Deflector dish on the original Enterprise – question about design.

[Gepard]

I'm in the middle of discussing the various Enterprise designs on another message board, and I mentioned something I remember reading somewhere, that Matt Jefferies originally intended the deflector dish to be an antenna/communications array, and the sensor/deflector function wasn't decided on until later. I think I read that somewhere on this board a long time ago, but I can't find any independent reference to the notion anywhere else. Can anyone confirm or point me in the direction of a reference to this being the case? I hope I'm not talking out my ass on this one.

Thanks.

 

[Timo]

I'm afraid I can't help with the source - but I must also offer some reservations. Jeffries would be designing the ship with functionality in mind, including bits of aircraft, boat and spacecraft functionality gleaned from the real life. Why would he place a communications array facing forward, when Kirk was supposed to boldly fly away from home? Wouldn't it make more sense to have sensors pointing forward, and comm antennas pointing aft?

The deflector idea was quite possibly invented later than the sensor idea, but it doesn't sound all that probable that these were preceded by the communications antenna idea...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ssosmcin]

Why would they even have a unidirectional antenna? Facing it backward to "talk to home" makes little sense, particularly when they were frequently going to starbases, which at to be ahead of them at some point in order to get there. You're also implying that they wouldn't be sending communications forward into unknown space (no wonder the Melkotians didn't hear them, the signal was going aft), just primarily to "home".

Since the mission of the Enterprise was to reach out and contact alien life, pointing the communications array in the opposite direction seems counter productive.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I'm in the middle of discussing the various Enterprise designs on another message board, and I mentioned something I remember reading somewhere, that Matt Jefferies originally intended the deflector dish to be an antenna/communications array, and the sensor/deflector function wasn't decided on until later. I think I read that somewhere on this board a long time ago, but I can't find any independent reference to the notion anywhere else. Can anyone confirm or point me in the direction of a reference to this being the case? I hope I'm not talking out my ass on this one.

Thanks.

While I can't show scanned documents or anything like that, I know (albeit I could be WRONG about what I know... if that makes sense) that I heard MJ explain this in "aircraft" terms... a lot of the 1701 was based upon aviation concepts.

I recall that he described this along the same lines as the radar system often found in nosecone of an aircraft, and serving an almost identical purpose. His development sketches of the 1701 even had a "nosecone" over this at one point.

I suspect that the "it's communications" bit came from someone hearing "radar" and mentally substituting "radio," either because they were unfamiliar with the mechanics of radar or because they WERE familiar with "satellite dish" receivers (which probably would put the "mistake" into the mid-80s... when these dishes were very visible, 6' diameter fixtures in rich people's back yards. )

 

[Christopher]

I have come across a recurring myth on this BBS that the deflector function wasn't decided on until TMP, but that's not true; 1968's The Making of Star Trek describes it as a sensor/deflector. So we know the deflector function was decided upon within four years after the ship's creation. On p. 85-6 of TMoST is a reproduction of a Roddenberry memo, undated but clearly from the development phase of the production in 1964, in which it was stated that a "meteoroid force field deflector" would be a necessary component in a spaceship. If the memos in that chapter are arranged chronologically, this memo would date from sometime in July-August 1964, several months before the first Enterprise miniature was constructed (the 3-footer was built in November '64, the 11-footer completed in December). So we can safely say that the deflector concept existed in the minds of the show's creators before the Enterprise was built. Whether the dish was associated with the deflector function from the beginning is harder to prove, but we know it was pegged as the deflector by 1968.

An early design drawing by Jefferies on p. 9 of The Art of Star Trek shows a dome-shaped "Sensor" at the front of the secondary hull. So we can say it was intended from the start to be a sensor, not a communications dish.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

An early design drawing by Jefferies on p. 9 of The Art of Star Trek shows a dome-shaped "Sensor" at the front of the secondary hull. So we can say it was intended from the start to be a sensor, not a communications dish.

Yep, that's the "radar nose cone" I was referring to.

I suspect that at some point he did a "dotted line" version showing a dish underneath that "nose cone" and then realized (or had it suggested) that in space the nose cone (which on aircraft is necessary to protect the antenna from aerodynamic effects) would be unnecessary, so he just pulled it off.

 

[Vance]

The dish was originally a sensor reciever (IE, big ass radio dish), with the 'deflector' function (when the deflectors were automatic shields) added somewhere in the second season run. Note that this is in conflict with Roddenberry's insistance that a shield grid be drawn in the ship, which would duplicate that function.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

The dish was originally a sensor reciever (IE, big ass radio dish), with the 'deflector' function (when the deflectors were automatic shields) added somewhere in the second season run. Note that this is in conflict with Roddenberry's insistance that a shield grid be drawn in the ship, which would duplicate that function.

That's exactly the sort of thing I was just talking about.

"Radio receiver" is NOT the same as "sensor." The confusion between "radar" and "radio" is why some people erroneously think that it's a communication device.

Also, "deflector shielding" and "deflector beam" were never intended to be the same thing... one is there to fire a beam of energy to deflect big heavy objects in the ship's path, the other is there to dissipate and deflect away objects and energy which impinges on the defensive field. The fact that they both have "deflect" in their names does not infer that they are supposed to be the same thing.

 

[Vance]

It's a radio dish, but not one used for radio communication. It confuses people, yes.. but there it is. And, in TOS, you mostly only see references to 'deflector shields' and 'automatic deflector screens'. The only time we see the deflector 'beam' is when they deliberately alter the tractor beam.

 

[Shaw]

Less than two minutes into the first Trek ever...

"The meteoroid beam has not deflected it Captain."​

It was never an after thought that some form of navigational deflector was part of the Enterprise. As for the dish on the front, it was labeled sensor before the final plans were finished and the models started. And the dish was originally supposed to be able to changed direction (but that was later considered too costly an effect).

Was the dish also supposed to be the navigational deflector originally? I don't know.

But I wouldn't put sensors or deflectors into the same add on category as phasers and photon torpedos. Jefferies and company were getting enough advice to know that sensors and deflectors were going to be involved in a FTL starship.

 

[Christopher]

It's not a "radio dish." It's a sensor dish. A radio-based sensor dish would be useless for a ship that travels faster than light, because it would outpace its own sensors. Its intended function is analogous to a radar dish, but it would have to use some kind of FTL sensing method.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

It's not a "radio dish." It's a sensor dish. A radio-based sensor dish would be useless for a ship that travels faster than light, because it would outpace its own sensors. Its intended function is analogous to a radar dish, but it would have to use some kind of FTL sensing method.

Exactly right.

In my personal conceit on the topic, what this is, is a gravity-based beam. Because it's "gravity-based," and if you accept the model that gravity is basically a "depression" in the fabric of space/time (and that warp drive is also a form of depression in space/time), it's not unreasonable to assume that you could direct a pseudo-gravity beam "below the surface" of space/time, and use it FTL. Heck, we don't know that there's any limitation to the speed at which gravity works... it's entirely possible that gravity is effectively instantaneous, and many many times faster than light (which we HAVE managed to measure).

Now, if that is a "gravity emitter and receiver"... it's easy to see how it would work. You could use that to push objects, and you could also use it to collect certain types of information about certain types of objects.

I've given the dish a capacitor bank which drives it... the main power system charges the capacitors, and every so often, once the capacitors are charged, the thing puts out a big pulse of gravitational energy. Some of it "reflects" back to the ship, and interacts with the "rings" behind the dish (which I refer to as the gravitational resonator), much as a radar collects information by putting out a pulse of a certain frequency of electromagnetic radiation and analyzing the reflected energy.

Think of this as a "gravity-radar." This lets the whole concept work, I think.

But it has ZERO to do with radio. And stating that it's "radio" in any fashion is not only wrong, but it misleads people into incorrectly concluding that it's a communication system.

RADIO IS, BY DEFINITION, A COMMUNICATION SYSTEM.

Radio waves are a subset of "electromagnetic radiation," as is visible light, and as are "radar pulses." And so on and so on. This isn't electromagnetic. It's gravitational. Or it's "subspace"... or some other magic. But it can't be E/M energy.

 

[SchwEnt]

Quick idea...
Is it possible that deflector/sensor/comms could all exist at that one location?
Sure, the top/bottom domes and other features could be add'l locations.

But could there be multiple functions at that dish location?
The big dish is one component and the "rings" behind it another component?
And the three squarish forward hull structures surrounding the dish?

Maybe it needn't be deflector OR sensor OR radio...perhaps some combination?
I know some technologies would seem to cancel each other out, but not necessarily.

 

[GhostFaceSaint]

Interesting discussion, considering the way the Enterprise looks in TOS I am leaning towards the model makers thinking it was a radar style sensor dish that Roddenberry realized later when they published the original Tech manual would make for a good deflector dish. I never did read that first tech manual, I think I will order it tonight off of amazon and see if the deflector dish is multi-purpose being used as a sensor and a deflector. That and with the new tech manual coming out soon I think I will want to own all generations of the tech manuals.

 

[Timo]

From the pseudotechnology point of view, both long range "futuro-radar" sensors and meteoroid deflectors would require a specific type of resource: a gadget that allows their beams to probe ahead at much higher than lightspeed. So yes, it would make sense to put the two devices in the same location, right next to this FTL booster gadget...

Communications reception would be omnidirectional, I guess; the burden of FTL boosting would have been on the sender. But it does make pseudo-tech sense that communications transmission would again depend on a FTL booster gadget, and perhaps those are indeed so expensive (in terms of credits, mass, power or whatever) that only one can exist per starship. Yet our heroes frequently contact distant locations without reorienting their ship so that the bow antenna would point to the desirable direction; sometimes this would even be impossible by the rules of the show, because reorienting in midflight would mean turning the meteoroid deflector away from the meteoroids... So perhaps we have to accept that FTL transmission of messages does not take place through the bow antenna.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

I always wondered if those three blocks behind the dish were some prime component of the "meteoroid deflector" or whatever you want to call it. Perhaps even the beam emitters themselves. For instance:

• They obviously serve some purpose or they wouldn't be there.
• Although they could be some sort of "clamps" for the dish unit the fact there are 3 not 4 makes this unlikely.
• They're positioned outside the dish facing forward so they have a good viewpoint for targeting.
• There's three of them (for triangulation, although admittedly not an equal triangle).

Anyone else ever though along these lines?

 

[Christopher]

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

Quick idea...
Is it possible that deflector/sensor/comms could all exist at that one location?

It's already been thoroughly discussed in earlier posts why it would make no sense for the communication functions to be located exclusively in a forward-pointing dish.

Interesting discussion, considering the way the Enterprise looks in TOS I am leaning towards the model makers thinking it was a radar style sensor dish that Roddenberry realized later when they published the original Tech manual would make for a good deflector dish. I never did read that first tech manual, I think I will order it tonight off of amazon and see if the deflector dish is multi-purpose being used as a sensor and a deflector.

As I've already pointed out, Roddenberry was aware of the need for a navigational deflector in 1964, and the dish was explicitly identified as a "parabolic sensor antenna and asteroid-deflector" in 1968's The Making of Star Trek (on p. 191). The Star Fleet Technical Manual was not published until 1975.

Also, the SFTM is not an authoritative source. It was done by a fan who had his own interpretations of a lot of things, and it was created well after the show had ended. It won't tell you what Roddenberry had in mind, because Roddenberry didn't write it.

For what it's worth, though, the SFTM labels the dish only as a "main sensor." The only exception is on the page showing the plans for Franz Joseph's conjectural dreadnought class, in which the main dish is labeled "main sensor" and a smaller dish adjacent to it is labeled "navigational deflector."

 

[Vance]

Points of order. Chris, the Tech Manual was NOT done by a fan (though it was done FOR one), and every single page was personally signed off by Gene Roddenberry. More than that, it WAS used as a reference until Gene rewrote the rules AGAIN for TNG. For the time period we're talking about, it WAS the definitive source, period.

Two. Gene was NOT a particularly tech-saavy guy. A lot of things people, such as yourself, assume Gene 'knew all along' came later or came with the input of others after the fact. Remember, the initial drafts for Star Trek had a spaceship that went around from asteroid to asteroid with Spock being a green-blooded and green-skinned MARTIAN.

The truth is, the 'giant dish' was indeed created as a combination transciever of some sort, serving as a sensor proble (Jefferies notes and napkin sketches are clear on this). It was designed and included on the ship WELL BEFORE she was even the Enterprise, after all. It's purpose was altered, naturally, when the capabilities of the ship itself were dramtically expanded.

So, originally, in 'canon', it's a sensor dish, with the navigation deflector housed behind it. As of TMP, these functions were largely flipped, (the sensors are the small pods encircling the 'dish'). This was, oddly enough, based on the Star Trek: Technical Manual too, as the new Enterprise owed a LOT to the details within that guide.

 

[Christopher]

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

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.

 

[Vance]

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.