If you love the Enterprise…

Many of the FX were ground breaking at the time, at least for tv. As a kid I got the original Enterprise blueprints in '76.

 

I had those - the Franz Joseph ones that came in a little brown and transparent plastic pouch? I loved them, pored over them, and it was fascinating to see all the areas that had gone unseen on TV. They really gave you a sense of how huge the Enterprise was. I'm sure some of those ideas for spaces like the arboretum went into TMP, which is why we also got the big aft entertainment deck.

Wish I still had those! No idea what happened to them.

They also put out blueprints for TMP, but IIRC they didn't show the interiors of the Enterprise; they were only external plans. Memory might be shaky on that, as I only looked at those at a friend's house.

 

The TMP blueprints, which I still have, did not layout the interiors of the ship.

I, too, poured over the FJ blueprints when I got them. I still have them along with the Technical Manual. I love their layout and the professionalism FJ brought to this kind of materiel. He set a standard that fed our fascination and set many of us on a road to emulate and build upon what he did.

But with that said we can easily see that he did quite a few things that were inconsistent with what we saw onscreen. And we could see that on ‘70’s era televisions long before high definition DVD and BluRay on big flatscreen televisions.

 

Ah, thanks. Memory's not so terrible then. Am I misremembering that they also included other ships from TMP such as the Vulcan long-range shuttle?

As a package, and they way they folded out, those blueprints were lovely things, yes. I can imagine they fired up the creativity of a great many young fans who went on to imagine and make their own (model) starships.

What were the inconsistencies? I suppose those were bound to creep in (at least on the exterior) if he didn't have direct access to the 11-foot miniature, which must've been in storage at the point they were drawn...? Which was in 1973 IRRC, while the miniature was donated to the Smithsonian in 1974.

 

For one thing he didn’t include an Auxiliary Control which we saw in TOS, but rather he had an Emergency Bridge which was a copy of the Main Bridge. And the exterior contours of the ship were different than those seen on the show. It looked almost like h had used the AMT model kit as a template for some parts.

His drawings for the shuttlecraft were way, way off.

 

If you want to replace them, they sell for like $20-25 on eBay these days.

 

I have the FJ blueprints somewhere.

 

Despite what the blurb on the packaging says, FJ's plans are not actually of "The Fabulous Starship Enterprise" but rather were meant to represent her sister ship, the U.S.S. Constitution. this alone would account for the many subtle differences between the plans and the ship we see onscreen.

 

I like that. That's a nice "in-universe" explanation. As the first ship of her class, the Constitution would've inevitably had some teething problems that would've led to modifications and updates in her sister ships, built a little later.

 

I love that Avatar, Robin.

The Planet of the Titans Enterprise had a flyer that landed atop the bridge cluster that I am sure would have been similar to the Eagle cockpit you have Spock in.

As a kid, I was actually disappointed when Star Wars and Battlestar Galactica showed bigger ships than the Enterprise. Ever since then, with HALO and everything else---the Enterprise comes across as tiny---so when JJ scaled it up--I cheered.

 

Thank you! I forget where I found it (I claim no authorship, with apologies and grateful appropriation to its original creator), but IIRC the original also shows Kirk on the other side of the cockpit!

Nowadays, when you've got Star Destroyers and whatever looking like they're three miles long, the original 1701 looks pretty dinky. Back in the 1960s she was huge!

 

She still IS huge. That's the problem.

 

Star Trek got there first with the Fesarius and Yonada, but the contagious trend of preposterously oversized spacecraft began with Star Wars. Ever wonder how much energy it takes to propel the Death Star? For interstellar travel to its target planets? But nobody worries about that, because popular sci-fi is mostly a physics-free zone. It's the same with recent Superman shows: he swoops in and "rescues" a stationary person by scooping him up at 800 miles an hour. Like the acceleration trauma wouldn't be fatal. "Physics? What's that?"

For my money, the TOS Enterprise could more easily contain its goodies if it were slightly bigger, but the Enterprise in JJ-Trek is going way too far. Oddly I have no problem with the Enterprise-D, and I'm openly fond of the Galactica, Princess Ardala's Draconia, and Spaceball One. Execution is important: if a show is well made, it just seems like the math works out.

 

Lucas never cared about real-world physics, or any other science that got in the way of telling a story. Back in 1977 he called Star Wars "space fantasy", not "science fiction". And Superman was originally a comic book written for kids that wasn't going to worry about physics.

 

That is a problem, ignoring physics because the story is good.

 

Honestly, neither did Star Trek. "Didn't care" is too strong on both shows. Lucas knew you needed life support. Knew you needed something for faster than light travel. Energy weapons can be stopped by force fields.

For 1977 Star Wars was as solid as Star Trek (if for no other reason than the creators of both had read all the same books).

George's protestations also ring a little hollow after he turned the magical Force into a cell based phenomenon.

When Isaac Asimov complained to Roddenberry that the galaxy didn't have a defined edge Roddenberry replied that hey, were just trying to make a TV show. Asimov said that of course they were and apologized.

Sorry, pet peeve of mine.

 

This is my approach as well. Dramatic license will trump reality. Sometimes it works, and sometimes it doesn't. It was more disappointing to me to learn about the real nature of space travel wouldn't look like Star Trek than it was to watch a reimagined Enterprise on screen.

Life is funny.

 

Learning even a smidge about orbital mechanics has me yelling at so many TV shows.

Oh, and the transporter is as magical as The Force ever was.

Anyway, love the Enterprise. And 300 meters is a freaking big spaceship. Not big enough to hold the shuttle deck we saw, but really big.

Hey, even the Death Star looks dinky next to a planet!

 

Ah, but Lucas--inspired by the millions earned from the ancillary market success of TOS--soon greenlit "technical & character manuals" which was the beginning of treating SW as some "plausible" universe, with an explanation for vehicles, weapons, character abilities, etc. That was not how SW marketing was treated in 1977, but its since become as obsessed with how "real" SW can be as the subjects of endless nerd debates. I love theories about how a lightsaber works as much as the next guy, but SW as a film series--unlike TOS--never instilled an urge to know every detail of the mechanical side of its world.

 

Definitely. The Force is based in Eastern Mysticism, but the transporter was based on not wanting to deal with shuttlecraft.