I’ve been watching all of the star trek shows from the beginning of Next Generation through Discovery. I’m at the beginning of Voyager at the moment and just saw Tuvok use his com badge to talk to an officer on the other side of the bridge. Haven’t seen this before, and strikes me as a bit weird. I love Star Trek, but I’m not as knowledgeable about the mythos as I’d like. Curious as to why Tuvok would have used his com badge for this purpose (it was to reprimand an officer for an off hand comment). Since the com badges seem to be recording devices as well (we see officers take them off plenty of times to have conversations “off the record”) could this be a way of kind of highlighting this exchange to formalize the reprimand, or is there something else going on?

Interesting. I never took the removal of the communicator as a deactivation of it, rather as a symbolic gesture. At the time it was made, we couldn’t yet envision our “always listening” technology, so I wonder if the writers did? Regardless it’s interesting to see that be the thought process of today.

I’ll add a layer here: I recently rewatched Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges, there’s a scene towards the end where Bashir goes to see Ross after Sloane appears to have been vaporized. Before they start this conversation Ross states its going to be off the record and both remove their combadges. There’s a little digital audio click sound too as they remove them, signaling they might be off?