Is the bridge at a funny angle?

Oh, yeah, I made my own position clear, this scene here is in favor of "bridge faces forward," but I know how the hair-splitting game works.

 

“Balance of Terror,” perhaps? And not just Uhura. She and Kirk move in roughly the same direction: toward flashing alert lights. Everyone one else of the bridge is thrown in different directions, essentially boxing the compass.


I think Vincent McEveety blocked that shot to draw attention to the lights which are the only things visible for 3.5 seconds, immediately preceding the VFX of the crippled Enterprise. It’s a compelling image, the brightly lit bridge plunged into (near total) darkness.

In-universe, though, the way the people are tossed to and fro suggests variable gravity at play.

 

@GNDN18 That's brilliant. Never noticed how random they moved before.

 

It would seem reasonable to suppose that people getting tossed around would have to be because of relatively very tiny fluctuations in the inertial dampeners while they're getting taxed to their operational limits, given the accelerations involved. As fluctuations, they could be variable across a given deck, in time, in direction, and in magnitude, and they might not necessarily correlate with the direction of the ship's motion.

If the crew getting tossed around is not because of tiny fluctuations in the inertial dampeners, and we're actually talking about relatively large fluctuations, then we might have to chalk the crew not getting pasted up to the crews' mass effectively being reduced by the warp drive itself. That would seem to imply other effects we don't seem to observe, like virtual weightlessness, but maybe when the warp drive is on the artificial gravity compensates for changes in inertial mass aboard ship.

TL;DR = Without understanding the principles behind the warp drive, we can't know what the inertial dampeners are doing either and fully understand why it is that the crew is getting tossed around at all.

 

And that was also a close-proximity thermonuclear detonation near a starship that had barely raised its shields before the explosion went off. Who knows what kind of gravimetric interference a nuclear explosion close to the onboard systems of a spacecraft would have?

 

Sometimes, despite your world-weary façade, your inner geek really shines through. Always a pleasure to see.

 

I'm a world-weary geek.

 

Absofreakinglutley!

 

“Balance of Terror” when they are hit by the dissipating Romulan weapon that they are backing away from.

 

I now see tha the upper panel, right side circular screen, has a bridge diagram,which looked more like a brain scan to me before.

 

I had seen where someone had posted a shot of the probe reading things at Spock's science station and crisscrossed it with yours; sorry about that. I can't account for the diagram in Star Trek III. Unless it just is the old version of the ship because it did not need to be accurate, like some have said, which means that it would not say anything about the angle of the bridge.

 

Yes, I think that's the one I meant!

 

Off the cuff, these two look like an angled Bridge to me:
The camera is facing (almost) straight rearward on the ship, towards the turbolift, and then the ship tilts back and to starboard. That would imply the detonation did not hit them head on, though.

The "Arena" one, though it just a as compelling the other way, in the fact that the crew, and the bridge, are leaning straight forward towards the view screen.

 

One of the things that comes to mind in this discussion is something Mike Okuda or Rick Sternbach said in their TNG blueprints introduction.

I'm paraphrasing from memory here... but it went something like... the Enterprise exists in our imagination more than anything else.

For me, everything fits even if it the math doesn't add up in actuality from what we see on screen to what Jeffries wrote down. The bridge, the turbolift, all of it fits into this grand majestic ship, whether it's offset or facing forward.

But that's just me. And that's the angle on all this that I'm sticking with.

 

In the "Balance of Terror" clip, I think everyone does go flying in the same direction— which is back toward the elevator doors. Uhura and Leslie both fall toward the elevator, from opposite sides of it.

 

To me, everyone is falling 'downhill' except for Sulu, Uhura and Kirk. The Navigator falling toward a point forward of Spock's station is the most downhill, followed the port perimeter peeps. Sulu goes almost directly aft of his chair, Kirk straight back from the camera along the axis of tilt, and poor Uhura looks like she is running uphill.

 

Leslie's fall looks unnatural. First he's later then everyone else, then he stands up to the right, spins around his chair and flies to the left. I think it would have looked better to just fly out of his chair to the left, like the guy next to him.

 

Now, your a’ being a’cute eh?

 

Perhaps if you just turned that frown... at an angle?

*runs away*