Donny’s Late TOS Movie Era Interiors
- Thread starter Donny
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Completely disagree. TUC was explicitly about stepping away from militarism. It makes sense that they would occupy a bridge that conveyed a military aesthetic* as they came to realize that they could achieve a future involving peaceful relations with their former enemy.
* - Whatever a military aesthetic is, exactly.
From a practical standpoint, maybe you're right. Meyer's rearrangement of the set was all about good filmmaking — the extensions to the Science and Communications stations were added so that Nimoy and Nichols could face outward while still "working" their stations, and the repositioning of the turbolifts and those stations allowed for that great final group shot at the end.
But that interruption between stations only really matters if Spock or Uhura are trying to work with the person at the station next to them; if one of them needs to collaborate with someone two stations down or on the other side of the bridge, there's still going to be some getting up and moving around or talking across the bridge. Or, more likely, there's ways they can program the stations to tie in with each other so Spock can send data to Ensign Redshirt and vice versa.
Yeah, I get the cinematic appeal with the stations moved further back so they can be included in a wide shot. Funny, the group shot still ended up with characters having to stand away from their stations.
I think that's one of the things I noticed between the newer movie bridges is that they lose a bit of their practicality in service of being cinematic which is a bit of a bummer, IMHO.
I don’t think stations being away from each other is that big of a deal. It was around this time that Starfleet experimented with its pandemic-mandated “work-from-home” policies and they realized “hey, there’s no need for these guys to even be on the ship now that Zoom exists.” So what’s a few more feet between consoles? 
I don’t think stations being away from each other is that big of a deal. It was around this time that Starfleet experimented with its pandemic-mandated “work-from-home” policies and they realized “hey, there’s no need for these guys to even be on the ship now that Zoom exists.” So what’s a few more feet between consoles?
It's not them being away from each other that I find impractical but the placement of a turbolift in between the stations
It would be funny for the bridge crew to work from their quarters and you just see their faces on the station screens on a zoom call with Kirk.
Someone made a post on this plaque..said he had a conversation with Mike too. Not sure who is right.
We only get a few glimpses of the Enterprise-A dedication play in TUC. It's near the ceiling, right above the viewer. About the most unusual of places we've seen a dedication plaque mounted, but it's there nonetheless. We don't really get a good look at it...
But we get a better look at the Excelsior's plaque, and it's clear that the two are of the same style.
I had a conversation with Mr. Okuda this evening and he explained to me that the budget was so low on the film that they didn't have time to make an actual plaque as they'd done in TFF and in TNG forward. He said the plaque was actually a 1/4 inch sheet of Masonite, with trimmed pieces of art card for the border and rivets in the corner. The inner plate was another piece of art card mounted on the Masonite. The entire thing was then primed, painted with metallic paint, with hand-brushed highlights. The lettering was then screen-printed onto the plaque, instead of engraved or embossed lettering, the borders painted black as well.
I've replicated what he described here, but made it obviously more metallic and given the lettering a slight engraved feeling, as that was most likely what was intended
And there it is, up near the ceiling, where you can hardly get a good read of her
Looking at these two cutaways (and excellent work as always, Donny), it makes me realize why Meyer moved the turbolifts for STVI. It enabled him to get more two shots of Kirk and Spock (and occasionally Kirk and Uhura) as well as some types of shots we'd never seen before. And in shots like this and this, the turbolift doors are conveniently out of frame and the bridge instantly becomes more claustrophobic and dramatic.Tuesday night I went ahead with creating the elements for the 3/4 cutaway view.
Here's the previously posted TFF bridge cutaway view for direct comparison:
Meyer is on record as not liking the design of the bridge very much, so he was obviously trying to add some visual interest wherever he could. And IMO, the look of the TUC bridge is light years beyond the TFF version. The STV version just looks bland and bare and beige to me. The STVI has more pops of color and a lot more visual variety.
Exactly. It's cool that Meyer had such a healthy irreverence for ST traditions. That enabled him to rethink things from the ground up at times and really freshen up the franchise.
For a TV show that's hopefully going multiple seasons, it totally makes sense to position the turbolift door slightly behind the Captain's chair, to give you the widest variety of possible shots. For a single movie with a limited number of shots, it makes sense to just choose a placement that gives you the coolest shots possible. So although the movement of the turbolifts to either side makes absolutely no sense from an in-unverse Thermian standpoint, it was totally the right call for making the movie.
Apologies, if I missed it, but what is the "chandelier" hanging in the center supposed to be, just for starters, in the STVI bridge?
I don’t think stations being away from each other is that big of a deal. It was around this time that Starfleet experimented with its pandemic-mandated “work-from-home” policies and they realized “hey, there’s no need for these guys to even be on the ship now that Zoom exists.” So what’s a few more feet between consoles?
It was carried over from a similar feature on the TMP bridge - something to do with navigation I recall.
Except in the TMP version, there was actually a graphic of the Enterprise that could be moved by someone on the stage crew to suggest changes in direction, kind of like one of those dashboard compasses. The TUC version was pretty much there to cover up a rotating red light that came on whenever they were on Red Alert.
Speaking of Red Alert, @Donny, are you going to do a Red Alert version of your bridges? And if so, are you going to actually model these light bars that they stuck on the helm just for that sequence?
Speaking of Red Alert, @Donny, are you going to do a Red Alert version of your bridges? And if so, are you going to actually model these light bars that they stuck on the helm just for that sequence?
I totally agree about the cool factor overriding practicality and that was the right director's call. But Thermians questioning if something makes sense? LOL
Well, perhaps the dome on the Enterprise-A in TUC (the "chandelier" thing) and the Excelsior bridge could be something like the Automatic Bridge Defense System that was seen in the "Star Trek Animated Series" episode "Beyond the Farthest Star." Heck, I had speculations about that dome being that way in TMP, although it clearly wasn't.
It's just the dome light like on old cars. They just need some giant dead space bugs inside it, backlit whenever the turbolift doors open.
Not to derail too much, but there was a time when I put a red gel in my ‘79 Honda Accord dome light. You know, when the craft was on red alert.
Sometimes the past should remain in the past.
I've done some of the work necessary for red alert. However, the TUC Ent-A and Excelsior bridges are a ton of work to get rigged properly for red alert. They require every display graphic to be switched over to an appropriately colored alert version, complete with faster motion. I did not have the energy to create all those yet, on top of creating near 100 graphics for both these bridges in the last two months (even ones I'd created years ago I redid for this project, as I'd needed to adjust some errors and colors). Keep in mind I also have more graphics to create for the Excelsior or any other starship variant bridge I want to depict. The TFF bridge is actually almost completely rigged for red alert, which was easier because it did not require separate alert graphics for every display.
Also, I'm waiting for the official release of Unreal 5, which will allow the real-time lighting changes necessary to switch seamlessly between the alert modes. As it stands right now in Unreal 4, it's impossible to do so with baked lighting, unless I switch entirely over to dynamic lighting, which would cause framerate to be abysmal and global illumination to go away completely.
I don't know if I'll ever come back around and do all the red-alert colored displays. Depends on if my motivation takes me there. My priority from the beginning was to get at least the normal status versions of these bridges in first, because I knew trying to do all the red alert displays would result in burnout and thus result in unfinished bridges left on the back burner of the other unfinished projects I have
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By the way, I wanted to thank you for being so educational about the limits of changing lighting situations in Unreal 4, so I actually understood why the new remake of Myst blacks out for two seconds whenever a light goes on or off. I'm wondering if they aren't planning to switch it over to Unreal 5 when it comes out, since responses to user feedback has indicated that getting rid of the flicker and dynamic day/night cycles were both said as possibilities for future patches.
Yeah, what’s probably occuring there is the program switching between two baked lighting scenarios. These baked lighting scenarios are cheap to run but still need time to load up into memory and into view without a flicker.
Large-scale dynamic lighting changes are possible for simple scenes with one or two lights, but for the TUC bridge, for example, which uses so many light sources, it is not possible with current tech if quality and frame rate are desired.
We all should keep in mind that Unreal 5 has its own limitations, and will require a better video card to run at similar frame rates as Unreal 4. Don’t be conned by this notion being marketed that Unreal 5 is without limits, because it very much is not. I have faith in time it will be the amazing product they’re touting, and as soon as we all upgrade our rigs to have the VRAM necessary to develop and play on the engine.
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