I assume this was to facilitate the teacup table when used as the Excelsior?
Donny’s Late TOS Movie Era Interiors
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I assume this was to facilitate the teacup table when used as the Excelsior?
I heard once that it was to hide a structural element, and the bridge was mounted on a moving base for TUC for more authentic shaking action. I only saw that once, though, and I remember it being a bigger deal when they did it for Galaxy Quest and Nemesis, so I don’t know if I believe that.
I heard that Nemesis was the first time they shook the bridge in Trek, so I'd be surprised if that was true.
It makes sense to gimbal sets as in The Hunt for Red October, where you want to convincingly sell the subs banking and diving, etc., but less so for a show like Star Trek because there's relatively little of that, which is why I suspect the expense has been spared in most Trek cases.I think there was something that Sulu's tea table was supposed to hide on the bridge with regards to shaking it, though I'm not sure. That being said, the Enterprise-E bridge set being on a gimbal didn't help that movie at all. I wonder if the Kelvin movies had their bridges on gimbals though? Somehow, I doubt it, but I'm not sure.
They shook the Ent-B bridge in Generations.
In Shatner’s movie memories book, he mentions being thrown for an actual loop on GEN when turned on something that sounds like a gimbal for the Ent-B bridge scenes. He indicated it was a new experience for him, which suggests there wasn’t anything like that on TUC, albeit they clearly did some shaker gimmick for the teacup closeup. I suppose it's possible when they reassembled the TUC bridge as the -B they put it on some shaker platform...perhaps something already built for another film, given most Trek movies were shot on the (relative) cheap?
Thought for sure there was some kind of element like that for the Enterprise A bridge in TUC that carried over either from the Excelsior build or to it that they needed the tray and the weird hump to hide.
Since Mike Okuda couldn't recall what he had on the TFF astrogator display when I asked him ("I remember what I had on IV and VI, but not V. I do remember I didn't like whatever I had there though"), here's my conjectured design. Upthread, this would be the popular option number 3. It's obviously a re-use of the graphic for the Tactical display, but turned 90 degrees and fleshed out into a full circle. I have three tiers of stars panning at different speeds behind the grid. I like the display, but I think it just feels out of place to me because we never saw it on the bridge, nor did the camera ever get a good look at what was on the display, save for one time in the film when the Great Barrier nonsense was playing on it. I think it's a very practical use of the circular space, however.
[EDIT] In between taking these screenshots and uploading a video, I'd changed the ship schematic from green to light blue
Thoughts?
[EDIT] In between taking these screenshots and uploading a video, I'd changed the ship schematic from green to light blue
Thoughts?
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I like it. It fits with the overall scheme of the graphics they had for that film. Nice work (as always)!
Speaking of speed, it looks like the Enterprise image passes over a star dot every few seconds. Picking a low estimate, the ship is moving at one light year per second. That's back to incredible TOS speeds, again. Probably explains how they travelled to center of the galaxy so quickly. 
Now that’s an astrogator! The graphic totally matches the other Okudagram.
I've found that to be true to varying degrees of pretty much every bridge variation that has an astrogator. Only on TOS was it ever really at even kind of a semi-appropriate viewing angle for the stations next to it.
I’ve always thought it was more for the Captain than the helms person or navigator. After all, a ship’s captain is a driver, who is ultimately responsible for the driving of the ship. He has to be aware of the ships movement.
Now that you mention it, it does make a great deal of sense for it to be a view for the captain, so he knows where the ship is going.
