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U.S.S. Enterprise - how many decks?

I am still shocked and disappointed they allowed such a massive mistake to appear in TFF. :brickwall::sigh:

I do hope that your friends are thoughtful enough to bring satin pillows for you to swoon upon, and smelling salts to revive you, when they know the scene is coming up.

What? :shrug: You think that error was acceptable?

I find the Trek predilection for throwing in wacky funny in-jokes like the numbers 47 and 78 to be tiresome. They strike me as the production team trying very, very hard to look Cool and Hip and With-It with those groovy fans. Attempts to pander are almost by construction doomed to fail.

So I find the joke of making deck 78 a big, sad, desperate plea to ``love me!''. It is hardly an error; it is a joke that does not amuse. It is as ``shocking'' to behold as an installment of the comic strip Compu-Toon.
 
Rumor and speculation had it that Shatner heard the new Enterprise-D was going to have 42 decks and wanted his Enterprise to be bigger.
 
Scotty refers to it as "Emergency turbo shaft number three".

Not "emergency" - just closed down for repairs. But they did an oddly complete job at that, sealing off everything that would have made this useful as a turboshaft. Shouldn't that also invalidate its use as a route for our heroes?

The 78 deck deep shaft is the one that Riker dropped the Viceroy into ... oops, wrong move.

Well, that one is easy to accept: the Viceroy was going up to the bridge, Riker was coming down to stop him, and if they met halfway, somewhere near deck 12'ish, there'd be plenty of height for the Viceroy to fall to his doom.

Timo Saloniemi
 
Or perhaps a turbolift shaft that runs between decks 7 and 8...
Or not.
normal_thefinalfrontier0749.jpg



normal_thefinalfrontier0751.jpg

Well, so you see decks named things like 77 and 78 or 64. But if you watch the sequence, there are only 10-12 decks. Fact is, there is not enough physical space for 78 decks in a connie. that would make it at least 800 feet tall.
Actually there are 5 major problems with that scene:

1 - The decks are numbered from bottom to top instead of top to bottom. Even as early as TMP they had already started numbering them from top to bottom, with the bridge being deck one.

2: There are no DOORS in this turboshaft. It's just a long vertical shaft with deck labels and no obvious way to get into them.

3: There's no obvious way for the turbolifts to get through this shaft either; we see the "bottom" of the shaft where Kirk and company come in, and later Sulu and the cultists. There's no way for a turbolift to go anywhere except from the bottom of the shaft to the top of it, and there's no turbolift IN the shaft, so why the hell is this thing here?

4: The only place on the ship tall enough to accommodate a vertical shaft like that is in the neck of the ship right above the engine room and right below the impulse deck. The problem is, the first numbered deck in the shaft is "deck 6" which would put the big in the widest part of the saucer section. So wherever the "forward observation lounge" actually is, Kirk probably shouldn't have to climb more than one or two levels to get there; more importantly, the shaft shouldn't be more than 40 to 50 feet high in the first place (assuming it stops at the bridge), but then if it did why are they going to forward observation?

5: The giant "Stop" sign at the top of the shaft. WHY THE FUCK IS THIS HERE? Do the turbolifts need to be reminded that this is the end of the shaft and they should stop here?

So, maybe in their haste they used parts from a station to build the thing. Those doors were on the inside of the shaft, not meant to be seen were they?
They weren't even doors. Just SIGNS.

So what is this feature?
I think it's an emergency hyper-dimension fold. Starships store things in there that they by all accounts shouldn't have room for but inexplicably still do.

Voyager probably stored its extra shuttlecraft in Turboshaft Three, along with its emergency supply of photon torpedoes. On the Enterprise-D, turboshaft three is used to store replacement parts for the starboard power coupling.

Deep space nine has a similar feature in upper pylon three that is used to store the majority of Major Kira's porn.
 
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I do hope that your friends are thoughtful enough to bring satin pillows for you to swoon upon, and smelling salts to revive you, when they know the scene is coming up.

What? :shrug: You think that error was acceptable?

I find the Trek predilection for throwing in wacky funny in-jokes like the numbers 47 and 78 to be tiresome. They strike me as the production team trying very, very hard to look Cool and Hip and With-It with those groovy fans. Attempts to pander are almost by construction doomed to fail.

So I find the joke of making deck 78 a big, sad, desperate plea to ``love me!''. It is hardly an error; it is a joke that does not amuse. It is as ``shocking'' to behold as an installment of the comic strip Compu-Toon.

That still does not explain this personal attack due to your anger about the Star Trek production team's pandering: :shrug:
I do hope that your friends are thoughtful enough to bring satin pillows for you to swoon upon, and smelling salts to revive you, when they know the scene is coming up.
 
For my part, I've always seen the silly deck numbers as either in jokes or stuff they didn't think fans would notice on camera (yeah, right of course. :rommie:). I'd prefer that we keep the conversation going and not get personal, though. ;)
 
For my part, I've always seen the silly deck numbers as either in jokes or stuff they didn't think fans would notice on camera (yeah, right of course. :rommie:). I'd prefer that we keep the conversation going and not get personal, though. ;)


Agree. :)
 
That still does not explain this personal attack due to your anger about the Star Trek production team's pandering: :shrug:
I do hope that your friends are thoughtful enough to bring satin pillows for you to swoon upon, and smelling salts to revive you, when they know the scene is coming up.

You stated you were ``shocked and disappointed'' by the appearance of a deck numbered 78, and included a smiley of a frustrated person banging her head against a brick wall.

It seems to me that to be shocked and disappointed by such a thing, when one has had twenty-six years to become accustomed to it, implies an extraordinarily sensitive disposition. It suggests a need for friends who are able to help you through the emotional distress of glimpsing inappropriate deck floor numbers. I feared to think what might happen if you were to come across the Voyager episode listing as junior officers the members of President Josiah Bartlet's administration.

I apologize for drawing incorrect conclusions about your character. While you may be shocked and disappointed by the numbers painted in the turbolift, I will not suppose it to be a bigger thing than you say it is.
 
That still does not explain this personal attack due to your anger about the Star Trek production team's pandering: :shrug:
I do hope that your friends are thoughtful enough to bring satin pillows for you to swoon upon, and smelling salts to revive you, when they know the scene is coming up.

You stated you were ``shocked and disappointed'' by the appearance of a deck numbered 78, and included a smiley of a frustrated person banging her head against a brick wall.

It seems to me that to be shocked and disappointed by such a thing, when one has had twenty-six years to become accustomed to it, implies an extraordinarily sensitive disposition. It suggests a need for friends who are able to help you through the emotional distress of glimpsing inappropriate deck floor numbers. I feared to think what might happen if you were to come across the Voyager episode listing as junior officers the members of President Josiah Bartlet's administration.

I apologize for drawing incorrect conclusions about your character. While you may be shocked and disappointed by the numbers painted in the turbolift, I will not suppose it to be a bigger thing than you say it is.

Apology accepted. I should have stated past tense not still... upon seeing TFF in 1989. Albeit, it is a stupid intentional part of the film. ;) The "smiley of a frustrated person banging her head against a brick wall" was my failed attempt at humor.
 
Apology accepted. I should have stated past tense not still... upon seeing TFF in 1989. Albeit, it is a stupid intentional part of the film. ;) The "smiley of a frustrated person banging her head against a brick wall" was my failed attempt at humor.

Thank you. I apologize also for my own joke that failed.
 
We know what Andrew Probert intended for the TMP ship and her 21 decks, so we can pretty confidently force the other two ship versions into the same mold. The saucer would then have 11 decks (from 1 to 11, or from A to K), the secondary hull would have eight (from 14 to 21, or N to U), and the neck five (from 9 to 13 or I to M).

Timo Saloniemi

Actually, if you look at Andrew Probert's drawings for the refit you'll see that his intentions were for it to have 8 decks in the saucer for a total of 19. For example:

Here we can see his drawing for the refit in its as designed and built configuration before its later modifications:


Here is a drawing of the Bridge/Officer's Lounge structure that shows his intention of 2 decks, not 3 per Shane Johnson:


Here we have a drawing comparing the original design with the modified one:
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And here we have the secondary hull:
04%202_zpss93jfiom.jpg
 
Ha! Probert spelled "hangar" wrong. I love when that happens.

And thanks for showing those. Except for the last one with the engineering hull, I hadn't seen the others.

--Alex
 
That's interesting, especially as Matt Jefferies' cutaway featured an 8 deck saucer too, along with a slightly sunken Bridge. The 11 deck saucer notion is from TMOST book, which Franz Joseph used as a guide for his own famous deck plans.
 
Shatner was behind it. He had the dodgy number of decks pointed out to him but wanted it retained because it was dramatic. Frankly if they just left out the word 'deck', kept the numbers, give it that ambiguity the canon gods would've been appeased and Shatner would've got his scene. Not to be, alas.
 
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