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Observations on Janice Lester's isolation room

That set model is a wonderful thing. And yes, it makes sense that the EMM would've been wild (movable) so that it wouldn't get in the way of cameras, overhead lights, and such when they were shooting Engineering from that side. The "energizers" (for want of a better term) were probably wild too, since they weren't shown in any of the available set plans besides the TMOST one. Though they do look like they're in fixed positions on the model.

It took me a moment, but that yellow room at the bottom is Auxiliary Control, isn't it?
 
Just a Bill said:
Heh, I made that same mistake today. By the way, I think I just confirmed that they did indeed keep those turbines/energizers around even after the EMM was constructed: they both appear on MJ's set model!

Note that the EMM (rectangular with a light yellow floor) appears to have been loose on the model. Here the whole shebang is being held up for the camera — by D.C. Fontana, if memory serves. The EMM has slid down until stopped by the pulled-out bridge wedges, and somewhere along the way it also has spun around about 180° from the facing it would normally have (the black box on the left end is the ladder alcove). This all seems to suggest that the full-size EMM was movable.

vY3rTUO.png


I wonder if those bridge wedges were magnetized, or used some kind of repositionable glue like post-its? I also wonder if their order has been swapped; the red handrails don't seem to align properly unless you transpose them, and the one behind Spock's back is too short unless it's extended by the short rail segment on the leftmost pullout wedge.
Click to expand...

Nice; I forgot all about this model—thanks. The EMM has to have been wild or removable, I think. For example, when the Klingons take over in "Day of the Dove," there are all those shots from the ground of the raised section on the opposite side. The Klingon stunt team attacks from that section; Kang, Mara, and the first officer or second officer played by Mark Tobin later come out there to gloat; and the entity shows up there at the end before being laughed out of town. Did they have enough room for the cameras to get those shots if the EMM was in place? It looks tight.
 
I'm sure the EMM was wild, as well as the "energizers." In later episodes (e.g. Mirror, Mirror) the energizers faced each other as drawn in TMoST, but in earlier ones (The Enemy Within, The Naked Time, Court Martial, maybe Space Seed) they were shoulder-to-shoulder and facing into the Engineering space. I agree they seem fixed on the model, so maybe at some point face-to-face became their default position?

SxWiw20.jpeg
Ish9OC1.jpeg


FWIW, I will always love The Enemy Within for giving us this view of Engineering. One of the few parts of the whole set to actually have a filmable ceiling.

8nn2UFg.jpeg
 
Christopher said:
No, there are two of them and they bracket where the EMM would go. The image is reproduced here: https://forgottentrek.com/the-origi...se-within/images/Star-Trek-set-floor-plan.png

I wondered if they were supports for the EMM set, but apparently it was on stilts. I always sort of assumed they were the big machines on that side of engineering from "The Enemy Within," but the graphic shows the season 2 set configuration.
Click to expand...
Thanks for the link!
This is also the version of the setplan in which a portion of the Transporter Room (the area which has the additional scanner console) intrudes into the corridor :whistle:
 
Mytran said:
This is also the version of the setplan in which a portion of the Transporter Room (the area which has the additional scanner console) intrudes into the corridor :whistle:
Click to expand...

Yes. I assume they removed the corridor wall when filming the transporter alcove and struck the alcove when filming in that part of the corridor.
 
Christopher said:
Yes. I assume they removed the corridor wall when filming the transporter alcove and struck the alcove when filming in that part of the corridor.
Click to expand...
Yep, classic TV magic! :whistle:

That section was redesigned in S3 so that it actually fitted inside the Transport Room
 
Mytran said:
Yep, classic TV magic! :whistle:
Click to expand...

Until I figured that out, I sometimes wondered if that protrusion into the corridor corresponded to some wall fixture on the other side, although if I'd thought it through, I would've realized that the red and yellow wall attachments we saw in the corridors were too small to mask an entire floor-to-ceiling protrusion.
 
Mytran said:
Yep, classic TV magic! :whistle:

That section was redesigned in S3 so that it actually fitted inside the Transport Room
Click to expand...

Interesting. During the time when the transporter room didn't fit inside were there any scenes filmed where crewman walked by where the set would have protruded (like right before going to or leaving the transporter room)? Or did the production avoid filming that part of the corridor when the transporter room was involved?
 
blssdwlf said:
Interesting. During the time when the transporter room didn't fit inside were there any scenes filmed where crewman walked by where the set would have protruded (like right before going to or leaving the transporter room)? Or did the production avoid filming that part of the corridor when the transporter room was involved?
Click to expand...
They were pretty good at avoiding it for the most part!
The closest we got was in Mirror Mirror where we see an interior shot of the Transporter Room, including the scanner alcove...

...to Kirk & pals leaving through the doors...

...to an edit cut, showing them leaving the "Transporter Section"...

...and in a continuous shot they walk down to the corner which not only DOESN'T show the scanner alcove protruding into the corridor, but also has a set of red doors which can't possibly lead anywhere!

If we want to take the visuals literally then I suppose it could be argued that on the MU Enterprise the "Transporter Section" doors don't open up directly into the Transporter Room but instead lead to a security corridor, which in turn provides access to the T-Room.
Plenty of room for scanner aloves and red doors galore! :devil:
 
Mytran said:
They were pretty good at avoiding it for the most part!
The closest we got was in Mirror Mirror where we see an interior shot of the Transporter Room, including the scanner alcove...

...to Kirk & pals leaving through the doors...

...to an edit cut, showing them leaving the "Transporter Section"...

...and in a continuous shot they walk down to the corner which not only DOESN'T show the scanner alcove protruding into the corridor, but also has a set of red doors which can't possibly lead anywhere!

If we want to take the visuals literally then I suppose it could be argued that on the MU Enterprise the "Transporter Section" doors don't open up directly into the Transporter Room but instead lead to a security corridor, which in turn provides access to the T-Room.
Plenty of room for scanner aloves and red doors galore! :devil:
Click to expand...

Hmm, interesting. The corridor they exit into can only be the one outside the transporter room set, so the red door is where the alcove protrusion would have been when it was assembled. The protrusion shown on the set diagram is a little wider than a door would be, so I guess the whole panel including the door would be wild; they couldn't just open the door and stick the alcove through it.

Aside from the bridge, I think that the wild (removable) walls and set components on the diagram are denoted by having curved lines around them, like (|). That one by the quarters set must be where they put in the small corridor mentioned earlier in the thread. It's interesting how the sickbay complex is set up so all four rooms can be open to the camera, much like the design for a sitcom set (something Desilu's designers would've had a lot of experience with).
 
Mytran said:
They were pretty good at avoiding it for the most part!
The closest we got was in Mirror Mirror where we see an interior shot of the Transporter Room, including the scanner alcove...

...to Kirk & pals leaving through the doors...

...to an edit cut, showing them leaving the "Transporter Section"...

...and in a continuous shot they walk down to the corner which not only DOESN'T show the scanner alcove protruding into the corridor, but also has a set of red doors which can't possibly lead anywhere!

If we want to take the visuals literally then I suppose it could be argued that on the MU Enterprise the "Transporter Section" doors don't open up directly into the Transporter Room but instead lead to a security corridor, which in turn provides access to the T-Room.
Plenty of room for scanner aloves and red doors galore! :devil:
Click to expand...

I have really got to study these screencaps more. "Transporter Section"— fascinating!! I have watched "Mirror, Mirror" something like 50 times and never once noticed that sign. Thank you for something new! Was that ever used in any other episode?
 
Mytran said:
They were pretty good at avoiding it for the most part!
The closest we got was in Mirror Mirror where we see an interior shot of the Transporter Room, including the scanner alcove...

...to Kirk & pals leaving through the doors...

...to an edit cut, showing them leaving the "Transporter Section"...

...and in a continuous shot they walk down to the corner which not only DOESN'T show the scanner alcove protruding into the corridor, but also has a set of red doors which can't possibly lead anywhere!

If we want to take the visuals literally then I suppose it could be argued that on the MU Enterprise the "Transporter Section" doors don't open up directly into the Transporter Room but instead lead to a security corridor, which in turn provides access to the T-Room.
Plenty of room for scanner aloves and red doors galore! :devil:
Click to expand...

Damn, good find Mytran! I wonder if maybe the production crew could have altered the angles of the scanner wall to fit into the room for that episode.
 
blssdwlf said:
Damn, good find Mytran! I wonder if maybe the production crew could have altered the angles of the scanner wall to fit into the room for that episode.
Click to expand...

Probably not, since it wasn't a continuous shot. There was a cut between the transporter room scene and the corridor scene, as Mytran said. They were filmed separately, possibly even on different days for all we know, so presumably they would've taken down the alcove walls and put in the corridor door panel between the two different setups (or vice-versa if they filmed the corridor shot first).
 
Christopher said:
They were filmed separately, possibly even on different days for all we know
Click to expand...
And almost certainly out-of-sequence. Just about the only television that's shot in-sequence is multi-camera, usually with an audience. And even that is often out-of-sequence, especially if multiple sets are involved.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
And almost certainly out-of-sequence. Just about the only television that's shot in-sequence is multi-camera, usually with an audience. And even that is often out-of-sequence, especially if multiple sets are involved.
Click to expand...

Right. They would've shot all the transporter room scenes together, and a fair amount of stuff in "Mirror, Mirror" is in the transporter room, with this scene being early in the episode. So that makes it likely that the corridor scenes were shot on a different day.
 
I think my first exposure to out-of-sequence shooting was in either TMOST, or in one of DG's two nonfiction ST books from roughly the same era. And it blew my mind at first, and then I quickly realized that it made perfect sense.

Regarding "hiding things well," if I didn't already know that the bridge was built in wild segments, I'd have probably never noticed edges of consoles showing up in shots, where they wouldn't be visible if it were the real bridge of a real starship.

FJS managed to fudge the floor plans so that they would work in real life. Which probably took some effort. Much the same as it wasn't a trivial exercise for the late John Armstrong to make the cafe from Edward Hopper's Nighthawks work in three dimensions on his O-scale model train layout.
 
hbquikcomjamesl said:
Regarding "hiding things well," if I didn't already know that the bridge was built in wild segments, I'd have probably never noticed edges of consoles showing up in shots, where they wouldn't be visible if it were the real bridge of a real starship.
Click to expand...

Have you seen this week's Strange New Worlds "documentary" episode? The "console camera" shots of Spock have a protruding edge obstructing the left side of the image, which was almost certainly a deliberate nod to the TOS shots where you could see the edge of Spock's station.
 
Phaser Two said:
I have really got to study these screencaps more. "Transporter Section"— fascinating!! I have watched "Mirror, Mirror" something like 50 times and never once noticed that sign. Thank you for something new! Was that ever used in any other episode?
Click to expand...
Yes, it was the standard designation - the label "Transporter Room" was never used or seen.
It can be glimpsed in several episodes but here's another clean appearance from This Side Of Paradise
And the pointer-sign version from Journey To Babel

blssdwlf said:
Damn, good find Mytran! I wonder if maybe the production crew could have altered the angles of the scanner wall to fit into the room for that episode.
Click to expand...
If they had, it would have looked more like this:
YWwQw0x.jpg
 
Last edited:
Mytran said:
Yes, it was the standard designation - the label "Transporter Room" was never used or seen.
It can be glimpsed in several episodes but here's another clean appearance from This Side Of Paradise
Click to expand...

Nice—thanks. Although I've enjoyed the adoring pan to the "Environmental Engineering" sign in "Wink of an Eye" for about four or five decades, in watching some episodes I'm clearly focusing on something else; that "Transporter Section" sign in "This Side of Paradise" is pretty dang obvious! :rommie:
 
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