When I was drawing up my Phase II overview, I had a very nice shot of the missing bridge dome where you could see the inserts quite clearly. Sadly it's been a couple of years now, but I think some of the Phase II model shots should still have the 'upper saucer' picture.
I can see there's a sort of Bundt cake pan depression in the top of the bridge, but it looks too shallow to be a light mount.
It places on top of the bump, and is secured in place by the (missing) bridge dome. That'll mean that the dome itself will appear to glow, rather than have the lighting coming in from below it. (Also, remember, that this was a fairly large model, and it wouldn't take all that big of a light to fit into that slot.) I probably should have written a lot of what I found out about the Phase II model when I was redrawing her as the Tikopai. I figured at the time, wrongly, that all the info had been pulled together by someone at that point. Alas, 'tis not to be.
It should be noted that all photographs of the assembled model prior to the decision not to use it are missing any kind of dome or detail at all on the lower saucer hull.
Since the nub appears to be the same height as the outside top, I don't see how a light could sit atop that central nub and and not press against the dome that would go over it, which could lead to heat/melting issues. Are you sure this wasn't just a piece that would be cut out in order to mount a light?
It wouldn't press against the dome, it would be covered by it. The dome wasn't going to be a flat piece like with the TOS model (shown on the prints) but a concave thingie (yes, that's the technical term, thingie, dammit!) It was supposed to be a more sophisiticated lighting setup for the ship than what had been done up until that point. Of course, I do not know if it would have stayed that way, and how practical it would have been when all was said and done. Lastly, of course,the model itself was altered heavily to look like the TMP ship eventually, so it's damn-nigh impossible to check fits, etc., these days. Damn shame, really. Not my favorite Trek model, but I would have liked to seen her finished.
Note that in 1978 LED technology wasn't nearly as advanced as it is today. Discrete LED emitters were capable of red, orange, yellow, and green ... and I'm not even sure green was widely available yet in 1978. Blue and white (blue with a phosphor coat to re-emit the blue in a broader spectrum) options didn't become available until the mid-to-late 1980s.
I'm not sure what the Phase II Enterprise would have used, but models were using yellow LEDs for Battlestar Galactica and Buck Rogers at the time. Overlighting it in the studio would have made it pale enough to serve as white illumination.
The refit nav deflector is concave, the dome over the bridge is convex. I can't speak to the "insets" you said you saw on a photo. All the photos I've seen of the model are at a stage where the bridge dome appears to just be the solid casting we see in the photos with a half-donut indentation in the top, as seen on the left photo in the image linked below. The plans show a shallow TOS type dome that would--at the scale of the model--would have cleared the nub by maybe 1/4 inch. Or are you saying and array of lights would have set in the concave bundt-cake pan? Image courtesy of one of Shaw's earlier posts.
DS9Sega, what magazine did you scan the lower Mike Minor painting (the one with the added Paint insets) from? I'd be curious to track it down, even though it's also reproduced in The Art of Star Trek.
Great find. It might be nice to see Minor's version truly fleshed as someone did with the Bonaventure. The lower saucer would be more moundlike, with the secondary hull smaller than it was on the proper refit.
As for Dennis' work, it's truly astounding. Indisputably the best model of the Phase II Enterprise made yet, in my opinion. That said, I hope a few suggestions for improvements are not out of place, even at this late date. Bear in mind that none of this is crucial, though, as it's already a fine ship. 1) You should probably remove the upper serifs from the numeral 1s on the hull registry decals. Both Matt Jefferies' blueprints and photographs of Phase II models by Andrew Probert show that the decals of the number 1 on the Phase II E had no serifs, instead being plain vertical lines. (Incidentally, using serif-less 1s is the registry style Matt Jefferies used for the decals on the TOS pilot Enterprise in The Cage and Where No Man Has Gone Before, as well as in his writers' guide diagrams of the Enterprise. He must've liked that style and gone back to it for Phase II.) 2) The two NCC-1701 decals on the underside of the saucer, as shown in both two Mike Minor paintings and the TMP theatrical poster which used the Phase II study model as a reference, both face the same way. Specifically, both decals should be legible when the ship is moving towards you--that is, when seen from the bow of the Enterprise. I know this is contrary to how the saucer decals were laid out in TOS, and there's certainly no evidence this is actually what Matt Jefferies intended. But the circumstantial evidence indicates there was a departure from the TOS decal placement, if nowhere else than on the Phase II study model. As for the upper saucer registry, while the curvature of the U.S.S. Enterprise marking is different from what we saw in TOS, no painting of the Phase II E depicts the upper side of the saucer, so there's no reason to change it. 3) The warp nacelles. The hardest part of the ship to get right... a) The nacelle caps. As you've said, you've "cheated" them by using a glowing blue light there, which swirls like the rotating-fan lights of the original TOS nacelles--something plainly impossible on the original model. Several of Mike Minor's illustrations, including this one so far not linked in the thread (plus the aforementioned TMP poster) suggest the nacelle caps were in fact blue, similar to the deflector dish. Of course, having them be the exact same dark gunmetal-blue color would be problematic visually. I suspect that, as with the registry decal style, Matt Jefferies returned to the pilot design of the Enterprise for inspiration, and I think you should do the same. Instead of a dark gunmetal-blue, I suggest using a lighter, bolder blue on the nacelle caps--the Phase II equivalent of the solid red nacelle caps from The Cage and WNMHGB. This would be an artistic liberty, true, yet it's still rather "truer" to what the modelmakers intended. b) The warp grilles. I personally think that anticipating the TMP glowing grilles is a bit odd. My own design preference would be to sculpt the grilles with actual gleaming metal struts, as seen on the half-completed Phase II model (and the molds used in its casting). Also, what's with that curved area of black space just aft of the glowing purple grilles? It seems too TMP-esque to my mind. I've always interpreted this area as hull-colored, based on how it appears in blueprints, on the molds, and on the model as (half) built. This way, the warp grilles are properly rectangular in outline. c) The registry on the nacelles. Again, too much of an anticipation of TMP for my taste. My personal thinking has always been that Jefferies moved the registry decals that were formerly on the nacelles to the secondary hull when he redesigned the ship, so there would be no NCC-1701 on the nacelles. Also, neither Minor's paintings nor the TMP poster include such a detail. 4) The photon torpedo tube. Specifically, the red glow at its mouth. I think this may be a mistake, as the Phase II Writers' Guide (quoted in The Lost Series) indicates this was originally intended as the main phaser array! That's probably why the tube's mouth seems almost to form two intersecting circles--it was made to fit twin phaser beams. Thus, I would remove the red torpedo-room glow, and leave the area a solid black--just as on the Mike Minor paintings. All this is merely by way of feedback, in an effort to suggest how you could make your model even better. Of course, feel free to disregard any or all of my advice... after all, you're the guy with the fabulous 3D model.
And now a bit of thread necromancy. Apologies if this much-delayed double post offends anyone! An update to my earlier thoughts: as built on the Phase II Enterprise model, the nacelles’ side grilles were made of overlapping silver struts. However, they were probably meant to have a whitish glow effect when photographed in-camera. This explains how Matt Jefferies thought he could get away with non-glowing nacelle caps. The nacelle caps themselves were probably meant to be the same gunmetal-blue color as the deflector dish. This harks back to the matching designs of the non-glowing spiked nacelle caps and the copper deflector dish in the Enterprise model as seen in the two TOS pilots. It’s possible that, if Roddenberry had insisted, Jefferies might have dropped the glow on the side grilles and instead used glowing blue lights for the nacelle caps. But, due to the new nacelle shape, these would have been pulsing lights, flickering but without the spinning-fan effect of the TOS series Enterprise nacelle caps. And based on Matt Jefferies' blueprints, there is a single photon torpedo tube in the dorsal weapons array, set between the two phaser cannons.
I'm sure it doesn't offend anyone, but it is against board rules to resurrect a 6+ years old dead thread. More often than not moderators are asked to close necro'ed threads. In this case, though, your post is somewhat substantial and might breath new life into the thread. I'm not sure how many people who originally posted here are still active, but we'll see if there's still interest to discuss this. So I will leave it open for now. In the future, though, you are welcome to open a brand new thread if you want to reopen a discussion. That way new posters might feel more inclined to participate if they don't feel they have to read dozens of thread pages. Linking to the original thread would be an option then as well.
Well, it's nice to see that there's still occasional interest in this. The essential contours of the Jefferies refit design have proven pretty durable. They were used by Probert and Michaelson to design the ST:TMP, and to all appearances have been used by the CG folks on Discovery as the basis for their "modernized" Enterprise that was revealed on Sunday evening.
Well I for one love the Phase II Ent, as I find her rather awesome...and I am a sucker for anything that sheds light on some obscure ships So lay it on me man