But they weren't shown using the hallway from to-and-from the ready room, were they?
Which I feel is good evidence for the idea that the ready room is on a different deck. If it were on the same deck, we should see the characters using the hallway in-universe, quite regardless of set realities.
And even including the backstage realities, really: an explicated key factor in turning Lorca's ready room into the Red Angel lab was to allow for direct walking access from a dramatically relevant set to the bridge. Pike's new ready room i turn was created in order to have a better-looking set, but it, too, was dramatically relevant and in need of bridge access; surely there would have been effort to give it direct bridge access, too, all other things considered equal? So something was considered not equal, and my guess is that the factors were in this descending order of importance:
1) They wanted to give that set a dramatic entranceway from everywhere in the ship, not just the bridge; having two dramatic entranceways would reduce the dramatic value bit, so a turbolift it was.
2) They wanted to build the set next to the bridge anyway, for convenience. This would have facilitated walk-through scenes for accessing the bridge, but we never got any. (Was the set there behind the bridge or not?)
3) They did do their homework and found out the one place for the room in-universe would be behind
and above the bridge, there being difficulty in having plausible portholes elsewhere. (The relevant portholes were then modified on the ship model, establishing this was the very spot they were thinking of.)
They're being careful not to show us any real internal layout for some reason. I think we had Enterprise D blueprints pretty early on in TNG's run.
Those never had much to do with "real internal layout", though. In onscreen reality, the sets didn't connect in any particular way, and any and all interpretations were possible, including both the Wildfire and Sternback blueprints and others.
In TMP, they had pretty good ideas about how the ship ought to look internally. It's just that those were piss-poor ideas, with implausible Rec Deck and Officers' Boozing Room locations, and a different interpretation of where those sets would be located serves the in-universe layout of the ship better. I don't think there's much demand for author ideas on the
Discovery layout as such, not until at least a few additional seasons of evolution of the concepts, so that we can see what fits and what does not.
I don't see the lift being absent a second as a problem, as surely a spare can turbo-pop in to replace it in the half second it takes to leave. Plus I'm sure Pike has an 'executive hold' button at his desk or at the door keypad.
Sounds awfully complicated when the fictional man himself could just as well have asked for a table and a few chairs to be brought into Lorca's original ready room. Meaning I can't see Pike
ever going for such a setup. But that's just me.
It would be different if Pike were already forced to squat at another deck entirely, meaning the turbolift would necessarily be his most convenient option for reaching the bridge, after a cool forcefield waterslide or somesuch anyway.
I think the main block here is thinking (not accusing anyone particularly - I think the same way sometimes) they operate solely like single cab 1950s elevators.
Well, up there, the network is unlikely to be particularly extensive or complicated. So the one and only bridge turbolift station being vacant or occupied is still pretty much a thing. Perhaps more so than on Kirk's ship, where back-to-back turbolifting (which we saw happen a couple of times) could involve cabs on standby all around the one lift station save for the actual bridge side. Lorca's lift station is
screwed: bridge on one side, ready room (now lab) on another, the alcove (now corridor) on third, and the aft doors leading somewhere relevant on the fourth... The cab ranks would have to be above or below there.
Timo Saloniemi