Deck Height. Is there a correlation?

[James Stringer]

I been looking at many of the Star ship blueprints and noticed that one location says X amount of decks yet another sight says Y.

Also, when I look at Ships about the same size, they each have a different amount of decks.

I look up several ships and took the Height and divided by the number of decks to see how many meters would be per level. Not till now did I think to take out a couple meters to count for the Hull, but the numbers wouldn't change much i think.

https://imgur.com/hRzry9C

Any thoughts as to the discrepancy?

 

[Sgt_G]

Any thoughts as to the discrepancy?

Different artists / drafters, some of whom have no clue what they're doing.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Very few starship interiors fit the way they're supposed to. Most blueprints don't take into account the elaborate ceiling designs Trek sets have, for example.

 

[James Stringer]

Different artists / drafters, some of whom have no clue what they're doing.

That I agree with. Draw what looks good, figure out a scale and then fudge the rest. I love how it looks but it makes the Math side of my brain hurt.

 

[James Stringer]

Very few starship interiors fit the way they're supposed to. Most blueprints don't take into account the elaborate ceiling designs Trek sets have, for example.

Very True. I wounder how the ships would look if drawn to scale based off TV set design.

 

[Captain Rob]

^^ Prior threads on the subject have suggested tha tthe tOS Enterprise should have been closer to 1200 to 1400 feet long to accomodate the interiors seen. Specially the Hangar Deck.
Most ships IRL are designed from the inside out (except for the hull's hydrodynamic design). While starships seem to be designed from the outside in. Draw a cool design then stuff things into it.

 

[Timo]

Basically, the Hollywood set height is around 3.5 meters. TOS had ceilingless corridors that probably were a bit higher in-universe. So the big question becomes, is there stuff between decks?

DSC shows us this shuttlebay with a doorway into one deck, and lines and windows marking the decks above, to a definite and resounding "no" (at least as concerns that particular corner of the ship). With other ships, it's less obvious. In some cases, we might think some of the Jeffries tubes run between the decks rather than level with them, even if the entrances are always at waist height. In VOY, for example, this was an actual designer intent, along with 4.5 m separating each floor from the next.

Among the variables here is the number of decks. Do we count window rows, do we listen to dialogue, or do we stare at the MSDs? I doubt there's a single ship where all three would agree.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[drt]

Among the variables here is the number of decks. Do we count window rows, do we listen to dialogue, or do we stare at the MSDs? I doubt there's a single ship where all three would agree.

Heh, the dialogue contradicts itself on its own most of the time.

 

[James Stringer]

Heh, the dialogue contradicts itself on its own most of the time.

Very true. I have a story I want to write but i want to plan out the ship first as i want to take the same path to the locations. As that has always bugged me when reading.

 

[Captain Rob]

Sort of reminds me of "CSI: Miami" and movies set in Miami. They always need to go from downtown out to the airport or the Keys. And they always without fail drive down MacArthur Causeway and/or along Ocean Drive in South Beach. Which is in the opposite direction. Oops.

 

[Albertese]

Also it seems silly to me to assume that all decks need be the same height. On a real life ship, the decks are often of varying heights. Even in Trek, check out the cross sections of the TMP ship in Mister Scott's Guide to The Enterprise where the engineering hull decks are significantly taller than the saucer decks, or Matt Jeffereis cross section of the TOS ship in the Making of Star Trek which also has varying deck heights. The standardized deck height bug seems to have begun with Sternbach and Okuda. (And it's my one and only complaint about their otherwise stellar work.)

--Alex

 

[James Stringer]

Also it seems silly to me to assume that all decks need be the same height. On a real life ship, the decks are often of varying heights. Even in Trek, check out the cross sections of the TMP ship in Mister Scott's Guide to The Enterprise where the engineering hull decks are significantly taller than the saucer decks, or Matt Jeffereis cross section of the TOS ship in the Making of Star Trek which also has varying deck heights. The standardized deck height bug seems to have begun with Sternbach and Okuda. (And it's my one and only complaint about their otherwise stellar work.)

--Alex

Point. The Cutaway for the Excelsior does show several decks larger then the others, all as part of the secondary Hull.

http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/excelsior-revised/excelsior-revised-4.jpg

I only did my math as same height for as an average, and if the deck height was to small for the number of reported decks then that would mean the ship would need to be taller.

 

[James Stringer]

Basically, the Hollywood set height is around 3.5 meters. TOS had ceilingless corridors that probably were a bit higher in-universe. So the big question becomes, is there stuff between decks?

DSC shows us this shuttlebay with a doorway into one deck, and lines and windows marking the decks above, to a definite and resounding "no" (at least as concerns that particular corner of the ship). With other ships, it's less obvious. In some cases, we might think some of the Jeffries tubes run between the decks rather than level with them, even if the entrances are always at waist height. In VOY, for example, this was an actual designer intent, along with 4.5 m separating each floor from the next.

Among the variables here is the number of decks. Do we count window rows, do we listen to dialogue, or do we stare at the MSDs? I doubt there's a single ship where all three would agree.

Timo Saloniemi

Very true. I have looked at all three for the Excelsior Class Ship, and there are very few windows on the secondary hull.

 

[Timo]

There are also different versions of the Excelsior class on sxcreen, with different porthole placements. So what we learn from a single specific ship (say, the Enterprise-B) may not apply universally.

Our only real dialogue references come from the E-B, really. There we hear that damage to Decks 13-15 means this:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=55432&fullsize=1

Again, a slight discrepancy between visuals and dialogue: the characters are supposed to be meeting on Deck 15, even though they appear to be standing on the topmost of the damaged decks. But the bigger discrepancy would be from the actual deck count, which is surprisingly low overall (although acceptable if we assume the neck has no numbered decks) but grossly contradicts the MSD image from the same movie (in which the damage would be on Decks 26-30 or thereabouts, and the decks would be much less tall).

Bernd Schneider discusses the ambiguous size of the Excelsior in detail on his pages.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/excelsior-size.htm

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Stringer]

There are also different versions of the Excelsior class on sxcreen, with different porthole placements. So what we learn from a single specific ship (say, the Enterprise-B) may not apply universally.

Our only real dialogue references come from the E-B, really. There we hear that damage to Decks 13-15 means this:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=55432&fullsize=1

Again, a slight discrepancy between visuals and dialogue: the characters are supposed to be meeting on Deck 15, even though they appear to be standing on the topmost of the damaged decks. But the bigger discrepancy would be from the actual deck count, which is surprisingly low overall (although acceptable if we assume the neck has no numbered decks) but grossly contradicts the MSD image from the same movie (in which the damage would be on Decks 26-30 or thereabouts, and the decks would be much less tall).

Bernd Schneider discusses the ambiguous size of the Excelsior in detail on his pages.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/excelsior-size.htm

Timo Saloniemi

Thank you for the second link. I passed over it before in search for images of the Excelsior, I will have to read up on it.

 

[Samuel]

Sort of reminds me of "CSI: Miami" and movies set in Miami. They always need to go from downtown out to the airport or the Keys. And they always without fail drive down MacArthur Causeway and/or along Ocean Drive in South Beach. Which is in the opposite direction. Oops.

Remember that the famous car chase in "Bullitt" is not geographically doable in the time shown in the movie.

 

[MAGolding]

Captain Rob said:

Sort of reminds me of "CSI: Miami" and movies set in Miami. They always need to go from downtown out to the airport or the Keys. And they always without fail drive down MacArthur Causeway and/or along Ocean Drive in South Beach. Which is in the opposite direction. Oops.

Samuel said:

Remember that the famous car chase in "Bullitt" is not geographically doable in the time shown in the movie.

I have seen many shows, from The Addams Family and Dark Shadows originally shown in the 1960s, to the present, where it is a puzzle trying to fit the interior sets into the outside of the house seen in various shots.

Philadelphia is rarely seen in movies & TV, but an episode of The Six Million Dollar Man had thieves drive off with the Liberty Bell down a dirt path behind Independence Hall, despite there actually being a drop of several feet down to sidewalk and street level from that garden area. Later in the episode mountains southeast of Philadelphia were mentioned though that area is the flat southern New Jersey.

The final episode of Mighty Med had the heroes and villain fly among the skyscrapers of Philadelphia, which were far more numerous than in real life.

An episode of Family Ties had Alex Keaton meet his girlfriend in the Lancaster, Pennsylvania train station, which of course didn't look like the real one.

In Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home, Dr. Taylor asked if Kirk and Spock needed a ride to San Francisco, though the backgrounds indicated they were in the Marina neighborhood of San Francisco. The cetacean Institute is in Sausalito, on San Francisco Bay, but the location shooting in Monterrey shows the ocean extending to the horizon, as if a massive earthquake had submerged many square miles of land by 1986.

The Haunting (1963) used Ettington Park, Warwickshire, England, for the exteriors of Hill House and used interior sets designed with no relation to the actual rooms of Ettington Park. The Haunting (1999) used Harlaxton Manor, Lincolnshire, England, for the exterior shots of Hill House in the Berkshires, Massachusetts, and sets for the interiors that could not even have fit inside Harlaxton Manor.

The James Bond movie Octapussy has Bond's airplane land with the Taj Mahal in Agra, India, in the background. Bond takes a taxi ride and in a minute or two is in Udaipur, hundreds of miles away.

Adn there are many similar problems with architecture and geography in movies.

 

[Paul Weaver]

Sort of reminds me of "CSI: Miami" and movies set in Miami. They always need to go from downtown out to the airport or the Keys. And they always without fail drive down MacArthur Causeway and/or along Ocean Drive in South Beach. Which is in the opposite direction. Oops.

The first Paddington movie referenced this. A taxi trip from Paddington to Windsor Gardens, about 2 miles, turns into a montage led odyssey. Hugh Bonneville then complains about the route taken when they get out. I'm sure it must be a trope.

 

[Gary7]

Simple fact is, most movie producers and designers are not concerned with 100% accuracy of interior and exterior synchronicity. Spending time to do that is not profitable. It only satisfies a very small percentage of people who are consumed with such detail.

Star Trek TOS was probably the first series that made a very concerted attempt to resolve interiors to a general ship design. They had mention of deck numbers for the turbo lift elevator. They had key rooms in primary and secondary hulls that needed to be consistent.

When Star Trek got its reboot with TNG, they tried to carry on that tradition, but at times they made some pretty screwy foul-ups. And there's that infamous TOS Movie scene with Spock using his jet boot thrusters where deck numbers more than double that actual number of decks on the ship (WTF?).

But rather than get fixated on such inconsistencies, I think it best to just chalk it up to "that's the way it is" and move on because it'll never be resolved, no matter how much fan interpretation is attempted to justify certain on-screen content. Unless you've nothing better to do...

 

[Paul Weaver]

Unless you've nothing better to do...

If you did have something better to do, you wouldn't be discussing this type of minutiae on a trek bbs.