DAY OF THE DOVE and Engineering's location

Does DotD prove that Engineering is actually in the saucer during the TOS period?

Most of the crew was locked 'down in the lower decks', and yet the Klingons took over Engineering and that after we saw the crew still had access.

Where does this leave the location of Engineering during TOS?

 

That's a hotly debated topic even today.

Did they say how many decks, exactly, were locked down? Maybe that started below Engineering?

It's also possible that there were two different Engineering rooms: one for the impulse drive (saucer) and one for the warp (secondary hull). It might even explain why we had two slightly different sets used on the show for Engineering!

In any case, I really don't see how main, 'warp' Engineering could be anywhere other than the secondary hull, since that's where the nacelles connect. Also we saw in ST II that main engineering is down there anyway (Khan fires directly at it). Refit though that ship was, it doesn't change the location of key decks.

 

In the episode a diagram was given to show what areas had been isolated...



The Red areas were occupied by the 80 klingon/human combatants, blue areas are where the rest of the crew is "trapped" by the emergency bulk heads.

 

^.Blue?"

 

Is that better? I was trying to bring out the red more originally. On screen in the episode those areas appeared white when backlit.

But yeah, the point was that areas of both the primary and engineering hulls are red. The klingons started out on deck 6. This was the technical schematic that they studied before setting out to attack engineering.

 

Interesting theory about the diagram, but i don't know how much it helps us though, considering its obvious inacuracies and the fact that it wasn't even made for this episode. In fact it's from one of the bridge stations and was drawn up back before M.J. realized the ship had to be twice as big as he originaly concieved (based on compareing the scale of th bridge dome on the filming model with the actual diameter of the bridge set). Besides, didn't Spock say later in the ep. that "the Klingons control decks six and seven, we control everything above".Since this was after the klingons had taken the engine room, it seems to imply that all decks below seven are "the lower decks"?

 

Actually, it is a mistake that this version was done for a bridge station, it was specifically made for Day of the Dove, the base graphic is the diagram next to the turbo lift doors on the bridge, and was colored in a different way for another bridge graphic... but none of them this way.

Maybe this will help illustrate the actual differences between the two...



Also your time line of preproduction events seems a little off. I'd be happy to discuss that aspect of the Enterprise, but it seems a little off topic here.

The actual line is "The klingons control deck six and starboard deck seven... while we control everything above." This was before the klingons stormed engineering.

 

A theory I've had over the years was that the swirling, twinkly special effect alien thing, having the ability to alter phasers and chessboards into swords and messing with peoples minds, also had the ability to alter space around it, meaning it physically or mentally moved engineering into the saucer section, thus freeing the secondary hull to use as a holding cell for the 400 some trapped crewmembers. Once the creature left, engineering was moved back to the secondary hull and everything goes back to normal.

However, seeing that diagram has got me reevaluating this theory. It kind of seems like the entity sealed off differant sections throughout the ship, which seems like a much more efficient, dare I say logical , way of trapping 400 people, and thus providing specified sections for the remaining humans and Klingons to kick the crap out of each other.

I'm starting to like this new theory better since it does have canonical evidence to support it.

 

Which sort of makes one think that the decks in this episode are supposed to be numbered from bottom up. That is, the Klingons control six, and then half of seven above, but the heroes control the other half of seven. Why else would the Klingons fail to control the entire higher-numbered deck?

Clearly the "lower decks" idea has to be taken with a grain of salt because it would be very, very difficult to isolate 400 people from 38 by drawing any arbitrary horizontal line across the ship. A more complex arrangement of locked isolation bulkheads and doors has to be postulated - as in the diagram.

And remember that in "The Enemy Within" dialogue, "lower levels" are equated with "the engineering deck"...

So, while the location of Main Engineering can certainly be argued over, I'd tend to think that the makers of "Day of the Dove" actually believed in the secondary hull theory. Or at least those creating the graphics and refining the script did. The original writer might have been confused about deck numbering conventions and the like, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

The Decks were number from te top down. The Bridge has been stated on the show in a few episodes as being on Deck 1. As for the location of main engineering - I always assumed it was right in front of the Impulse Drive; and in the original (non- remastered) Ultimate Computer the sfx shot used on the viewscreen when Spock states the Lexington was hit in the Engineering section with possible damage to her warp drive - they show a 'phaser flash' at the level of the Impulse Engine. Also, when Kirk and McCoy exit enginering in that episode, the corridors are curved, indicating they are walking in the Primary Hull/Saucer (And yes, I realize that in the real world they just used the standing sets they had ).

All that said, there IS also evidence showing Main Enginering in the lower/Secondary hull as in The Doomsday Machince Scotty and his damage control pary do climb DOWN a ladder accessway to get to main engineering; BUT it could be they beamed into a higher deck of the Primary hull/Saucer section and just went down a deck or so.

 

It has? Do you remember which episodes say that?

 

This doesn't mean that the assumption would hold true for every episode. Not all writers need have read the writers' guide well enough. For example "The Enterprise Incident" also might have the decks numbered from bottom up, so that "Deck 2" would be a maximally long turbolift ride away from the bridge, as shown...

Timo Saloniemi

 

Shaw, your right about the different origens of the diagrams, but my basic point still stands, that is,that the one in DOTD is based on an older one which does not match the size and complexity of the ship as we know it is sopposed to be. Also, the two views of the ship don't even match each other, so again I dont see how useful it can be?

 

So what you are saying then is that they took the existing non-colored graphic and then randomly cut colored film to place behind it in the display for this episode?

See, for me, that sounds like a lot of extra work by the art department. The dialog described the information as "layout and specifications of the Enterprise", so if no additional information was meant to be conveyed, why not use the (pretty accurate) exterior views graphic of the Enterprise produced in previous seasons? Or they could have just use the bridge version of this graphic with either the bridge station colored films or just a single colored film.

Star Trek was under major time and budget constraints by the third season, so taking any extra time on this graphic at all seems like a major waste... unless it was supposed to convey some additional information to the audience in the brief moment in which it was on screen.

No one in the 1960s would have expected people of the 21st century to have such highly detailed versions of this stuff at our disposal, so small details and overall shape wouldn't be considered viewable information on televisions of that period. On the other hand, the choice of colors (which would have been readable even on Black & White televisions of the day) seem to point to some motivation behind the time put into this graphic.

But that is just the train of thought that I had while looking at the evidence and knowing the expected limitations of the viewing audience of that period. You need not subscribe to this theory, I have just presented it as a fans conjecture on a subject in which we may never know the answer to.


Edit:
Maybe we could ask CBS to replace the original graphic with something like this...



It does have more detail while outlining the same basic areas of the ship.

 

I vote for the less exact, original version being "realistically sufficient". If one were to have a similar schematic of the watertight compartments of a modern warship, that schematic would probably also be similarly approximate and simplified, omitting needless detail.

OTOH, we could choose to be anal-retentively detail-minded here - in which case we would actually gain new information about the vessel. See, while the deck layout might be as portrayed by Shaw's accurate pic, the layout of pressure compartments might be as portrayed by the original graphic... Voilá, we learn that the outer sections of the two decks on the widest part of the saucer actually comprise a single pressure compartment!

The bridge is first defined as Deck 1 in TMP graphics, I think. There is no mention of that factlet in any TOS or TAS episode.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Read this...

 

I believe in a few TOS episodes; Kirk gets in the Turbolift and says 'Deck 1' instead of 'Bridge' - and ends up on the Bridge; but in all honesty I couldn't give a title; but if I xcatch an instance in watching, I'll post it.

 

Interesting. That link even quotes a key scene in "Day of the Dove" - when (*) leaves the ship, it goes through a wall in Engineering and emerges outside the ship FROM THE SECONDARY HULL. FWIW.

 

IMO, that visual pretty much seetles the argument.

 

Basically, Greg manages to turn every piece of evidence into support for the secondary hull location theory, or at least asserts that no piece of evidence truly works for debunking that theory.

The part I'd like to disagree on is his choice of ignoring the sets themselves. When we see two different engineering rooms in "Omega Glory", I see no reason not to accept the idea that there would be two such rooms aboard. When we see distinctly different configurations of the Enterprise set in different episodes, I again see no reason not to think that all those configurations could be simultaneously present.

The "engineering decks" or "engineering levels" are supposed to be a giant maze, after all - something that could hide a lunatic criminal indefinitely. The single set wouldn't suffice for that, no matter how much trickery they pull with camera angles...

In theory, there could be engineering facilities next to the impulse engines, in addition to the facilities that must exist in the secondary hull. In practice, I'd argue that all the multiple engine rooms we see are in fact in the secondary hull. I once doodled a layout wherein the secondary hull could easily accommodate six or eight engineering sets, perhaps so that a tunnel of the type we see behind the grillework connects two, and the tunnels lie in parallel and in triangular or diamond form - essentially acting as horizontal "warp cores" or the like, and incidentally matching the "fat central trunk" layout from the Drexler drawing they used in ENT "IaMD".

Timo Saloniemi