"...and another thing..."...besides what?

There are a few dialogue oddities in the movie that stick out to me. I understand these are just 'move the story along' comments, but still...

McCoy: Humans, Ensign Perez...us.
McCoy was out of starfleet. It seemed odd that he knew the guy's name.

Spock: You did have a...relationship with Lt. Ilia, Commander.
Where did Spock pick up this nugget of fact?

Chapel: She mentioned she wore this.
When was there time for Chapel and Ilia have the time to chit-chat about her leather headband?

It wouldn't do to have characters walking around in a clueless fog, but comments like these make the crew come across as "gossipy".

 

Also, I suppose if there was a more formal "Captain's Office" on board it would still be decked out with all of Decker's stuff as it would surely be a bit of a waste of time to move it out. It would have been really hard to have that conversation sitting at a desk surrounded with reminders of who the captain of the ship is supposed to be, like a photo of Daddy Decker.

I don't know, I'd have thought they were just VIP guest quarters, it would have been really dickish of Kirk, during the push to get the ship going on time, to make Decker move rather than just taking up in a vacant room.

As he seems to be staying in the same (or at least identical) quarters in Khan when Spock presumably has the captain's suite I would just assume he just got put in visitors accommodation both times.

Unless he booted out Spock as well?

 

It certainly makes sense for there to be quarters for visiting admirals or other VIPs, especially for a ship that gets its fair share of diplomatic missions. Even so, some shuffling of quarters might always be a possibility. When President Roosevelt used USS Iowa to go to the wartime Tehran conference, he took the admiral's cabin, Admiral Leahy took the captain's cabin, General Marshall took the XO's cabin and so on down the line.

 

Perhaps McCoy checked up on the crew's files when he was reinstated to active duty. It helps to know who your patients are even before you treat them.

Decker's service record includes his posting to Ilia's homeworld. And I doubt they felt the need to keep their relationship secret. It was probably common knowledge.

Not gossipy. Ilia - the real one - seemed friendly enough. I'm sure she was friends with most of the crew, Chapel included.

 

Very sensible ideas, Mr. Laser Beam!

The only one I might quibble with would be the Chapel one. I had taken it that Ilia was all-new on board.

But even if that were so, I suppose there's no reason a few of these people might not already be acquainted with each other.

 

Fun to get new insight into such old things...

Agreed that McCoy would be the one to go for the human touch, finding about people's names and feelings. And Spock should know just about everything about just about everything; he's as good at esoteria as Data in TOS already. Also agreed that the crew mingling would not necessarily happen all that easily - how many of them would have been aboard the ship for any length of time before the launch? 10%? 15%? They'd have little to do when construction crews still worked on the vessel.

As for ready rooms and beds, Picard's E-D room had a bed - it doubled as his sofa. However, we never see it pulled out to the full sleeping position, although some episodes show it (accidentally) pulled part of the way. Archer of course had a room right next to the bridge, complete with a bunk, so if Kirk did not, it's an in-universe hiccup in overall continuity.

As regards cabin shuffling, we saw that happen in, say, "Elaan of Troyius". We could assume it also happened in "Journey to Babel" where Kirk uniquely lives down on Deck 5, rather than on Deck 3 suggested in the movies or Deck 12 mentioned in the earliest episodes. If Kirk's normal cabin is on Deck 3 (as Spock's is in ST2), then there's little need for a separate Ready Room. Pike's cabin might also be on Deck 3, judging by certain set details...

Where is the dressing-down room of ST:TMP located? Supposedly, the corridors in the saucer were color-coded to indicate decks (or at least there is some variation to the lighting of the corridor set in the movie, and Shane Johnson in his semi-fictional guide claims the color-coding was a feature).

FWIW, the room we see could well be Decker's room without being the Captain's Cabin; the scheduled completion of the refit was so far away that Decker might have chosen to live somewhere far away from the noise, or close to the action, instead of at the formally appointed location.

Timo Saloniemi

 

That was my first thought, however by Kirk moving into "The Captain's Cabin" it might have been part of his assuming the role of captain in the eyes of the crew. Picking up the reins of control.

There's a psychological aspect to the job of command.

 

Isn't there a line from Chekov (when the Intruder Alert signals the arrival of the Ilia-probe) where he says, "Deck Five, Captain--Officers' Quarters"...? That would indicate that (at least in the freshly-refurbished Enterprise), all the officers were on Deck 5.

 

^ Chekov does say that line, yes.

But it doesn't necessarily follow that ALL officers are quartered on Deck 5. Just that the portion of that deck where the probe appeared was one which contained officer quarters.

Although it is indeed the most likely explanation. As we'd later learn in ST VI, ships like this contain few enough officers that they can all be called to the bridge at once. So depending on how big Deck 5 actually is, I suppose it could be where all the officers live.

 

...I was going to check on the wording of that "All officers to the bridge" announcement, but found Chrissie Lucking's excellent "Chakoteya" page of transcripts gone, usurped by some sort of a shoe ad.

TrekCore of course has the penultimate script version, with Saavik instead of Valeris. No help there, then. And at this time of the night, I'm not gonna rewatch. But I'd hazard the guess that while "All officers to the bridge" is a valid command in modern or recent naval practice, in the Trek context it means more like "all department heads report in, and then send in your subordinates if need be". Or perhaps "All officers who have bridge duty, snap to it now - your free time has been cancelled".

Agreed that "Deck Five, Officers' Quarters" is an indication that Deck 5 is vast and contains multiple facilities and thus needs some further "where on that deck exactly" cues, and not an indication that Deck 5 equals Officers' Quarters!

Timo Saloniemi

 

...Whew, Chrissie's site is back (dunno what happened). And the PA about all officers reporting in isn't really followed by even all the main officer characters reporting in - so it's probably a case of all the officers who are supposed to be reporting in responding.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Now correct me if I'm wrong, but modern day aircraft carriers contain thousands of crew, don't they? Much more than a Constitution-class ship would, at any rate. And yet a carrier's entire complement of officers can fit in one room quite easily. There's a dozen, maybe two. So it makes sense that a ship with a smaller crew also could manage this.

 

...The officers seen during TOS wouldn't fit on the bridge at the same time! This just reflects the fact that Starfleet has a much higher officer-to-crew ratio than any navy of today.

Heck, more officers died during Kirk's TOS adventures than would have comfortably fit aboard the bridge.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Oh God no. The carrier has around 200 officers, the air wing maybe 250, and the flag staff another couple dozen. They have to have three wardrooms to serve them all.

 

No he did not.

 

Perhaps he did. With three different decks identified as accommodating the Captain, it could easily be argued that the rooms met different needs.

Clearly, Deck 1 cannot accommodate any further, "private" rooms besides the bridge itself. (Heck, possibly it cannot accommodate the bridge, either, and the structure is in fact sunken at least halfway down Deck 2!) So any room intended to allow Kirk to catch a nap, undre... I mean, dress down one of his crew, or formulate a devious plan in secret from even his own officers would still be a turbolift ride away. Would Deck 2 be any better than Deck 12 as a location for such a room in that case?

Timo Saloniemi

 

I'd say that Kirk's were also on Deck 5 in TMP, as I'd assume that Ilia was on the wey to her quarters when she and Decker bumped into each other.

 

I think the deck by-deck listing given by Shane Johnson (and possibly determined by Andrew Probert already) took a bit too many cues from TOS...

For example, SJ says there is a brig on Deck 2, for prisoners to be moved off the ship through the upper docking port; this is an apparent misreading of "The Enterprise Incident" where the Romulan Commander thinks she will be taken to the brig, and Kirk then orders her to be escorted to Deck 2. SJ or perhaps AP appears to have missed the fact that she is not going to the brig she expected, but to guest quarters!

Deck 3 or C is the lowermost deck in the superstructure, but Deck 4 or D on the saucer isn't particularly wide or credited with anything important. Yet it would seem logical to house the top officers and their assistants in the superstructure (as per the TOS suggestion of McCoy and perhaps Rand living there) since there's plenty of room, and then have lower-ranking officers on lower decks, and crew on the widest decks (F and G, that is, 6 and 7).

FWIW, SJ lists the color codes for saucer decks as

4/D brown
5/E red
6/F silver
7/G white
8/H light blue
9/I yellow

Whether this is a designer intent, or just something the movie as filmed can be interpreted to support, I'm not sure. But this would seem to establish Kirk and Decker's first meeting as taking place on Deck 7 (very white), and their cabin confrontation on Deck 4 (orangish).

Timo Saloniemi

 

I'm pretty sure you're right. When Kirk wants to have a private word with Decker after the wormhole, as mentioned in the OP, he calls for "level five" in the lift.