Mirror Enterprise

[Mike Have-Not]

I just noticed that in the "TOS-R" 'Mirror, Mirror' the 'Cage' version of the Enterprise is used in the mirror universe.

The first thing that caught my eye was the larger deflector dish. I waited for the rear view and, lo and behold, grills instead of spheres on the afts of the nacelles.

Cap it all off with crimson and spired forward nacelle domes.

Interesting idea...

I guess one could assume that the the Terran Empire is not as refit-happy as the UFP :-p

 

[Wingsley]

TOS-R "Mirror, Mirror" would also seem to invalidate the notion that Evil Empire starships were descended from the captured U.S.S. Defiant (ENT's "In a Mirror, Darkly"), which was obviously of a later vintage.

 

[DonIago]

Not necessarily, if the Imperial fleet wasn't entirely able to replicate Defiant's technology and had to make do with what they had.

 

[7thsealord]

Still had a heckuva of head start to get up to speed with the new technology. I think it more likely that they hadn't built or fitted ISS Enterprise up to the same standards.

Also, it seems plausible to me that the Empire would not allow any one ship, or any grouping thereof, to get TOO far ahead of the rest of the Fleet, technology-wise. For that matter, the Emperor/Empress probably wouldn't want any one ship to be too close to matching the Imperial flagship - which MIGHT be an aged and maybe very heavily altered 'Defiant' or whatever replaced her.

Alternatively, given how nasty shipboard life is in the Imperial Fleet, wanna think about what their Starbase bureaucracy is like, or what may be involved in getting a refit?

 

[T'Girl]

the Terran Empire is not as refit-happy as the UFP

If it ain't broken' don't fix it.

 

[GSchnitzer]

I just noticed that in the "TOS-R" 'Mirror, Mirror' the 'Cage' version of the Enterprise is used in the mirror universe.

The first thing that caught my eye was the larger deflector dish. I waited for the rear view and, lo and behold, grills instead of spheres on the afts of the nacelles.

Cap it all off with crimson and spired forward nacelle domes.

Interesting idea...

I guess one could assume that the the Terran Empire is not as refit-happy as the UFP :-p

I guess you never noticed that in the original (non-TOS-R) version of "Mirror, Mirror" used the old "Cage" version of the Enterprise. It has the larger deflector dish, the spired nacelle caps and the real high bridge dome.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

Is that shot of the Enterprise used anywhere in the series?

 

[Timo]

Nope - this is the only time outside the pilot shots that we would see the high bridge dome (although other shots of this model or the "Where No Man" version, from other angles, reveal other detail at odds with the regular series model).

Whether we can speak of "the Mirror universe" is somewhat debatable; DS9 established a series of Mirror universes that each closely matched the specs of the regular universe that was "accessing" the Mirror realm, but differed from each other. Sometimes the evil Alliance had cloaks, sometimes it did not... The process of "accessing" the Mirror world might well be coarse enough that a series of realms would be visited, similar in some ways but differing in details. Perhaps the Mirror Empire of "Mirror, Mirror" happened to capture a Constitution class vessels of these older specifications, rather than the Defiant, and never reached the tech proficiency to improve upon it?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gary7]

Curious. I can see putting back on the spikes to help with showing a difference... but a taller bridge? Was it a modular part that could be swapped in/out without too much difficulty?

 

[GSchnitzer]

Curious. I can see putting back on the spikes to help with showing a difference... but a taller bridge? Was it a modular part that could be swapped in/out without too much difficulty?

They didn't restore a model to an earlier "Cage" version for "Mirror, Mirror;" they used old footage of the model that was shot years earlier before the model was changed from its earlier "Cage" version.

 

[F. King Daniel]

You know you're in the evil universe when they orbit the planet the other way.

Also: Yeah, unless the Defiant in "In a Mirror, Darkly" was lost or destroyed before the Empire could learn from it, them having (vitually) identical ships to their Prime counterparts 100 years later makes no sense.

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

Curious. I can see putting back on the spikes to help with showing a difference... but a taller bridge? Was it a modular part that could be swapped in/out without too much difficulty?

They didn't restore a model to an earlier "Cage" version for "Mirror, Mirror;" they used old footage of the model that was shot years earlier before the model was changed from its earlier "Cage" version.

Must be one of the few shots where the left hand side of the ship can be seen?

 

[GSchnitzer]

Curious. I can see putting back on the spikes to help with showing a difference... but a taller bridge? Was it a modular part that could be swapped in/out without too much difficulty?

They didn't restore a model to an earlier "Cage" version for "Mirror, Mirror;" they used old footage of the model that was shot years earlier before the model was changed from its earlier "Cage" version.

Must be one of the few shots where the left hand side of the ship can be seen?

Yes--there aren't that many "left side of the ship" shots. ("Shore Leave" comes to mind, however.)

 

[Captain Rob]

Nope. It's a flopped shot. You're actually seeing the right side of the ship. The giveaway is the green nav light on the saucer top edge. It's the right side nav light. A very common technique for shooting models with only one side finished. Even done for the full-size mockup built for Titanic. Includes reversed signage and lettering to make everything read right.

 

[GSchnitzer]

Nope. It's a flopped shot. You're actually seeing the right side of the ship. The giveaway is the green nav light on the saucer top edge. It's the right side nav light. A very common technique for shooting models with only one side finished. Even done for the full-size mockup built for Titanic. Includes reversed signage and lettering to make everything read right.

Yes, they showed the "left side of the *ship*" by flopping the shot; I didn't mean to imply that they showed the left side of the *model*.

Here's the shot from "Shore Leave"--and you can even see from the mirror-image lettering on the warp nacelles that the footage was simply flipped:

But why does the ship fly from right to left and why do we see the left side of the ship? Why did they flip the footage? Well, let's flip the shot to a "non-flipped" direction:

Do you see it? Do you see why they had to flip the footage to create the only episode besides "Mirror, Mirror" with a right-to-left orbit?

It's a little hard to make out, so here's a little bit of help if you need it:

The North American geographical features are clearly visible. It would appear that the shot was simply a re-use of footage from the episode "Miri"--with the planet colorized a bit to make it more alien. Nevertheless, as the Enterprise visits this strange alien planet, it wouldn't do to have all the planetary features look exactly like Earth. So it had to be flipped so the features wouldn't be immediately recognizable.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I just noticed that in the "TOS-R" 'Mirror, Mirror' the 'Cage' version of the Enterprise is used in the mirror universe.

The first thing that caught my eye was the larger deflector dish. I waited for the rear view and, lo and behold, grills instead of spheres on the afts of the nacelles.

Cap it all off with crimson and spired forward nacelle domes.

Interesting idea...

I guess one could assume that the the Terran Empire is not as refit-happy as the UFP :-p

I guess you never noticed that in the original (non-TOS-R) version of "Mirror, Mirror" used the old "Cage" version of the Enterprise. It has the larger deflector dish, the spired nacelle caps and the real high bridge dome.

It's an unused shot from "Where No Man Has Gone Before", not "The Cage".

The model didn't have any lights for "The Cage".

 

[Mike Have-Not]

I just noticed that in the "TOS-R" 'Mirror, Mirror' the 'Cage' version of the Enterprise is used in the mirror universe.

The first thing that caught my eye was the larger deflector dish. I waited for the rear view and, lo and behold, grills instead of spheres on the afts of the nacelles.

Cap it all off with crimson and spired forward nacelle domes.

Interesting idea...

I guess one could assume that the the Terran Empire is not as refit-happy as the UFP :-p

I guess you never noticed that in the original (non-TOS-R) version of "Mirror, Mirror" used the old "Cage" version of the Enterprise. It has the larger deflector dish, the spired nacelle caps and the real high bridge dome.

Grr. You are right. I never did notice that. I just happen to have the "TOS-R" season 2 dvd set checked out from the library at the moment. I'd like to think I'd have noticed if i'd been watching the original version, too :-D

 

[EmperorTiberius]

You know you're in the evil universe when they orbit the planet the other way.

.

btw, nice find GSchnitzer

 

[TigerOfDarkness]

Nope. It's a flopped shot. You're actually seeing the right side of the ship. The giveaway is the green nav light on the saucer top edge. It's the right side nav light. A very common technique for shooting models with only one side finished. Even done for the full-size mockup built for Titanic. Includes reversed signage and lettering to make everything read right.

Yes, they showed the "left side of the *ship*" by flopping the shot; I didn't mean to imply that they showed the left side of the *model*.

Here's the shot from "Shore Leave"--and you can even see from the mirror-image lettering on the warp nacelles that the footage was simply flipped:

But why does the ship fly from right to left and why do we see the left side of the ship? Why did they flip the footage? Well, let's flip the shot to a "non-flipped" direction:

Do you see it? Do you see why they had to flip the footage to create the only episode besides "Mirror, Mirror" with a right-to-left orbit?

It's a little hard to make out, so here's a little bit of help if you need it:

The North American geographical features are clearly visible. It would appear that the shot was simply a re-use of footage from the episode "Miri"--with the planet colorized a bit to make it more alien. Nevertheless, as the Enterprise visits this strange alien planet, it wouldn't do to have all the planetary features look exactly like Earth. So it had to be flipped so the features wouldn't be immediately recognizable.

The interesting thing is that if you look a few frames further into that shot from the original Mirror Mirror, the NCC 1701 on the nacelle is quite clearly the right way round, so did they reverse the decals?

 

[GSchnitzer]

Nope. It's a flopped shot. You're actually seeing the right side of the ship. The giveaway is the green nav light on the saucer top edge. It's the right side nav light. A very common technique for shooting models with only one side finished. Even done for the full-size mockup built for Titanic. Includes reversed signage and lettering to make everything read right.

Yes, they showed the "left side of the *ship*" by flopping the shot; I didn't mean to imply that they showed the left side of the *model*.

Here's the shot from "Shore Leave"--and you can even see from the mirror-image lettering on the warp nacelles that the footage was simply flipped:

But why does the ship fly from right to left and why do we see the left side of the ship? Why did they flip the footage? Well, let's flip the shot to a "non-flipped" direction:

Do you see it? Do you see why they had to flip the footage to create the only episode besides "Mirror, Mirror" with a right-to-left orbit?

It's a little hard to make out, so here's a little bit of help if you need it:

The North American geographical features are clearly visible. It would appear that the shot was simply a re-use of footage from the episode "Miri"--with the planet colorized a bit to make it more alien. Nevertheless, as the Enterprise visits this strange alien planet, it wouldn't do to have all the planetary features look exactly like Earth. So it had to be flipped so the features wouldn't be immediately recognizable.

The interesting thing is that if you look a few frames further into that shot from the original Mirror Mirror, the NCC 1701 on the nacelle is quite clearly the right way round, so did they reverse the decals?

Yes, the decals were reversed to get the "port" side.