A Funny Thing about Sickbay

[ZapBrannigan]

What strikes me most about the Stage 9 floor plan is that Sickbay appears to take up more than a quarter of the square footage, not counting corridors:

Star Trek Continues

Star Trek - Former Desilu Stage 9 Blueprints. U.S.S Enterprise Interior Sets. Click On Image To Magnify.

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That's an awful lot for a show that wasn't set in a hospital. It looks twice the size of the Bridge or Engineering.

If the Lab and McCoy's office were really one redress set, and same for the Exam Room and the Ward being one redress set, that would have cut Sickbay in half. They got a Ship's Theater, Phaser Control Room, a Gymnasium, and Starbase 11's Computer Center out of Engineering. They got a Chapel, a Court Room, a Scolding Room, and a Rec Room out of the Briefing Room, but Sickbay's four sets were sacred and immutable? That's nuts!

Kirk had to use his bedroom as an office to question scum like Harry Mudd and Khan Noonien Singh, which-- I get it-- is a callback to Horatio Hornblower, but the Enterprise is much bigger than the Lydia. With better planning, Kirk could have had a standing Office set that would easily double as other things, and it wouldn't have cost Desilu a cent. How did they make a mistake like that, pouring so much studio space into Sickbay?

 

[Laura Cynthia Chambers]

How many episodes featured a scene in sickbay?

I guess those beds were really heavy.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I forgot to even mention, the Briefing Room was used for the Mess, a facility seen here, here, and here. And it was a fancy dining room besides. That makes it seven different places on the ship, counting the Chapel and so forth.

 

[Maurice]

The series sickbay began as just the ward (first used in the second pilot). The examination room was added by the time they shot "Corbomite." The area later occupied by McCoy's office and part of the lab was a "swing area" where they put things like the Charlie-X room/cell. I think the lab first appeared in "Operation—Annihilate," but not in its final form, and I've never seen the set plans to show where it was erected, and I don't think we have the daily production reports to be sure what stage it was in.

For the second season, IIRC, they rejiggered the engine room and the corridor connecting to it, making the main corridor longer. McCoy's office was added for "Amok Time". My guess is they figured it and the lab would be good standing sets.

 

[Maurice]

I just noticed the Rec Room food slot is labeled "automat".

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I just noticed the Rec Room food slot is labeled "automat".

Highly appropriate. Automat was the exact 20th century equivalent.

One of my favorite lines in The Odd Couple is when Oscar gets fed up with Felix-inspired, dainty small talk from his poker buddies. "Are you listening to this? Martha and Gertrude at the automat."

 

[Doug Otte]

The series sickbay began as just the ward (first used in the second pilot). The examination room was added by the time they shot "Corbomite." The area later occupied by McCoy's office and part of the lab was a "swing area" where they put things like the Charlie-X room/cell. I think the lab first appeared in "Operation—Annihilate," but not in its final form, and I've never seen the set plans to show where it was erected, and I don't think we have the daily production reports to be sure what stage it was in.

For the second season, IIRC, they rejiggered the engine room and the corridor connecting to it, making the main corridor longer. McCoy's office was added for "Amok Time". My guess is they figured it and the lab would be good standing sets.

Very interesting. I think the Gymnasium was only used as such for Charlie X. What became of it after that?

 

[Phaser Two]

What strikes me most about the Stage 9 floor plan is that Sickbay appears to take up more than a quarter of the square footage, not counting corridors:

Star Trek Continues

Star Trek - Former Desilu Stage 9 Blueprints. U.S.S Enterprise Interior Sets. Click On Image To Magnify.

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That's an awful lot for a show that wasn't set in a hospital. It looks twice the size of the Bridge or Engineering.

If the Lab and McCoy's office were really one redress set, and same for the Exam Room and the Ward being one redress set, that would have cut Sickbay in half. They got a Ship's Theater, Phaser Control Room, a Gymnasium, and Starbase 11's Computer Center out of Engineering. They got a Chapel, a Court Room, a Scolding Room, and a Rec Room out of the Briefing Room, but Sickbay's four sets were sacred and immutable? That's nuts!

Kirk had to use his bedroom as an office to question scum like Harry Mudd and Khan Noonien Singh, which-- I get it-- is a callback to Horatio Hornblower, but the Enterprise is much bigger than the Lydia. With better planning, Kirk could have had a standing Office set that would easily double as other things, and it wouldn't have cost Desilu a cent. How did they make a mistake like that, pouring so much studio space into Sickbay?

Kirk actually questioned Khan in Khan's guest quarters, but good points. BTW the briefing room was also Environmental Engineering in "Wink of an Eye."

 

[DarrenTR1970]

I don't know how accurate this 3D rendering is, but this shows what Stage 9 looked like.

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[ZapBrannigan]

Kirk actually questioned Khan in Khan's guest quarters, but good points. BTW the briefing room was also Environmental Engineering in "Wink of an Eye."

Yeah, I misremembered Khan. Insert non-scum Captain Christopher.

And in "Wink of an Eye" it seems I was always taken in by the room's artful and busy disguise. I'm like "Oh, we never saw this set before." It would be closer to the truth to think we never didn't see it.

 

[Phaser Two]

Yeah, I misremembered Khan. Insert non-scum Captain Christopher.

And in "Wink of an Eye" it seems I was always taken in by the room's artful and busy disguise. I'm like "Oh, we never saw this set before." It would be closer to the truth to think we never didn't see it.

Me too! That was one of their best set redressings by far.

 

[Ssosmcin]

For the second season, IIRC, they rejiggered the engine room and the corridor connecting to it, making the main corridor longer. McCoy's office was added for "Amok Time". My guess is they figured it and the lab would be good standing sets.

And this is why I never waste any of my aging brainpower on making the sets work vs the shooting models or prior episodes. It was an evolving TV series that would use more available funds to add to or otherwise improve their shooting sets. Sometimes it was for specific story purposes that they could amortize over the season with reuse. Emergency Manual Monitor and Auxiliary Control were second season additions that seemed to be for specific episodes: EMM for Mirror, Mirror so McCoy and Scotty could sneak around the ISS Enterprise engine room unseen and Aux Control for The Doomsday Machine so they didn't have to worry about wrecking the bridge set for the 1017 scenes. Then they were used whenever they could later on.

The Engine room changed layouts a lot over the series to fit the needs of the stories and as the budget for the set allowed expansion. Then fans gotta jump on "Oh there's more than one GIANT ASS ENGINE ROOM" instead of "TV series making improvements as it went along." But I'm also no fun at parties.

What's really fun is seeing the 1701-A bridge change layout every single movie, after refits, without explanation.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

What's really fun is seeing the 1701-A bridge change layout every single movie, after refits, without explanation.

The off-screen fan explanation was that the Connie refits had a modular bridge deck that could be swapped out in Space Dock. It was like a capsule attached to the ship. But I wish our movies had more respect for the settings. I didn't follow Star Wars closely, but I suspect the Millennium Falcon had a consistent interior.

With regard to the Briefing Room, which sometimes played three roles in a single episode, I'm working on a comprehensive list. This might be all of it:

• Chapel (Balance of Terror, The Tholian Web)

• Hearing Room (The Menagerie, Space Seed)

• Scolding Room (The Trouble with Tribbles)

• Fancy Dining Room (Space Seed)

• Formal Reception Room (Journey to Babel)

• Mess/Rec Room (Charlie X, Conscience of the King, Naked Time, Tribbles, By Any Other Name)

• Environmental Engineering (Wink of an Eye)

 

[Mudd]

Sickbay was a more dramatically useful and flexible set than devoting one more room - "KIrk's Office" - to a place for work conversations. They carried these on successfully in their Briefing Room, the Bridge, the Ship's Brig, and, yes, Sickbay itself.

Those locations, BTW, had the dramatic advantage that any talking scene might be interrupted abruptly by other action, rather than requiring additional set-ups or cutting away.

So, an office was superfluous.

 

[David cgc]

I didn't follow Star Wars closely, but I suspect the Millennium Falcon had a consistent interior

Maybe less than you think. One of the special edition changes was cropping in tighter on scenes set in the cockpit in ESB because Lucas thought they’d made that version of the set too big and spacious and he preferred the initial, more cramped version.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

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[Maurice]

Very interesting. I think the Gymnasium was only used as such for Charlie X. What became of it after that?

On the set plan I posted, you can see it's basically built inside the engine room, the walls right up against the consoles. The engine room was first used in "The Naked Time," "The Enemy Within," which was shot just prior to "Charlie X". The phaser control room in "Balance of Terror" was built in the Engineering set area as well. The forced-perspective tubes were probably rolled off to one side so they could use the big grille between compartments of these one-off sets.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

Wouldn't Kirk just be confronting the officer's who had been in the fight on K7 in the briefing room? He's briefing them on the consequences and questioning them on what happened. Why would it need to be another room?

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Wouldn't Kirk just be confronting the officer's who had been in the fight on K7 in the briefing room? He's briefing them on the consequences and questioning them on what happened. Why would it need to be another room?

Just because the table isn't in there. I think it's meant to look like a different room. It's not a true redress, but kind of an undress.

 

[Esteban]

On the set plan I posted, you can see it's basically built inside the engine room, the walls right up against the consoles. The engine room was first used in "The Naked Time," which was shot just prior to "Charlie X". The phaser control room in "Balance of Terror" was built in the Engineering set area as well. The forced-perspective tubes were probably rolled off to one side so they could use the big grille between compartments of these one-off sets.

The engine room was first used in "The Enemy Within", two eps before "The Naked Time". Granted, it was not as fully fleshed out.