Was 'Ten Forward' always on the ship?

[SchwEnt]

A Galaxy class has room for LOTS of everything.
Plenty of space for every kind of lounge and conference rooms and meeting halls and formal reception areas and you name it.

And yet most everything we saw, from informal casual gatherings to high-level ambassadorial functions to theatrical performances to crew ceremonies to music recitals ended up in Ten Forward. I guess it was everyone's favorite spot but, come on. It's not a tight ship where rooms need to be multi-purpose.

[Trekker4747]

Don't confuse things happening on the 10-Forward set with things things happening in 10-Forward. Many of the times you see the 10-Fwd set used for something it could simply be another room on the ship that simply, vaguely, looks like 10-Fwd. It was a show, afterall, running on a budget.

[King Daniel]

That is true, those (too small) windows go all around the saucer and along the secondary hull too.

[Mojochi]

Any time you see the windows of the front arc of the ship, that is clearly the bow of the vessel, I just assume it's Ten Forward

[SchwEnt]

Right on. But those great sweeping windows apparently encircle the saucer, so there should be dozens or hundreds of rooms with views equally as impressive as Ten Forward.

What would make Ten Forward the place to be? Guinan and the bar? The forward view is better than the starboard view?

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Maybe just the name.

Meaning: When the ship was first launched, possibly it didn't have a fancy name that was cute to say. But calling it "Ten Forward" gave it an air of sophistication and made it 'trendy' for everyone to go there.

[JirinPanthosa]

It 's entirely possible 10 Forward started out as a generic mess hall and was turned into a trendy bar when Guinan came aboard.

[Melakon]

I thought there was mention of it in Sternbach & Okuda's TNG Technical Reference Manual, but either I'm mistaken or my eyes have gotten so bad I can't find it.

[Antni]

Yeah perhaps it wasn't a place everyone went to in the first year as people were still settling in on the new ship and slowly but surely the place started getting customers then word of mouth spread and people decided it was the place to go on the ship.

There could even be more than one like a Ten-port or Ten-starboard but they wasn't as popular as ten forward.

[The Keeper]

A little off topic here but I believe related is that scene in ST5 TFF with the sailing ships Wheel and the forward looking window. ST5 was the first movie to be made in tandem with a ST TV series, TNG season 2, btw, so perhaps we saw the birth of a (in Universe) Ten Forward concept there.

[Robert Comsol]

"Ten Forward" wasn't considered to be on the ship before the end of Season One and Andrew Probert's departure.

Here is a link how he felt about the addition of "Ten Forward" on the ship that's essentially his design and creation (however, read the answer to question # 23 at your own risk! I wasn't aware of the "problem" before I read his interview, one of the rare cases where I'd agree that ignorance would have been bliss).

Bob

[Bigjoe]

Trekker4747 wrote:

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I feel it was always there there we just never got to see it in the first season.

Agreed.

I'm not sure what the rating were like after the first season finished. Maybe they included it to help with future story lines.

[JirinPanthosa]

I always thought Ten Forward was at the very front tip of the saucer section. That's pretty much implied in Starship Mine, but that interview makes it look like it's somewhere on the downward slope.

[Therin of Andor]

C.E. Evans wrote:

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On other Galaxy-class ships, it may have a different name like "Herman's" or "The Saloon," but "Ten-Forward" was chosen for the one on the Enterprise.

Sure, but "Ten-Forward" was also the official deck plans' designation, ie. front of the ship on the tenth level. Richard Arnold told us, at a convention where the first publicity slides for ST V were shown, that the set shown with the old, wooden ship's wheel on the Enterprise-A was called "Five-Forward", in retro homage to TNG's Ten-Forward.

[Therin of Andor]

Bigjoe wrote:

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Maybe they included it to help with future story lines.

Exactly. No "maybe" at all. It was partly to do something constructive with Deanna Troi. Denise Crosby's Yar was already gone - and suddenly Gates McFadden's contract was not renewed. Troi's character had been in grave danger of being dropped (in fact, she's missing from quite a few latter-Season One eps, as the writers couldn't figure out how to use her effectively). The production having lost the other two established female regulars, Sirtis was suddenly safe. But still not effective.

So the writers brainstormed sets that would help with Troi's character development: a counselor's office, which they never used much (a simple redress) and a bar, since characters might open up more over casual drinks than in an office. (Of course, Troi doesn't need them to be in a bar to know how her patients feel, but we do.)

And then the producers finally believed Whoopi Goldberg that she was serious about joining TNG - in any role - and a character, based on Texas Guinan, was born.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Texas_Guinan

Ironically, when Whoopi made it known she'd be free for an upcoming episode, the writers often hurriedly rewrote Troi counseling scenes into Guinan scenes, much to Marina Sirtis's frustration.