DAY OF THE DOVE and Engineering's location

[TIN_MAN]

Shaw, great work! I love your new schematic. I actually was hopng CBS/D would do somethig like that I'm just saying they worked with what they had, and it might not have reflected the ideal image? One question though, since Kang pointed to the viewscreen when he decided which areas to sieze, and we can't see where he was pointing, doesnt this suggest the intention on the part of those in the production to be vague? I know this is pushing it, but just keeping you on your toes.

 

[TIN_MAN]

When it comes to using factoids from the series to attemp to pinpoint the location of engineerng, there just isn't enough specific info to go on, and what there is is controdictory,or as Spock might say "There is insufficiant data to arive at a logical conclusion". Timo, I think you've hit the nail on the head. there has to be more than one engine room on the ship, that's the only conclusion that fits all the facts. Aridas' deck plans are the best I've seen along these lines.

 

[gastrof]

I'm now convinced of two things-

There'd HAVE to be some sort of "Engineering" section in the saucer, for the sake of the impulse engines alone. If the saucer separates, there's got to be a place from which its engines can be monitored. Plus, all the other ship's systems, normally governed by Main Engineering, would now have to be overseen by SOMEPLACE in the saucer.

Second, especially with the shot of the escaping DotD alien, it's pretty obvious that MAIN Engineering is in the lower section of the ship.

Thanks for helping me reason this out, guys.

 

[FalTorPan]

Timo said:
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.

That's an interesting summary with which I disagree, but I'm not exactly unbiased about the article.

Timo said:
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.

I once had a brief email conversation with a TNG art department member in which I stated a hypothesis about stardates. I hypothesized that stardates more or less always consisted of more than five digits before the decimal point. Just as we often abbreviate the calendar year by using the last two digits, during the 23rd century, the stardate was abbreviated by using the last four digits, and during the 24th century, for whatever reason, the stardate became abbreviated by using the last five digits. I suggested this to "explain" why stardates sometimes aren't sequential from story to story, and why the stardate of thirtysomething Captain Kirk's birth seems so close to the stardate of "Where No Man Has Gone Before."

I recall the artist saying that although the idea was interesting, it did not explain why, most of the time, the stardates were sequential from story to story more often than could be explained through coincidence.

I applied the same Occam's razor to the number of nearly identical rooms within the TOS Enterprise. Prior to "The Doomsday Machine," the engine room set has one basic configuration ("Pre-TDM ER"), and beginning with that episode, it has another basic configuration ("Post-TDM ER"). It seems needlessly complicated to assume that two rooms never seen in overlapping segments of time, both of which seem to be utilized in basically the same way and referred to by the same basic moniker, would be entirely different rooms.

As for the situation in "The Omega Glory," the montage which showed an empty engine room while Kirk and Company occupied an engine room also showed rooms that were all empty of crew uniforms -- an unlikely situation, given the story, so it's possible that the empty engine room was a goof-up.

Timo said:
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...

Had there been more soundstage space and money, a far more effective depiction of a maze would be... a maze -- of winding passageways, Jefferies tubes, and the like. There isn't much maze-like about multiple large, open rooms.

Timo said:
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".

Why would such rooms be nearly identical in size and configuration?

 

[Lieut. Arex]

FalTorPan said:

Why would such rooms be nearly identical in size and configuration?

Because of Star Fleet's preference for modular construction? Bridge modules, engine nacelles, etc. It makes sense they would build a standard engineering section and incorporate it into both the main and engineering hulls. The engineering rooms of Saladin's, Ptolemy's, Miranda's, all the saucer-only ships has to be (IMO) located near the impulse engines, per TMoST and FJ.

 

[Timo]

I applied the same Occam's razor to the number of nearly identical rooms within the TOS Enterprise.

I'm not sure why. The stardate theory was sound as such, and didn't contradict anything on screen. It didn't tie the hands of the writers of future episodes, either. Why should one apply a razor to a complex work of art, unless one has an a priori reason for Calvinistically fanatic iconoclasm?

As for the situation in "The Omega Glory," the montage which showed an empty engine room while Kirk and Company occupied an engine room also showed rooms that were all empty of crew uniforms -- an unlikely situation, given the story, so it's possible that the empty engine room was a goof-up.

That evokes two immediate responses in my perverted mind:

a) There can't be such a thing as a "goof" in the Trek universe. What we see is all equally real. If it doesn't make sense, then our intellect isn't up to the challenge!

b) Surely when people started desiccating to white powder left and right, the majority would rush to sickbay? Most compartments would thus be entry, while the sickbay would be jam-packed (as we saw) and the corridors outside would be even more so (but we didn't peek into those).

Had there been more soundstage space and money, a far more effective depiction of a maze would be... a maze -- of winding passageways, Jefferies tubes, and the like. There isn't much maze-like about multiple large, open rooms.

Yet what we did get was a maze as well: an open space (of which we always really saw just one corner, that is, two intersecting walls) bordering on some heavy equipment behind a grille on one side, and expanding to a floor littered with multi-storey pieces of heavy machinery, behind or even atop which the villain of the week could hide.

The set wasn't built "wild" enough to allow the photographers to actively create the illusion of a larger space, for example by moving major walls between shots in a single episode. But the ambiguities in filming certainly allowed for it - and the writing demanded it.

It might be that the big transformer things that lay oriented whichever way in different eps were in fact movable, perhaps gliding on air cushions or those nifty antigravs when needed. But the changing walls, the appearance of the entry alcove, the emergence of the floor cylinders... At some point, one would wish to draw a limit on what the shipboard repairmen could achieve. (Certainly the addition of the second level would be a bit much!)

Why would such rooms be nearly identical in size and configuration?

I don't see why they wouldn't be. After all, the function of them all would be identical. Taking a peek in the machine room of a modern seagoing vessel, there would be multiple gigantic diesels, with associated control equipment at both ends of each engine, and then a central control room elsewhere.

It's not as if Scotty really would be "headquartered" at any of his different-looking engine rooms. He repairs and adjusts machinery here and there, checks readouts on that beige switchboard that mysteriously changes location from episode to episode, and accesses specific systems via Jeffries tubes, but the overall nerve center seems to be his bridge station.

The engineering rooms of Saladin's, Ptolemy's, Miranda's, all the saucer-only ships has to be (IMO) located near the impulse engines, per TMoST and FJ.

The Miranda saucer isn't really related to the Constitution one in that respect. And the single-nacellers should have a very different configuration in every respect, to accommodate the described systems. Probably only the rough exteriors are modular and interchangeable, while machinery inside can be positioned in many ways (say, with two torpedo tubes atop the saucer on Saladin, but up to six at the bottom of the saucer in the Constitution we see and hear described on screen).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Captain Robert April]

Keep in mind that the FJ's single nacelle designs were based upon a different theory of how the ships worked, i.e., that all power generation was done in the nacelles, so it didn't matter where Engineering was (he was also going by the notation in "The Making of Star Trek" that says that headquarters for the Engineering division was located near the impulse engines). If power generation is actually in the secondary hull and channeled to the nacelles, as is indicated in multiple episodes, then that pretty much nips the FJ lollipop designs in the bud.

I still like my idea of the first season engine room being forward of the warp core, while the later one was located aft, even though I originally came with the plan as a joke.

 

[FalTorPan]

Captain Robert April said:
If power generation is actually in the secondary hull and channeled to the nacelles, as is indicated in multiple episodes, then that pretty much nips the FJ lollipop designs in the bud.

No, it doesn't. There have been "canon" precedents for warp-capable starships that have no dedicated engineering hull: the NX class, the Defiant, class, etc.

 

[Captain Robert April]

^ In those instances, we've been shown the Engineering sections of those ships.

FJ's designs, however, tend to imply that the internal arrangement of the saucers is the same for all ships, be they Constitution, Hermes, Saladin, or Ptolemy.

 

[EliyahuQeoni]

Captain Robert April said:
FJ's designs, however, tend to imply that the internal arrangement of the saucers is the same for all ships, be they Constitution, Hermes, Saladin, or Ptolemy.

Where does the implication come from? FJ's tech manual doesn't have internal arrangements for the ships, just external.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The implication comes from his stance that all of the power generation was done in the nacelles and was fed into the ship.

 

[Timo]

Doesn't mean the designs would be unsound as such, tho, as his "stance" was never onscreen while his artwork actually was.

Since we see in the TOS movies and later in TNG, DS9 and VOY that significant warp machinery can be crammed in a narrow vertically configured space, it wouldn't be all that difficult to think that the "inboard reactors" of the single-nacellers are in the neck. That's probably what we're to assume about the Freedom class, too.

We might also postulate that since Kirk's heavy cruiser dedicates much of a hull for engineering, she's a better performer than those smaller ships that cram whatever machinery they have in a smaller space. Let's say for example that the Saladin has a single vertical "warp boiler" similar to the triangular shaft we see behind Scotty's grillework, while the Constitution has two to four horizontal ones...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Peacemaker]

Obviously,Engineering is always near the bowling alley. Figure that out and you can pinpoint Engineering. :P

 

[aridas sofia]

Captain Robert April said:
Keep in mind that the FJ's single nacelle designs were based upon a different theory of how the ships worked, i.e., that all power generation was done in the nacelles, so it didn't matter where Engineering was (he was also going by the notation in "The Making of Star Trek" that says that headquarters for the Engineering division was located near the impulse engines). If power generation is actually in the secondary hull and channeled to the nacelles, as is indicated in multiple episodes, then that pretty much nips the FJ lollipop designs in the bud.

I still like my idea of the first season engine room being forward of the warp core, while the later one was located aft, even though I originally came with the plan as a joke.

Well, I don't want to reopen old wounds, but the presence of an engineering room in the secondary hull, or even a reactor near that engineering room, doesn't discount reactors also in the nacelles. There is just as much evidence for the one as the other. It was either an issue that was in flux, or confused, or -- and I think this more likely -- planned that way. A reactor in each nacelle, and one in the engineering hull. A triply redundant system, with the possibility of having that "engineering core" be the control for the whole system.

It might not be the way they did it later, but then again, maybe the later people didn't check every line of dialog like you and I did.

 

[Captain Robert April]

It's that sometimes contradictory info, and the sad fact that it simply won't go away, that prompted me to put small M/AM reactors between the Bussard collectors and the warp plasma injectors, for emergency backup purposes (no dilithium in these suckers, so we're talking a top speed of maybe Warp 4, if they've got a good tailwind). Rarely used, but sometimes threaten to blow up the ship when nasty lava monsters bent on acting out morality plays start reaching out and providing Kirk a reason to play along, i.e., play along or we blow up your ship.

 

[Plum]

Trekcore picture

Kang: "Check it out, they have a bowling alley!"

 

[Captain Robert April]

BTW, I'm still debating whether to conjure up a full size regulation bowling alley or some sort of holographic version that'd fit in half the space.

 

[Timo]

To be sure, the Franz Joseph ships use many "modular" elements of Kirk's ship while supposedly profoundly altering the interiors. Say, the innards of the Ptolemy tender saucer can't be the same as those of the Enterprise cruiser one, despite outward similarity. If Starfleet still deems it practical to build those "modules" outwardly identical, we could very well argue that the nacelles are part of that deal, too.

That is, there could be wildly varying interior configurations to what seems like a single design in the SFTM. A nacelle from Kirk's ship might pack less reactors (say, zero) and more coils than one from a ship that has limited other engineering spaces.

It's not all that different from the real world situation where one can't tell at a glance whether a piece of rolling stock comes with just seating, or seating plus restaurant, or seating plus a big generator, or in fact the main engine of the whole train. Same exterior, both minor and major functional differences inside.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Stag]

^True. Look at engines in today's cars. Variations exist - single cam, twin cam, OHV, OHC, etc...but essentially, they all fit in the same space in the car and are of the same basic general layout - fuel enters in one location and exhaust in another with combustion taking place in between.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I'd be more inclined to that theory if FJ had provided something along the lines of the Reliant, with it's built up aft section to accomodate the engineering and hangar facilities that would normally be relegated to a secondary hull.

FJ's engineering section isn't much more than a monitoring station.

But this is devolving into another topic for another area, like, say, Trek Tech.