It's a Trope: Morse Code

There is even a version of Morse in the (now dead)
Star Wars Expanded Universe called Mon
Calamarian Blink Code. Leia is better at it than Han.

Welcome to the first installment of a new series I am going to be doing involving noticeable tropes in TV, movies, and books that have always bugged me. I want to explore them, where they came from, and how based in reality they actually are. To start off this series, I decided to tackle one thorn that has really been sticking in my side since childhood, Morse Code.

I was once again alerted to the trope of Morse Code while watching Interstellar, a movie which I have already said enough about, but there is one thing that I left out of my review. The crux of the plot revolves around Matthew McConaughey communicating with his daughter via Morse Code, and seeing as how the move takes place at least sixty years in the future in a world that has been almost desolated by climate change, and has no standing army and barely any government, I have to wonder how many people in that future actually know Morse Code? Yet for the purposes of Interstellar, the Morse Code usage is one of the more believable aspects, as the message is actually being sent by an artificially intelligent robot, via McConaughey, which I can (at least) believe has a program from Morse Code translation somewhere in its databanks. It is also being received as one long continuous and repeating message, which means McConaughey's daughter has the time to open an old Morse Code book and translate every dot and dash there is. However, the use of Morse Code in other media, especially when we talk about science fiction always seemed less plausible to me.

For official purposes, Morse Code was retired as an International Standard of Communication in 1999, and in 2007 the FCC even dropped their Morse Code proficiency standards for amateur radio operators (which was the last group that seemed truly enthusiastic about actually using it.) Some navies, including the United States Navy, occasionally uses the code for signal lights, but learning it is not required for most US military personnel. Obviously the language peeked with the invention of the telegraph, but I can't imagine its ever going to experience such a time of popularity again. Thus, when Captain Kirk uses Morse to communicate with Scotty, I find it a little hard to believe that, in the 23rd century, they are both fluent enough in what is, essentially, a dead language to be able to relay any meaningful message to each other.

"It's seems as if we're getting a message for the Americans in old Morse Code"
"Aren't we in the Iraq Desert under siege by technologically superior aliens?
Where did we get an old telegraph from? And what is the likelihood that any
of our survivors would have the technical proficiency with Morse Code to
even understand the American's complex battle plan as relayed by dots
and bloody dashes. That's just absurd."

Even worse, when TV shows and movies do show people using Morse Code, anyone (in real-life) who actually knows Morse Code usually notes that the actors are usually just randomly tapping at a speed that is much faster than most users could interpret. It gets even less believable when the receiver begins reading the message as fast as he/she is receiving it. The fastest operator could send about 35 words per minute, and anyone who was masterfully fluent in Morse could decode a message in their head at up to 40 words per minute. Bear in mind that those records were set back in 1942, at the height of Morse Code usage. So it is completely unlikely that most people, (especially modern or future users) whom we assume only have basic training in Morse Code could even send more than 10 words per minute, let alone decode them on the fly.

Subversions of the Morse Code trope often come in forms of comedy. Most notably on The Simpsons during the episode Mountains of Madness, when Homer and Mr. Burns are trapped in a cabin together. Mr. Burns tries typing out a distress signal on an old telegraph machine, but the audience learns that the other end is connected to a telegraph machine in a museum. No one gets the message. Another notable subversion comes from the The Office (US) when Jim and Pam admit to attending a Morse Code class just to use the obscure knowledge to mess with Dwight in the episode, The Cover Up. In fact, (in my opinion,) the trope is often best employed as a subversion. A character takes time to tap out a long message and the receivers all stand around looking one another because nobody  knows what the hell it means.

Along those lines it could also be argued that when ever a character uses S-O-S, that they are actually not conforming to the trope. As S-O-S is the most common and well known use of Morse Code, with it being only three dots, three dashes, three dots (. . . - - - . . .) However, S-O-S has a lot of misnomers attached to it. For instance, it does not stand for "Save Our Ship," or "Save Our Souls," or anything. S-O-S was picked because it was determined to be the easiest code to use as a distress transmission, so easy that even a layman would be able to do it. Additionally, it is not really S-O-S, but actually S-O-S-O-S-O-S, etc... You were expected to send out the code alternating between three dots and three dashes as long as you were able. Thus, maybe you can make an argument that many TV shows and movies use it incorrectly, but it is still hard to consider it a trope, as it can be argued that S-O-S is more vernacular than any other Morse Code transmission, at least for modern humans.

Pointing a finger at Star Trek when talking about this code is easy. Even though Starfleet is a military-like organization it is still unreasonable to believe that Starfleet Academy teaches classes in a code language that is over 300+ years old, and based upon an alphabet of one language of one planet when a Federation that has thousands of member worlds and species. One could argue that, "maybe they are using an updated code," and that, "there are still some people in the US military today who still know Morse," even if they are a rare breed. The franchise does sometimes attempt to explain it away, most notably because Uhura is a communications specialist, or because two characters know the language from playing in an holographic program based on the 1930's. Regardless, Star Trek is not the first and not the last to perpetrate this sin.

Interstellar is just the latest incarnation of this trope, but I am sure there will be more. Whenever a ship loses communication or someone has to send a warning without talking it doesn't take much effort on the part of the writers to have their character drum on some pipes, wrap their fingers on a table, or blink in rapid succession. Tropes, by their very nature are a sort of "easy-out"for writers and audience members. Despite not knowing the code, most book readers, TV watchers, and movie goers understand what it is and what it is about. Morse Code, like other tropes, is a short-hand that writers and audience members agree upon, even if it is not always believable.

If McConaughey or Captain Kirk, or Mr. Burns want to communicate via dots and dashes, we will buy into it, especially in terms of our heroes. We want to believe that the heroic characters are better than us, smarter than us, have knowledge we don't have. After all, that's why their heroes. Besides what writer or audience member wants to sit through a five minute explanation of how two character developed their own language of knocking and scratching sounds from that time they spent together back in summer camp when they were both in grade school. Sometimes it's just easier to say... "Yeah, okay... Morse Code," because ITS A TROPE.