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

[BK613]

Maybe a little sappy, but the timeline fits; and why else rename the shuttlecraft out of the blue three years after it was destroyed? It's nice to give it meaning and a backstory in my head-canon.

My head-canon is a lot simpler when it comes to shuttlecraft: They are not commissioned vessels and whatever name they carry is unofficial, meaning you can slap the name 'Galileo' on as many replacement shuttlecraft as you want.

My analogy for this is US Navy ship's boats, which do have a unique identifier similar to an aircraft's tail number*, but are always painted with markings reflecting the ship they are currently assigned to.
And if one were damaged in a way that the ship's crew couldn't repair—as was the case once in 1983 —it was replaced with another which was subsequently painted the same as the first.

*(embedded in the hull, the format was boat length, type of boat, fiscal year of purchase contract, unit number. So 26MW7322 would be the 22nd twenty-six foot Motor Whaleboat authorized by the 1973 purchase contract)

 

[Christopher]

I really doubt the bridge turbolift was moved around, mostly because the (vast?) majority of bridge scenes, excluding brief inserts like those showing Kirk/Spock/Scotty/Sulu/Uhura communicating with someone off the ship, involve someone entering or leaving. I bet that remained in place, and the cool TMOST pic supports that. I guess they had two in the corridor complex and at least one of them had wild walls.

Except, as I think I mentioned, all the scenes on a given set are shot together in one block. So they'd shoot all the bridge scenes in an episode over the course of maybe 2-3 days, then they'd move all the lights and cameras and sound gear and everything over to the next set and shoot all the scenes there the following day, and so on. So there's no reason they couldn't have struck the turbolift from the bridge set when they were done there and moved it over to the corridor set along with all the other equipment they moved to prepare for the scenes taking place there. After all, once they were done shooting on the bridge, they wouldn't need to go back there until the next episode. (Even if they needed to do reshoots, they'd probably tack them onto the next episode's shooting schedule so they could take advantage of the bridge setup already in place.)

I love the Burke chairs so much that I really hope they didn't drag them around the set. I like to think they had about 50 total and left them largely in place.

Huh? Those are pretty small, lightweight chairs -- 16.48 pounds without the raised backs, according to the Internet. They obviously would've needed to move them around a lot on the bridge and briefing room sets just to get them out of the cameras' way when they changed angles, or when they redressed the briefing room to represent a different location.

It's the nature of set pieces and furnishings that they get moved around routinely. As I mentioned, even the helm console and command chair on the bridge were sometimes rotated around to fake a different camera angle without changing the lighting setup, or moved out of the way so that the camera could occupy the lower deck to get a close angle on one of the side stations. I can't imagine why you think it's bad or difficult for set furnishings to get moved frequently. They're designed that way. Most TV and movie sets are very flimsy, their solidity an illusion.

 

[Maurice]

After all, once they were done shooting on the bridge, they wouldn't need to go back there until the next episode. (Even if they needed to do reshoots, they'd probably tack them onto the next episode's shooting schedule so they could take advantage of the bridge setup already in place.)

That's the exception, not the rule (see reshoots for "The Naked Time" as such an exception, and that was 6 weeks after that episode wrapped), because the directors switch and you're eating into their episode's time/budget. Generally, if you need a pickup, you'd go back and relight the set and shoot before you wrap production. The big issue is that crew moves take time and you easily get into overtime if you have to go back and redo setups you hadn't scheduled.

 

[BK613]

It's not very accurate. For instance, the 4" model was never used on screen.

Huh? The linked article referred to the metallic E that Sylvia creates in "Catspaw" as the 4" model:

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/screencaps/season2/201-catspaw/catspaw-br-484.jpg

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/screencaps/season2/201-catspaw/catspaw-br-491.jpg

Which was also used in these kind of shots with the Doomsday Machine:

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/screencaps/season2/206-doomsday-machine/doomsday-machine-br-443.jpg

 

[Christopher]

That's the exception, not the rule (see reshoots for "The Naked Time" as such an exception, and that was 6 weeks after that episode wrapped), because the directors switch and you're eating into their episode's time/budget. Generally, if you need a pickup, you'd go back and relight the set and shoot before you wrap production. The big issue is that crew moves take time and you easily get into overtime if you have to go back and redo setups you hadn't scheduled.

Okay, I wasn't sure about that last sentence and should've just left it off. The point is that it's an exception, and the normal practice is that you wouldn't go back and forth between the bridge and other sets, so there'd be no need to leave the turbolift in place. They might have had two lifts, as I said, but they wouldn't have needed to.