Another fan attempt at TOS deck plans

Why in the name of the Great Bird of the Galaxy didn't Jeffries just cut and apply the AMT model's decal sheet to read 1710 instead of 1017 for the Constellation, then we wouldn't be wondering about things like this forty years later?

 

I wanted to put this up because it had been discussed a bit (and I hadn't put anything new up in a while). In this image I have a comparison between Jefferies cross section and mine as it sort of stands currently. I put in some turbolifts and corridor frames on the primary hull approximately where they would appear given the deck layouts as they stand currently.

Click to enlarge​

 

Mind if I wade in on the "Constellation" discussion here?

There seems to be a certain assumption that ships which look like the Enterprise (the Constitution Star Ship Class) are the first ones to ever look that way in Starfleet. Not long ago, Aridas did a thread called "Star Ships". In the thread, there were drawings of ships that looked like a an evolution of the "Star Ship" that ultimately settled on the configuration we recognize as the Constitution-class.

I'd like to suggest a different possibility. Maybe the overall shape and structure of the "star cruiser" concept date back over 50 years prior to TOS, hence Anan 7 referring to the target Enterprise as "the star cruiser now circling". This "star cruiser" concept may have looked very much like the Constitution-class in overall shape, but its technical refinement and capabilities may have been significantly less advanced, but each succeeding star ship class of star cruiser vessels acted as an improved draft, with the final draft being the Constitution-class. We don't know what these earlier ship classes were named, but NCC-1017 Constellation was no doubt a member of an earlier class of star cruisers. Refitting these earlier star cruisers to the Constitution class spec when it came out was a significant undertaking, but not as drastic as totally building them from scratch.

I like the notion of NCC numbers being slated for construction, but I've also seen fans suggest that NCC means "navigation contact code", which could mean that ships are given the NCC registry to identify them by name and class. Perhaps NCC-10xy, of which Constellation is a member, started out life as a Magna Carta-class of star cruiser around 2185, and it was only capable of Warp 6.5 top speed, until the class' members were upgraded to Constitution-class decades later; Constitution class vessels were the ones to finally crack Warp 7. In the meantime, the Charter of Liberties-class came out in 2200, which represented a marginal improvement: a top speed of Warp 6.8. The Charter of Liberties class were slated for NCC-13xy, which included the future cadet vessel Republic.

Perhaps the shape and spine of the Magna Carta and Charter of Liberties were the same as the Constitution, but the secondary hulls and connecting necks were smaller on earlier "drafts" of the design.

Sorry if this just muddies the waters more, but I do think the content of TOS and TMP should make it clear that starships and their class-specs evolve over time, no doubt with refitting playing a role.

 

That's what drives me nuts about these discussions. The modelmakers (Jefferies himself, I believe) were very candid that a) they used the numbers available and b) they picked the registry that they felt looked the least like 1701 and therefore was not confusing to the viewer. Nothing more complicated than that.

Now if that leads us to extrapolate all of the things that we have (it's what we do for fun, and it is fun) then fine. As long as we don't fool ourselves into thinking that the "filmmakers intent" was anything other than to show a ship pretty much exactly like the Enterprise.

 

And that! is the question.

His own visual numbering "intent" would have allowed 1702, 1705, 1707, 1710, 1712 (legibility issue) based on the 12 like her statement made on-screen and in keeping with a 17th major Cruiser design "intent".

As head of the Art Department, surely he had some control over the model while being built - enough at any rate to recognize something so glaring against his "intent" of a 17th major Cruiser design and its attendant "intent" registry system. So, the numbering scheme may have fit some other "intent" unrelated to this concept.

I'm likely to stick with his assessment of "So 1701 was as good a choice as any." and simply substitute 1017 for 1701 as the true underlying "intent" as the true explanation, given that at least 1 other registry number was given; 1371 (aside from a wall chart of other interesting registry numbers).
Source: The Star Trek Sketchbook pgs 62 (text) and 68 (sketch).

Shaw: will this project be a "toolbox" kit?
Meaning, generic staterooms and other soundstage set pieces that have been adapted (e.g. briefing room to "x") that can be inserted at will?
I got this impression from the beginning of this thread with your "black box" analogy, but wanted to clarify. Something like "Vance's toolkit" in implementation?

Shaw: second question; I noticed that in you amalgram of sources (Phase II cut-away and original cut-away) that, at minimum, the centerline corridors no longer match in placement to the original. In fact, according to the original cut-away, the corridors have never been proven concentric (they are forward of the central turbolift not aft; under the bridge and thus offset from a true raduis of the primary hull), where the aft placement F. Joseph and thus most of fanon plans thereafter have adopted. Will you be addressing this?

 

Now that's what I'm talking about Shaw! Beautiful, It's coming along nicely. I would humbly suggest you add some more bulkheads in the secondary hull, but that might come with time, unless that falls under the "I'm not filling in the blanks" catagory?
About this ship registry stuff, If anyone's interested, I have a theory about where MJ might have got 1701 for the Enterprise. I think it comes from 'Forbidden Planet', when early in the show the C57J aproaches altair the navigater says something like "We'll reach the planet in 1701" but doesn't say whether he means seconds, minutes, parsecs or whatever, just "1701". Can anyone shed any light on this?

 

I think folks are making too much out of Jefferies' after-the-fact musing over what significance 1701 might have, since he was always quite clear that the number was arrived at purely for how well it looked on screen.

There was no "intent" behind the number. More like "in case anyone asks, how 'bout this idea?" And the fact is, nobody asked, and he didn't take it personally. He was the art director, not the story editor, not his job to worry about stuff like that.

As for the Constellation model, he probably never laid eyes on it. That would've been the guys across town at Howard Anderson Company, or whatever other effects house had that job that week. Even with the cruddy nacelle strut attachment setup in that model, it could be put together, given an overall coat of white spray paint, have some details painted, like the deflector dish, decaled, torched, and ready for camera inside of a few hours. Allow another hour for somebody to hand some gofer a five dollar bill and sent to the nearest store selling models to go grab one and get it back to the studio pronto. I'd lay odds that the first time Jefferies laid eyes on the Constellation was when that episode aired.

As for the first appearance of the term "Constitution Class" in reference to the Enterprise, try Bjo Trimble's early fan-produced version of the Star Trek Concordance, circa 1968. Taken, no doubt, from that phaser emitter diagram Scotty's looking at in "The Trouble With Tribbles", possibly via Greg Jein (he certainly seemed to have gotten a lot of that stuff over the years).

 

I still think the most plausible explanation for Constellation's hull number would be a refit. Constellation started off as an earlier design, then was refitted to the same specs as Enterprise and retained its hull number (something similar to what happened to Enterprise in TMP).

 

That's always been the explanation that I like best.

 

Okay, in DS9: Trials and Tribble-ations Sisko told Miles and Julian to start searching on deck 21, and we're assuming the 1701 had 21 decks. With height of 68.9 meters, that's reasonable: over 3 m per deck. Logical so far. But I'm wondering about the schematic seen in ENT: In a Mirror, Darkly, which seems to differ slightly in deck layout from what you've got so far. Wasn't that ship supposed to be identical to the TOS Enterprise?

 

I wouldn't think so. Because the Defiant is presumably a later build than Enterprise, they would be able to put in various changes and improvements. Kinda like how the aircraft carrier Ronald Reagan is quite different than the Nimitz, despite them being the same class.

 

Okay, I can accept that. I always try to update my schematics according to the wisdom found here, except when people insist that some ship has so many decks that the ceilings are less than 6 feet high, which has happened.

 

In The Tholian Web (TOS) Defiant was supposed to be identical to Enterprise. The Defiant from In A Mirror, Darkly (ENT) was altered. They (the writers) gave it rear-firing phasers and photon torpedoes, something never even mentioned on the Constitution class in other sources. Since the ENT writers gave the Defiant a somewhat bigger hull number (NCC-1764), it's plausible that Defiant could be a slightly different design. (Perhaps one that Enterprise was due to be refitted to at a later date...)

I think you raise a good point. However, for the purposes of this thread, Shaw is discounting any data from sources other than TOS episodes...

 

It's quite a leap of logic to say there's "no doubt" that the Constellation was a member of an earlier class of star cruiser. You haven't really filled in the blanks between the theory and the conclusion.

Plus, Magna Carta? Charter of Liberties? Where are these coming from?

 

Don't look at me...

I never said "no doubt"...

I said "most plausible"...

As for Magna Carta and Charter Of Liberties, I ***THINK*** these are schematics created by aridas sofia. I'm not sure because I can't seem to find any of those links that still work...

 

Yes, I just discovered his Star Ships thread and all the links are broken.

 

Nope. Not mine.

As for my art, it's always available at my Photobucket account.

The ships I recently posted are still at the "Star Ships" thread.

 

You took my words to be absolutely literal in their meaning.

I was putting forth a hypothetical scenario of what the history of the Constellation and her sisterships could look like if you apply this kind of evolving star ship concept to show how Decker's ship and others of pre-NCC-17xy registry could still *look like* the TOS Enterprise, and yet be older and have subtle differences.

 

Addressing the first question, yes, this is part of the overall plan. I am putting together my interpretation more or less as a test to see if this stuff works. But I do plan on putting out just the rooms and deck outlines for people to come up with their own ideas of placement.

As for the second question, I don't consider those details on such a small diagram to have much weight when those types of details were completely ignored by Jefferies on a much larger diagram where those types of details would have been much easier to both draw and read. I consider those details to be there to illustrate size to the writers in the same way that some of the details I had in my early cross section views actually had no baring on how I planned the later deck layouts.

As for the reason for using concentric rings of corridors and rooms, between set design and some graphics seen in TOS, and looking at the problem from a packing point of view, I don't have any reason to see why this isn't the best approach. But I haven't really been looking too closely at the center core of the primary hull, which I may treat differently.

Yeah, as of right now, I'm really not sure what additional stuff will end up in the secondary hull, so I assume that there are rooms and corridors on most of those decks... but haven't thought of a layout for them (or what they would be for) as yet.

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The question as to why I really like the idea of pressure hull compartments has most likely been on more than a few people's minds. Beyond the fact that there is a direct visual link back to TOS, it also makes organizing things easier, and I could imagine that the ship was originally constructed piece by piece using prefabricated compartments (of about two decks in height).

As an organizational tool, in the primary hull I've numbered the rings starting from the center (with the core section being labeled Ring 0). Below is a graphic that shows a perspective view of decks 3 through 8 (with a number of compartments removed), and a diagram of the compartments color coded to distinguish the rings.

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The reason I wanted to make this a little more clear is that I was doing some estimates on the number of crew cabins that could be housed in the primary hull (based on which decks are known to have cabins). This is what I got from this quick study...

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I had generally assumed that of the 430 crew, 100 of the senior officers and chiefs would have cabins with offices/work areas, and that the remainder would pair up (sharing a single cabin with a center divider). That would mean that we would need 265 cabins (which is less than the projected 299 cabins in the primary hull). Further, I would also assume that some of the (currently) open areas in the secondary hull would have cabins as well (for people whose duty stations are mainly in the secondary hull), so I'm not envisioning there being much of an issue when it comes to space for the crew.

 

I really admire what Shaw and others before him have endeavored to do in trying to plan out every deck of the ship. I love the idea, but I don't think I'd have nearly that much dedication even though I've considered attempting it myself.

Tackling specific areas (like the shuttlecraft and/or the hangar deck) is something I can envision tackling because it's something more manageable.

Even with my own design(s) for my own ideas I don't plan on laying out every deck of the ship in detail, but rather just some of the main areas and perhaps a general outline.

Keep it up, Shaw, because I like what I see.