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Discovery in Variety

My thinking is that the bridge will look a little smaller on screen, since motion picture cameras and various lenses, lighting, angles, etc. will compress it a little. It's quite different than a still lens.
 
So, there's all of an eight-inch step-down from the outer stations to the two forward consoles in the "pit."

From a functional perspective, what's the point there?
 

Neat! I had no idea Popular Science did an article on Star Trek back in '67. I wish we knew more about that Navy Communication Center, a picture for comparison would be nice. As it is I'm not entirely convinced Roddenberry didn't make it up. Doesn't that story appear in "The Making of Star Trek"? I know I've read it somewhere before. Of course that book was published in September of '68 and the article is from December of '67.
 
So, there's all of an eight-inch step-down from the outer stations to the two forward consoles in the "pit."

From a functional perspective, what's the point there?
Clear view of the screen? There is some sense in making rooms that all have to see the same big screen or central focus staggered in some way. Picard would have Data and Wesley's heads taking up most of the screen.
 
Clear view of the screen? There is some sense in making rooms that all have to see the same big screen or central focus staggered in some way. Picard would have Data and Wesley's heads taking up most of the screen.

I think that's generally the rationale, yeah - clear eyelines.

The thing is, an eight-inch drop across thirty feet or so is nothing. It's far worse than old-fashioned movie theaters. Might as well be flat.

From its beginnings, Trek visual design has been a nice combination of what might be functional with what gives a visual impression of being functional. I think that when the designers just keep aping old features for no reason - such as nominally putting the bridge on several levels, but really flattening it - both aspects get lost.

Discovery's bridge tiers look like nothing more useful than a mild tripping hazard.
 
So, there's all of an eight-inch step-down from the outer stations to the two forward consoles in the "pit."

From a functional perspective, what's the point there?
On the TOS bridge, isn't there the upper level for the outer stations, then a step down to Kirk's chair, which is up on a platform to look just above and past Sulu and Chekov?
 
They can smile!

It seems when they are not in character, they are allowed to look happy.

Aaaaaand.....we get a generic bridge design that could fit in ANY scifi show...with an as uninteresting color scheme as possible. I´d never thought I´d ever prefer the new movies "Apple Style Bridge" to anything. Would it have hurt to add some different colors to the console displays...instead of just "make it blue"?

Don't forget black! They love black and dark shadows, too. ;)
 
I actually like that it's so big. Somehow makes it look more realistic to me as a workplace where everyone needs room for their station and you can realistically have a conversation on one side without disturbing the others. I look at it basically as an office room in space. Or a NASA flight control room like this one.

Unless you're the helmsman and need to talk to either the captain or navigator. :o
 
On the TOS bridge, isn't there the upper level for the outer stations, then a step down to Kirk's chair, which is up on a platform to look just above and past Sulu and Chekov?

Yes...and the level on which Chekov and Sulu sit is a foot lower than Kirk, and eighteen inches lower than the outer stations.

In the old movies, Chekov and Sulu were about two feet lower than the outer stations. On TNG, Picard is about two feet lower than Worf.

These folks could credibly appear to have clear lines of sight at one another and the forward viewer. Eight inches? The effect is negligible. It's just done because there have always been different levels on Trek bridges.
 
Looking back, some of the bridges in Star Trek have been rather cramped, like the bridge of the Defiant or even the NX-01, which I love, but isn't necessarily spacious.
Those two being more cramped makes sense. They were both quite a bit smaller than most of the other ship's we'd seen, so they wouldn't have room for big, spacious bridges.
 
They need to put a red carpet from the captain's chair, running between the helm and nav stations up to the view screen.

This bridge makes the least amount of sense to me. It is huge, for no technical reason I can imagine. Plus, it would use more resources than is really necessary from life support.
 
It is the cockpit of a Volkswagen Beetle compared to a Chevy Suburban. :lol:

I don't know...Compare this image:
EFP5gPs.jpg


To this image:
4ecee64c8e25b07546d4a0ac019ef649.jpg


While the Discovery bridge is certainly larger than the TOS bridge (there's no denying that), there really isn't that much extra "clear floor space"...

...except for the area directly in front of Isaacs, Martin-Green, and Yeoh, but I but we rarely see that part of the set on screen anyway (due to camera angles and such), just like there is clear floor space in front of and beside Sulu and Chekov that we rarely saw on screen, as shown below:

8940e1ad83b3f6481f22e301c6d1c529.jpg
 
The design work on this series is okay, but it doesn't compare well to the Abrams films.
 
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