I noted this in Donny's great Unreal 3 Engine thread but I thought I would also post it here in case someone missed it. I have posted an article on the Auxiliary Control Room set at my site. If anyone is interested in reading it; you can do so here: http://tosgraphics.yuku.com/topic/418/The-Auxiliary-Control-Room Thanks to Mytran here at the TrekBBS for his help.
I imagine this set was originally conceived out of necessity for "The Doomsday Machine," since they used a portion of the standing Enterprise interior sets for the Constellation interiors, temporarily 'damaging' the sets for the latter by spray painting on fire damage and adding a bevy of bent conduits. A second control room was needed as they couldn't damage the bridge set--the majority of the scenes on the Enterprise were shot on there. Interestingly, viewers first saw this set in "The Changeling," which was broadcast before but shot two weeks after the first episode where the ACR was shot on, "The Doomsday Machine." They had to damage it before they first shot on it! That also explains why the set is more ornately decorated in "The Changeling," with a computer access for Spock and additional computers in the engineers section. I always wondered about the strangely half-moon angled wall to the right of the console... any thoughts about that?
That's a good theory. And they apparently had a wall segment from the old engine room set (the one that was displaced by the new ladder to the upper level of the new set) together with the lesser used briefing room viewscreen wall to assemble something new. If I recall correctly we saw that wall piece first in the adjacent gym area where the ladies excercised in "Charlie X" and later as an overhead beam in the Phaser Control Room in "Balance of Terror". In-universe I believe this to be a structural support beam of the Engineering hull's bow (I concur with Doug Drexler that A.C.R. is probably on Engineering Deck 8). Bob
In fact, in DM, except for some corridor shots, not a single 'Enterprise set', is used for the Constellation set pieces...
What I meant was - and poorly phrased that for Doomsday Machine, there was a careful separation of the sets used to portray Constellation, from the 'regular' Enterprise sets. In fact, there are really only two sets used for the ENT - the Transporter Room and the Bridge. That, the piece of corridor used for Deckers fight with Mr Montgomery, and the little piece of corridor where the Jeffries tube is. They must have shot those either very early, or more likely, very late in the shooting schedule. I wonder if the UCLA archive has those call sheets...
I think they likely didn't want to use the bridge set for the Constellation to avoid "confusing" the audience.
To the contrary, you'd think that nobody would pay much attention to a dedicated backup facility that is basically never needed for anything. What you would expect down there is things battened down, turned off, inactive and very, very difficult to activate without proper training and up-to-date passwords. Although as the article illustrates, the facility does see some use even outside emergencies, and in some episodes even appears to be permanently manned. And it's those episodes where the potential of hostile takeover gets realized... Timo Saloniemi
Am I right that according to "I' Mudd" Norman was tampering with the controls on the port side of ACR and that wall console was basically "mirrored" (removed) from the starboard side for this shot? This would mean that this panel would be approximately 10.30 o'clock from the main seat of the master table. It seems that to present Life Support in "By Any Other Name" (is "life support control" official or just what the Kelvan female called it?) they also shot the port side of ACR, but rotated the master table so that now the wall console would be at the 9 o'clock position. Thus, while being essentially the same set, the rotated master table of LS would suggest a different (unseen) layout than ACR. Bob