TOS Enterprise Internals

[yotsuya]

Rats. I put the red line where it was in WNMHGB, but I did the ceiling vertical panels aligned to the series red line. I'll have to rethink it. It's no big deal for the 9 foot ceilings, but it really will crunch things for the 8 foot ceilings. At least I go the A frame right.

 

[Mytran]

You could always angle the support struts to make them more triangular in cross section.
That would still allow a decent amount of room to fit the trapezoid silver sections in on the outer surfaces

 

[yotsuya]

That thought had occurred to me as well, but it doesn't really fit with the set design. Instead I made the trapezoid's shorter. I also added how the set was constructed to fit with my other drawings.

There are problems with each of these. We frequently see the full panels on the set. Sometimes we see the full height of the panels and occasionally we see they added an addition on the top to extend the sent higher so we don't see the studio (one reason I have no issue shortening the sets to fit inside the ship). DOTD shows us the ceiling and a corner post (how I scaled it). I think this is what Jefferies was thinking for his cross section. But TPTB went with the text description and when the TMP ship was designed the corridor sets have a definite ceiling and 9 foot deck spacing. But, only the area above the red line is impacted. Everything below that remains consistent and that was 95% of what we saw of the sets in the series.

 

[Mytran]

Yes, we frequently see the trapezoid panels but then again we also frequently see 9 or 10 foot high walls!

Since you are approaching this with a "compromise" POV to start with, maybe the red panel could be moved down to 7' from the floor after all? The 24" (minimum) thick walls have plenty of space for pipes, air ducts etc and so a 6" solid floor panel in between the decks would be sufficient to hang lighting, grates etc off it as and when required, with everything else in the walls.
That leaves room for a 1'6" strut across the corridors, with a decent amount of space for (slightly flattened) silver trapezoids

 

[yotsuya]

That might work, but my original goal is to lower the top of the ceilingless set without changing anything in the majority of the eyeline. Where I have it now, the head room under the cross panels is the same as in the A frame. I leave it up to others as to what ceiling height/deck thickness they would like to use. I'm already pretty controversial in insisting on 9 foot deck to deck spacing. I'll leave the 7' 3" spot for the red band and keep more than 7' headroom of the cross panels and A frames.

You have been very helpful in ironing this out. I'm waiting for you to find another glitch. I found a few myself, but you found some very important ones. Thanks.

 

[Mytran]

That might work, but my original goal is to lower the top of the ceilingless set without changing anything in the majority of the eyeline. Where I have it now, the head room under the cross panels is the same as in the A frame. I leave it up to others as to what ceiling height/deck thickness they would like to use. I'm already pretty controversial in insisting on 9 foot deck to deck spacing. I'll leave the 7' 3" spot for the red band and keep more than 7' headroom of the cross panels and A frames.

You have been very helpful in ironing this out. I'm waiting for you to find another glitch. I found a few myself, but you found some very important ones. Thanks.

Honestly, aside from that 3" difference it looks fine to me now.
I wish you luck in finding a suitable compromise with the overhead beams, it's not something I envy you!

 

[DSG2k]

I'm already pretty controversial in insisting on 9 foot deck to deck spacing.

Folks have your back on the 95% logic. The red extension from "Charlie X" is almost certainly just a quick thing to hide the top of the set walls for the director's desired angle, and if the very different "Day of the Dove" pipe-stop ceiling is too tall, as well, then *it is*.

As noted with the shuttlecraft, discarding the known size because the interior set was too tall, as some do for it and similarly with the ship, is a *choice*, and not a necessary one.

Not much to do with the shuttle contradiction in-universe short of TARDIS tech a la the "Future Tense"[ENT] pod or Star Trek V. ;-) However, if one is insisting that no on-screen shot of the ship's innards be discarded, the comparative vastness of a starship allows for plenty of localized variations in ceiling height for a wide variety of potential reasons.

(Of course, this comes from the guy who thinks the shots looking down into the bridge are sufficient evidence that it isn't rotated all cattywompus, so YMMV.)

 

[yotsuya]

Thanks for the kind words, but I know some people have very strong opinions on some of these things. This entire topic is rooted in one thing - that the TMP refit is the same ship and the changes were mostly surface changes. There are some things I can't escape from the TMP design that force me into one line of thinking for the TOS design. That section on the decks in TMoST was the bible for a decade and both Franz Joseph and Andrew Probert followed it (and some other in between, though Matt Jefferies didn't waver from his internal plan and that has shaped other things about my interior. I want this to be as faithful the original series and Jefferies intentions as aligning it with the TMP design allows me. Sets some tough parameters, but finding the solution has been fun and challenging. The only set with beams that I need to worry about is the briefing room (and all its permutations as rec rooms and chapels). The cabin beams are in the wall and lower than my desired ceiling height. I'm going to have to draw an elevation and see what I can figure out. I've already scouted out a few places in the ship where I can place a room with a higher ceiling. That probably will be next (after I draw a bridge cross section).

 

[Henoch]

Couldn't some decks have possible open or extended areas above their ceilings as shown from your ship sketch (areas circled in red):

 

[yotsuya]

Yes, there are areas like that. Deck 6 would be a great area for the chapel and some rec rooms. Deck 5 would be the best place for a briefing room. I also have the challenge of trying to fit in the pilot briefing room. The herbarium is going on deck 8. Some other rec facilities as well. Forward phaser control is on deck 10. I'm still trying to figure out the nature of the ship's weapons. Forward implies there is an mid or aft control room and possibly fore and aft phasers. We did see an aft phaser in IAMD in Enterprise. The model wasn't built with much that can be weapons so I have a lot of ideas swriling around my head, including making the lower dome and the aft dome phasers. And it's not like a lack of model detail ever stopped the FX teams. In the Excelsior model's last appearance as the Lakota, the FX team had phasers firing from all sorts of places where the model has nothing. The TOS enterprise does have 3 bumps around the lower ring (and the lower ring itself) that are also options. I think I'm going to revisit my deck plans (I believe the first draft has a major error in that the circle I started with wasn't a proper circle. Plus I didn't draw the outline of the secondary hull decks. So I have quite a few things to figure out. At least the detailing and the cutaway poster for the TMP refit make a lot of these decisions easier for that version.

 

[yotsuya]

Time for some tweaking of the cross section. Found one mistake. I narrowed the decks, changed out the A frame, replaced the bridge bmp's with vectors (plan and cross section), created a saucer engineering deck by lowering it 3 feet (all the space available with the undercut - it will be a trapeziod shaped wedge out of the back of the saucer), and updated all the set plans. The original is at 3 pixels per foot. Not sure if that one (4282x2258 pixels) is one you can view or not.

 

[danellis]

I presume you think the TOS-E was more utilitarian than the TNG-E - carrying a Ford Transit rather than a Porsche?!?

More seriously, that's a nice piece of work, and I really like your approach of reproducing the sets to produce floor plans.

dJE

 

[yotsuya]

The Ford van was in response to someone telling me the shuttle had to be larger. I just left it there for now. Eventually I'll get around to redrawing the shuttle and remove those like I did the McMaster bridge I was using. And I made changes from his drawing so mine is unique. But the TNG E also had a giant duck and an old prop plane. I wasn't planning on such humorous touches.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

Looks really good. I need to visit more of this thread.

Couldn't some decks have possible open or extended areas above their ceilings as shown from your ship sketch (areas circled in red):

All great briefing room locations, since they match where it might be on newer ships.

The herbarium is going on deck 8.

I like the idea of putting it in the secondary hull where the blue windows are on the refit. It makes sense since then smaller ships might not have one. The same thing goes in my opinion for the big Recreation Room in TMP also. It matches the model better than having it in the saucer.

 

[yotsuya]

Looks really good. I need to visit more of this thread.


All great briefing room locations, since they match where it might be on newer ships.



I like the idea of putting it in the secondary hull where the blue windows are on the refit. It makes sense since then smaller ships might not have one. The same thing goes in my opinion for the big Recreation Room in TMP also. It matches the model better than having it in the saucer.

I see things being rearranged quite a bit. In the secondary hull we have the former engine room replaced with a cargo hold and processing area. So I see no reason to leave the botanical garden in the secondary hull. Especially when it is listed as being on deck 8 in TMoST. That is why the Herbarium is going on deck 8 - as part of the recreational facilities. Deck 8 becomes the airlock area in the TMP refit. So the deck 8 rec facilities are migrated to the new larger rec deck and larger botanical garden. I'm leaving the theater in roughly the same area and the transporters and sick bay stay roughly in the same area. And we don't really see a briefing room in the refit (one of the few major TOS sets they did not carry over) so I don't know where I might put one in the refit. I'm thinking forward on deck 5 (senior officer's quarters). But I need to make another pass at deck plans for the TOS version to get a better idea.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

And 1:96 on a 135" miniature yields an Enterprise of 1,080 feet long. Genius, right?
Well, not exactly. This thinking was born out of a misunderstanding - in reality, the size of the miniature was just 4 times the size of the plans, which themselves were simply that big because of the size of the piece of paper.

I have seen images that show the refit as smaller than the TOS Enterprise. I wonder how that theory would line up with this type of analysis.

The decks would have to be reconfigured and the secondary hull virtually rebuilt with only a fraction being kept over. The botanical section could actually remain in the same place but now have windows.

If that is the botanical sections there, then it seems like that would be the room we see in "Is there in Truth no Beauty."

Designing a force perspective item and then saying that it isn't but it only looks that way makes no sense. I guess I'm in the camp that won't give up on the full size pipes.

I personally like the idea that the pipes run most of the length of the secondary hull. The room itself is near the front of the ship as seen when the emotion-consuming alien leaves in "Day of the Dove," and then the pipes extend as far back towards the pylons as the shuttle hangar will allow.

 

[Mytran]

I have seen images that show the refit as smaller than the TOS Enterprise. I wonder how that theory would line up with this type of analysis.

I may have suggested that idea (that the refit is a stripped down, sleaker and smaller ship than the original) myself from time to time...

 

[yotsuya]

The problem with the TOS ship being larger is that the window placement doesn't agree with that theory. And assigning a scale to the TOS ship ignores that the size of the ship was set before the model was made and they kept the size. The model was deliberately built at a bizarre scale. And 1:96 is not a scale to consider. If you must pick an nice, well used scale, it should be 1:87, also known as HO scale. The actual scale of 1:84.726 isn't far off from that. That would be 972 feet... if you must have an exact scale. But rather than build the model to an exact scale, they built it to certain size limitations. The small model and the large model were both built to be 947 feet long from the very beginning. The scale was unimportant. All the measurements on the two models are in nice round measurements. Ease of construction was more important than what the scale was to be. The scale was arbitrarily because it was not tied to the size of the model. The model needed to be large for realism. It did not need an exact scale so long as it matched the drawings. Gary Kerr has not only gathered a ton of information on the model physically, but also a lot of its history. He is adamant that the scale was immaterial and the 947 in universe length and the 33.75 and 134 lengths of the two models were intended that way from the moment Jefferies put the designs to paper and sent them to be built. But 1:96 was never a scale considered. The size of the model and the size of the ship were set independently.

 

[Mytran]

The problem with the TOS ship being larger is that the window placement doesn't agree with that theory. And assigning a scale to the TOS ship ignores that the size of the ship was set before the model was made and they kept the size. The model was deliberately built at a bizarre scale. And 1:96 is not a scale to consider. If you must pick an nice, well used scale, it should be 1:87, also known as HO scale. The actual scale of 1:84.726 isn't far off from that. That would be 972 feet... if you must have an exact scale. But rather than build the model to an exact scale, they built it to certain size limitations. The small model and the large model were both built to be 947 feet long from the very beginning. The scale was unimportant. All the measurements on the two models are in nice round measurements. Ease of construction was more important than what the scale was to be. The scale was arbitrarily because it was not tied to the size of the model. The model needed to be large for realism. It did not need an exact scale so long as it matched the drawings. Gary Kerr has not only gathered a ton of information on the model physically, but also a lot of its history. He is adamant that the scale was immaterial and the 947 in universe length and the 33.75 and 134 lengths of the two models were intended that way from the moment Jefferies put the designs to paper and sent them to be built. But 1:96 was never a scale considered. The size of the model and the size of the ship were set independently.

Yes, we had this conversation about the non-existent scale of the model back in February

Regarding how the windows wouldn't work for a larger or smaller TOS-E, I'm not convinced they should be used as a guide at all. Certainly they do not work well for a 947' long Enterprise as the saucer rim windows would either before almost on the floor on one deck and nearly ceiling height on the one below!
Personally, I wouldn't even consider them as "windows" in the traditional sense, more like sensor placement ports. This way you have the lateral sensor array design progression of 4 clusters (on the TOS-E) to 6 larger clusters (on the refit) to a fully circumferential spread (in TNG).

The viewports we do see in TOS are very limited and confined to specific areas of the ship, anyway. TMP is not much better. If there are all those windows scattered throughout the ship, where are they in our films and TV shows?
I prefer my Enterprise more "submarine"-like in that regard, but YMMV

 

[Ronald Held]

Is there any consensus that the "windows" are sensors?