I'm not sure everyone would be willing to accept all the wonkiness of the TAS Enterprise just to get rid of the external turbolift. For some, I'm sure it'd be **cough** a bridge too far **cough**.
Is the bridge at a funny angle?
- Thread starter Mike Doyle
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but if it was just an oversight it shouldn’t happen at every angle as shown above..,
I'm not sure everyone would be willing to accept all the wonkiness of the TAS Enterprise just to get rid of the external turbolift. For some, I'm sure it'd be **cough** a bridge too far **cough**.
But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with it, especially considering the addition of the new turbolift.
I seriously doubt the issue of the offset turbolift/bridge was unknown in the 1970s.
What I find sort of strange is that some model makers building any scale of the 1701 insist on inserting a supplied bridge (1:350 scale) or an image (AMT/Round 2) at the debated angle, when the actual series does not show the bridge pointing in that direction.
Behind his shoulder is the science station (which often has the main sensors readout) and the communications station. Communications you could get away with not seeing I suppose (merely shouting order at the officer) but considering the regular importance of the science station to missions of the Enterprise, tucking it round the back is an odd choice, to say the least. It's even more isolated in the TMP refit!
If I recall correctly, the moving around of stations in TMP was because Matt Jefferies (and any help he got) couldn't remember the layout of the original bridge set, and guessed where each station went. TUC got closest when they put communications between the turbolifts, shared with sciences.
it was well known at least since the manuals came out.
But yeah, I wouldn't be surprised if that had something to do with it, especially considering the addition of the new turbolift.
I seriously doubt the issue of the offset turbolift/bridge was unknown in the 1970s.
I’ve always found this scene interesting: notice how the bridge is definitely not facing forward, on one hand a possible evidence of it being tilted.
On the other hand, the doors don’t quite open where the notch is, so it’s not definite evidence either. This can be attributed to the extreme difficulty of composing such a scene in the middle 60s, though (as, conversely, could be the bridge being tilted itself, unfortunately).
The remastered episode “corrects” the scene by having the bridge facing forward, thus that being the official intention in 2006 (I doubt it was really discussed, though), but I’ve always felt that the doors opened in a space that couldn’t fit the dome here.
I always assumed the dolly-in-on-the-bridge shot was to establish the location of the bridge and the size of the ship, not (as interpreted in the remastered version) that there was a literal translucent dome over the bridge!
Agreed. I always understood that original-fx shot in "The Cage" to be for visual explanation, that it gave the viewer an omniscient, "X-ray" vision moment and not a literal view of what you'd see from up there.
This non-X-ray shot made that pretty obvious:
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x09hd/thetholianwebhd1130.jpg
There are definitely a few shots in the Animated series that are almost 1:1 recreations from the original show, but there are also odd things like the secondary hull being longer for some reason, so the art department did decide to make some changes to the exterior. Losing the bridge nub seems like it was probably more to simplify drawing the top of the saucer and make it easier to animate from different angles.
The SPV from the Anderson series 'Captain Scarlet' was designed that way
http://www.spectrum-headquarters.com/spv.html
I don't believe Jefferies designed the bridge for the Star Trek II TV series. I think that was under the auspices of Joe Jennings. And, c'mon, the bridge layout is in The Making of Star Trek FFS.
EDIT: Shaw reminded me I was misremembering this.
Neither of which align the lift with the external blister. I can't speak for the remaster, which monkeyed with a lot of stuff, but given the rush in which the pilot was made and the fact they only got that one shot of the 11' model in the show at all, it's unsurprising the alignment is so crude...no matter what the intention.
And in the 2nd pilot you even see the ceiling. It's not supposed to be see-through.
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I remember the translucent dome referred in some of the ancillary material, and definitely there is one on the D, as we see in Generations.
Also, in that shot it seems quite translucent to me.
Wich is what I wrote in other words...?
I was pointing out that because of the way it was done in the original it's meaningless to even pay attention to the shot in question.
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Actually you are in good company in having such a belief... to this day Probert still believes the Phase II Enterprise was designed by Joe Jennings.
But the overall layout of the Star Trek II bridge was prescribed by Jefferies (6-77)...
...but was really brought to life by Lee Cole (8-77) under Jennings. Jefferies didn't draft out detailed plans for the bridge the way he did for the Enterprise, but he did set it up for the bridge to fit correctly.
Oddly enough, he had a bigger say in the designing of the Star Trek II bridge than he had in the designing of the TOS bridge. Life is funny in that way.
While you may be correct about Joe Jennings VS Matt Jefferies, are you really making the argument that a production designer is going to use a fan-centric marketing tool as reference material? I'd be surprised if he knew the book existed.
Mea culpa. I suspected I might be misremembering. I know Jefferies’ major contribution was the design of the ship and not the sets. I’d forgotten those sketches of the proposed bridge layout, which, with the twin turbolifts, is reflected on the exterior.Actually you are in good company in having such a belief... to this day Probert still believes the Phase II Enterprise was designed by Joe Jennings.
But the overall layout of the Star Trek II bridge was prescribed by Jefferies (6-77)...
...but was really brought to life by Lee Cole (8-77) under Jennings. Jefferies didn't draft out detailed plans for the bridge the way he did for the Enterprise, but he did set it up for the bridge to fit correctly.
Oddly enough, he had a bigger say in the designing of the Star Trek II bridge than he had in the designing of the TOS bridge. Life is funny in that way.
Are you really making the argument that he [EDIT 12-31: meaning Jefferies] was unaware of a book he was interviewed for and quoted in, written by an AMT rep, the company he dealt with for the shuttlecraft and the Klingon ship?
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That's right, and especially true back then. If a nationally published book featured your own artwork so prominently, it was a big deal to you. There was no Internet in 1968. You had no blog, no Instagram, no Twitter, no Facebook. Being in a book that was in stores around the country ("for all the world to see") was a huge thing. I'd stake my life on Jefferies owning a copy of TMOST from 1968 on.
Incidentally, we know that Jefferies was also well aware of the Franz Joseph materials, because he talked about them in an interview.
I was referring to Joe Jennings, not Matt Jefferies. Of course Matt Jefferies would have known of the book. Maurice, your own mea culpa makes it plain that you understood this, yet you still called me out on it. That's disingenuous, and I don't appreciate it.
I'm not sure this is quite right. Pato Guzman was the art director for the first pilot, but the initial renderings of the bridge done by him are not much like the bridge we ended up with. One image looks an awful lot like the bare, empty dome with stick-on consoles we got in TMP.
Guzman handed the bridge over to Jefferies to develop and we begin to see the familiar consoles and ergonomic controls in MJ's surviving drawings.
I entirely agree that Jefferies dictated the forward facing bridge for Phase II, and configured the turbolift locations, both interior and exterior ... all while moonlighting during Little House on the Prairie.
M.
Well, yeah... Guzman handed off development of the bridge to Jefferies, who in turn designed a very cockpit like set. And that is not what we ended up with because Guzman left the production (replaced by Bachelin). One of the things Bachelin directed that Jefferies wasn't a fan of was the multilevel set... but Jefferies pointed out that he was the assistant art director, and when the art director wanted something, his job was to make it happen.
I could write a ton on this, but these days I'm lucky to get an hour or two on the internet and I'd like to go looking at other stuff with that time. But if anyone is interested, here is my 2016 analysis of the original designs for the Enterprise...
And my 2019 attempt at reconstructing Jefferies' original drawings...
Click to enlarge (1.4 MB)
Click to enlarge (1.7 MB)
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