Inspired Enterprise -- new behind-the-scenes book about TOS

[Christopher]

I've been reading the new nonfiction book Inspired Enterprise: How NASA, the Smithsonian, and the Aerospace Community Helped Launch STAR TREK by Glen E. Swanson, whom I met briefly when we were both guests at the Shore Leave Convention this past July. It's an interesting look behind the scenes at the people who consulted for TOS like Harvey P. Lynn and Kellam de Forest, at Stephen E. Whitfield and AMT's relationship with the series, at NASA's and the Smithsonian's relationship with the show and the models, and so on. While the book could've used a more thorough copyedit before publication, and the author occasionally indulges in more speculation than I'd prefer, I've learned some new things from it, and it's even forced me to rethink a couple of my assumptions.

First off, I've always been annoyed by seeing people refer to the shuttlecraft Galileo as "the Galileo 7," because I took "The Galileo Seven" as a reference to the seven people aboard the Galileo in the episode; plus, of course, the two replacement Galileos used later in the series were not called 8 and 9, although the one in "The Way to Eden" was labeled Galileo II despite being the third one of that name. But on p. 59, the book quotes a pair of 1966 letters in which Desilu's attorney Ed Perlstein negotiated with AMT to build the interior and exterior mockups of the shuttlecraft in exchange for the model kit rights, and Perlstein refers to the shuttle as "the Galileo Seven." I suppose it's possible that he made the same mistake so many other people have, confusing the title of the episode with the name of the vehicle, but he was closer to the source than most. So maybe that actually was the intention, that the episode title had a double meaning. (It was NCC-1701/7, after all.)

Second, I've believed for a while now that when Matt Jefferies designed the Klingon battlecruiser, he intended the circular feature at the lower portion of the forward bulb, which everything from TAS and TMP onward has depicted as a torpedo tube, to be the ship's navigational deflector dish instead. (I think the '70s fan blueprints interpreted it that way.) But on p. 64 of the book, there's an excerpt from D.C. Fontana's article "The Klingons Are Coming!" in issue 2 of Ruth Berman's fanzine Inside Star Trek, and when Fontana describes the head of the ship, she says, "On the underside of this area facing forward is a combined sensor-weapon device." So I guess it really was intended to be a weapon all along. (Making something both a sensor and a weapon seems overcomplicated, but certainly in character for Klingons.)

So I thought I'd create this thread in case anyone else reading the book spots any interesting details they want to talk about. I was initially going to post this in Trek Tech, but since it's more about the production of the show than the in-universe tech, I figured it might go better in the TOS forum.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

Definitely in character for Klingons to have the torpedo tubes, forward sensor array, and navigational deflector in one convenient location. I will note that at least the original version of the AMT model kit *does* have a spike in the center of the part, which suggests the spike on certain types of dish antennas.

At any rate, B&N has it for $35 (list, online only); Amazon has it for $27.47; Alibris has it (new) for $24.76 from one vendor, $24.77 from another, up to above list price, but probably not with free shipping available from any of them.

 

[Christopher]

I can see how an active sensor could also function as a weapon. Lasers and microwave beams can be used to bounce off things and get readings about them, but both can be destructive if they're intensified enough. But the weapons we've seen fired from the "mouth" of the Klingon battlecruiser are always torpedoes or plasma bolts rather than beams, so it's hard to see how that could be combined with a sensor mechanism. We've seen that a torpedo launcher can also be a probe launcher, but that's not the same as the weapon being a sensor in and of itself.

 

[TrickyDickie]

Here is the dreadnought, from the tech manual:

Being that the dreadnought was never shown in the series, so is not canon but just an extrapolation, it begs the question of what all was contained in one unit on the heavy cruisers....main sensor array, navigational deflector, tractor beam....???

 

[knightgrace]

I remember the January 12th, 2009 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine having a statement: the sensor is the weapon, and the the weapon is the sensor. This is reference to the, at the time, new Pased Array Laser, at one power level it is the final sensor, for aiming, at another level of power destruction...all within a microsecond.

In case you are wondering, the guy who invented hated Star Trek, and when he realized that he had just invented the Phaser, he did a face palm...

 

[Christopher]

I remember the January 12th, 2009 issue of Aviation Week and Space Technology magazine having a statement: the sensor is the weapon, and the the weapon is the sensor. This is reference to the, at the time, new Pased Array Laser, at one power level it is the final sensor, for aiming, at another level of power destruction...all within a microsecond.

That reminds me of something I posited about phasers in one of my Trek novels. In real life, "stun" (reduced lethality) weapons are sometimes fatal anyway because different people have different susceptibilities based on size, health, metabolism, random situational factors, etc. But phasers on stun have always been shown to be reliably nonlethal. So I posited that a phaser on stun uses instantaneous sensor feedback through the beam to calibrate the beam intensity to the target's metabolism and so forth, so it doesn't kill them by accident (or at least is less likely to).

Of course, this wouldn't work in a wide-field stun like we saw in "The Return of the Archons" or "A Piece of the Action." But I suggested in my novel that that was the reason we hardly ever saw wide-field stun used after TOS, because it was phased out as unreliable. (The only time I can think of it being used post-TOS was in VGR: "Cathexis," where it was portrayed more as a beam darting swiftly between different targets rather than a field of energy. Though it may have been used in one of the streaming shows.)

 

[ZapBrannigan]

First off, I've always been annoyed by seeing people refer to the shuttlecraft Galileo as "the Galileo 7," because I took "The Galileo Seven" as a reference to the seven people aboard the Galileo in the episode;

I think so (know so), too. "The Galileo Seven" was named in the same format as The Magnificent Seven (1960). And the usage occurs in non-fiction once in a while: two years after the episode, there was a "Chicago Seven," who were tried for inciting political rioting. And it doesn't have to be seven for the form to crop up. It's a known thing.

So maybe that actually was the intention, that the episode title had a double meaning. (It was NCC-1701/7, after all.

I would speculate that the art department who put number decals on the shuttlecraft made the same assumption, that the episode title was meant to ID the spacecraft. And they got it wrong in a way that did no harm. But no, it would be Matt Jefferies in charge of that, and he was a pretty sharp guy. So I don't know.

 

[TrickyDickie]

That reminds me of something I posited about phasers in one of my Trek novels. In real life, "stun" (reduced lethality) weapons are sometimes fatal anyway because different people have different susceptibilities based on size, health, metabolism, random situational factors, etc. But phasers on stun have always been shown to be reliably nonlethal. So I posited that a phaser on stun uses instantaneous sensor feedback through the beam to calibrate the beam intensity to the target's metabolism and so forth, so it doesn't kill them by accident (or at least is less likely to).

Of course, this wouldn't work in a wide-field stun like we saw in "The Return of the Archons" or "A Piece of the Action." But I suggested in my novel that that was the reason we hardly ever saw wide-field stun used after TOS, because it was phased out as unreliable. (The only time I can think of it being used post-TOS was in VGR: "Cathexis," where it was portrayed more as a beam darting swiftly between different targets rather than a field of energy. Though it may have been used in one of the streaming shows.)

Susceptibility is a very good point....holds true for tasers, mace, pepper spray, etc. All depends on the individual body.

The wide-field starship phaser beam on lower power....I figured that there was something in the concept of photons sometimes acting as particles and sometimes as waves and that there were limits to what could be depicted on tv, especially with budgeting for special effects.

My....'head-canon' for the shuttles is this: The ship had six shuttles:

Columbus
Einstein
Da Vinci
Copernicus
Newton
Kelvin

Galileo was a replacement for Kelvin, which was destroyed in an incident that killed a bunch of redshirts.

 

[publiusr]

I thought the crew of the shuttlecraft Kelvin suffered heat death

THE SPACE REVIEW also has a nice write-up of this book. The author has a few pages at culttvman about the history of the AMT 1/650 Enterprise model.

I told my local library in Pinson Alabama about this book--now in its circulation.

I am currently reading the local library's edition. (Dwayne Day reported the book nearly sold out a month ago--like the initial AMTs)

On page 61 of chapter3 we read about AMT's Bryce Russell's August 11, 1967 letter to Gene Roddenberry.

Here is a quote about AMT offering ideas:
"We should consider making the 'Klingon' ship a three-way type of kit--possibly a freighter, transport and fighter."

Footnote 28-

This was--I think--before the 'D-7' of MJ.

The closest thing to such a modular design was the Airfix Starcruiser1 about a decade later, as per the 1999 Catacombs site and the article "Christmas Morning 1979" over at 2warpstoneptune.com

That was Martin Bower's design however--I think.

I wonder if there was any connection...preliminary art, etc.

The reason I ask is that the book confirms that there were multiple toolings of the 1/650 Enterprise done...there wasn't just one replaced with the steel one with the more bluff forward section to the B/C deck.

Could one of the toolings have been sent to Aurora, helping establish a connection to the UK with some concept cross-pollination?

You would need multiple toolings to sell a million per year.

Might there have been only one steel replacement tooling after everything died down a bit?

I seem to remember a video where bags of models (the Vor'Cha IIRC) minus boxes are stored.

Might it be that extras of the first pressings are in later box-art, that usually contain steel mold offerings?

Where are these other molds?

This might explain some later fixes if there wasn't just one mold you would be loathe to modify.

 

[Christopher]

The wide-field starship phaser beam on lower power....I figured that there was something in the concept of photons sometimes acting as particles and sometimes as waves and that there were limits to what could be depicted on tv, especially with budgeting for special effects.

A photon beam is just a laser -- or, if not coherent, a flashlight. Phasers are something else. (On p. 35, there's a quote of a Harvey P. Lynn memo suggesting that Roddenberry change the name of the "lasers" from "The Cage" to something else, since lasers were only a few years old at the time and Lynn figured the weapons in the show had to be something more advanced.) Per the TNG Tech Manual, they're particle beams made up of fictional particles called nadions.

 

[TrickyDickie]

A photon beam is just a laser -- or, if not coherent, a flashlight. Phasers are something else. (On p. 35, there's a quote of a Harvey P. Lynn memo suggesting that Roddenberry change the name of the "lasers" from "The Cage" to something else, since lasers were only a few years old at the time and Lynn figured the weapons in the show had to be something more advanced.) Per the TNG Tech Manual, they're particle beams made up of fictional particles called nadions.

Thanks. Here and there, over the years, various people had said that nadions were an exotic form of photons.

Here is the long of it:

The word ‘phaser' is an acronym, standing for PHASed Energy Rectification in reference to the process of changing the stored energy of the power cell to the output of the phaser itself.

The weapon relies on a process called the rapid nadion effect, nadions being (fictional) subatomic particles that possess properties related to high speed interactions within atomic nuclei, among which is the ability to liberate and transfer the strong nuclear force within a specific class of superconducting crystals called ‘fushigi-no-umi'.

A standard phaser is basically made up of a sarium krellide power cell, three interconnected control modules - the beam control assembly, safety interlock and subspace transceiver array - the prefire chamber (where the rapid nadion effect occurs) and the emitter crystal. The beam control assembly is the part of the phaser responsible for controlling the beam with and intensity as well as the actual firing of the weapon. The safety interlock provides functions for safing a phaser and allowing for personalisation of a phaser to limit use to authorised individuals only. The subspace transceiver array is part of the shipboard safety system, ensuring that, under normal circumstances, phasers cannot be fired at a setting above level 3 (maximum stun) without overrides as well as providing targeting systems and sensors for longer range operations.

When the trigger is depressed, energy from the power cell is routed via shielded conduits through the interconnected assemblies to the prefire chamber itself, where the pulse is held back by a charge barrier for a fraction of a picosecond, before passing to the emitter crystal wherein the rapid nadion effect turns the energy pulse from the power cell into a tuned phaser beam with the desired characteristics. The more power pumped into the emitter, the greater the proportion of nuclear disruption force in the final beam.

Phaser power settings range from 1 (light stun, which will put most baseline humanoid forms to sleep for around five minutes, or less in the case of resistant lifeforms) to 8 (full disruption, capable of vaporising humanoid forms) in the small type-1 phaser, with the larger type-2 and -3 weapons possessing eight further levels of disruption effects (9 to 16). A phaser rifle (the type-3) on setting 16 is quite capable of blasting a brand new cave into a mountainside (and likely bringing said mountain down round the ears of the fool who fired such a blast).

Shipboard phasers are nearly identical in operation, save for their physical design; the phaser array is unique to Starfleet, and offers a marked tactical advantage in terms of rate of fire and capacity for engaging multiple targets simultaneously; for example the main arrays on a Galaxy-class ship possess no less than two hundred individual segments, each of which can produce a beam of 5.1 megawatts. Up to twenty of these segments can combine their power inputs to produce a more powerful output beam.

Source: Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual....with thanks also to Martin Harding.

 

[David cgc]

(The only time I can think of it being used post-TOS was in VGR: "Cathexis," where it was portrayed more as a beam darting swiftly between different targets rather than a field of energy. Though it may have been used in one of the streaming shows.)

In “The Way of the Warrior,” they used phaser rifles set to wide-angle stun (I hope it was stun) to sweep for disguised Changelings in seemingly-empty rooms during the drill at the beginning of the episode.

Fixed wide-angle phasers were installed in rooms during the Changeling panic in “Homefront.”

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I would call the combination of the hull number suffix, the standard seating, and the number of crew members aboard at the start of "The Galileo Seven," to be coincidence.

But I will also note that Al Shepard's Mercury spacecraft (serial number 7) was named Freedom 7, and the "7" suffix was carried over to all succeeding Mercury spacecraft (Liberty Bell 7, Friendship 7, Aurora 7, Sigma 7, and Faith 7) in honor of the seven Mercury astronauts (only Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Shirra, and Cooper flew; Deke Slayton was grounded, because of idiopathic atrial fibrillation, and didn't make it into space until the Apollo-Soyuz mission).

 

[Christopher]

Thanks. Here and there, over the years, various people had said that nadions were an exotic form of photons.

No idea where that came from. It isn't logical, since phaser beams visibly travel slower than light (indeed, far slower than a bullet, if we take the animation effects literally). Also, the whole idea is that phasers are not simply powerful lasers, but some other futuristic principle entirely.

The TNGTM calls nadions "short-lived subatomic particles." If they're short-lived, they must be particles with mass, since any particle traveling at the speed of light would be infinitely time-dilated and essentially frozen in time.

I would call the combination of the hull number suffix, the standard seating, and the number of crew members aboard at the start of "The Galileo Seven," to be coincidence.

In-universe, sure, but I was talking about whether the writers intended the episode title to be a reference to the shuttle itself or to its occupants, or perhaps both. If it was both, then the "coincidence" would be a deliberate creation of the writers.

But I will also note that Al Shepard's Mercury spacecraft (serial number 7) was named Freedom 7, and the "7" suffix was carried over to all succeeding Mercury spacecraft (Liberty Bell 7, Friendship 7, Aurora 7, Sigma 7, and Faith 7) in honor of the seven Mercury astronauts (only Shepard, Grissom, Glenn, Carpenter, Shirra, and Cooper flew; Deke Slayton was grounded, because of idiopathic atrial fibrillation, and didn't make it into space until the Apollo-Soyuz mission).

Perhaps that was what the episode title was alluding to, then.

 

[hbquikcomjamesl]

I will also note that the AMT shuttlecraft model kit is only slightly less toylike than the AMT communicator/phaser/tricorder kit.

 

[Christopher]

I will also note that the AMT shuttlecraft model kit is only slightly less toylike than the AMT communicator/phaser/tricorder kit.

The book says that AMT didn't put out a shuttlecraft kit right away, even though the rights to it were part of the tit-for-tat deal in exchange for AMT building the shuttle for "The Galileo Seven." (Apparently they had an existing method for making full-size mockups of cars to display in trade shows and to advertise the model car kits that were their main line before the Star Trek deal. And it was their builder who reworked Matt Jefferies's more rounded, aerodynamic shuttle design into the boxy butter-dish shape that was easier to build.)

 

[TrickyDickie]

I will also note that the AMT shuttlecraft model kit is only slightly less toylike than the AMT communicator/phaser/tricorder kit.

In 1975, when I got the Exploration Set, my 8-year-old self was really ticked off that nothing was actual size.

Edit: Here's their offerings for 1975. The only one that I never bought was the UFO....they thought they could sell more of that one by linking it to Star Trek, which it had nothing to do with. They would have done better with a model of Captain Christopher's jet:

 

[korblborp]

Here is the dreadnought, from the tech manual:

Being that the dreadnought was never shown in the series, so is not canon but just an extrapolation, it begs the question of what all was contained in one unit on the heavy cruisers....main sensor array, navigational deflector, tractor beam....???

or simply that the dish was main sensors, and deflectors and tractors were different structures or unseen