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I'm pretty sure that at least one of the Bantam books has a pool on the Enterprise (Death's Angel, maybe? not sure).

 

I used the pool in NO TIME LIKE THE PAST just a few years ago.

Still looking for an opportunity to use the bowling alley.

 

I was just reading this book last summer. Here are my comments on it:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/tos...hak-and-myrna-culbreath-review-thread.287549/

 

I had no idea the Enterprise had a bowling alley until I read this thread. A few hours later i started reading a book called "Crossroads" and I'll be damned if there isn't a scene involving the bowling alley. Baader-Meinhof.

 

It's mentioned in "The Naked Time," although we've never seen it onscreen.

 

Learn something new every day.

p.s. Crossroads is pretty good so far, fwiw. You can't go wrong with Trek book featuring a bowling alley and a Lovecraftian monster.

 

It's also mentioned by Kevin Riley when he's stoned out of his mind on Psi 2000 water, so we can't be entirely sure the ship's bowling alley actually exists outside of his fevered imagination.

 

It’s in the Franz Joseph blueprints, too. And I’m pretty sure it was mentioned in Trek to Madworld.

 

I love Crossroads. Very fond memories of that novel.

And you can actually walk the very detailed route given around the ship in the old Franz Joseph Enterprise blueprints, which is awesome.

 

John Byrne used the Enterprise "bowling alley" concept again recently in his New Visions comic series, although not literally how most folks would tend to imagine it.

 

I don't think that was meant to be a hallucination. Riley is flying high, but nobody on the bridge reacts to the bowling alley thing. "Bowling alley? What bowling alley?"

Riley is intoxicated and having delusions of grandeur but there's no indication that he's invented an imaginary bowling alley. The joke is him scheduling an ice-cream social at the bowling alley, on his own authority, not that "Ha-ha, he thinks there's a bowling alley!"

 

Yeah, but at that point, the crew has had time to get used to his rantings, and they're kind of preoccupied with the fact that the ship is 17 minutes from crashing into the planet. They probably weren't even listening, just trying to tune out his rantings and focus on the emergency. (In fact, Uhura and Spock were literally trying to tune out his intercom broadcast at that precise moment, without success.) So their lack of reaction doesn't prove anything except that they're disciplined professionals doing a time-sensitive job.

The point is, it could go either way. Maybe the bowling alley was real, but Riley was too compromised a witness for his testimony to be trusted without corroboration. As a rule, if a drunken lunatic tells you something is true, be skeptical.

(And the ice cream joke was before that. Riley ordered a formal dance in the bowling alley.)

 

I count myself as Team Bowling Alley.

 

I don't know, seems like weirdly specific thing for him to make up, even if he was stoned.

 

I'll concede there's wiggle room if you want to sweep it under the rug (like Janice Lester's remark about no female Starship captains), but the alternative is much more fun. Who doesn't love the idea of a bowling alley aboard Kirk's Enterprise?

 

Bowling on the 1701, Dolphin tanks on the 1701-D, and a swimming pool in the Tardis. Why wouldn't you want any of these?

 

The STD version probably doesn't have a bowling alley or pool. Probably been replaced with a Spore Drive.

 

I don't want anything, except to explore an overlooked possibility. Everyone, including myself, has always just assumed the ship has a bowling alley because Riley said so. But it suddenly occurred to me, while reading this thread, that we don't really know for certain, because Riley was hardly a reliable source at that point. So there's an alternative possibility I never considered before, and exploring new questions is more interesting than clinging to old asumptions.

I mean, rationally, dedicating the amount of starship deck space needed for a bowling alley seems wasteful. It would make more sense to have a rec room that could be adapted to serve various functions -- a gymnasium, a bowling alley, a basketball court, etc. as needed.

 

It's mentioned on Memory Alpha so it's canon. Plus there is a picture of it.

That's enough evidence for me.

 

Although I think that photo comes from a video game, not from an episode. That said, maybe next season they'll have an episode where we'll see Tilly getting crunk with José Tyler at an Enterprise bowling-alley party while LMFAO's "Shots" blasts in the background.