In the scene where they're getting the torpedo room ready for battle, I've always focused on the center guy in the officer's uniform who doesn't quite know where to look. But something else just caught my eye -- there's a cadet on the far right who looks like he's trying to make a break for it through the airlock. First, he checks to see if anyone's looking: http://i.imgur.com/K8Mf4dG.jpg Then, he's like "screw this, I'm outta here!" and opens the door: http://i.imgur.com/xIH4I3i.jpg Has anyone else ever noticed this? edited to add: I also just noticed they changed the numbering of the torpedo rooms inbetween scenes, so technically he could be moving to the adjoining bay, but still...
^He was probably moving to an adjoining room. Were he trying to leave via the same port-side airlock that Kirk and company boarded the ship from, he'd have vented everyone in the compartment into space. What I've always found strange is that Spock's funeral is held in Torpedo Bay 2 (port-side, which is strange because the room was clearly damaged), but his tube is launched from the starboard side launcher. There must be an additional check-point through which the tubes pass before being fired (or the producers made a mistake and forgot to move the door to the opposite side of the room and change the numbers). --Sran
Damn I never noticed that, I'm glad you've provided a good explanation for it though or it would niggle me every time I watched it from now on!
^There may be several compartments that actually make up the torpedo bay; after the tubes loaded, they end up in one of the launchers that rests above the secondary hull. As an aside, I wonder where Reliant's torpedo bays are located, as the primary launcher rests well above the ship's hull. --Sran
^The space is certainly large enough, but it seems impractical to have to beam personnel (and equipment) back and forth from the primary hull to the torpedo bay--unless the roll bar is large enough that a turbolift can pass through it to reach the bay. OTOH, this is the same United Federation of Planets that thought it was a good idea to build a ship with an engineering section completely cut off from its bridge. --Sran
Turbo lifts and corridors travel though the two pylons, or the lower structure is a uninhabited sensor pod. The pylons are at least four times as thick as the height of the windows ... so about 10 to 12 feet?
Still seems impractical though, since the shortest distance between two points is a straight line. A turbolift from the primary to secondary hull would have to travel in at least a figure-7 path.
Given the speed at which turbolifts travel (i.e. the speed of Plot ) that doesn't seem like a significant hurdle.
In my head canon the lower portion of the Oberth Class is not habitable. It's entirely sensors. This is despite the nonsense they did in postulating otherwise. Likewise, the rollbar of the Miranda Class is uninhabited space. It's either sensors or a weapons pod. Either the torpedoes are stored up there or they slide up the rollbar. Or they could be transported up there, but that doesn't seem all that safe. No, I don't see 23rd Century Starfleet designing ships requiring site-to-site beaming.
Yup - for starships and the like, "shortest distance" clearly is not an important criterion. Indeed, the designers seem to go out of their way to place the various components of starships and stations at maximal distance from each other, even when certain criteria apparently force them to put those components close to each other anyway. That is, it's an awfully long distance from the bridge of the Enterprise to one of the nacelles as the turbolift flies, but the nacelles aren't all that far away in terms of pure meterage... Supposedly, everything has to fit within the warp envelope or something, but it's also advantageous to put narrow pylons between all the parts (for ease of emergency separation), and to make those as long as possible even if this doesn't result in a great distance between the components (for... your guess is probably better than mine). The obvious result of this is the absolute need for turbolifts even in ships as small as the Oberth or the Defiant. Timo Saloniemi
Unless you have one of those realli, really, REALLY slow turbolifts: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=75jU8n3F9aI (1:24 in)
To be sure, any indication of movement stops at the seven-second mark. Granted, it's indication of vertical movement, seven seconds still being a bit much for just five meters of travel or so - but the lift often negotiates what must be sharp curves while only showing vertically moving lights on the indicator panel... So the seven seconds might well involve initial sideways movement away from the top "parking slot", vertical travel down to Deck 2, horizontal travel on that deck, and docking. At which point Spock squeezes the "hold" handle so that the conversation can be concluded in privacy... This not counting in possible delays with negotiating oncoming traffic. Timo Saloniemi
This is what I love about technology today! So simple to go back and notice little things! Well, that's a good point. Perhaps I will go with the fact that he was attempting to enter the other torpedo room.