was evolved into
a more layered series of alerts as not every hazard that required an immediate response
also needed a full conversion to a battle stance. This new alert system was colour coded
to indicate the level of emergency so let’s begin with the two most seen ones.
Yellow Alert designated a ready stance for the ship as it channelled power into the defensive
systems like the shields. This status by itself presented no overtly hostile actions, therefore
no call to battle stations was given and the weapons systems remained unchanged. This status
was often called for when the crew encountered potentially dangerous phenomena or could be
initiated when the senior staff suspected dubious or hostile intent from an alien vessel,
but nothing had been confirmed, after all its not standard Starfleet procedure to open
fire first. Usually yellow alert was marked by a changing of the computer interface displays,
called LCARS, to an amber hue. Crew members under a yellow alert were expected to perform
their duties as normal, but be ready to drop everything and report to ready stations.
Yellow alert could also be issued by the admiralty to ships or even fleet wide in preparation
for a perceived offensive. This system could be escalated to Red Alert, which was more
akin to the older Tactical Alerts. This prepared the ship for combat and non-essential systems
were reduced to minimal power, such as lighting and holodecks in order to free up available
resources for critical systems. LCARS displays were changed to a Red Hue and the familiar
alarm sounded to alert the crew making it very hard to miss. In this state, the weapons
systems were primed and all personnel were to drop whatever they were doing and report
to stations, securing the ship for possible combat. Escalating from a Yellow to Red alert
was a quicker transition than initiating an unexpected Red Alert as the crew and ships
systems were prepped beforehand, however the situation dictated the overall readiness.
It seems that part of the Red Alert status prepared way for succinct damage and injury
reports from all over the vessel and engineering, security and medical teams were ready to respond
to locations around the ship that needed it. There was also a “Double Red Alert” that
was used in the 23rd century. This seemed to indicate a higher urgency to report to
stations, likely at double-time. This was not used beyond this time however, If I had
to speculate, I’d say that it was abandoned as it kind of psychologically lessened the
urgency of a “Red Alert”. …and it sounds a bit silly.
Blue Alert was a seldom used alert status that forewarned the crew of hazardous situations
such as a planetary landing or saucer separation. This was often reserved for irregular starship
manoeuvres or operations and often required clarification on the part of the crew to report
to the correct stations, the USS Defiant was expected to adopt Blue Alert on cloaking,
or an intrepid-class attempting a planetary landing. Other examples included when a vessel
was docking to a space-frame structure like a shipyard or the Earth Space Dock.
The Crossfield class of Starship, a purely scientific vessel was expected to undertake
all sorts of strange and potentially dangerous experiments and therefore was issued with
a “Black Alert” to alert the crew that an experimental project was running that would
have ship-wide effects. This USS Discovery used this in preparation for use of the Spore-Hub
Drive. Some of these alerts are automated or tied
to other systems, such as the self-destruct triggering a Red Alert or the multi-vector
assault mode triggering a blue alert. But all are at the discretion of the commanding
officer and can be initiated or cancelled and have certain elements of the conditions
altered and amended but in essence are time savers in situations where time may be a critical
factor. So there we have it, the use and function
of Starfleet’s colour coded alert system and its origin. There are many more operating
protocols that crews must respond to, but these are the big ones that we see the most.
So Thanks for watching and again, goodbye.