I have always wondered why the whole neck of the Excelsior class ships were ribbed like that. Well, that ribbing is confined to areas with high power output: the base of the warp pylons, the warp nacelles themselves, and the neck where some non-canon sources show the warp core extends upwards into. So, I've always wondered if it wasn't some form of energy dampener. Since the Federation couldn't build cloaking devices, perhaps the ribbing was intended to disguise or disrupt any energy emanating from those high power areas, making the ship more stealthy and harder to detect? Perhaps a poor man's non-cloaking cloaking device?
The perspective could create an illusion, thought. And for the same reason the whole section could be in the shadow. So far my conclusion is inconclusive. I do see structure there but can't tell whether they are inside the hole or not. In other pictures the shadows are more prominent and clearly identifiable as such, though. So the likely hood is there. For being emission plates they are place completely wrong. This may work in an atmosphere but not space. You want the most surfaces facing elsewhere out there and not the ship itself. Or the ship will reabsorb the heat radiation which makes it pointless. Yes, but cold compressed ice under pressure (depend on size) https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hydrogen_storage Now imagine a few peta joules of energy hitting it.
Doesn't matter how they are shaped, placed or designed. All it matters in terms of radiation are any surface to the outside. They all radiate at different rates depending on color, material, and temperature and nothing else other than surface size.
At 5:29, when Excelsior fires her torpedoes, they come from the canon positions in the secondary hull, not the neck.
There are also tubular things under the fantail that are never shown firing anything but could be taken to be aft torpedo launchers. All this in no way means that the neck things, and hidden things in the big "cave" on aft ventral secondary hull could not be torpedo launchers, too - it's simply that we have but one pretty flimsy reason to believe in any torpedo launchers other than those seen firing in the movie, and that reason is the E-B MSD. If we do choose to go by the MSD for the heck of it, though, then there are no showstoppers. Tubular things that lack openings at the ends are valid torpedo tubes on many a starship (indeed, the tubes on Kirk's ship lack openings, too, except in select few special shots created using a special partial shooting model). And anything could be hiding inside that aft "cave". And torpedo tubes that are unable to fire forward are in fact more "realistic" than ones that are able to do so - the nuclear killer subs of the West used to have this feature at the time of the making of the movies, relying on amidships tubes angled out because the bow of the sub was blocked by the giant sonar dome. In the Trek universe, the very blatantly explicated bow tubes of USS Voyager are similarly placed in an extremely awkward "neck" position that almost ensures hits on one's own ventral primary hull, and the VFX thus shows the torps angling slightly down at launch... The neck thingamabobs of the Excelsior could be a dozen other things, and IMHO probably are. But they could be torpedo launchers, too, and quite easily and consistently at that. Perhaps some sort of lower-caliber secondary torp (again plenty of real world precedent in submarines) that for this reason sees less combat use? But this is not a requirement in the TOS movies because the Excelsiors there see virtually no combat, and in DS9 most of the fighting omits photon torpedoes. Timo Saloniemi
Back to the ripping stuff on the neck and nacelles etc. Since the Excelsior was meant to test "transwarp" or new warp theory those things could be some sort of sensor clusters to measure the field and or for adjusting/controlling the field more precisely directed at many points. I admit it's a bit stretched considering ordinary ships don't need huge things like these to do the same. (I'll be away for awhile)
I don't quite get how people are seeing this in that scene. The workbee with the containers attached isn't coming out of the feature of interest. It's not even coming from the direction of the feature. It's just flying past the bows of the ship, along a trajectory that might have cleared the neck from in front just moments before - or then involved a descent from a ventral saucer hatch similar to the docking facilities Kirk's ship had there in ST:TMP. Timo Saloniemi
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=509&pid=55145#top_display_media http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=55145&fullsize=1
I can see them having foreward port or forward starboard firing arcs--tacing phasers that turn off when aimed forward--unless the saucer is missing.
You can't really see in the screencaps, but when the workbee is first revealed (a woman is walking past, hiding the exact moment of truth), it's pointed directly away from the hull, and appears to be all but touching it. Also, if it was just skimming the neck before making a U-turn (which is some inexplicable pathfinding), you'd be able to see it earlier traveling down the length of the neck, between the people walking past.
Geez, and I get pinged a few times... I can tell you right now that bee is slightly in front of the dome and nowhere near the neck. Just draw lines and you will see. And https://s30.postimg.org/9u5n7t4tt/kg-1701b-lakota-reference-028-compressed.jpg Here's a horizontally compressed image to simulate the view angle. As you can see while comparing it looks like the movie image was made with a wide field camera and we see slightly around the "corner". It's an error margin to consider. Anyway, I could try to let loose a software 3D analysis on it for those who remain skeptic. But since I'm away you gotta provide me all kinds of measurements as possible. Anything that's visible there I need measurements as precise as possible. Any slight error adds to the error margin. The bee is perfect but is too small as reference, though. Trial and error, then.
If that's what people want to believe they can I do not and the truth is only the guys at ILM who made the model back in 83-84 know what they really are if they ever decided what they are that is. Also line of fire isn't meaningless when they don't even have enough clearance from the not photon tubes to the back of the senor dome, not enough room to make a heard turn and why would you design it like that to begin with it make on sense at all.
Why assume they point straight ahead into the dome? They could be offset at any angle really. I think the FASA people thought those were launchers that could fire to port and starboard as well as forward, while the lower set on the secondary hull were the forward tubes. The truth is, we need more reference material from the model rather than one angle from one scene in one movie.