Original Enterprise design size... 180 feet?!
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
Here is a link with one of the very early and very small Enterprise visions (there's even a cutaway!): http://ottens.co.uk/forgottentrek/designing-the-first-enterprise/
Hope you like it!
Bob
Hope you like it!
Bob
Thanks for the link, Robert Comsol! I hadn't seen that concept art before. It's a fascinating design. But is it really what FJ is talking about? It read to me as if "in the design as it now appears" meant the familiar saucer/engineering hull/nacelles arrangement. Perhaps in the first familiar iteration, the saucer was of a similar scale to this one?
Wow.....holy "All I ask is a small ship, and a star to steer her by"!
I kinda like the tiny-ship design, though. Could work if someone wanted to make PT-109 To The Stars. (You'd have a built-in explanation for the captain, first officer, and chief medical officer being in every landing party, too!)
I almost wonder if someone (FJS or whomever he had spoken to) simply mixed up/combined their recollection of the concept Bob posted and the other early concepts of the final configuration.
Thanks I never saw that material before.
Very true indeed!
Ask not what your Starfleet can do for you....
Good points! A small ship/small crew format probably would've been easier on the budget, too. Not to mention the secondary cast would definitely have gotten more coverage. Easier to understand how a tight group of individuals in a small ship like that would bond in a way that getting back together later in life (i.e. the movies) would make a lot more sense.
It might lend more comparisons to the likes of Lost in Space though, I suppose...
Or Forbidden Planet.
Yeah, that too.
If I'm remembering right, one of Roddenberry's original selling points was how each crew member was a potential story waiting to be told, essentially. How little of that ended up happening, though? Garrovick? Reilly? McGivers? Just off the top of my head, I'm hard-pressed to think of others.
Well, Riley, Finney and Norman pop to mind... 
Looking at it from the opposite angle, having a crew of eight would wreak havoc on budgets when the stories needed forgettable extras. Why pay regular salary for somebody whose very function is not to be regular? Drama does have its requirements for people who exist simply to die; to ruin their character and reputation too badly for a repeat appearance; or to introduce a character trait that is all-new and unrelated to previous episodes.
Timo Saloniemi
Looking at it from the opposite angle, having a crew of eight would wreak havoc on budgets when the stories needed forgettable extras. Why pay regular salary for somebody whose very function is not to be regular? Drama does have its requirements for people who exist simply to die; to ruin their character and reputation too badly for a repeat appearance; or to introduce a character trait that is all-new and unrelated to previous episodes.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, Riley, Finney and Norman pop to mind...
Looking at it from the opposite angle, having a crew of eight would wreak havoc on budgets when the stories needed forgettable extras. Why pay regular salary for somebody whose very function is not to be regular? Drama does have its requirements for people who exist simply to die; to ruin their character and reputation too badly for a repeat appearance; or to introduce a character trait that is all-new and unrelated to previous episodes.
Timo Saloniemi
Very good point
Having a large ship also opens up more possibilities in terms of rooms and facilities aboard that can be shown as the series moves along and budget becomes available for the construction of new and more elaborate sets.
Mario
Plus you avoid the Millennium Falcon problem of it being very difficult to build sets that would fit inside an interesting-looking exterior in "reality". The larger the ship, the less attention you have to pay to wall angles and ceiling heights and the exact curvature of that whatnot housing the frammistat. TOS very seldom runs into such problems, unless one insists on a specific size for the vessel apart from "Wow, she's big!". And TOS itself never did insist...
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
With every face in the crew soon known to the audience, those actors' value would go up considerably compared to cheap day players, unless there was considerable turnover that would probably have to be addressed onscreen. And the writers would almost have to write up watch, quarter and station bills to know where everyone was at all times. Or risk the viewers asking "Well where was so-and-so while all that was going on?"
See also Jupiter 2.
See also Jupiter 2.
...Hell, fans can and do debate whether the innards of the TARDIS are consistent!
Another problem with a small craft: they'd probably have to do windows. The single big viewscreen is workable in terms of postproduction insertion of visuals, but a smaller vessel with more confined quarters would both yell for something different and more porthole-like and pose much bigger problems for getting the helmsman's head out of the way...
Timo Saloniemi
Another problem with a small craft: they'd probably have to do windows. The single big viewscreen is workable in terms of postproduction insertion of visuals, but a smaller vessel with more confined quarters would both yell for something different and more porthole-like and pose much bigger problems for getting the helmsman's head out of the way...
Timo Saloniemi
The TARDIS is a bit of a special case due to its "architectural reconfiguration" nodes or whatever they are. Although not really mentioned until NuWho, the Doctor had been vocally changing the layout of his ship at various points in previous regenerations.
The magically growing/shrinking starboard corridor on Blake's Liberator on the other hand, is a different story...
The magically growing/shrinking starboard corridor on Blake's Liberator on the other hand, is a different story...
I think that a small scout ship where the ensemble cast was the entire crew would have been a great idea for TNG-era spinoff...better than a couple of the ones that we got....
