Did Kirk have an office?

[allstar77]

In or out of canon, did Kirk have an office or a ready room? Seems like I've seen in some blueprints. Anyone ever make an attempt in illustrating it? What do you think it would look like? I thought it was amusing inn Star Trek Continues, everyone seems to run in and out of Kirk's cabin with their their problems.

Same goes for the gym.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

In or out of canon, did Kirk have an office or a ready room? Seems like I've seen in some blueprints. Anyone ever make an attempt in illustrating it? What do you think it would look like? I thought it was amusing inn Star Trek Continues, everyone seems to run in and out of Kirk's cabin with their their problems.

Same goes for the gym.

I think the personal office/ready room started with the 24th century. During the 23rd century, it seemed like the Captain's Quarters itself was the personal office.

If not the quarters, it was the briefing room.

 

[Melakon]

In TOS, his quarters definitely seem to double as his office, since the command packet is kept in a locked safe there. Normally, I suppose that section of the quarters would be the living room area for entertaining guests, but Kirk usually seemed to do most of that in the sleeping area.

 

[Joel_Kirk]

In TOS, his quarters definitely seem to double as his office, since the command packet is kept in a locked safe there. Normally, I suppose that section of the quarters would be the living room area for entertaining guests, but Kirk usually seemed to do most of that in the sleeping area.

Sarek, sitting on Kirk's bed: "Captain, even though my wife is an Earth female and my ambassador duties have allowed me immersion in Earth culture, I am not clear on the purpose of entertaining me here. Might we adjourn to the area where we can both sit in chairs?"

 

[Warped9]

One can extrapolate. We only saw Kirk use his quarters because it was a cost saving measure rather than building or redressing another set to serve as his office. But in TNG we did see Picard use his quarters as well as his office. So it's quite possible Kirk had an office only it was never shown, just like many other parts of the ship.

And for what it's worth Franz Joseph's blueprints do show an office for the commanding officer. Indeed the blueprints show an office for all the senior officers.

We never bathrooms on the TOS Enterprise, but we know they had to be there.

 

[Corylea]

Bob Justman came up with the idea for the ready room in the 1980's, which suggests that there wasn't one in TOS. Short consultations between only a few people take place on the Bridge itself or in the captain's quarters; longer meetings or consultations that involve more than a few people take place in the briefing room.

 

[Albertese]

And, yet, Scotty does have an office, from which prints for bulkheads can be pulled, as mentioned in (IIRC) "The Naked Time."

--Alex

 

[Wingsley]

Weren't Capt. Pike's quarters in "The Cage" significantly different from Kirk's? I don't recall if they were ever given a location, but the impression I had was that Deck 2 housed Pike's quarters and the briefing room shown in that story. One thing is for sure: the set (or sets?) used for Pike's room and the briefing room are significantly different than Kirk's cabin and the TOS-proper (post-"Where No Man…") Briefing Room sets.

Cross-comparing this to Picard's Ready Room on the Enterprise-D and to Archer's Ready Room on the NX-01 Enterprise, it seems to have gone full circle. Picard's ready room is like a combination office and mini-briefing room. (Seen as such in "The Neutral Zone") Other than that, the combination of a replicator and the (implied) off-set access to what seemed to be an executive washroom/head, seemed to give Picard's facility very limited function, like a "Captain's Break Room / Reading Room".

Archer's just-off-the-bridge facility seemed much more logical. It appeared to be a mini-office, plus a bedroom-at-the-Bridge. So the makers of ENT morphed the Picard Ready Room concept, merging it with Pike's.

One question on my mind: does anyone here think Kirk needed a Ready Room just off the Bridge? Would it have had useful dramatic value for TOS if such a set had been created?

One important fact that seems to be overlooked: all STAR TREK starship facilities are paperless, or very nearly so. They use padds, which look like iPads or Kindles. They also use desktop display terminals and other viewscreens all over the ship. With everything computerized, why is a dedicated just-off-the-bridge office necessary? TNG made use of it (and it seemed cozier than their Observation Lounge), but was it necessary? Couldn't the captain set up an office in his quarters, or in a briefing room, as we often saw Kirk do? If the Main Bridge on a Constitution-class starship were either damaged or undergoing refit/repair, and that part of the ship were rendered inaccessible, Kirk's quarters on Deck 5 would be a safe distance away and actually closer than the (implied) locations of Auxiliary Control (in either the underside of the saucer or in the neck or secondary hull).

 

[Timo]

I would argue the top officers need a place to get shut-eye very close to their working stations at the Bridge. This would be achieved by them permanently living in the area just below the bridge, negating the need for separate readiness facilities. McCoy's quarters are suggestively labeled, apparently as being on Deck 3; Spock lives on Deck 3 in ST2, too. A separate Ready Room would thus only be needed if an officer were for some reason forced to live far away from his duty station, and we don't learn of such a force majeure in TOS.

Yet we do learn that Kirk lives on Deck 12 in several early episodes. But perhaps this is for the better - perhaps Deck 12 contains Kirk's office, the place where he can dedicate himself to paperwork far away from his "day duties"? The set is identical to his living quarters that get no specific location (they are at least temporarily on Deck 5 in "Journey to Babel", but we learned in "Elaan of Troyius" that the ship has scant facilities for accommodating dignitaries, forcing at least Uhura to relocate - and "JtB" has a shipload of visitors to complicate the lives of our heroes). So we could well say Kirk lives next door to McCoy (some plots like "Man Trap" might be slightly enhanced by this) and Spock (certain fans will agree, although perhaps Starfleet dislikes the "all eggs in one basket" approach and forces the CO and the XO to be separated by at least a pressure bulkhead).

As long as the ship has these standardized cabins available, and the need to reshuffle exists, and the heroes have very few personal effects in evidence, it would make sense for Kirk's office to be identical to his living quarters, even when a separate room...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[F. King Daniel]

I can imagine Kirk being told years later that he did in fact have an office on the Enterprise. Much like Jack O'Neill never once opening his desk drawer during his tenure running Stargate Command...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In TOS, Kirk's quarters themselves were his office. In the films, he had a separate office which was right next to his room, separated by a door (this is most clearly seen in TMP and TWOK).

 

[JoeZhang]

In TOS, his quarters definitely seem to double as his office, since the command packet is kept in a locked safe there. Normally, I suppose that section of the quarters would be the living room area for entertaining guests, but Kirk usually seemed to do most of that in the sleeping area.

Ensign - come to my quarters, I want you to look at my command packet.

 

[Metryq]

I think the personal office/ready room started with the 24th century.

Wait a minute—fans want to eliminate the transporter room and simply beam point-to-point, yet the captain needs a special room to talk to people?

 

[Ithekro]

In TOS, Kirk's quarters themselves were his office. In the films, he had a separate office which was right next to his room, separated by a door (this is most clearly seen in TMP and TWOK).

Basically this. The plans in "Mr Scotts Guide to the Enterprise" also shows show an office and bedroom for senior officers and VIP quarters (he's a visiting admiral after all). Spock's captain's quarters are similar, though he has a mediation area.

 

[Green Shirt]

We never bathrooms on the TOS Enterprise, but we know they had to be there.

Do we?

Didn't Hawkeye tell Radar that officers don't go to the bathroom, they just explode when they're 50?

That's why Matt Decker was so irritable, the pressure made him fly into the DDM. Also the reason why Commodore Stocker was in such a hurry to get to Starbase. There are many other examples in the episodes why visitors to the ship acted so goofy.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I recall some fan blueprints of a TOS shuttle which suggested they beam the shit out of you rather than make you poop it out. That might have just been due to space restrictions on the shuttle though, rather than standard Starfleet policy...

 

[Melakon]

Stocker did have a look of desperation on his face through much of the episode.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In TOS, Kirk's quarters themselves were his office. In the films, he had a separate office which was right next to his room, separated by a door (this is most clearly seen in TMP and TWOK).

Basically this. The plans in "Mr Scotts Guide to the Enterprise" also shows show an office and bedroom for senior officers and VIP quarters (he's a visiting admiral after all). Spock's captain's quarters are similar, though he has a mediation area.

Kirk's quarters in ST VI, on the other hand, are different - I can't tell where the door to his office is (or if it even exists).

Although that's a good point about his TMP/TWOK quarters. I never even considered that they might be an admiral's flag quarters. Makes sense.

 

[Ithekro]

I recall some fan blueprints of a TOS shuttle which suggested they beam the shit out of you rather than make you poop it out. That might have just been due to space restrictions on the shuttle though, rather than standard Starfleet policy...

What about a food product (those plasticy cube things for example) that basically reprocesses your waste materials (inside your system) into something your system can use as nutrition, and then, not only do you not have to eat quite as much, since every gram of food is used for something, but also no waste.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

I recall some fan blueprints of a TOS shuttle which suggested they beam the shit out of you rather than make you poop it out. That might have just been due to space restrictions on the shuttle though, rather than standard Starfleet policy...

Man, you just never know where a thread's gonna go*!

* - pun not intended