Man that outer hull around the bridge looks paper thin. You'd think there would be some extra armor plating or at least a double hull for some protection on such a critical part of the ship.
The bridge did lose a crucial part of its outer wall: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/nemesishd/nemesishd2082.jpg I can't really see how a few (dozen) meters of mere physical matter would make a difference when a hostile starship's disruptors get a good shot. Phasers drill through kilometers of solid rock in a matter of seconds in several TNG episodes... Timo Saloniemi
The bridge of the USS Constellation was damaged and unihabitable in TOS episode "The Doomsday Machine". Excerpt of "The Doomsday Machine" below Link --> http://www.chakoteya.net/StarTrek/35.htm Navigator NCC-2120 USS Entente /\
The Battle Bridge solves the problem...unless you separate the ship (I *think* the battle bridge is on top of the secondary hull)
^^^ Yep, it's on the top and center of the cobra head. At least on the Galaxy, anyway. Can't remember where it was on the Sovereign.
Or whether the Sovereign was ever intended to fight in separated mode. After all, while a separation line of sorts was designed in, there apparently was no thought given to providing the "Battle Section" with things like impulse drive... Just as with Kirk's old ship which supposedly was incapable of doing anything much once separated. Kirk's ship had a "Battle Bridge" or three despite not having any operational separation ability. We never quite learned where these were located, though, and we got no real reason to think they would be better protected than the Main Bridge. Not until a bit of thought was put to the layout of the refitted ship in ST:TMP, that is; both Andy Probert and Shane Johnson tried to put Auxiliary Control in the very middle of the saucer, even though the sets didn't exactly make that easy. We never saw such a facility in the actual movies, so we didn't get any wiser in the canon sense... Timo Saloniemi
I was thinking about the diagram of the K't'inga bridge Timo posted, are the red windows about the same size as the forward window of the Enterprise? Something is outta wack somewhere, Ijust don't know where. James