What the heck is that?

...and why haven't I seen it before?

 

Wat

That's always been there fool

 

It's not on the Enterprise model I put together and painted...

 

IIRC, the Franz Joseph blueprints called it a navigational beacon for the shuttlecraft landing bay.

You milage may vary.

 

Is this thread for real?

Sorry having a real bad day, and while this might not be the icing on the cake , it certainly counts for sprinkle, WTF man, did you watch the show?

The model kits are always notoriously bad unless you re-work them yourself

 

The AMT kits I've assembled over the years all have that, though it is a small pimple molded into the plastic (rather than coming as a separate clear or translucent piece like the two saucer domes).

In ENT, we saw the Defiant fire her aft phasers from there. ()

 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Lp2HBY7tO2U

That is the model I had... no dome there... the guy appears to put a decal in its place.

Still, I'm somewhat ashamed to say I never noticed it in twenty years of watching Trek! It does look much larger than it is in the above screenshot due to perspective, though.

 

I believe Mandel and Drexler in their 'Enterprise Officers Manual' made it a control cab for the shuttlebay, complete with a little chair that looked suspiciously like Kirk's captain's chair.

 

Don't worry about it. It's very possible to be a Trek fan and not obsess about every square micron of the surface of the Enterprise.

 

"You okay back there,Artoo?"

 

...Which is perfectly consistent with how the forward phasers fire from the bigger dome on the saucer. (Or, if we go the full ENT route, they fire from tiny retractable turrets right next to the domes.)

If the saucer domes are sensor covers, then we might say that this aft dome fills the exact same function, covering an obvious blind spot. They could even be dedicated fire control sensors, always placed close to the weapons emplacements. The yellow circle at the very bottom of the ship could be a fourth radome, covering the final blind spot but not protruding as much as the three others do.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Yes (though how you'd actually get up there is something of a mystery):



FalTorPan's avatar makes that remind me of Dark Star's dome:

 

Hmm. Why is that "landing target" on the underside of the fantail..?

Timo Saloniemi

 

In 15 years I've never notcied that either. :S

 

In that Enterprise Tour (or whatever it's called) on the Season 1 HD-DVD (and BD, per reviews), it's shown as an observation port for the shuttle bay.

Doug

PS Not to pile on, I remember seeing it as far back as I can...remember...

 

You can see the dome on the original 11 foot model. Here it is after it arrived at the Smithsonian--seen from the unfinished port side:



With a close-up of the dome:



A close-up reveals its greenish-hue:



And taking it apart, you find that it's a clear dome with a greenish underlying translucent base with three plexiglass rods of varying lengths and colors

 

I know this is as sensitive topic and we all don't like to talk about it but that is the Enterprises' Prolapsed Rectum.

 

Interesting. It's like the pegs were inserted to mimic a person or some instrumentation inside.

How one would get inside there is not that much of a mystery. Beam-in and beam-out. And of course, there must be an emergency escape hatch to bail out in case the transporter system is off-line.

 

It's a Tramp Stamp.

She'll regret getting it, when she's older.

Joe, appreciates the target

 

In "IaMD(ENT)" that same translucent white canopy/bubble is where the USS Defiant's aft phaser bank is located. Makes one wonder if that is the TOS Enterprise's aft phaser emitter as well and we just never got to see it used on the show.