Starship design history in light of Discovery

This has always seemed the easiest way to remain sane with one's expectations of a 50-year old fictional universe.

 

I'm not gonna claim they would never have differently shaped windows inside and out, but they are quite different. Certainly the angle is right.

Plus, we never saw for sure, but I get the impression that they go straight through the turbolift to get from ready room to bridge. So the room being at the rear of the bridge module works for me.

 

Same here. The precise details (uniforms, sets) are not as important as events and characters.

 

I think it’s supposed to be one deck above the bridge.

 

...Otherwise why take the lift?

I get it that this is a jury-rigged space. But it would have made no sense to create a space that's accessed by walking through a turbolift in the first place, even before Pike made it his ready room. If that other door at the short end of the room to starboard leads somewhere, this has to be to the bridge, or to the corridor we see behind the bridge to the starboard of the turbolift, that is, to the left of the command chair when we look aft. That's direct access; having to wait for the turbolift to arrive so that you can walk through it to the bridge is just insanity.

Regarding those Facebook pictures, the ones depicting the battle show just two S31 ship types - the two-naceller and the four-naceller, the latter with a big hole through the bow. But wasn't the ship that launched the (first wave of?) S31 drones both a two-naceller and one with a hole in the bow? That is, we saw the lower nacelles and the roll bar and a hint of the hole, but there were no upper nacelles, now were there?

The ship that launched the big torpedo had the hole and the drone berths; we didn't see its dorsal side so it may have had the top nacelles. But were there two models or three? Was Leland's big bad command ship a further modification of the four-naceller, or am I just missing something (such as two nacelles?).

Timo Saloniemi

 

Being a level above the bridge would make sense re: using the lift. We just never saw the lift move during the trip from ready room to bridge, and with front and rear doors, it could be a pass-thru in the absesne of a hall or ramp.

 

...But only if there was a lift there. What if Saru had just decided to go fight some Klingons barehanded on the holodeck, or Tilly was having to consult Dr Culber on a suspiciously sapient wart? Pike would be crucially delayed from reaching the bridge and saving the day.

It's not as if the bridge would be lacking a hallway now, one suddenly appearing there between the last S1 and first S2 episode, that is, mid-scene...

Timo Saloniemi

 

But they weren't shown using the hallway from to-and-from the ready room, were they?

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.

 

Because they don't have folks like Rick Sternbach who made himself so intimately familiar with the ship that every room matched every window (most of the time). They pretty much just make it up as they go along, a trend that started with the JJ movies

 

Fixed it for you.

 

Why not have a dedicated turbolift between the Bridge and Ready Room? Even if Pike cannot travel from one to the other quickly there are intercoms in the RR and turbolift.

 

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.

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.

 

You do know Picard's ready room window doesn't exist on either Enterprise-D model, right? And that Ten Forward is twice as big on the inside as out?

And that the rec room on the TMP Enterprise is way too big? And the massive window in the STV lounge doesn't fit anywhere?

But its all JJ's fault!

 

who can forget the time JJ abrams traveled back to the 90s and made brannon braga et al forget about voyager's dual warp cores, the aerowing shuttle, and the limited amount of shuttlecraft and photon torpedoes?

 

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.)

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.

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.

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

 

Or how the warp streaks go backwards from Picards window, despite it facing the port side, so they should be going sideways...

 

Not unless the bridge is angled off-center like the TOS bridge and the ready room is facing to the rear of the ship.

 

Except all the windows right on the top are centered correctly, when you see the bridge from the outside. Picards window is directly port facing.

 

So, who's right? Window or no window on the outside of the ship on the port side?

 

If it existed it would be on the port side (by room/set placement) and have stars streaking sideways. But they go backwards and there's no window on the model.

Turns out the window does exist on the Generations saucer crash model! Although the proportions don't match because it should be recessed into the oval below (what you see is the ceilings of the bridge and surrounding rooms)

Showing how it's all recessed

And...

That weird black dot on the side of the bridge module lump? It's meant to be this:

It isn't, but they sort of tried.