• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Star Fleet Technical Manual missing page

Yeah. It's the transporter console by Geoffrey Mandel.

I researched its origins [https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/franz-josephs-star-trek.295387/page-5#post-12697050]. It seems I replied to you back then as well!

Late to the party here. I grew up on the Technical Manual. Interestingly, I remember finding one of the "missing pages" at an online archive a few years back. It wasn't in the book, but it sure looked like it had been. I wonder if it was fan-made. Anyone know what I'm talking about?
Geoffrey Mandel did a transporter console page with the look and feel of the Tech Manual. Maybe this is what you're thinking of?

Here's an earlier post of mine, dated Jan 17, 2015 (so note that some referenced information may have changed in the interim), that discusses it [https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/transporter-console-slider-controls.244549/page-4#post-10584364]:

Apologies for the thread reanimation, but I have a correction to make regarding this information. This information does not appear in the Star Fleet Technical Manual, and it is not due to Franz Joseph.

Instead, it is due to Geoffrey Mandel, and it originally appeared in The Starfleet Handbook Issue 12, on page 12, in this drawing: thumbnail/full. (At the time of this post, I know of no link to an online copy of this issue. The location of the images is described below.)

There are at least three causes of the confusion about this drawing.

First, the drawing is (undoubtedly deliberately) rendered in the same style as the Star Fleet Technical Manual (SFTM) pages. However, the page is not actually in the SFTM, and its technical order number isn't even in the contents (unlike some missing pages that are), although it logically fits into the gap following the 6 person transporter plan; it is in fact the first unused number in the contents after the 6 person transporter plan.

Second, the Star Trek LCARS Blueprint Database at Cygnus-X1.Net includes Mandel's page on its SFTM webpage. (That's where the images I linked to above are.) Unfortunately, they do not credit Mandel for it, although note that the page is out of sequence, evidently as the "bonus page" that it is.

Third, people have (no doubt unintentionally) propagated the error around the web, such as on this page. And in the post I am responding to. ;)

This is a significant page in the tech manual area of fandom, and I'm just setting the record straight here (naturally, only to the best of my knowledge), so that credit can be given where credit is due. Thanks!

P.S. I think this may have come up before. I know that I found out about The Starfleet Handbook Issue 12 on the board somewhere. I couldn't find the thread, though.​

A follow-up post also seems significant [https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/transporter-console-slider-controls.244549/page-4#post-10586446]:

One other thing needs addressing, I believe.

I'm not in a position to agree or disagree with what you are saying, because I have never seen an original printed copy of the page. However, I have seen another electronic copy from a different source, and I can assert that what's posted at Cygnus-X1.Net is a particularly bad reproduction. For one thing, the pattern for red doesn't show up in the legend of the reproduction, and yet the red pattern, which takes up the bulk of the console, looks particularly messy in the actual figure. This tells me that, in all likelihood, the page is more competently drawn than the images at Cygnus-X1.Net might lead one to believe. I'd doubt that Mandel himself would be pleased with the reproduction, because it looks really bad. But again, whether the page is as competently drawn as Franz Joesph's work, I cannot say.​
 
^^On topic: I felt cheated by the lack of a transporter console page when I had the TM, so this ersatz TO is welcome.

Off topic, slightly: As I scrolled through Cygnus-XI pages you linked, I’d forgotten how many heads FJ placed on a starship that famously had none on TV. Also, there’s quite a lot of sumps and tanks, which follows the first point, I suppose.
 
I've also seen plans of the inside of the warp nacelles, looking just like TAS, done in Star Trek Blueprints style.
That's also Mandel's work, it says so right on the sheet.

It's included as a bonus sheet in the LCARS Blueprint Database entry of the Franz Joseph plans.

It, another version of it, or something very similar to it was published in one of the Star Trek Giant Poster Books, but I don't know which one.

It's pretty clearly inspired by the scene inside the nacelle in TAS "One of Our Planets Is Missing."
 
That's also Mandel's work, it says so right on the sheet.

It's included as a bonus sheet in the LCARS Blueprint Database entry of the Franz Joseph plans.

It, another version of it, or something very similar to it was published in one of the Star Trek Giant Poster Books, but I don't know which one.

It's pretty clearly inspired by the scene inside the nacelle in TAS "One of Our Planets Is Missing."
I think it was in issue 13. Amusingly there was a typesetting mistake and a block of text was in the wrong place in the article that accompanied the illustration.
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top