I'm sure this has been determined but I was wondering. In the Next Generation the ship has nice big windows in places like the captain's quarters and Troi's and Riker's quarters. But what about the windows that are on the underside of the ship? Does the gravity change on those decks so that the windows are still in the same place in relation to the room as shown in the above mentioned places? I can picture it either way, but for some reason the gravity changing is an annoying concept.
I don't think we've seen a room that was in the bottom half of the saucer. But I'm pretty sure the windows (and wall) would just be angled out rather than angled in as in the examples you mentioned. As for windows in the floor (per your title), maybe? I guess it depends on how the room's laid out. There's some pretty severe window/hull angles on the lower half of the saucer. (But your title did remind me of a couple of times we saw windows in the floor in Babylon 5. Of course, with rotational "gravity", that's the only place they could be most of the time.)
Well, Ten Forward is *acutally* supposed to be on the underside of the lip of the saucer. But other than that, no - there are no TNG sets that are realistically shown to be in a place that matches the underside of the exterior. The TNG sets weren't really built with this in mind, save for the senior officers quarters / VIP quarters. The "junior" officers quarters for Data, LaForge, and Worf, were all supposedly on Deck Two and would supposedly have a ceiling porthole somewhere above them, matching some on the model. This was never seen, and this set was recycled from the TMP movie set quarters anyway, which featured no windows. By the time of VOY they were making better efforts to match the set windows with the model. Still, the only "underside" window we've seen was that Deck 15 workspace in "Good Shepherd", which was conveniently tucked behind the ventral phaser emitter where no one would really look, as it it were "always" there. Mark
I figure they're just floor window, maybe some of which you walk on, others just low shallow openings. Star Trek: First Contact actually has a floor window which Picard uses to show off the fact that they're in orbit.
Isn't it a hatch in the wall, with a forcefield, that Picard uses to disarm Lilly with awe? Don't remember it being in the floor.
No, Picard and Lily were standing on the floor, the wall was inclined away from them, and Picard had to bend over slightly to "flick" his fingers against the force field. But the opening was in a wall.
I remember it at shin level. Interestingly, the conference room windows of the E-D don't have glass. There is at least once scene where a character would have bumped their head on the glass if it were there.
Thank the Gods for TrekCore! http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/firstcontacthd/firstcontacthd0999.jpg I remember wondering what the point of that particular hatch was. It's not really meant for people to come in and out, being part of the utilitarian areas of the ship. Refueling connector? Waste ejection? Ship's Mayweather sweet spot, good for relaxing, meditating, reading in whatever orientation you prefer? Mark
I'm pretty sure I read somewhere that the TNG crew quarters set was designed so that the slanted outer wall/ceiling portion with the windows could be flipped over to represent quarters on the underside of the saucer. I don't recall if they ever went to the trouble of actually doing it, though.
The windows that got eventually got flipped were the ones in Ten-Forward, and only then when they became Capt Janeway's ready room!
Ah, but they do it with invisible tractor beams nowadays! ...The emitter is high up on the back wall we never see, see. Timo Saloniemi
But the tractor beam emitter would be blocked by a force field, unless you're suggesting they vent a room without an airlock into space. Furthermore, tractor beams aren't designed to move the ship relative to their target, they're designed to move their target relative to the ship. It also fails to explain why a room so important for docking the ship wouldn't have a normal door.
Okay, dropping the funny act now. What do we know of this room for real? - Does it only have access via outside and Jeffries tube? Never established - we only see two walls out of presumable four. - Is it a big room or a small room? Behind Picard in the one reverse view we get, when they grapple for the gun, there's a diagonal bracing that may or may not indicate a slanted back wall. In stage reality, there of course was no wall there. - Is it a room for stargazing? It's exceptionally ugly, with said bracings and so forth, so highly unlikely to be a recreational space. Might be a vitally important observation post, though. - Is the hole into space for moving stuff through it? Might well be - the lower edge is close to the floor, so anything brought in could be smoothly delivered to the floor. - Is it a hole for walking through? This ought to be fairly easy, but one would have to stoop a little, even if gravity at the junction of the hole and a putative tube attached to it were to "bend" at the threshold. Why build the hole to be those crucial couple of dozen centimeters too small? - Is it an airlock? No big reason why it wouldn't be. But again a very awkwardly shaped hole for that. And a spacewalker stepping outside would have to be an acrobat to get his boots to the outer hull. - There's a big console by which Picard operates the hatch, supposedly controlling complex things. We see no complex things. But anything could lie behind Picard's back, such as honking big tractor beam cranes, or probe launchers, or whatnot. Why these doodads aren't permanently against the hatch could be for two reasons (the third of course being "there is no doodad there") : 1) The user can select from multiple doodads to be placed against the hatch. 2) The doodad brings stuff aboard, so a clear space is left for the stuff to be brought aboard. Compare this to the only other shuttered porthole ever seen in Trek, the one from "Mark of Gideon". The controls there were much simpler, and we saw there was nothing in the room that could be brought to peek through the porthole. Timo Saloniemi
It's a set that exists so Captain Picard can show that they're both in space. That's all we really know about it. (I think it would have worked a bit better if they'd just made it a small shuttlebay, the then you couldn't see the Earth, I guess.) Actually, what the room could be for is connecting umbilical cables from a starbase to the ship. The control panel would then need to be more sophisticated to allow for opening valves and relays to accept consumables from the umbilicals. The system allows the cables to pass through the force field, but not air or people.
Would it? I'm sure we've seen ships use tractor beams while their shields were up. We've certainly seen that one ship's shields can't block another ship's tractor beam, otherwise no ship could ever be held in a tractor beam involuntarily.
All Starfleet ships have had windows that would either be the ceiling or floor. The NX-01 had windows that were literally horizontal on various decks mostly around D and E. The Enterprise D has so many that would mean the window took up about 60% of the floor of the quarters it means walking on it, or the room goes considerably further back into the hull and there are some weird layouts of places we never saw.