@Donny Wow! What a great find on the four missing pads. Wonder why they pulled them from the Enterprise set instead of the Regular I/ Old City Station’s set? Or maybe they are all the same patio tile pads and just kept hot- swapping them around. (Not exactly sure how hot-swapping works for set parts but I’m going with it) I never would have guessed it was built in another set like that. I wonder it it really was or if they just pulled the doorframe off and built the set somewhere else. We see in Roddenberry’s The Cage intro that aside from some weird pink neon light the engineering set seems to be reasonably intact, so it either had to be in the corridor side or somewhere else. *EDIT* @cardinal biggles I had misread what you had written - you were asking if the BOP engineering / cargo bay was built in main engineering. IIRC - whenever the went from the BOP transporter room to another part of the ship, there was a cut - never a continuous shot. So the BOP cargo bay and engineering could have been in a different soundstage altogether. *End of Edit* We also see that part of a corridor set (??) and a sickbay wall is partially disassembled (Approx at 2:38 here). Make me wonder if this was in early stages of conversion to TNG sets - or maybe the wall was pulled when they made sickbay into the cantina in TSFS. This makes me realize that the notion that the sets were still in screen ready conditions at the conclusion of principal photography on TVH is probably wishful thinking. Several of the sets would need some work getting back to their Enterprise look. Sickbay had the main diagnostic room painted dark brown to be the Bird if Prey’s sickbay. The main sickbay became the cantina - might need to be repainted too. The radiation room for engineering was probably mostly gone - used for screens in the BOP in TVH. Torpedo Bay was partially rebuild as the first BOP bridge in TSFS. And a BOP transporter room built into the corridor. Plus the bridge would had needed additional screens or electronics to add some animation or movement to those static plexiglas images. I’m surprised that engineering and the corridors were still as intact and not cannibalized more considering as they weren’t used at all in TVH.
I haven't watched that intro in a few years. The Roddenberry myth-making was really in full force, wasn't it? Not only does he repeat the old trope that the women in the pilot's test-screening group objected to the character of Number One (instead of the network objecting to Roddenberry casting his mistress in the role instead of another actress), he claims that "I had refused to cast our crew sensibly - which meant all whites." That's a pretty bald-faced lie to say right before screening the lily-white "Cage" pilot, where the character supposedly named "Jose" is a blond-haired white guy, and the only non-Caucasian is a non-speaking Asian extra in the transporter room. The audacity of Roddenberry's falsehoods really amazes me these days.
I doubt the cargo bay was built on top of engineering. That would have required striking the whole set, then resurrecting it again for the Cage intro. Nah. Now that I'm thinking about it, it's more likely that doorframe from engineering was pulled out, much like it was for the TWOK Starfleet Academy set. Or they had two sets of those engineering doors? The fact that the corridors and engineering are in tact in the Cage Intro / Good Morning America suggests those two sets were pretty much left alone (except for them redressing the reactor room for a BoP sequence)
What amazes me is how few of other sets were re-purposed for the BOP sets in TVH. Yes, there was the reactor room (was that scene actually shot in a repainted reactor room, or did they just pull some of the screens and wall into the BOP set?) Looking through screenshots, it doesn't look like any sets from the Enterprise, Regula I, Starfleet holding facility or TSFS BOP bridge (Enterprise torpedo bay) were used for those sets. Others might have a better eye for this than I do. Wonder whatever became of them? The BOP bridge does seem to be reused in TFF (and possibly other TNG appearances), and I think TNG used parts of the corridor as Farpoint. Interestingly, the BOP sets for TVH were probably the first instance of sets for the hero ship being newly constructed for the film they appeared in. Even with TMP most of the enterprise sets were re-purposed from the aborted Phase II series. And they were great sets! They really conveyed a sense that the ship was barely holding itself together. Part of it was on gimbals so it could angled and submerged in the water (which right there might have sealed their fate to be a one-time use). They made all these sets knowing that most likely could not be reused in the next film as the crew would be back on the Enterprise. So what ever became of those transporter pads after TVH I wonder? Enterprise kept the TNG plexiglass floors for TFF and TUC. The BOP transporter in TFF had plexiglass circles. In TUC, it looked more like a metal grate. Wonder if the TNG crew found a creative way to reuse them?
The BOP bridge was new construction for TFF, but you can definitely see the influence of the TVH look on Herman Zimmerman's design. And of course that bridge became pretty much every Klingon bridge for the next decade, with occasional modifications here and there.
I spent yesterday working out the ceiling of the transporter room (which is completely conjecture since we never see it in the films) and got the transporter pads modeled. I also got the TMP version of the transporter chamber hexagon/honeycomb pattern in. It's programed to change hue to whatever I set it as. For these shots I just have it set to a cool blue/gray. NOTE: All of these images have been adjusted for brightness. The sets are actually a tad bit darker in-game, but I wanted you guys to be able to see details. Here's the pad in the TMP purple lighting/color scheme: And here's my TWOK version, with a more gunmetal apperance: For the ceiling, I wanted to incorporate some sources for the red-alert lighting we see in TSFS: I wanted these lights to be separate from the room's made lighting, but I didn't want them to be too visible when they were "off". So I borrowed the overhead circular lights from the corridor set and placed them roughly in the same spots where the stage's red lights would've been: Here's the red-alert lighting with the TMP aesthetic (also note the "vent" I placed in the ceiling in front of the control booth...we can assume it's either AC or some sort of radiation vent) And here it is with the TWOK aesthetic: Next up I'll be working out the enhanced honeycomb pattern we saw beginning in TWOK: A diffuser was placed in front of the honeycomb and a disco ball was set behind the stage to produce the dancing lights we see in that film and TSFS. It sure looks like that may have been achieved using a disco ball, but how do I know for sure a disco ball was used, you may ask?
There's a story in Inside Star Trek about a stage cat that used to lurk around the TOS sets, and apparently got mangled from hanging out in the engine compartment of James Doohan's Pontiac Bonneville. Decades later when Bob Justman and Ed Milkis (both TOS veterans that Roddenberry brought back for the early days of TNG) are inspecting the standing sets from the movies, they find... evidence of cats living on the sets, and a particularly ugly, mangy-looking cat crosses their path, leading them to wonder if it's the same one from 20 years earlier.
Ha! I did experiment with effectively turning a light into a disco ball of sorts, but couldn't get the look I wanted. In the end, 4 textures of a disco light pattern rotating at different speeds and directions and blending on top of each other did the trick. It was then a simple task of multiplying the honeycomb pattern on top. I whipped up a quick video to show the effect in action. It's not quite as bright in game and is duller to fit it's on screen appearance, but again I adjusted the video for brightness. I also noticed my transporter pads were too large and too far apart from each other, which has been corrected in the video above
The "disco ball" animated pattern was NOT present in TSFS. One thing I think they should have done with the transporter room set in TFF / TUC was to use a different back pattern than the TNG one that was used (perhaps the honeycomb again?). As with transporter machinery, things probably got more compact and sophisticated than they did in TMP.
You're correct! I mistakenly thought it was present in TSFS as well, Looks like someone took their disco ball home!
Last night and tonight were dedicated to the transporter console. We only see it briefly in TMP, but we get a few good shots of it which show most of the detail. And thanks to the Phase II Enterprise Flight Manual, like with other consoles, I have a very accurate guide to go off of. There's also a small peak of the console's side view in Gene's Cage Intro (top left of my reference sheet) which came in handy at determining the shape of the base. Here's my compiled reference: Here are the results. I really love those vector knobs, which add a nice three-dimensional quality to the main panel. And from the TWOK version, looking towards the booth so you can see the reflection of the transporter pad
Impeccable work as always. Incidentally, did you manage to dig up any usable references for the transporter assistant's console?