Deflector dish on the original Enterprise – question about design.

[Cary L. Brown]

The point is that the SFTM was published long after Star Trek was off the air and was not an official part of the production; therefore its contents are not an authoritative source as to the intentions of the actual creators of the show.

And all Roddenberry signing off on it meant is that he saw it as a way to promote his cancelled TV show and maybe make some extra bucks off of it. Later in life, he repudiated a lot of FJ's assertions.

On one hand we should take Gene's word, and on the other we shouldn't? Yes, Gene did a backflip on the Technical Manual, but that was - as you well know - once he had TNG started up and he desired, really, to try to get complete and total control of Trek once again (a situation he, himself, had made impossible). Don't try to conflate and say that it was because Gene got a better understand of Trek's technology... too much in TNG's 1st season says otherwise.

This is all, in the end, due to G.R's inability to allow anyone else to get credit for their work, it seems. I dismiss ENTIRELY any claims made by G.R. regarding the "technical" side of the Enterprise. Nothing he ever came up with on his own made even a lick of sense.

And you know what? There's nothing wrong with that. There's not a damned thing wrong with a storyteller not being technically-proficient, nor is there anything wrong with a technically-proficient person not being much of a storyteller.

The problem arises when you get someone who lacks skill in one area or another, gets other people to do the work, then wants to get 100% credit for what they've done.

The Enterprise was designed by Matt Jefferies, not by Gene Roddenberry... with some obvious influences coming from Datin and crew. Some elements of the design lineage came from various scriptwriters... who put stuff in that, honestly, I doubt Roddenberry had much of a clue about. (Had he really understood all of that, we wouldn't have some of the contradictions we have... after all, Roddenberry was never shy about rewriting anyone's work if the characterizations weren't consistent with his ideas, was he?)

FJ worked from notes which came, in some cases, from Roddenberry, and in some cases from those who actually influenced the design of the ship more directly. And he did a "based upon" fictional work that was NEVER really "a direct representation" of what we saw on-screen. Hell, his little "foreword" messages addressed this directly, by referring to it as being "incomplete" or "edited from the real information to avoid harming the timeline" or whatever... he knew he wasn't consistent, but was trying to make something that would "work" where, as far as he was concerned, certain aspects of the show didn't work.

I love FJ's work, and consider it far better in terms of technical content than Roddenberry's occasional off-the-cuff pronouncements, but NEITHER is what I would consider "source material."

MJ is the principle "source" as far as I'm concerned. And anything seen on-screen has to be used, though very little of what was seen on-screen was REALLY inconsistent (since most of it was fairly vague). Little things which were created, but not readable on-screen (such as the 947' length, or names of ships on a chart) are irrelevant because they were never intended to be seen... and thus fall into the category, as far as I'm concerned, as the "medical insurance" status bar on the TNG sickbay monitors.

MJ intended this thing to be an analog to the radar nosecone on an aircraft. A sensing device, in other words. There was never any clear indication that it was "also" a deflector, so that remains pure speculation... albeit (see above, re: gravity-based deflector-sensor functionality) a reasonable path of speculation.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Deflector dish on the original Enterprise – question about design.

On one hand we should take Gene's word, and on the other we shouldn't?

It's got nothing to do with anyone's "word." It's about telling the difference between a primary source and a secondary or tertiary source. If the question on the table is "What did the makers of Star Trek itself think about the purpose of the dish?" then the Star Fleet Technical Manual is blatantly the wrong source to use for answering that question, because it was not created until years after the show ended and it was the work of someone unconnected to the original production, partly based on material from the original production but clearly a derivative, later work.

A primary source, in this case, would be an original piece of design artwork by Jefferies, a memo from the original production, or an interview with one of the people directly involved in the design of the ship. The 1964 memo in The Making of Star Trek in which Roddenberry comments on the need for an asteroid deflector is a primary source -- direct documentation from the creative process itself. It proves that the creators of the show were aware of the navigational deflector concept even before the show went into production. The description on p. 191 of TMoST of the dish as a combined sensor and asteroid deflector could be considered a secondary source, since it's the words of a "historian" reporting on the event rather than a direct participant; however, the author had direct access to the production in progress and thus could be considered an eyewitness, and eyewitness accounts do qualify as primary sources. It's impossible to be sure whether Whitfield got the sensor/deflector idea from one of the ship's designers or made it up himself, so TMoST doesn't prove conclusively that Roddenberry or Jefferies held that opinion as of 1968; however, it does prove that the concept of the dish being a deflector was conceived no later than 1968, even if Whitfield himself was the one who conceived of it. Thus, any claim that the deflector dish idea originated with the SFTM in 1975 or the TMP blueprints in 1980 is manifestly false (especially since the SFTM contains virtually no mention of the deflector dish concept).

Since the SFTM was created six years after the show ended and eleven years after the Enterprise was designed, it cannot under any circumstances be considered a primary source. It's a secondary source, because it's created by an author who was not a participant or eyewitness to the original events and who constructed his own secondhand interpretation based on his research into events that had happened years earlier.

Now, Roddenberry was a direct participant in the events in question, and any quote from him that was specifically about what happened in the design process in the 1960s would be a primary source for those events (though it would be more reliable in 1964 or 1968 than it would be in 1975, years after the fact; oral history must always be taken with skepticism). However, any endorsement he makes of a 1975 book is only evidence of his opinion of that book as of the time he made the endorsement, rather than direct evidence of what was actually said or thought a decade or so earlier while the ship was being designed and the series' concepts being developed. It's not the same level of evidence, because of its separation from the specific events which we seek to address.

 

[Vance]

And, as I already stated, according to the published sketches of Matt Jefferies when designing the ship, it's a sensor-reciever dish. The first mention of where the deflector grid came from is actually in TMoST where Jefferies objects to drawing it on the model (as early as "The Cage") since it would hurt the 'smooth look' of the ship. While you're right that the deflector is mentioned early on, the deflector grid is not the dish.

The first reference I've ever found that the main dish is the deflector and not the sensor comes closer to the TMP era. It's a bit of an open question where it came from first, though, but it doesn't really seem to date back to TOS itself at all.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Deflector dish on the original Enterprise – question about design.

And, as I already stated, according to the published sketches of Matt Jefferies when designing the ship, it's a sensor-reciever dish.

No, according to those sketches, it's a sensor dish. The word "receiver" does not appear.

The first mention of where the deflector grid came from is actually in TMoST where Jefferies objects to drawing it on the model (as early as "The Cage") since it would hurt the 'smooth look' of the ship. While you're right that the deflector is mentioned early on, the deflector grid is not the dish.

What in the name of hell are you talking about? The deflector grid has nothing to do with this! I've already quoted the exact text from page 191 of TMoST:

The starship's main sensor-deflector (a parabolic sensor antenna and asteroid-deflector) is located at the front end of the secondary hull.

That is unmistakeably a reference to the dish.

The first reference I've ever found that the main dish is the deflector and not the sensor comes closer to the TMP era.

Again, what the hell are you talking about? The sensor function of the dish has not been disputed at any point in this thread as far as I'm aware. The only alleged function that's been disputed here is the misinterpretation of it as a "radio antenna." The question I've been addressing is that of when it was first referenced as a deflector dish as well as a sensor dish.

 

[Captain Robert April]

By his own admission, Roddenberry wasn't entirely consistent with himself, so we find ourselves following the advice of James Woods' character in "Shark": Truth is relative. Pick on that works.

As for the dish, remember that the space program was in its heyday, and those big satellite dishes were all over the news whenever a story about NASA came on. So, one way to visually tell the audience that this a big serious spaceship designed by serious designers for a serious audience is a big honking satellite dish on the front. The Jupiter II didn't have a dish, because that's a silly show by silly people for a silly audience, but over here, we've done our homework, and a serious spaceship has a big ol' dish on it.

That also is probably why the covering over the dish was dropped, because with the cover that was planned, the secondary hull looked like a giant baby bottle. Leave that nonsense for Irwin Allen and his silly shows, we're serious, dammit!

As for that early layout, let's take a look at it again. Memories tend to blur when we see too many different versions of the same thing...

 

[Cary L. Brown]

As for that early layout, let's take a look at it again. Memories tend to blur when we see too many different versions of the same thing...

thanks for posting that, CRA...

Obviously, not every single line in that can be taken as absolute gospel (as established via that "fleet of airliners" line). But the general concepts are well-laid out there. We know that "impulse is the same concept as rocket power..." that is, it's a thrust-based system. UNLESS WE DECIDE TO PLAY REVISIONIST. (Which, ultimately, we have to do, it turns out, to one extent or another, don't we?) It states that the nacelles are where the matter and antimatter are reacted and the power is produced which warps space. It states the crew complement. It shows the overall dimensions (which I've determined need some tweaking to make things work properly, but your mileage may vary!) It establishes the WF^3 x c speed scale. It establishes all the things that the writers from the show were SUPPOSED to be paying attention to when they wrote their episodes (but which the often failed to follow, whether intentionally or due to lack of "homework" or general knowledge).

Basically, that's the "Rosetta stone" we need to start with. Any "tweaks" we make should start with what's seen there, and deviate only when there's a truly compelling reason to do so (ie, something that literally cannot be made to work!)

The dish is clearly a sensor system. The idea that it's also the deflector is entirely reasonable, but not in any way established at this point. And as for it being part of the comm system, I reject that utterly... there is zero evidence of that at any point, other than due to people thinking of their 1980s backyard satellite dishes.

 

[Christopher]

^I agree that there's no basis for the idea that the dish is part of the communication system. Indeed, I've never in my entire life come across that suggestion prior to this thread and find it rather bizarre.

As for the sensor/navigational deflector issue: We know that MJ intended the dish as the main sensor. And we know that Roddenberry was aware in 1964 of the need for a navigational deflector beam sweeping space in front of the ship. My guess is that these started out as separate concepts, that the people designing and building the ship didn't necessarily keep the deflector-beam concept in mind in the design process. So Roddenberry (and others who read his memos) knew that the ship must have a deflector beam, and when it came time to decide where it was, the only logical choice was the forward-facing dish feature on the front of the secondary hull. So the navigational-deflector function was added to the dish along with its existing sensor function, possibly by Whitfield, possibly by Roddenberry or Jefferies or someone else. I think that's a plausible explanation for how it ended up with the dual function.

So while the asteroid-deflector concept was around fairly early in the ship's design process, it may have been somewhat free-floating for a while before it got pinned down to a specific feature on the miniature.

 

[Vance]

I think someone was just confusing my use of 'transciever' and assumed I meant communications. I didn't.

As for the deflector, Jefferies is on record about the pencilling in of the 'grid'. Though this was at a time where shields, screens, and deflectors, were all used in combination and interchangably as well.