My all-time favorite practical effect: the wireframe city in "Escape from New York". It was beautiful, nuanced "CGI", all the more so because it wasn't CGI at all; they built a model of the city and then outlined the entire thing with glow-in-the-dark tape, shut off the light, and just filmed the flyover with a crane.
Trust me, there really isn't much of an explanation for most of #StarTrekTOS beyond "Let's do THING IN SPACE!"
Random Masto thought: I see a lot of people try to replace "instance" with different, non-technological metaphors to try to explain it, but honestly, the term I've had the most success with is "server", especially with people used to playing stuff like Minecraft where it's common for people to run their own servers for online multiplayer. I've never read up on the technicals enough to know if this is exactly correct, but.
@kevinb@octodon.social
I was reminded of this image.
Bi, geek, genderqueer, sf&f fan, in no particular order. Pronouns: he or they. I blog at https://www.bigeekfan.com