Donny's Refit Enterprise Interiors (Version 2.0)

[Maurice]

To expect Star Trek, with its magical transporters that can split people into Jekyll and Hyde,

Spoiler: how to say Jekyll

('let the name be pronounced as though it spelt “jee-kill”; not “jek-ill”'—Robert Louis Stevenson)

FTL telepathy and humans mating with alien species to be hard SF is silly on the face of it, and not what anyone working on the show was after. Sure, they tried to be believable enough, but they routinely ignored technical advice and no one ever really thought through how the ship could/world work.

Just my 2¢.

 

[Mytran]

Almost like no cowboy ever stopped to discuss how his six-shooter worked, you mean?

 

[aridas sofia]

Is there anywhere that shows your cutaway with callouts?

When I did that, it was in the Trek Tech forum iirc. I explained each detail as we went along. My intention was to use all that discussion to put callouts on the art, but when I messed around with it, it so obscured the details that I decided to let well enough alone. It needs a dynamic interface of some kind where you can put a cursor over a detail and the explanation appears. Something beyond my pay grade, I’m afraid.

The intent was 947 feet length, Henoch. The heavy object line around it makes it look a bit longer, though hopefully not 35 feet longer.

 

[aridas sofia]

Looks like he depicts the TOS engine room as impulse engineering and the TAS engine room as warp engineering. Although I don't see any indication of the other engineering decks seen in TAS, like the big room with all the computer consoles and the core access hatch that Scotty got stuck under in "Beyond the Farthest Star."

You’re right. My intention was that those other TAS engineering spaces you mention were off the centerline to port and starboard of the impulse drive. The room you see is starboard impulse engineering, with a flipped but otherwise identical space serving the port impulse engine. The big rectangles on the aft of the impulse drive are heat dissipators for the reactors - the forced perspective, trapezoidal pipe tunnel. The thrusters themselves are the small, circular “ports” between the rectangles.

The way I’ve drawn it, the ship has nine reactors- two huge reactors in each nacelle, one pipe tunnel linked to each of them in the secondary hull, one pipe tunnel for each impulse engine, and an emergency reactor in the center of the saucer. They are all interlinked and can support each other, but not like TMP shows it with reactions happening along the connecting plumbing.

The nine reactors started out as eight, which was an homage to CVAN-65.

 

[BillJ]

Still, I'd rather see science fiction that actually acknowledges physics and designs the tech with it in mind, rather than just doing fanciful stuff and saying "Don't worry, a science wizard did it." That's what made Jefferies's designs so great -- they looked practical and plausible.

The horse left that stable a long time ago, and the stable immediately burned down afterward. I like scientifically accurate, but it just isn't something I expect from Star Trek, because it has never been accurate to any real degree.

 

[Christopher]

To expect Star Trek, with its magical transporters that can split people into Jekyll and Hyde, FTL telepathy and humans mating with alien species to be hard SF is silly on the face of it, and not what anyone working on the show was after.

It's not about "expecting," it's about wishing. Assuming that the speaker of a wish is unaware of objective reality is misunderstanding how wishes work. The very act of wishing that something were true is predicated on the awareness that it isn't.

Yes, there are many ways that Trek has had bad science, but there are also a number of ways in which it's had good science too. Its ratio of good science to bad, at least during TOS and TNG, was much higher than that of its SFTV contemporaries, which rarely had even a shred of good science. I'm just saying I wish the ratio had been even higher.

You’re right. My intention was that those other TAS engineering spaces you mention were off the centerline to port and starboard of the impulse drive.

In DTI: Forgotten History, I followed the lead of the Drexler cutaway from "In a Mirror, Darkly" (since that was onscreen and thus effectively canonical), which put main engineering in the secondary hull. I described the depicted section from TAS as being a level below main engineering and maybe a bit behind. (I had some characters go through the aft door of the upper-level catwalk, go back a bit alongside the "pipe cathedral," then descend a ladder two levels to get to that section.)

 

[aridas sofia]

In DTI: Forgotten History, I followed the lead of the Drexler cutaway from "In a Mirror, Darkly" (since that was onscreen and thus effectively canonical), which put main engineering in the secondary hull. I described the depicted section from TAS as being a level below main engineering and maybe a bit behind. (I had some characters go through the aft door of the upper-level catwalk, go back a bit alongside the "pipe cathedral," then descend a ladder two levels to get to that section.)

I got to talk to Doug in Ticonderoga about our respective visions of that cutaway. I really like his, but I was proceeding from a different starting point- Jefferies’ cutaway in TMoST. I was exploring what he did to see if some things* we saw would work, like the hangar he put in the Phase II cutaway. It was very much meant as a WIP, that would eventually lead to deck plans that would further work things out. David Shaw picked up some of that, which left me with less reason to undertake the project.

*Like the “hull pressure compartments”, bridge orientation, underlying skeletal framework, turboshaft layout, the placement of engineering spaces and interconnected reactors, hangar deck sizing, etc.

 

[Henoch]

The intent was 947 feet length, Henoch. The heavy object line around it makes it look a bit longer, though hopefully not 35 feet longer.

Work's for me since I too support the 947 foot ship, but lately, I'm starting to think a few more feet doesn't hurt anything...(I used the graduated scale in the drawing assuming each small red tick was 10 feet.)

 

[Mytran]

When I did that, it was in the Trek Tech forum iirc. I explained each detail as we went along. My intention was to use all that discussion to put callouts on the art, but when I messed around with it, it so obscured the details that I decided to let well enough alone. It needs a dynamic interface of some kind where you can put a cursor over a detail and the explanation appears. Something beyond my pay grade, I’m afraid.

That does make sense, sadly. And it would certainly be a crime to obscure so much of that intricate detail with a mass of lines!

You’re right. My intention was that those other TAS engineering spaces you mention were off the centerline to port and starboard of the impulse drive. The room you see is starboard impulse engineering, with a flipped but otherwise identical space serving the port impulse engine. The big rectangles on the aft of the impulse drive are heat dissipators for the reactors - the forced perspective, trapezoidal pipe tunnel. The thrusters themselves are the small, circular “ports” between the rectangles.

The way I’ve drawn it, the ship has nine reactors- two huge reactors in each nacelle, one pipe tunnel linked to each of them in the secondary hull, one pipe tunnel for each impulse engine, and an emergency reactor in the center of the saucer. They are all interlinked and can support each other, but not like TMP shows it with reactions happening along the connecting plumbing.

The nine reactors started out as eight, which was an homage to CVAN-65.

This is great stuff - do you still happen to have any of those (full or partial) floor plans?

 

[aridas sofia]

This is great stuff - do you still happen to have any of those (full or partial) floor plans?

It never got beyond the B/C deck. The bridge is a half deck lowered, so there was room above it for a small maintenance space. Below it was support machinery. Below that was the circular briefing room from the pilots. There was a command and control room (where a version of the plot board you see in early pr photos was located), phaser control, a captain’s ready room that followed the floorplan of Pike’s quarters, several labs, and the ship’s astronomical sensors aft in the space that in TMP becomes the officers’ lounge (under the non-yellow rectangle behind the bridge). The lower part of that space serves as a smallish officers’ lounge on this ship, too. It never got to engineering beyond a small space under the yellow rectangle behind the bridge, that served as a fueling point for the saucer emergency reactor - a deck below.

 

[Professor Moriarty]

It never got beyond the B/C deck. The bridge is a half deck lowered, so there was room above it for a small maintenance space. Below it was support machinery. Below that was the circular briefing room from the pilots. There was a command and control room (where a version of the plot board you see in early pr photos was located), phaser control, a captain’s ready room that followed the floorplan of Pike’s quarters, several labs, and the ship’s astronomical sensors aft in the space that in TMP becomes the officers’ lounge (under the non-yellow rectangle behind the bridge). The lower part of that space serves as a smallish officers’ lounge on this ship, too. It never got to engineering beyond a small space under the yellow rectangle behind the bridge, that served as a fueling point for the saucer emergency reactor - a deck below.

Aha! I thought that was the circular briefing room that I spied — that distinctive boxy viewer was quite clear in your drawing. I miss that room; it was much more science fictional than the drab room the series ended up with.

I also noticed that you put Matt Jefferies’ sexy curvaceous take on the shuttlecraft in your hangar deck. NICE.

 

[Mytran]

It never got beyond the B/C deck. The bridge is a half deck lowered, so there was room above it for a small maintenance space. Below it was support machinery. Below that was the circular briefing room from the pilots. There was a command and control room (where a version of the plot board you see in early pr photos was located), phaser control, a captain’s ready room that followed the floorplan of Pike’s quarters, several labs, and the ship’s astronomical sensors aft in the space that in TMP becomes the officers’ lounge (under the non-yellow rectangle behind the bridge). The lower part of that space serves as a smallish officers’ lounge on this ship, too. It never got to engineering beyond a small space under the yellow rectangle behind the bridge, that served as a fueling point for the saucer emergency reactor - a deck below.

Ah, planned out but not mapped out, so to speak!
Thanks for these extra titbits though, I always wondered what that Engine Room-ish area was below the teardrop

 

[AllisonR]

bird's eye view from N Deck

Not really sure what is going on here (my ignorance) but this image is so clean and lovely, great sense of depth.

 

[Christopher]

Not really sure what is going on here (my ignorance) but this image is so clean and lovely, great sense of depth.

It's looking straight down the engine shaft from the upper level of the engineering set, without the intermix column (warp core) present. And apparently with a void of white light replacing whatever would go at the bottom of the shaft, so maybe the ship is in the middle of being eaten by a collapsing subspace pocket universe or something. That black area on the right of the image is the entrance to the engine room foyer (where Kirk broke the bad news to Decker about taking back the ship).

 

[Tallguy]

Laying in bed sick and passing in and out of Wrath of Khan. Because of this thread I noticed for the first time that while the whole ship is falling apart, warp drive is down, the "mains" are off line and the engineering space is apparently flooded with radiation: The intermix chamber is just chugging along, business as usual, not even a blink.

Also noticed for the first time in 37 years that when Kirk runs into the engine room and sees Spock that his jacket is closed. When he is caught by McCoy and Scott and for the rest of the scene it's open. 37 years! A hundred times, minimum!

 

[Christopher]

Because of this thread I noticed for the first time that while the whole ship is falling apart, warp drive is down, the "mains" are off line and the engineering space is apparently flooded with radiation: The intermix chamber is just chugging along, business as usual, not even a blink.

Oh, that's a good point. If the drive was down, the shaft should've been dark. (Not to mention that blast door that descended right through the shaft, cutting off the reactor from the conduit to the nacelles.) Basically, the makers of TWOK totally ignored the design logic of the engine room set (like having the "reactor room" be off to the side and completely unconnected to the engines).

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Oh, that's a good point. If the drive was down, the shaft should've been dark. (Not to mention that blast door that descended right through the shaft, cutting off the reactor from the conduit to the nacelles.) Basically, the makers of TWOK totally ignored the design logic of the engine room set (like having the "reactor room" be off to the side and completely unconnected to the engines).

Which I don't find myself minding very much, personally. If we have to sacrifice the design logic of fake technology to have a scene as touching and dramatic as that final scene between Kirk & Spock, so be it.

(Although thinking about it, the thought of the shaft being dark and the entire engine room having low lighting or even emergency lighting because of it might have enhanced the scene even more... It reminds me of William Shatner's comment that he thought the glass separating Kirk and Spock should've been slightly opaque, to enhance the drama of the scene. Hmm.)

 

[Tomalak]

I'm sure it's not the last time we hear some variation of "main power offline" whilst the warp core continues the usual light show.

 

[Mytran]

Oh, that's a good point. If the drive was down, the shaft should've been dark. (Not to mention that blast door that descended right through the shaft, cutting off the reactor from the conduit to the nacelles.) Basically, the makers of TWOK totally ignored the design logic of the engine room set (like having the "reactor room" be off to the side and completely unconnected to the engines).

Well the "blast door" did have those louvres down the centre, so it's possible that warp energies could still make their way through to the nacelles

 

[Christopher]

Well the "blast door" did have those louvres down the centre, so it's possible that warp energies could still make their way through to the nacelles

I don't see any louvers, just what looks like one of the tracks for the gears that raise and lower the door.

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=309&pid=34243#top_display_media