BLSSDWLF's TOS Enterprise WIP

[Mytran]

Mytran

I could not decide if the shuttles were 99 or 100 pixels long

It's 99: I'm not sure what graphic program you're using, but I have a Mac and there's a Preview function and you can just drag a box around and it says exactly how many pixels.

At work I'm reduced to using MS Paint; at home I'm strictly a Paint Shop Pro man! However, both have the same function as your Mac Preview. The issue is that all 3 shuttlecraft pictured seem to have a half-pixel or so at either end, which in fact they would need to avoid being quite so blunt fore & aft (as per the miniature). This is problem when using images at such low resolution, but a variance of +/-1% is hardly a deal breaker.

This is really nitpicky, admittedly, but a foot is not 1/10 of a foot, it's 1/12th. This would make the ship about 1612'1.455" (roundoff)

Very true (and I think you made a typo there!) but I avoid using decimals in the imperial measuring system - it makes for some unwieldy posts!

Never onscreen though

True enough, but if it's written by W. Matt Jeffries, that can be considered a useful number for scaling TOS to TMP...

Depends on which you lay more credence to, the intention of the creators or what actually ended up on our TV screens. If you prefer the former I strongly reccommend checking out Shaw's thread here. His goal was to create a set of internal plans consistent with Matt Jefferies' original designs and intentionshttp://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=45261 and there's a lot of good work there.

 

[kennysmith]

HERE IS MY IDEA FOR YOU THEN?, if you are haveing a hard time
Why don't you just try to put it on a computer in a cad file
And draw it out that way if you can't make up your mine then?.

 

[blssdwlf]

Never onscreen though

True enough, but if it's written by W. Matt Jeffries, that can be considered a useful number for scaling TOS to TMP...

Depends on which you lay more credence to, the intention of the creators or what actually ended up on our TV screens. If you prefer the former I strongly reccommend checking out Shaw's thread here. His goal was to create a set of internal plans consistent with Matt Jefferies' original designs and intentions and there's a lot of good work there.

Exactly. Choice of source materials steer what numbers you'll come up with. IMHO, as long as one stays consistent with the source materials the numbers will be true for that universe. Example: If you use Probert's designs and figures then expect it to differ from what was onscreen since the production folks didn't adhere to his product. If you use graphics created for a different series (Enterprise) don't expect it to be consistent with TOS as its not the same people who worked on it. Etc.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

B.J.

You have CATIA? That's the stuff they'd design airplanes with?


Mytran

1. Based on internal dimensions of the TOS design (Drexler): 1370.625 or 1370'7.5" seems to provide the best layout

2. Based on the fact that the Motion Picture Enteprise was supposed to be 1,000 feet, and the Phase II Enterprise was supposed to be 952 feet: Considering the modifications to turn the TOS Enterprise into the TMP Enterprise requires such an absurd degree of modifications (in universe), I've often been fond of retconning the TOS enterprise into the Phase II design for continuity purposes.

• 1000/952 = 1.050420168067227
• 1370.625 x 1.050420168067227 = 1439.732142857142857 or
• 1439'8.785714285714286", which rounds off to
• 1439'8.8"

 

[Mytran]

I'm not sure I'd be so willing as you to throw out 3 years of TOS starship footage just like that, but I can't argue that it does make the conversion to the movie version a lot less drastic!

The biggest problem in having such a large TMP-E is that a lot of the visible external structures would expand to much greater proportions (most notably the airlocks, which would be around 9' wide in your model)

The Drexler cutaway has some nice details, but in my own head it really only applies to the Defiant; a later, larger version of the traditional Enterprise Starship class.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Mytran

1. 1370.625 fits the shuttlebay fits the decks in right
2. It also happens to be compatible with the Phase II design
3. The Phase II design is indirectly compatible with TMP design

 

[Nightowl1701]

Just for shits and giggles, has anyone ever tried rendering a TOS Enterprise using the TMP proportions, just to see how it'd look? Keep everything else the same, just have the wider saucer/curvier engineering hull and adjust the nacelles/pylons to match? (And I don't mean bend the nacelle pylons back, just position/lengthen as needed to fit with the rest of the ship)

 

[Mytran]

1. 1370.625 fits the shuttlebay fits the decks in right

It does indeed match the shuttlebay miniature length of 122', although the height of the Drexler-bay is somewhat greater and thus out of proportion. But again, that depends on how slavishly one interprets the episodes.
As for fitting the decks in, the exact number was never quantified in TOS. So, it could be Drexlers' 26 decks or O'Brien's 21 decks or any other number at all. Unlike the E-D, there's no "right" number of decks to fit in.

2. It also happens to be compatible with the Phase II design

The length? Well certainly, you can make it as long as you like, since the lengths of either ship design were never confirmed onscreen.

3. The Phase II design is indirectly compatible with TMP design

Naturally, since the TMP was virtually the same model.

I don't dispute that it would have made a more natural transition for TMP to have had a Phase 2 style Enterprise design on TOS (especially as it featured on all the preliminary sketches). However, it's not what we got and once the actual design of ship has been tossed out, you pretty much have a free hand to reinterpret any elements you see fit as well. Where does it end?

As for an alternate solution to bridge the visual differences between the TOS-E and the TMP-E, I offered one back on page 67. It is unconventional (and I'm far from naming it the definitive account), but does at least allow for both designs of Enterprise to exist without drastic retconning.

YMMV

 

[CuttingEdge100]

How did you come up with the idea of scaling the rims?

 

[Mytran]

Honestly, I can't remember, but it was probably inspired by some remark on the BBS somewhere!
However, from a structural POV the saucer (compared to the Engineering Hull) is the component with the largest surface area and the simplest shape, so it made sense to start with that. And (once I'd accounted for the undercut) it seemed to fit rather well.

The more cramped nature of the corridors and lower ceilings also contributed to the notion of a smaller starship in TMP (albeit a sleeker and more advanced one)

Having said all that I will admit I've a bit of a stickler for "on screen accuracy" so it's hardly the definitive version of events, just one that sits well in my own head. IDIC, after all.

 

[blssdwlf]

Since some of the Phase-II schematics survived to the movies as part of the shield diagram then perhaps we could sneak the Phase-II design in as a transitional version of the Enterprise? Perhaps the reason why the Enterprise got her own class name was her Phase-II version and eventually got merged back in with the other Constitutions. (Speculation of course )

In any case, I think of the Defiant's schematics as her own and since it was created by a different production team in a different series they're like separate universes in this project's parameters.

 

[JJohnson]

1. 1370.625 fits the shuttlebay fits the decks in right

It does indeed match the shuttlebay miniature length of 122', although the height of the Drexler-bay is somewhat greater and thus out of proportion. But again, that depends on how slavishly one interprets the episodes.
As for fitting the decks in, the exact number was never quantified in TOS. So, it could be Drexlers' 26 decks or O'Brien's 21 decks or any other number at all. Unlike the E-D, there's no "right" number of decks to fit in.

2. It also happens to be compatible with the Phase II design

The length? Well certainly, you can make it as long as you like, since the lengths of either ship design were never confirmed onscreen.

3. The Phase II design is indirectly compatible with TMP design

Naturally, since the TMP was virtually the same model.

I don't dispute that it would have made a more natural transition for TMP to have had a Phase 2 style Enterprise design on TOS (especially as it featured on all the preliminary sketches). However, it's not what we got and once the actual design of ship has been tossed out, you pretty much have a free hand to reinterpret any elements you see fit as well. Where does it end?

As for an alternate solution to bridge the visual differences between the TOS-E and the TMP-E, I offered one back on page 67. It is unconventional (and I'm far from naming it the definitive account), but does at least allow for both designs of Enterprise to exist without drastic retconning.

YMMV

That's a definitely new version of things, scale-wise. I'd always subscribed to TMP-E having a larger saucer and engineering hull, and being slightly longer, but this also makes a good bit of sense.

I don't remember where, but I did read somewhere here that Gene Roddenberry had theorized the original series were 'log recordings' so the original ship didn't really look like that, so maybe the halls weren't as huge and cavernous as they appeared (to me they looked 12-15' tall when I was a kid), and were more like the motion picture Enterprise in size.

 

[Mytran]

Yeah, I thought that that was a nice bit of hand-waiving on GR's part to explain some of the drastic aesthetic changes present in TMP. It appears in his introduction to the TMP novelization.

I speculated in another thread somewhere what (in the light of GR's TV-show statement) the TOS corridors would have been like in TMP's "real world". Since the 8' width and 10' height were restrictions derived from 1960s filming requirements, I figured that the corridors would probably be more like those on DS9's Defiant or maybe even slightly narrower (the TMP corridors were 5' wide at the floor). Certainly the ceilings would have been a lot lower throughout the entire ship. And the colour scheme? Since The Cage and TMP share pretty much the same palette, I think we can say goodbye to the bright primary colours of the TOS series - greys, browns and muted blues would have been more the thing. This interpretative latitude can also extend to the exterior of the ship to reshape it along Phase-2 lines, creative a further design connection between TOS and TMP.

Of course, any ideas of what Kirk's ship might "really" have looked like went out the windows when TNG, DS9 and ENT all went back and canonised the look of the TOS sets exactly as seen on screen. Ah, well.

 

[mattpiper]

I always imagined the TMP and later hallways were designed to fit within the larger, older structure from TOS... Maybe with the added weapon systems (as the TMP Enterprise has a lot more firepower than the TOS one) the structure integrity of the ship itself needed to be beefed up for anticipated battles the refitted ship would find itself.

So perhaps the reduced ceiling height and heavily reinforced wall structure is there to support a ship that now has had it's role expanding to combat vessel instead of a more pure exploration vessel...

 

[Nightowl1701]

^ That's exactly what happened IRL with the Phase II/TMP corridors.

This is pretty much as far as they got before the decision was made to turn Phase II into TMP.

 

[Albertese]

Ah... I don't think I've ever seen that particular image. I really dig where that was going.

--Alex

 

[blssdwlf]

@Nightowl1701 - wow thanks for posting that!

 

[JJohnson]

^ That's exactly what happened IRL with the Phase II/TMP corridors.

This is pretty much as far as they got before the decision was made to turn Phase II into TMP.

Cool! Any way to see how tall the doors, hall, and those cross beams were?

 

[Nightowl1701]

You can thank Richard Taylor for the pic, and Maurice for first bringing it to my attention.

Those are the very same doors you see in TMP (they built the TMP walls literally over the Phase II walls), so go from there.

 

[Mytran]

Well there were some differences. The TMP corridor sections mostly alternated being long and short sections (with the doors on the short sections) whereas the Phase-II corridor in that pic seems composed of sections all the same size (I would guess about 10' wide).

FWIW, the TMP doors were standardised at 3' wide.