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The "side" of Spok's station....

It was expected that the vast majority of Star Trek viewers would never study the floor plans. Most people who even noticed Spock's hand would not know for sure that there was no such gap in the "real" console.

While the bridge set was unique, many conventional TV shows would intentionally go beyond the fourth wall for a particular kind of camera shot. When an actor walks through a set door from one room into another, often the camera will move along with him, briefly exposing the edge of the separating wall. There's no way to shoot that in a real house, but a TV family's house with no fourth wall? No problem.
There was a running gag in Police Squad! where Ted the scientist would open the door and walk into the adjacent laboratory room and, as the camera tracked back to follow him, Frank Drebin would just walk around the false wall.
 
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Surely there must be some kind of convincing in-universe rationalization...

Why "must" there be? Some things are just stagecraft. The earliest known stage performances were in Egypt around 4000 years ago. Motion pictures have only been around for about 125 years or so. That means that for at least 97 percent of the history of dramatic performance, audiences have been able to clearly see the edges of the stages the performers played upon, yet still suspend disbelief and accept the conceit that the stage was merely a representation of a conjectural reality that they filled in with their own imaginations. If hundreds of generations of our ancestors could do that with no difficulty, why should it be any harder for us?
 
Exactly! If I could have it my way, I´d remove that console altogether and have a secondary exit there.

But not until after “Space Seed” because the Bridge crew was trapped up there by Khan. :p

But seriously, had ALL the Bridge stations been constructed by the time TOS took off, or had they left this spot deliberately open for access purposes?

We saw a lot of the Bridge port side during the pilots and in TOS, but if I recall correctly we never saw that station until this one TOS episode where Kirk walked the entire outer Bridge platform counter-clockwise.

With all the budget restraints (same applies for fan productions, I’d assume) you usually don’t construct areas which will probably never be seen on-screen.

What's the real story?

Bob

@ Christopher

My statement had a somewhat ironic nature which I had hoped the Smiley would convey.
And having been around here much longer than myself, you know there are plenty of fans - myself included - that just have a great time looking for in-universe rationalizations.
 
Exactly! If I could have it my way, I´d remove that console altogether and have a secondary exit there.

But not until after “Space Seed” because the Bridge crew was trapped up there by Khan. :p

Khan locked the turbolifts so that the door on the bridge wouldn´t even open. I´m sure, he´d have done the same to the door of the secondary exit :p

@ Christopher

My statement had a somewhat ironic nature which I had hoped the Smiley would convey.
And having been around here much longer than myself, you know there are plenty of fans - myself included - that just have a great time looking for in-universe rationalizations.

Yes we do :techman:
 
I understand the OP completely, but I had the complete opposite reaction. I thought that was just the edge of Spock's station until Doomsday Machine (I think), when Spock and Kirk decided to take a little stroll all the way around the bridge and there were stations and people there. That's what threw me, seeing things there that weren't before, as opposed to them "supposing" they were always there.

Having edges or tops off consoles for better views never bothered me, just like seeing log recordings close in on hands hitting buttons on chairs or the view screen showing people hitting buttons on consoles or showing views from ships or bases that have already blown up or couldn't have had that perspective in the first place.
 
So the error with Spock's console is a similar situation -- a shot composed based more on the physical reality of the set than on the conjectural reality it was supposed to represent.

Good call--The Rockford Files situation was a constant "problem" on Lost in Space, where the interior walls of the Jupiter 2 seemed to expand when the script called for it, even as the exterior set sold a hard, fixed structure of limited interior space. In the years since the series' cancellation, fans have performed artistic cartwheels trying to make sense of the interior shape-shifting, but the answer was always there--from a production standpoint.

Whatever moved the story/camera was "right" --the same as Spock's station.
 
We saw a lot of the Bridge port side during the pilots and in TOS, but if I recall correctly we never saw that station until this one TOS episode where Kirk walked the entire outer Bridge platform counter-clockwise.

Belay my question. While I'm not sure if they already had a "complete" Bridge for the pilots, and the opening scene from "The Corbomite Maneuver" is shot through the gap of the missing station, next to Spock's, Kirk's entry onto the "new" TOS Bridge (and a couple of later scenes) clearly reveals that they had a complete Bridge for TOS.

Thus no second exit for Mario de Monti, I'm afraid, but I still might accomodate my coffee tray dispenser, somehow, I think ;)

Bob
 
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. . .on Lost in Space, where the interior walls of the Jupiter 2 seemed to expand when the script called for it, even as the exterior set sold a hard, fixed structure of limited interior space.
It got even worse than the walls. In one episode from the final season (I think), the ship suddenly had a deck below the living quarters, just so the monster of the week could fall to his death into the power core.
 
I now can't refrain from telling this anecdote I once read about "Lost in Space":

One episode had run out of budget and the production manager came to Irwin Allen, telling him they couldn't afford to built the antagonist alien's spaceship anymore. Allen supposedly got very mad, but then he said "Then the alien is going to walk." :lol:

Bob
 
I now can't refrain from telling this anecdote I once read about "Lost in Space":

One episode had run out of budget and the production manager came to Irwin Allen, telling him they couldn't afford to built the antagonist alien's spaceship anymore. Allen supposedly got very mad, but then he said "Then the alien is going to walk." :lol:

Bob

Allen---such a contradiction of beliefs; he would use armies & pour a bank into the pilots of his 1960s sci-fi series, but the moment the pilot sold, he turned into the textbook example of the cheap producer.
 
I can see that left station being temporary removed for repairs or upgrades. Why can't another secondary station be configured to take over for a while?
 
I can see that left station being temporary removed for repairs or upgrades. Why can't another secondary station be configured to take over for a while?

That would be a great solution!!

Except for when one camera angle shows the station intact and a split second later the reverse angle shows it missing. LOL

But what I am going to do from now on is note if it was certain directors who choose to shoot it so it was obvious and others who cropped the shot so it would not be evident you were seeing the side of something that "in universe" did not exist.

Also going to note if it happened more as the series went on.
 
Surely there must be some kind of convincing in-universe rationalization...

Why "must" there be? Some things are just stagecraft. The earliest known stage performances were in Egypt around 4000 years ago. Motion pictures have only been around for about 125 years or so. That means that for at least 97 percent of the history of dramatic performance, audiences have been able to clearly see the edges of the stages the performers played upon, yet still suspend disbelief and accept the conceit that the stage was merely a representation of a conjectural reality that they filled in with their own imaginations. If hundreds of generations of our ancestors could do that with no difficulty, why should it be any harder for us?

Well, obviously, because we're a more sophisticated audience than our forebears were.
 
Gripping the side of that console was one of the few things that would keep Spock's hair from going curly in times of stress.
 
Why "must" there be? Some things are just stagecraft. The earliest known stage performances were in Egypt around 4000 years ago. Motion pictures have only been around for about 125 years or so. That means that for at least 97 percent of the history of dramatic performance, audiences have been able to clearly see the edges of the stages the performers played upon, yet still suspend disbelief and accept the conceit that the stage was merely a representation of a conjectural reality that they filled in with their own imaginations. If hundreds of generations of our ancestors could do that with no difficulty, why should it be any harder for us?

Well, obviously, because we're a more sophisticated audience than our forebears were.

Riiiight. So "sophisticated" that we've forgotten how to use our imaginations.
 
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