The Omega Glory - Info about the Enterprise?

[JonnyQuest037]

I was rewatching "The Omega Glory" the other night, and it struck me that the search on the deserted USS Exeter could yield some information about the Enterprise.

At one point, Kirk issues a broadcast throughout the ship, searching for surviving personnel. One of the locations shown is Engineering, the same place that Kirk is making his broadcast from. What's your opinion on this scene? A simple blooper, or definitive proof that TOS-era Starships had more than one Engineering room? (Remember that the Exeter is presented as being pretty much identical to the Enterprise & they reference it having a crew of around 400)

Similarly, a redshirt in the search party reports that "all four" are in the Shuttlebay. Is this definitive proof that four is the normal ship's complement? And if so, how you explain the Galileo shuttlecraft being numbered 7? Were shuttlecrafts given non-sequential registries like the Starships were?

And if you're of the opinion that the Exeter is different from the Enterprise, why do you feel this way?

 

[F. King Daniel]

The shuttle one makes sense, since I don't think there's room for more than four in there.

 

[Timo]

We never saw the front wall of the shuttle landing and handling area. It might well be just as big as in ST:TMP, with shelves for dozens of craft if need be (but cargo and other equipment stored there for the needs of this five-year mission instead).

OTOH, I'm all for the ship (any Constitution) having at least four and perhaps more rooms like the one represented by the "Main Engineering" set. Engineering is supposedly a vast maze where villains can hide indefinitely. Perhaps TOS era machinery took up most of the secondary hull, with dozens of monitoring rooms and even greater amounts of machinery one can only access in a protective suit - while TMP tech compacted that machinery a lot and the engineers found nothing better to put in its place than a vast empty cargo hold.

Generally, we could argue that if ships of this class are so important that they warrant extensive refits like the one from TMP, individual Constitutions must be constantly getting such preferential treatment, and might all represent vastly different standards of equip and re-equip. Also, different missions probably call for different complements of shuttlecraft, as seen in TAS.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Alter Ego]

OTOH, I'm all for the ship (any Constitution) having at least four and perhaps more rooms like the one represented by the "Main Engineering" set. Engineering is supposedly a vast maze where villains can hide indefinitely.

Timo Saloniemi

Right! Finney manages to evade a full search in Court Martial but in Day of the Dove, "taking Engineering" seems to be limited to that one general set.

 

[Metryq]

At least engineering didn't look like a brewery. And did anyone bother to check the Exeter's bowling alley?

 

[TREK_GOD_1]

I was rewatching "The Omega Glory" the other night, and it struck me that the search on the deserted USS Exeter could yield some information about the Enterprise.

At one point, Kirk issues a broadcast throughout the ship, searching for surviving personnel. One of the locations shown is Engineering, the same place that Kirk is making his broadcast from. What's your opinion on this scene? A simple blooper, or definitive proof that TOS-era Starships had more than one Engineering room? (Remember that the Exeter is presented as being pretty much identical to the Enterprise & they reference it having a crew of around 400)

Similarly, a redshirt in the search party reports that "all four" are in the Shuttlebay. Is this definitive proof that four is the normal ship's complement? And if so, how you explain the Galileo shuttlecraft being numbered 7? Were shuttlecrafts given non-sequential registries like the Starships were?

And if you're of the opinion that the Exeter is different from the Enterprise, why do you feel this way?

The empty engineering shot was an error, as Kirk & McCoy's shots were on the same set. Since we are to believe all Connies are mirrors of each other, Exeter has the same internal structure as the 1701.

Now, about shuttle numbers, perhaps Galloway's "all four of the craft" line means Exeter always carried four. There's flexibility there, since shuttles are not the in-stone design of the Connie, or are subject to damage, loss, or other factors whihc would change any original number.

At least engineering didn't look like a brewery.

That's sort of true.

 

[Lance]

We never saw the front wall of the shuttle landing and handling area. It might well be just as big as in ST:TMP, with shelves for dozens of craft if need be (but cargo and other equipment stored there for the needs of this five-year mission instead).

OTOH, I'm all for the ship (any Constitution) having at least four and perhaps more rooms like the one represented by the "Main Engineering" set. Engineering is supposedly a vast maze where villains can hide indefinitely. Perhaps TOS era machinery took up most of the secondary hull, with dozens of monitoring rooms and even greater amounts of machinery one can only access in a protective suit - while TMP tech compacted that machinery a lot and the engineers found nothing better to put in its place than a vast empty cargo hold.

Generally, we could argue that if ships of this class are so important that they warrant extensive refits like the one from TMP, individual Constitutions must be constantly getting such preferential treatment, and might all represent vastly different standards of equip and re-equip. Also, different missions probably call for different complements of shuttlecraft, as seen in TAS.

Timo Saloniemi

Also interesting to bear in mind that engineering was the set which underwent the most changes over the course of the series, to the point where the set in season three bears only superficial similarities to its appearances in season one. If the set were representing different parts of the engineering section, however, that'd help to sell the idea that they're all part of an incorporated whole, interconnected somehow.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Rather than insert a stock photo of the whole Engineering set in "The Omega Glory," they should have gotten a creative shot of some corner of that set, maybe the section that's up that little staircase.

Or they could have dug up a photo of the empty Observation Deck from "The Conscience of the King." At no financial cost, that would have been a welcome call-back to a cool set we saw only once.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Similarly, a redshirt in the search party reports that "all four" are in the Shuttlebay. Is this definitive proof that four is the normal ship's complement? And if so, how you explain the Galileo shuttlecraft being numbered 7? Were shuttlecrafts given non-sequential registries like the Starships were?

If the Enterprise has been in service for 20+ years at that point, it's not only possible but likely that some of its shuttles have been lost or replaced in that time.

 

[WisTrekFan]

This is a little off topic, but I have always wondered what Lieutenant Galloway was doing hunched over the helm the entire time the boarding party was on the bridge of the Exeter.

 

[F. King Daniel]

At least engineering didn't look like a brewery.

You sure about that?

 

[Mytran]

If the Enterprise has been in service for 20+ years at that point, it's not only possible but likely that some of its shuttles have been lost or replaced in that time.

That's not a bad theory, I may have to borrow that!
It certainly avoids having to create convoluted theories to explain why 4 (or possibly just 2) shuttles have registries numbering so high.

Rather than insert a stock photo of the whole Engineering set in "The Omega Glory," they ... could have dug up a photo of the empty Observation Deck from "The Conscience of the King." At no financial cost, that would have been a welcome call-back to a cool set we saw only once.

Or even the Season One Engineering set clip from Enemy Within! That would have confirmed once and for all that there were at least two distinct Engine Rooms on board ship. Ah, well...

 

[Metryq]

At least engineering didn't look like a brewery.

You sure about that?

Engineering for TOS was a built-for-the-purpose set, not an "exotic location" passed off as the engineering section of a starship. You're really trying to push the point by calling hand railings "pipes," squat cylindrical housings that look more like some kind or coil or stator a "tank," and the giant struts of the forced perspective portion of the set "pipes." The TOS engineering room gave the same impression as the exterior miniature with no flaming rockets—it had no moving parts and generated exotic fields in vacuum chambers. The TOS Scotty never had to change out of soiled coveralls after working in engibeering.

 

[Timo]

Which only goes to show he never left the control booth of his realm, delegating the greasier aspects of the work to his minions.

In ST:TMP, coveralls and other, even more extensive protective gear are introduced. Are we to assume that technology became more primitive and less futuro-user-friendly as time passed? More probably, warp engines always required toiling in heavy armor if something went wrong or was about to (say, when new engines were about to be run for real for the very first time), but could be controlled from a shirtsleeves booth when the going was smooth.

IMHO, the brewery set is a more realistic and interesting concept for the engine room of a starship than the cardboard sets of TOS - but the TMP introduction of at least one "gimmick" set element, the vertical glowing pillar that later would be called "warp core", was a very welcome step towards making Star Trek engineering sets iconic, the way transporters and phasers had made the rest of the show iconically recognizable on a budget. The 2009 brewery suffered from the lack of any recognizable, iconic gimmick; ST:ID remedied that with a vengeance.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

The shuttle one makes sense, since I don't think there's room for more than four in there.

I'm presently modeling the TOS hangar area and rest assured there isn't much room there. Four shuttlecraft is it.

If we can take MJ's cross-section drawing of the Enterprise in TMoST as the starting point we can see the TOS shuttlecraft flight deck does not extend beyond the support pylons. At best it tucks under just a wee bit. That leaves shuttlecraft storage for below the flight deck. This makes sense given there must be some sort of support system where the pylons attach to the secondary hull.

That beautiful view we have of the flight deck in TOS isn't too far off as long as you understand you're seeing a forced perspective view and the forward wall is missing with the viewpoint pulled back. The effect makes the deck look much longer than it really could be.

The scale of the shuttlecraft is also off in that shot. It would have to be somewhat bigger than it looks although a 30-32 ft. shuttlecraft with the interior seen onscreen is simply out of the question.

The shuttlecraft complement and hangar scenes seen in TAS are complete nonsense and utterly impossible.

 

[Metryq]

Which only goes to show he never left the control booth of his realm, delegating the greasier aspects of the work to his minions.

The "warp core" of post-TOS engineering sets may have been inspired by the accelerators of particle physics. The 2009 brewery probably wouldn't have annoyed me so much if not for the "Scotty stuck in the pipes" schtick designed to make 5-year-olds laugh.

In ST:TMP, coveralls and other, even more extensive protective gear are introduced.

The armored space suits and other protective gear looked very retro, like the oversized, clunking relays in Robbie's face in FORBIDDEN PLANET. "The Menagerie" had Pike confined to a wheelchair with limited mobility and a blinking light, yet science fiction had long since introduced the concept of cyborgs and other exotic prosthetics, such as Heinlein's "waldoes," and the reality was not far away. So having starship engineers manually tending the engines in armored spacesuits is an anachronism in a real world brimming with more and more sophisticated robots every day.

But a brewery? The industrial locations in the Ryan vs Dorkman movies looked better. TREK 2009 couldn't find someplace better, like Lawrence Livermore?

EDIT:Then again, Timo may have a point. All that tankage and plumbing may be needed to cool the cloaking device.

 

[Marsden]

I know this isn't official, but what I've read that a Heavy Cruiser like Enterprise has 4 shuttles available for duty and 2 or 3, I've seen both, broken down in storage that can be re assembled for use but not with a lot of work, so there would be no practical way to say the ship has 6 or 7 shuttles available, like for an evacutation.

 

[Timo]

"The Menagerie" had Pike confined to a wheelchair with limited mobility and a blinking light, yet science fiction had long since introduced the concept of cyborgs and other exotic prosthetics, such as Heinlein's "waldoes," and the reality was not far away.

And yet when realistic future prosthetics were utilized in "Spock's Brain", comparisons with "The Menagerie" were unfavorable.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

Is it possible Pike was simply really messed up?

 

[Albertese]

I was rewatching "The Omega Glory" the other night, and it struck me that the search on the deserted USS Exeter could yield some information about the Enterprise.

At one point, Kirk issues a broadcast throughout the ship, searching for surviving personnel. One of the locations shown is Engineering, the same place that Kirk is making his broadcast from. What's your opinion on this scene? A simple blooper, or definitive proof that TOS-era Starships had more than one Engineering room? (Remember that the Exeter is presented as being pretty much identical to the Enterprise & they reference it having a crew of around 400)

I am firmly of the opinion that there are numerous "engine rooms" in the ship. TOG is just one example. If you watch the series in Stardate order (which few do) then you see the different versions of the set interspersed together, which to me suggests they are all different rooms throughout the ship's volume. It makes sense to me especially given that there is a lot of dialogue describing the complexity of the engineering areas.

Similarly, a redshirt in the search party reports that "all four" are in the Shuttlebay. Is this definitive proof that four is the normal ship's complement? And if so, how you explain the Galileo shuttlecraft being numbered 7? Were shuttlecrafts given non-sequential registries like the Starships were?

Yes, four shuttlecraft. I would argue that the ship is also equipped with four workbees numbered 1-4 and the shuttles are numbered 5-8.

And if you're of the opinion that the Exeter is different from the Enterprise, why do you feel this way?

I think they are quite the same. There might be little differences here and there, but in general, I think they are both built on the same plans. Now, the Constellation in "The Doomsday Machine".... that's another question. But with the exception of the Constellation, I am of the opinion that all the starships that looked like the Enterprise were the same as the Enterprise.

--Alex