The TOS E was a work-in-progress as they progressed from 1st to 2nd pilot to series production. Ideally, and in my mind’s eye, some of the details later added to the series’ version should have been on the previous two versions. Certainly, in the least, windows would have been lighted all the way back to the 1st pilot if it had been at all possible.
They would look something like this (at the 14s mark) - just imagine that the spike got stuck in the extended position and the dome covers stayed open... We do see something like that in the original fx as the 1st and 2nd pilot version were shown in the same episodes as the series version. To me the different versions are all the same Enterprise and in episode we're just only catching the Enterprise after a feature or two is adjusted by the crew for in-universe reasons. It gives the ship a certain visual dynamic like a sailing ship changing her sails or adjusting itself for different operations that the later more static Enterprises lack, IMO. My current build of the Enterprise is targeting this ability to change features.
I gotta say I really appreciate this take. For the longest time when I was younger I assumed the Enterprise coukd reconfigure itself like you describe. I'm still really impressed with how you rationalized the nacelle caps! I'm really interested to see what you do with the rear ends of the nacelles. I'm also interested on how you're going to take on the bridge changing between cage and tv series versions
Thanks! I have a rough idea for the animation for the rear ends of the nacelles that I uploaded a while ago. The exhaust covers needs a bit more work. However I'm not animating the rear nacelle cap from "The Cage" as I'm treating that as only present on Pike's Enterprise since that shot doesn't appear in any of the series episodes (as researched in Tallguy's TOS FX library). The bridge animations will show the bridge dome lowering and raising into the tear-drop structure. The features that change on the bridge dome will be tricky though. Like "The Cage", I'm treating the bridge as being in the bridge dome and it being static on Pike's Enterprise. For Kirk's Enterprise, the bridge is re-located into the tear-drop below the bridge dome. In-universe, I'd pack it with specialized sensor equipment that necessitates elevating or lowering the dome. There are some features on the Pilot 1/2 versions that probably won't be on mine as I'm basing mine on what was aired. For example, the black strips on the port/starbard navigation lights on the Pilot 1 is impossible to see in "The Cage" so they will be left off.
Excellent. And if you can figure out how to transform the WNMHGB nacelle end cap to the series end cap, you will have no trouble figuring out how those damnshell doors open on the hangar deck.
I’ve long thought that how FJ did them makes sense—having the panels basically overlapping each other.
I've blocked it out already but haven't rendered it yet. Here are the steps that I am using but am sharing if you want to try and replicate it... Setup/terms: - Pilot version - exterior solid dome for doors (no seams) and no "control booth" between doors and overhang. - Series version - exterior dome for 8 doors has visible seams (no overlap) and "control booth" between doors and overhang. There are 4 tracks, an outer, middle 1, middle 2 and inner track. The outer track is the exterior one where the doors currently are and what we normally see. The other 3 tracks are inside with each one also slightly lower in elevation than the one before it. - Interior flight deck - interior clamshell doors with overlap. - Key point - there are two sets of doors, exterior and interior. The interior doors are already clamshell and overlapped. The exterior doors animate to the point where they overlap. 1. Normal flight conditions, show Pilot version 2. Prepared shuttle operations, switch to Series version 3. Move exterior doors to separate slightly to create the seams - this results in 8 doors, we'll number them 1-8 from port to starboard. At this point the exterior doors are no longer airtight. Each door at the top do not connect to the center but on an upper track that is about the diameter of the "control booth". 4. Lower down "control booth" from the overhang. The control booth is collapsed into 3 sections as it is a little taller than the thickness of the overhang so it expands down to touch the exterior doors 5. Open the doors 6. Exterior doors 3,6 are attached to track middle 1 and slide in and down onto track. 7. Exterior doors 2,7 are attached to track middle 2 and slide in and down onto track 8. Exterior doors 1,8 are attached to track inner and slide in and down onto track 9. Exterior doors now loosely can clear each other and we slide the exterior doors open 10. Interior clamshell doors slide open To close, we reverse the operation. When the exterior doors are in the Pilot version those doors are sealed and airtight. I got the idea that it is two sets of doors from observing that the set doors in "Journey to Babel" have an interior and double exterior door and that the observation window in "The Mark of Gideon" also featured two sets of exterior shutters. Yeah that's the way they need to be to slide over each other. But I (and presumably Professor Moriarty) am working from what's show on-screen so we have different starting conditions for the doors
I’ve already taken too many liberties with how the Enterprise looks… I really didn’t want the clamshell doors to overlap their neighbors. While mechanically that would make perfect sense, it’s not how they looked on screen and it’s not what the 11 foot studio miniature looks like that’s sitting in the Smithsonian. I did figure out a solution, but it’s a bit of a cheat. I don’t want to derail your thread, so I’ll explain it in my “So I made this” thread when I release my video later this week.
No worries @Professor Moriarty The way I'm doing it doesn't change anything on how they looked on screen or on the 11 foot model. As far as I can tell, there are zero screens of the exterior doors open as viewed from the outside. And from the interior views we have on-screen evidence that the doors already start overlapped and slid over each other. So all I'm doing is just connecting the dots to show what happens between scenes. Yep that's how some of mine mechanically have to work.
We are on the same page. They definitely have to overlap when they're opening/closing, unless the doors are made out of some sort of 23rd century treknology that's indistinguishable from magic.
Forgive me for saying that the detail on the hangar doors exterior is likely a simple production compromise given they knew those doors would never be shown open or opening on the 11 footer. So they just etched some lines on the clamshell shape to suggest overlapped dilating panels. And, regrettably, while we saw a working interior miniature of the flight deck we never saw it from the outside as it was never completed/finished that way. Today if they were building the 11 footer, even if the doors weren’t meant to open on the miniature, they would probably detail the outside of the doors more exactly to clearly affirm how they were meant to operate. You simply have to look at the TMP refit miniature or the TNG E as well as later miniatures to see how detailed sci-fi hardware for film and television had become even long before cgi. Star Trek broke the convention of the sci-fi rocketship yet 2001: A Space Odyssey really changed the game in terms of detailed SF hardware.
Interestingly - if you look at the TMP Enterprise you'll see the equivalent of this "etching in of some lines" on the doors when they are closed and it doesn't show any overlapped panels. You can see the non-overlapped panels in this screenshot (https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0447.jpg) the doors are all on the same track. And when they are opened, they have this complicated layering where the doors have to slide in before they can slide laterally. Screenshot (https://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0370.jpg).
Seemed like a logical approach. @blssdwlf You know, I never noticed until now that the outer door was outside that lip beneath the booth while the other two are inside. Credence to your inner/outer door plan, perhaps? Of course, where would those doors go?
Right now, I have no idea. My guess is that the inner doors slide in, the top lip slides down, the inner doors slide around back and also rotate in order to maintain that opened angle with the outer door.
Spoiler alert, I cheated and made each clamshell segment shift -250 mm on the Z-axis (i.e. out/aftward) and +132 mm on the Y-axis before rotating +/-22.5° (the doors on my Enterprise are 150 mm thick), starting with the middle pair of doors of course. As each segment rotates in front of its neighbor, each paired stack shifts out/up -250/+132 mm before rotating another +/-22.5°. This repeats one more time with three segments stacked on top of each other. I consider it a cheat because Richard Datin’s interior maquette built for “The Galileo Seven” clearly shows the doors firmly anchored to the deck and not shifting up as they retract. Another cheat is that I had to slightly shorten the vertical height of the “control booth” to keep the upper edges of the clamshell segments from scraping the walls (or outright punching into the booth!). But after testing a couple of alternatives which looked really weird (test #1: the clamshells descend into the floor before they rotate, starting with the outermost pair; test #2: the doors stay anchored to the floor but slide out aftwards and tilt at the bottom before rotating), at least this solution leaves the doors looking like they look on the 11 foot miniature when closed looks similar to the Richard Datin model from the inside (except for the middle pair of doors flying 396 mm above the deck by the third rotation) is mechanically possible (i.e., the segments don’t scrape/punch through walls or collide into each other). But holy hell, the weird cam-like connection between the top of each segment and the center axle underneath the control booth is just bizarre.