Court Martial RM has some of the best images of the series!
- Thread starter RAMA
- Start date
The switch was also a blinking light, so it was visible as a blinking light whenever that part of the ship (as it was eventually configured for the series) was visible.
Of course, "Galileo Seven" takes place before "Court-martial," so maybe the pod hadn't been installed yet.
Now, can anyone provide a screencap from an original TOS episode that shows that switch? Or was the TV resolution too low?
Good points. The bridge in "Corbomite"(Balok)looks different than those of the two pilots as well, but we can always say(rightly so)that additions and refits were made between late 2265 and late 2266 and the bridge was altered slightly. In a similar light, the sensor pod wasn't installed until after the Murasaki 312/Taurus II mission seen in "Galileo."
Thanks for posting these, guys. This model is so damn beautiful! Pure starship porn.
(Yeah, I've chosen my username wisely.
)
Thanks for posting these, guys. This model is so damn beautiful! Pure starship porn.
(Yeah, I've chosen my username wisely.
I'll say this much. The original NCC-1701 is certainly the most beautiful and elegant starship in the entire TREK canon.
No doubt about it.
Not a lot of extraneous, gratuitous hull paneling and lines...no thousand different shades of shadow and paint. Just elegance made flesh(or duranium).
I've quickly gone through TrekCore's caps for three episodes (Space Seed, Tomorrow Is Yesterday, The Cloud Minders) and didn't find a picture with anywhere near close enough definition to pick the switch up. Even if it had been shot clean enough, the optical effects have blurred the picture beyond recognition.
Last edited:
Here's a pic from All Our Yesterdays (I've been checking third season caps because I wanted new and cleaner shots, rather than the same old recycled footage). I think the switch is the bright light below the rectangular windows. The round window further forward from it, lit in the remastered shot, doesn't seem to be lit on the model.
Somebody, make sure NCC-1701 doesn't get too excited with this shot. I'm not mopping up after starship porn.
Somebody, make sure NCC-1701 doesn't get too excited with this shot. I'm not mopping up after starship porn.
Here's another pic of the stern of the model. It's been a while since this has been posted, but here is a really great site for pics of the model.
Hmm... are you sure the actual switch is the feature we're talking about, the clear dome with a copper ring around it right in front of the "1837"? Because that looks more like a light, and the small reddish dot just forward of it looks like it could be a small pushbutton switch.
Christopher, I know nothing. I'm just posting pictures. The bubble, whatever it is, is in the same spot as the ion pod in the remastered Enterprise. Other people say it's a switch. I have to agree that it does look like a push button switch. Every other window on the big E is flush with the surface. This is the only lit window that isn't. Why the difference? I also think the metal ring around it is very typical of a switch. But in terms of reality of the model, I'm as ignorant as hell. I am the first to admit others know much more about this than me.
I agree it's nice and everything, and a true classic, but I've never really understood the absolute adoration a lot of people have for the original Constitution class. It seems a little too simple a design to me.Thanks for posting these, guys. This model is so damn beautiful! Pure starship porn.
(Yeah, I've chosen my username wisely.
I'll say this much. The original NCC-1701 is certainly the most beautiful and elegant starship in the entire TREK canon.
Actually, now I am sure it's a porthole:
http://www.mjtsc.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/new/images/image75.jpg
Okay, here goes...
As discussed a couple of times before, it seems that Kirk steers deliberately into that storm, having every opportunity to fly in other directions at high speed yet still opting to approach the storm at a steady warp one. The role of the ion pod might not be to protect the ship from the storm, then, but to gather crucial scientific information Starfleet wants on ion storms - so badly in fact that it tells its captains to deliberately fly into storms at the risk of damage or casualties.
Combined with the fact that the pod suddenly appears on the ship for this episode, having previously been absent (in the TOS-Rverse at least), this might suggest that the Great Ion Storm Hunt is a recently initiated scientific program that has seen the installation of special observatory pods aboard frontline starships. These pods are largely self-contained laboratories, but they still require a specialist to operate (an unpleasant task which all the officers onboard are forced to partake in, for reasons of morale) and also warrant other arrangements such as a special button on the Captain's flexibly configurable command console, and a new, nonverbal, push-button procedure for allowing yellow and red alerts to be controlled directly by the Captain. They are also somewhat disruptive to the ship's operations, and a skipper seldom hesitates to go for the ejection option when there is trouble.
This interpretation also allows the main plot to make more sense. If it is known in advance that Kirk is on a hunt for ion storms, and in fact repeatedly flies into those, it becomes reasonable for Finney to prepare for the opportunity by inserting himself in the ion pod duty roster and waiting for the perfect storm to do his dastardly deed.
If, OTOH, the pod is just a contingency measure, Finney's master plan becomes impracticable, as it might never happen that a storm and Finney's shift would coincide. Finney should then be considering other, less impractical ways to frame Kirk for murder, in which case it makes little sense that he would not already have tried a trick or two during his long years of harboring hatred. The ion pod must have offered an unprecedented opportunity that suddenly made Finney excited, hence it is likely to be a new feature.
For extra spicing, we might claim that the Great Ion Storm Hunt is related to the Romulan experiments on artificially seeding such storms, as described in Diane Duane's books...Definitely an issue of strategic interest to Starfleet!
Timo Saloniemi
As discussed a couple of times before, it seems that Kirk steers deliberately into that storm, having every opportunity to fly in other directions at high speed yet still opting to approach the storm at a steady warp one. The role of the ion pod might not be to protect the ship from the storm, then, but to gather crucial scientific information Starfleet wants on ion storms - so badly in fact that it tells its captains to deliberately fly into storms at the risk of damage or casualties.
Combined with the fact that the pod suddenly appears on the ship for this episode, having previously been absent (in the TOS-Rverse at least), this might suggest that the Great Ion Storm Hunt is a recently initiated scientific program that has seen the installation of special observatory pods aboard frontline starships. These pods are largely self-contained laboratories, but they still require a specialist to operate (an unpleasant task which all the officers onboard are forced to partake in, for reasons of morale) and also warrant other arrangements such as a special button on the Captain's flexibly configurable command console, and a new, nonverbal, push-button procedure for allowing yellow and red alerts to be controlled directly by the Captain. They are also somewhat disruptive to the ship's operations, and a skipper seldom hesitates to go for the ejection option when there is trouble.
This interpretation also allows the main plot to make more sense. If it is known in advance that Kirk is on a hunt for ion storms, and in fact repeatedly flies into those, it becomes reasonable for Finney to prepare for the opportunity by inserting himself in the ion pod duty roster and waiting for the perfect storm to do his dastardly deed.
If, OTOH, the pod is just a contingency measure, Finney's master plan becomes impracticable, as it might never happen that a storm and Finney's shift would coincide. Finney should then be considering other, less impractical ways to frame Kirk for murder, in which case it makes little sense that he would not already have tried a trick or two during his long years of harboring hatred. The ion pod must have offered an unprecedented opportunity that suddenly made Finney excited, hence it is likely to be a new feature.
For extra spicing, we might claim that the Great Ion Storm Hunt is related to the Romulan experiments on artificially seeding such storms, as described in Diane Duane's books...Definitely an issue of strategic interest to Starfleet!
Timo Saloniemi
Last edited:
"Think THIS is incredible? You should see the sky when an orbiting ship's warp core breaches!"
INTREPID:"Stupid Enterprise. Hogging all my shots.
When I get back from investigating that huge space amoeba creature, WE'LL see who gets all the glory, asswipe!"
DENISE OKUDA:"Damn.
They told me the ladies' room was back here."
In that shot, it looks more like a protruding reddish cylindrical shape, probably identical to the circular reddish feature in the bottom right corner of that photo. If you look at the top of the shape, it's flat, like a hockey-puck shape seen a bit from the side. Although I will admit that there's no hint of such protrusion in the overhead angle you posted.
But if it is just like that forward feature, then I guess it isn't a switch, just a slightly protruding light fixture.
That's a given. It's explicitly stated in the bridge log tapes in the episode: "We'll need somebody in the pod for readings." Spock then orders Finney to "Report to pod for readings on ion slates" (or so says the closed captioning -- some people in this thread have said "plates," suggesting something analogous to photographic plates for X-ray instruments, say), and Finney later reports "Ion readings in progress." The ion pod was quite clearly depicted as a scientific instrument.
I imagine the pod might be something that extends a telescoping antenna/probe out into the storm, kind of like a lightning rod. The pod and its extended probe are insulated from the body of the ship proper, but an intense enough charge can jump the gap, so the pod must be jettisoned if the storm's energies grow too intense (since it might not be possible to discharge the pod safely past that point).
I guess that depends on how big the storm is and how feasible it would be to fly around it. Although I assume that an ion storm is typically a coronal mass ejection from a star (I've even seen the term used that way by scientists at least once), it's possible that some ion storms are larger, similar phenomena, maybe interstellar plasma clouds energized by distant gamma-ray bursts. I'm fairly sure there are episodes referring to ion storms that are too big to steer around.
Who says he had a master plan? I've always seen it as an extemporaneous decision. His hatred for Kirk had been festering, and when he happened to get the ion pod assignment during an intense storm, it suddenly occurred to him that if the pod were to be jettisoned, he could jump out just before and hide in Engineering, and people would think he'd died. Then he'd simply have to get to a computer terminal, do a little video editing on the bridge records (easy for a records officer), and bingo, Kirk's framed for his murder.
Similar threads
- Poll
