BLSSDWLF's TOS Enterprise WIP

[drt]

I'm pretty sure there were red radiation suits in TMP (not just the collars). I always thought of them as the damage control folks.

EDIT: just found this on a prop auction site (I guess they were orange, not red)

http://images.auctionworks.com/hi/3/3282/orange_collar.jpg

 

[Robert Comsol]

The immediate problem is that the width of the vertical shaft decks is 22'6" which is too wide to fit in the neck. Conduit, no problem but not the room surround it.

You are sure that the lower vertical shaft decks would have a minimal platform width of 22'6" or 6.85 meters?

By the way, what's up with these three different radiation suit (body) colors?

• Grey - impulse drive section only?
• White - both impulse and warp drive section?
• Red - both sections and reactor?

I'm not following. The rad suits look the same body shade of white to me and the differences you might be seeing are from lighting temperature variations.

The radsuit of the engineer standing next to Decker is grey.

The entire radsuit of the engineer at Spock's funeral (starboard side near the torpedo "mouth") is orange red (thanks drt).

Oh, and I meant to say one more level above the main level.

Regarding the "impulse deflection crystal" I'd say it does look a lot like it's a part of the impulse engine block which is usually is not associated with warp drive.

The onscreen information comes

• from a guy from the late 20th Century who may not be (yet) that familiar with the proper 23rd Century Starfleet engineer lingo
• and who leaves us clueless in regard to the interpretation of "photon controls". The destruction of the "crystal" could have damaged the controls of the "photon" torpedo pod or "photon controls" are a component of the impulse drive necessary to channel intermix energy back into the shaft or else.

As we did learn from TMP it didn't require a special intermix formula to have the intermix energy for impulse drive, but it required Spock's arrival and an exact formula to be capable of warp drive.

With that in mind I can imagine the Reliant still used intermix energy to get away on impulse but for warp drive capability the destroyed crystal would have compromised the delicate formula.

Bob

 

[blssdwlf]

The immediate problem is that the width of the vertical shaft decks is 22'6" which is too wide to fit in the neck. Conduit, no problem but not the room surround it.

You are sure that the lower vertical shaft decks would have a minimal platform width of 22'6" or 6.85 meters?

90% certain. That's what the current matchup is at.

By the way, what's up with these three different radiation suit (body) colors?

• Grey - impulse drive section only?
• White - both impulse and warp drive section?
• Red - both sections and reactor?

I'm not following. The rad suits look the same body shade of white to me and the differences you might be seeing are from lighting temperature variations.

The radsuit of the engineer standing next to Decker is grey.

Ahh. Interesting find.

So we have rad suits that are:

1. White - circle chest - black collar
2. White - circle chest - red collar
3. Grey - circle chest - black collar
4. Orange - circle chest - no collar/orange collar?
5. White - rectangular device on chest - small collar

Have you charted when they appear and where?

The entire radsuit of the engineer at Spock's funeral (starboard side near the torpedo "mouth") is orange red (thanks drt).

Yes sorta - but I didn't count him at first because he was lacking the black collar. The guy in white next to him with a helmet also appears to have a rectangular device on his chest also appears to have a variation of the rad suit.

Regarding the "impulse deflection crystal" I'd say it does look a lot like it's a part of the impulse engine block which is usually is not associated with warp drive.

The onscreen information comes

• from a guy from the late 20th Century who may not be (yet) that familiar with the proper 23rd Century Starfleet engineer lingo
• and who leaves us clueless in regard to the interpretation of "photon controls". The destruction of the "crystal" could have damaged the controls of the "photon" torpedo pod or "photon controls" are a component of the impulse drive necessary to channel intermix energy back into the shaft or else.

Joachim was specific about the damage as he was explaining to Khan why they can't fire back. The context for "photon controls" is photon torpedo controls. The warp drive is both main power and phasers which connect back to the TMP Enterprise's phaser cutoff when the warp drive went wonky.

As we did learn from TMP it didn't require a special intermix formula to have the intermix energy for impulse drive, but it required Spock's arrival and an exact formula to be capable of warp drive.

With that in mind I can imagine the Reliant still used intermix energy to get away on impulse but for warp drive capability the destroyed crystal would have compromised the delicate formula.

The problem still is if that is part the impulse engine, there should be some kind of impulse impairment on the Reliant and we don't see that and they are still able to make use of "full impulse power". Instead, that hit on the dome resulted in the loss of warp drive and it's power advantages.

So you have the right idea, that the destroyed crystal impaired the delicate intermix formula but the name of the dome should be really called the "Warp Deflection Crystal" or "Warp Turbine" and not the "Impulse Deflection Crystal", IMO.

 

[Mytran]

The immediate problem is that the width of the vertical shaft decks is 22'6" which is too wide to fit in the neck. Conduit, no problem but not the room surround it.

You are sure that the lower vertical shaft decks would have a minimal platform width of 22'6" or 6.85 meters?

90% certain. That's what the current matchup is at.

I'd tend to agree. Although we shouldn't take the setplan as gospel, a quick comparison between the fore/aft engine room and the corridor (which we know to be 8') gives us a measurement between 22'3" and 23'3". The sketch itself is a little inconsistent in places (best to also use the TNG set), but along with Blssdwlf's figure I say that's definitely around the right figure - far too wide to squeeze into the blue strip on the dorsal, unfortunately

 

[Robert Comsol]

@ blssdwlf

No, I haven't charted the appearance of the differently colored radsuits, I just happened to notice Scotty's assistant in TMP wearing the black radsuit collar (but not the typical body suit). I did notice the guy in the orange-red radsuit earlier in my TWOK torpedo bay examinations, hence that little theory came up.

@ blssdwlf & Mytran

Looks like I am / was beating a dead horse. But now I need to ask some questions, since Mytran stated that we "know" the TMP corridor to be 8' wide.

Did Suwalski's TMP studio set blueprint come with measurements? As you may recall from our TOS discussions I'd been somewhat sceptical whether the turbo lift cab diameter was really 8'.

The movie corridors had always looked narrower to me than the TOS corridors.
Ironically (no pun intended) the shot with Admiral Kirk (Bill Shatner is 5'9" tall?) in TMP suggests that the blue corridor (at its widest above knee level) is just a little wider than Bill Shatner is tall.
I therefore arrived at a corridor width of "only" 1.88 meters or 6'2" (i.e. the width between the outer black corridor lines in the TMP studio set blueprint).

This would yield a distance between the parallel elements of the octagonal frame surrounding the intermix shaft of 2.82 meters or 9'3" approximately.

The descending platforms of the vertical intermix shaft are no wider than the open shaft space plus the transparent aluminium floor panels left and right. Open shaft space + starboard floor panel + port floor panel = 4.23 meters or 13'10" approximately.

With the connecting dorsal pylon's widest width of 5.4 m (305 m O.L.) or 6.3 m (355 m O.L.) there wouldn't seem to be a problem fitting the vertical intermix shaft there instead.

Can you follow my calculations? Please feel free to point out calculating errors.

Bob

 

[Shat Happens]

Reliant is a mystery. Someone was seen falling DOWN her intermix -
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0922.jpg

I, for one, never figured out how a vertical intermix like the Constitution config fits there.

 

[blssdwlf]

@Bob - the 8' wide corridor stems from the width of the corridor + the framework around it. You can see here at the intersection the full width of the corridor once you account for the framework. One way of thinking about it is take a TOS 8' corridor and then add framework on the interior.

 

[Robert Comsol]

@ blssdwlf - I see and did a recalculation. We have Shatner's body height and we see how wide the corridor walking floor area (the innermost two parallel lines in the studio set blueprint) is in relation to Mr. Shatner (I arrived at 132 cm).

Now I arrive at an approximate width of 5.4 meters for the deck platforms surrounding the intermix shaft below the main engine room level.

At 5.4 m (305 m Enterprise O.L.) the port and starboard side exterior hull would be too thin, so obviously a 6.3 m connecting dorsal pylon width (355 m Enterprise O.L.) would be the better option, but it looks like that shaft could still fit into the connecting dorsal pylon.

Bob

 

[Robert Comsol]

Reliant is a mystery. Someone was seen falling DOWN her intermix -
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0922.jpg

I, for one, never figured out how a vertical intermix like the Constitution config fits there.

You might have two options

• assuming that at some point the horizontal shaft has to make a turn and go vertical to feed the "deflection crystal" we may just look at the core segment right below the crystal (since this crystal was blown up earlier the area has been sealed and we'd looking at a dead end).
• assuming that these shafts also run up the roll-bar and feed the "megaphasers" we might be looking at the instant effect the disruption of the port nacelle has on the adjacent interior area in the port side hull.

Bob

 

[blssdwlf]

I just tried placing the engine room in a 1000' TMP E where the impulse engine is and it doesn't fit. (Vertical shaft lined up the dome.) The top level sticks out of the deflection crystal dome by 6' and the lower deck platforms stick out of the neck by a foot or two on each side. Also, the side corridors in front of the foyer of the blue corridor stick down from the undercut. And lastly, the horizontal conduit room in it's forced-perspective form also sticks out of the bottom of the impulse drive.

On a larger 355m ship, the top of the upper level sticks out of the dome by 2'. The sides of the lower decks stick out but by a much smaller amount. The FP horizontal room now fits barely in the impulse engine space but the two diagonal conduits leave zero room for space behind the orange glow grills.

In both cases, all space at and to the aft of the vertical shaft is unusable by turbolifts and you'd have to fit all turbolift cars in front of the vertical shaft decks.

So as interesting as placing the engineroom as seen up where the impulse engine/neck sounds, it doesn't work and causes way more problems than it solves in it's current configuration.

Edit: Unless there is more useful data regarding set sizes I'm putting this to bed and won't revisit it unless something new comes up.

 

[Mytran]

Blssdwlf got there first, but yes - you need to measure from the corridor junctions to get a true idea of the width. TOS corridors measured a full 8' from wall to wall, but TMP, TNG & VOY sets have support buttresses and those pull-off panels intruding into the walkways, making them seem narrower. Voyager cut back and expanded the corridors to their fullest modern extent, almost going full circle to TOS!

Yes - sort of. It fits well at 12' deck heights. Shorter deck heights can work but it does weird perspective things to the vertical shaft and the widths of the rail openings going down. The FP artist did a pretty good job on 12', IMO.

The more I inspect that floor painting, the more impressed I am. I wonder if it was done by the same famed artist that worked on Indiana Jones 3 (amongst many other films). It was still there in TWOK and still carried off the illusion.

Looking at it again, I was surprised to see that the lower rooms are actually rectangular, and smaller than the square "upper room" where Kirk originally enters in TMP. My estimate puts the lower rooms at between 18'x22' and 19'x23', not including the thickness of the outer bulkheads.

Sadly this width will still not fit in the dorsal section, even on a 1,164' Enterprise.

The trouble is that Probert's original design (along with the blue vertical stripe on the dorsal) would require much smaller sets than the ones we ended up with on screen. It is clear that while Probert was approaching the design of the refit from a more realistic real-world perspective, the actual set designers were focused on making everything seem BIG and CINEMATIC.

They are two completely different ships. In fact, it seems to me we have 3 versions of the TMP Enterprise:

1) The 1,000' Probert version, with a smaller engine room and better correlation with the exterior features. Some "squinting" is needed for scenes in the Cargo Deck and the various "plus sized" sets. The blue corridors are best ignored entirely.

2) The 1,164' movie version. The Cargo Deck fits fine, but the Engine Room is located further aft to accomodate blue corridors in the forward secondary hull, along with a dog-legged intermix tube.

3) The Roddenberry version from the novelisation. Engine Room is in the centre of the secondary hull (and a possible TNG-style intermix setup). Cargo Deck of a likely different design. Numerous private windowed compartments in the forward section of the secondary hull (many filled with copulating couples). Officer's lounge has FORWARD facing windows, possibly as in ST5?

Squeezing the vertical tube (as seen) into the dorsal might be possible with a bit of squinting, but what about the multitude of personnel walking left and right in the corridors - are they all going up stairs into the saucer undercut? The "impulse crystal" would basically have to be a hollow bowl to fit the Upper Engine Room beneath it. The whole setup eats into space that might logically be reserved for the glowing "impulse" machinery, and the 23' width of the room would still not fit. I must admit, I am still skeptical...

 

[blssdwlf]

@Mytran - you are right and it is too bad the production folks went so sideways with Probert's design that it doesn't fit with what he intended.

Oh and Happy Thanksgiving to All!

 

[Robert Comsol]

So as interesting as placing the engineroom as seen up where the impulse engine/neck sounds, it doesn't work and causes way more problems than it solves in it's current configuration.

I'm unable to follow.

• It would relocate the blue corridors "inside" the ship and the saucer where these make better sense
• It would explain how Kirk and Scotty arrived so quickly at the transporter room
• It would free us from the need to rationalize circular corridors in the engineering hull
• It would not introduce an even longer corridor at the bow of the engineering hull
• It would not require a rationalization why the TWOK energizer room was miraculously spared from Khan's slicing feast (shifting the warp engine room further to the stern will beg for explanation)
• It would, last but not least, keep the warp drive engine room exactly where Mr. Probert intended it to be along with the special intermix shaft cover panels on the connecting dorsal pylon.

All it really takes is either some tolerance towards a few inches or feet of sets a little too wide and/or high (literally nothing compared to the Rec Deck issue) or a slightly bigger ship.

As a matter of fact, I failed to include the dark "fin" attached to the dorsal near the saucer undercut in my calculations, that should also add a few feet to the engine room's width.

IIRC, your 355 m overall length estimation resulted from the examination of the cargo and hangar deck's width. Did you include the outgoing bright corridor on the starboard side in your figures?

Once the size of the ship has already been boosted from 305 to 355 m to accomodate Mr. Probert's aforementioned matte painting, I'm confident - if considered absolutely necessary - another size increase will not nearly be that drastic but rather moderate.

Happy Thanksgiving everyone

Bob

 

[blssdwlf]

So as interesting as placing the engineroom as seen up where the impulse engine/neck sounds, it doesn't work and causes way more problems than it solves in it's current configuration.

I'm unable to follow.

• It would relocate the blue corridors "inside" the ship and the saucer where these make better sense

That's not an issue as the blue corridors are straight corridors.

• It would explain how Kirk and Scotty arrived so quickly at the transporter room

Not an issue. Put the transporter room nearby on the deck below in the engineering hull.

• It would free us from the need to rationalize circular corridors in the engineering hull

Not an issue since curved corridors were present on the TOS engineering hull.

• It would not introduce an even longer corridor at the bow of the engineering hull

Not an issue with the engine room already moved back. It does fit (on a 355m hull like the blue corridors.) The blue and silver corridor doesn't fit on a 305m hull.

• It would not require a rationalization why the TWOK energizer room was miraculously spared from Khan's slicing feast (shifting the warp engine room further to the stern will beg for explanation)

Not really. Even if Khan shot directly at the engine room in the engineering hull on a 305m ship, there is 30' of machinery to blast through which at Khan's low power setting he obviously didn't penetrate far. On a 355m ship at least 36' of space to blast through.

• It would, last but not least, keep the warp drive engine room exactly where Mr. Probert intended it to be along with the special intermix shaft cover panels on the connecting dorsal pylon.

As pointed out before, that would only work if all the sets were ALTERED or created DIFFERENTLY than as shown on screen. What was made for the movie IS NOT compatible with what Mr. Probert designed (unfortunately.)

All it really takes is either some tolerance towards a few inches or feet of sets a little too wide and/or high (literally nothing compared to the Rec Deck issue) or a slightly bigger ship.

And that's the problem. If you want to build Mr. Probert's ship, I suggest you start your own thread

Did you include the outgoing bright corridor on the starboard side in your figures?

Yes.

 

[Robert Comsol]

You need to measure from the corridor junctions to get a true idea of the width.

But the problem remains that we'd still need the actual size figures of the original TMP set. Unless we don't have these, I see no alternative than to rely on the known body height of actors, put these at 90° and use them as a biological "rulers". This is how I arrived at a width of 132 cm for the corridor floor area revealed on the (apparently accurate) stage plan and from that derived the other size figures (some fans might want to believe that Bill Shatner is taller than he is but that should not influence our size estimates ).

The trouble is that Probert's original design (along with the blue vertical stripe on the dorsal) would require much smaller sets than the ones we ended up with on screen. It is clear that while Probert was approaching the design of the refit from a more realistic real-world perspective, the actual set designers were focused on making everything seem BIG and CINEMATIC.

Absolutely! Production designer Hal Michelson seemed to have a soft spot for oversized sets, it often looked like they were trying to hard to compete with the large UK sets from Star Wars.

Andrew Probert always got the reply "Nobody is going to measure it with a ruler." Yeah, sure (I already did back in 1980).

Squeezing the vertical tube (as seen) into the dorsal might be possible with a bit of squinting, but what about the multitude of personnel walking left and right in the corridors - are they all going up stairs into the saucer undercut?

Since the corridor ahead of the engine room is off center towards the starboard side there'd be inevitably stairs there. On the port side I would assume mostly turbo lift cabs (and according to my estimates there'd be space for these)

The "impulse crystal" would basically have to be a hollow bowl to fit the Upper Engine Room beneath it. The whole setup eats into space that might logically be reserved for the glowing "impulse" machinery, and the 23' width of the room would still not fit. I must admit, I am still skeptical...

But its explosion in TWOK made it look like a hollow bowl, didn't it? As for the glowing impulse engines I guess it wouldn't be that much of a problem, but apparently I should focus on making some visual presentation of these issues...and a new thread as recommended by blssdwlf.

Bob

 

[Mytran]

The width of the corridor at the junction can be estimated in this very shot - the man walking past is not too different from Shatner and his height is approximately 75% of the corridor width (the extremities of the struts), ie 8'. Whole numbers were used in TOS (and other set plans I've seen) as that made it easier for the carpenters and set builders, so I doubt we would be looking at 7'7" or 7'10" for example.

I've stated my belief that the Probert ship (as planned) is irreconcilable with the movie Enterprise. However, since scaling up the ship is always possible and something I never shy away from (as you know) I'm happy to give it a go!
Let's see, using the 1,000' vessel as our baseline:

The dorsal width on a 1,000' refit is 5.4m or 17'9" and to fit in the width of the lower Engine Room bays (including outer bulkheads) would require around 24' minimum. That would require a ship length of 1,355'.

If the airlocks were 6' diameter on the original, they'd now be 8'2" (with a 5' drop onto the gangway level with the shuttlebay, so steps would be needed).
Saucer decks (as suggested by the windows) would go from 9'6" to 12'10" and the secondary hull window spacing would go from 12' to 16'3".

This would solve the problem of the Engine Room sticking out of the undercut, since it could now nestle higher up.
The Rec Deck would at last fit into the undercut in its "official" location too.
I think my "central saucer engine room" idea would fit as well - we could have TWO engine rooms in the saucer!!!

* * * * * * *

I wonder how large that would make the pre-refit Enterprise?

Using the "official" length of 947' would scale up to 1,283'
The popular alternative of 1,080' would yield a 1,463' ship

However, if we match the bottom rims of the saucers (my preferred method) then we get a TOS Enterprise of 1,437' - coincidentally a very close visual match for Drexler's cutaway of 1,420', so at least we know what it would look like!

In summary - this new refit would be a BIG ship

 

[Robert Comsol]

Doing some close-up studies of the TMP Enterprise I came across a screencap which I believe should make it abundantly clear that there are plants behind these 6 large bottom windows at the bottom: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0723.jpg

I'm not aware of a better shot, but this one should satisfy the Thermians.

Bob

 

[blssdwlf]

Dunno - looks like a shield and a giant wrench head on a stand.

 

[Robert Comsol]

Next, he walks into a room. From our perspective the area that Kirk enters into is actually facing a wall above the foyer end of the set below:

The panel with the "e" on it is the foyer wall - the lift to the side is a dead giveaway. Taking the set literally, Kirk must have entered through a door situated above the horizontal intermix tube, at the aft end of Upper Engineering. ...

However, we do get to see the aft wall of the upper level - that green octogon thing from the cancelled Star Trek Phase 2 series. Leaving the "trouble shot" aside for now, the octogan would seem to be the door from which Kirk originally entered the room - and there is a large black area in the octogon which might be a darkened entranceway. What do people think about that?

Having seen some Phase II pictures of the original engine room like this one (mirrored or not?) it looks like there actually is a door right next to the octogon wall panel, so there wouldn't be the need to rationalize an entranceway in the octogon.

You can also glimpse that door just a few frames ahead of this screencap.

Thus, the blue corridor used by Kirk in TMP to get to the upper level of the engine room would actually extend to the stern (starboard side) and not to the bow (and outside the ship).

Too bad that takes only care of the upper level's blue corridor.

Bob

 

[blssdwlf]

Having seen some Phase II pictures of the original engine room like this one (mirrored or not?) it looks like there actually is a door right next to the octogon wall panel, so there wouldn't be the need to rationalize an entranceway in the octogon.

That's a good find but not exact. Rationalizing an in-universe interior with out-of-universe partial set elements that were moved around is a bad thing, IMHO. (The phase 2 octagon is one level down and there are 2 panels separating it from the door on the right.)

However, that did encourage a re-examination of the actual visuals and we do see what appears to be a door/opening to the right, one panel away from the octagon that is visible in TMP behind Kirk.

Thus, the blue corridor used by Kirk in TMP to get to the upper level of the engine room would actually extend to the stern (starboard side) and not to the bow (and outside the ship).

I'd put it on the stern port side after rotating 180 around the engine room.

Now, it fits fine on the stern on my setup with the horizontal conduit having evenly spaced segments.

But, if I use the "short" segments then the corridor gets crowded with the diagonal segments (not to mention it won't reach the warp pylons without another horizontal run.)

Too bad that takes only care of the upper level's blue corridor.

Yep. Still got the main level one.

The top blue corridor could go either way, but the stern version can work for me.