I suspect they would not have been the same set.
Donny’s Late TOS Movie Era Interiors
- Thread starter Donny
- Start date
That would be wicked to see and read 
fantastic work on the phaser .
fantastic work on the phaser .
Excelsior's interiors should look more like what was seen on TNG since it's the future of starship designs, could there have been a prototype of the holodeck but was simply a training deck for exploration of strange new worlds or strategic purposes?
I'd still like to see your reinterpretation of Styles' Prototype Excelsior bridge. I figure it's so bare-bones of a canvas and so needing of a re-take that you could do any amount of subtle re-works to make it better.
Have there ever been any full photos of the entire bridge or just the fragment that we briefly saw? I wonder if it was ever a complete set or just that one area. It looked much bigger than the Enterprise bridge.
I suspect they only built the fragment that was shown; so much of the set design in TSFS looked so cheap, I can't see them building the whole thing in 360° (or even 270°, like the Defiant bridge from "In a Mirror, Darkly") for something that's only there 1-2 minutes. They don't even show the viewscreen (though, judging by storyboards, it would have looked really cool).
That would have been an awesome bridge to see. But, since nothing like that was shown on-screen, Donny pretty much has carte-blanche to do something similar, or whatever he wants, without ever being considered “wrong”. 
To be honest, I don't think there's a lot of people who would complain if Donny totally revamped it from floor to ceiling. 
You’d be surprised the amount of people that want me to re-create it as it is in the movie. When I express my complete lack of interest and disdain for the design, they are dumbfounded. “Why not? It’s such a cool design!?!” Some people just don’t see how terribly cheap and poorly designed that set is.To be honest, I don't think there's a lot of people who would complain if Donny totally revamped it from floor to ceiling.
No offense to anyone that might like it. But....it’s just bad.
After the amazing sets we got in TMP, and the impressive job Joe Jennings and Mike Minor did in reworking those existing sets (particularly the Klingon bridge --> torpedo room and rearranging the Enterprise bridge to be the Reliant) for TWOK, TSFS doesn't come close to measuring up.
Yet slight tweaks were done for the normal bridges to make a Grissom set nobody complains about...
The way that I see it, NX Excelsior is a neat canvas to explore some proto-LCARS interfaces. Knowing what came out in the next movie and beyond, Excelsior's all-black surface interfaces were supposed to herald no tacticle surface interfaces that was to come. We also have only concept art for what the main view screens looks like. Rekkert has more experience with LCARS interfaces though, in a way the NX bridge is more evocative of the TNG sets to come than TMP.
Still, I think the reason I like the potential of the NX bridge more than Sulu's NCC bridge (apart from the uniqueness and rarity of pure NX elements on the Excelsior) is how distinct it is. The NCC version being indistinguishable from the Ent-A doesn't speak to the design being the next generation of starships. The NX bridge, in spite of the sparsity, did enough to sell you on the idea that the NX represents a new generation of starship technology and the Refit is old news by comparison. B-29 vs the B-17.
The way that I see it, NX Excelsior is a neat canvas to explore some proto-LCARS interfaces. Knowing what came out in the next movie and beyond, Excelsior's all-black surface interfaces were supposed to herald no tacticle surface interfaces that was to come. We also have only concept art for what the main view screens looks like. Rekkert has more experience with LCARS interfaces though, in a way the NX bridge is more evocative of the TNG sets to come than TMP.
Still, I think the reason I like the potential of the NX bridge more than Sulu's NCC bridge (apart from the uniqueness and rarity of pure NX elements on the Excelsior) is how distinct it is. The NCC version being indistinguishable from the Ent-A doesn't speak to the design being the next generation of starships. The NX bridge, in spite of the sparsity, did enough to sell you on the idea that the NX represents a new generation of starship technology and the Refit is old news by comparison. B-29 vs the B-17.
Somewhere on my list is going into that scene in After Effects to add "Black Alert" to the indicators surrounding the turbolift and make the sound effect and change the lighting when they fire up the transwarp drive, as part of a mad scheme to retcon "Black Alert" into every experimental drive system ever used in Star Trek.
The impression I got from the NX bridge was that it was almost entirely for the purpose of studying transwarp and its effectiveness, hence the sparsity of it. None of the visible consoles look anything like a tactical station, and I sometimes wonder if the ship was even armed. It must have been, or it would have been pointless to send it after Enterprise, but I wonder anyway.
Given they would've quickly scanned the Enterprise and realized there were only five people on it, they had to know they couldn't put up a fight, and all they'd need to stop Kirk is a tractor beam (shouldn't have waited until Wednesday to steal the ship!).
The full-feature surround-screen tactical center was just to the right of the frame, next to the main view screen, and conveniently off-camera. After all, the refit's tactical display was at the front of the bridge.
Another thing about the NX bridge is that it represents a branch of starfleet's future tech developments that never matured. With a little more detail of course, but it's an interesting thought to wonder if the Enterprise-D's bridge had ended up more like that NX prototype bridge. I mean, make the color pallet more warm tone, give it carpet, and switch the chairs and you could have any run of the mill TNG ship bridge I think.
And before anyone reminds us how ugly they felt the NX bridge is- remember, the 1960s Enterprise was almost just as sparse as that NX bridge. Yet Donnie, and others, lovingly recreated it all the same.
The impression I got was that they had no money and the stage had burned down.
Donny, would you ever model the Space Dock to go with your Enterprise?
I never felt like the NX bridge was sparse at all. On the contrary, I thought it was excessively over-greebled and busy. I suppose it was an attempt to make things look more primitive compared to TOS, which was far more sparse and streamlined.
He’s referring to the NX-2000 bridge.
AH! Sorry. Misunderstood.
