Engine Room(s) on the TOS Enterprise (revisited)

[TIN_MAN]

TMOST doesn't specify what fuel, but the only known fuels are the matter and anti-matter.

Yes but my point is that onscreen dialogue does tell us that the M/A-M is in the nacelles/pods, so its either stored there in reserve or its moved there just before integration/reaction or some combination of both. And in any case, what’s in TMOST plays second fiddle to what’s onscreen.

And even if some people didn't put the care into season 3, Jefferies was still the art director and would have been consulted about the systems.

Sure, and this is part of the reason “Day of the Dove” is such a bone of contention, because Jefferies prepared the pressure compartment diagram showing his thinking that the engineering deck/section is in the secondary hull, even though the writer and editors –judging from the dialogue throughout- were following TMOST, or information based on it to the effect that engineering is in the primary hull/impulse engine area (thus spanning decks six and seven).

Jefferies was back for Phase II and got things stated with Mike Minor helping and Andrew Probert taking over and Probert and Rick Sternbach tackling TNG. So there is a handoff of responsibility that makes looking at where things went to sort out TOS valid.

Well Probert is on record as saying he “forgot” about the matter side of the fuel equation when he was working out the design for TMP, so how it should really work with the matter fuel included is everyone’s guess, but my own two squandros worth is that the tanks at the bottom of the intermix shaft should be for matter fuel storage -with the anti-matter fuel kept in the nacelles- per long standing TOS tradition, this way the two fuel sources can meet in the middle, so to speak, and do their thing.

I'm sure that the rest of the production team didn't give up as much as Roddenberry had (he was the one massaging the stories to make them better and more consistent), so I don't think discounting the third season is valid.

I didn't say I was discounting the third season, just evaluating the weight of evidence from two episodes written by the same writer who got the details wrong and wasn’t corrected, regardless of whether we chalk this up to dramatic necessity for those particular episodes.

Who knows if the writers had been corrected or the technical advisors consulted. But if they spent time on it and the technical advisors were involved then we can be more certain of their intentions, even in season 3.

Keep in mind here that dramatic license often trumps technical continuity, which is why I question the strength of evidentiary weight given to the two Lucas episodes, because they contradict the majority of evidence from all other sources at the time; onscreen, behind the scenes, and supplemental material.

What came later with TMP holds even less weight because in-universe the engine system is a totally new design, and from a real world perspective, because what Probert designed was based on a “forgotten” (yet vital) piece of the puzzle.

But this is your project and you have every right to do any way you see fit, regardless of the ramblings of old fuddy-dutties like myself, so please don’t take my comments as an attempt to change your mind, keep up the good work.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Kirk and Scotty place the bottle behind the door, and the physical lift takes it up to one nacelle.

That would work, except Scotty said he would take it into the nacelle himself. "Then I can take it into the antimatter nacelle, put it into the regenerating chamber and release the forcefield by remote control."

my own two squandros worth is that the tanks at the bottom of the intermix shaft should be for matter fuel storage -with the anti-matter fuel kept in the nacelles- per long standing TOS tradition, this way the two fuel sources can meet in the middle, so to speak, and do their thing.

I always thought that the antimatter pods at the bottom of the shaft in TMP were ridiculous.

 

[yotsuya]

I don't have the scripts, but the James Blish novelizations were done from the scripts and that line from The Apple has no 'and' in it. So either Shatner added it other it was a change to the shooting script. And whether you hear it or not, Shatner didn't deliver that line as cripsly as normal.

My take on all of TOS (especially after reading the 1967 series Bible) is that story was the main concern and tech a secondary concern. So I find it not at all surprising to see such inconsistency in how things are referenced. When it was important to the story they seem to have spent more time on it and the technology is more consistent. Same with the sets and many other things. No sense letting little things like that get in the way of a good story. So I'm not inclined to care about the off-hand comments characters make and focus on longer dialog and significant changes to the sets.

 

[Henoch]

Well Probert is on record as saying he “forgot” about the matter side of the fuel equation when he was working out the design for TMP, so how it should really work with the matter fuel included is everyone’s guess, but my own two squandros worth is that the tanks at the bottom of the intermix shaft should be for matter fuel storage -with the anti-matter fuel kept in the nacelles- per long standing TOS tradition, this way the two fuel sources can meet in the middle, so to speak, and do their thing.

If antimatter is in the nacelles, then the two blueish conduits meeting into one blueish horizontal shaft is carrying antimatter fuel to the intermix vertical shaft, and not pushing "power" up to the nacelles? Nah. If the matter side was forgotten, then the "intermix" shaft is intermixing what? Antimatter, only? Then, they are sending only antimatter up to the nacelles in the blueish conduits? How is phaser power routed through the warp engines, and where are connections? And, what in the hell are the dilithium crystals doing over there in a glass room totally unassociated to the power flow? The splashy, visual TMP power system makes even less sense than the vague TOS power system.

 

[blssdwlf]

I think that instead of referring to dialog transcripts, you need to watch the episodes/scenes in question. In The Apple Kirk doesn't say warp drive nacelles, he says warp drive 'n nacelles. The n is far too long to just be the word nacelle. And I really don't care what is in TAS. Especially not what they drew without consulting anyone.

What version are you hearing Shatner say "warp drive 'n nacelles"? The DVD version does not have that extra syllable at all.

 

[yotsuya]

If antimatter is in the nacelles, then the two blueish conduits meeting into one blueish horizontal shaft is carrying antimatter fuel to the intermix vertical shaft, and not pushing "power" up to the nacelles? Nah. If the matter side was forgotten, then the "intermix" shaft is intermixing what? Antimatter, only? Then, they are only sending up antimatter to the nacelles in the blueish conduits? How is phaser power routed through the warp engines, and where are connections? And, what in the hell are the dilithium crystals doing over there in a glass room totally unassociated to the power flow? The splashy, visual TMP power system makes even less sense than the vague TOS power system.

But if you put That Which Survives together with TMP and other occasions when the logic of a single m/am reactor fits, even the TMP engine makes sense. Those anti-matter pods are on the outside of a structure David Kimble labeled the m/am mix chamber (and the bottom of the ship has plenty of room for a deuterium tank) so the mix is happening at the base and at the main engineering deck the product is being split with some going to the deflection crystal and the rest to the warp nacelles. TWS gives us the correct of the same system in TOS. A single integrator in the engineering hull produces a product that is directed to the nacelles. And in both cases the dilithium doesn't have to be anywhere close to that because the dilithium crystals are almost always associated with the power system, not the warp drive directly. But without at least one of the 4 DC circuts, the ship can't go to warp. That was the solution I was looking for. And you still have the Nacelles as very dangerous because of all the reactant product inside (almost certainly radioactive).

And for those who must have something more exciting in the Nacelles, perhaps there are multiple reactions. Maybe the reactor in the engineering hull is just a partial reaction to prepare the anti-matter for a secondary reaction in the Nacelles. But what is happening in TWS is a runaway reaction that can't be stopped later down the line. And what Spock does in TWOK is fix the needed power circuts for the rest of the warp drive parts to work. I'm going to stick with a single full reactor, but there is room for many interpretations of how the entire system works. I just don't see the matter and anti-matter being separated into the Nacelles. That fails on several logical levels because you either need a reaction in both nacelles or a reactor product being sent to both nacelles. Sending fuel down just to send the other back up adds a lot of useless plumbing and violates the KISS principle.

 

[uniderth]

I don't think we can rely on TMP to inform our analysis. It was an almost totally new Enterprise after all. For all we know they cut off the secondary hull and replaced it with a completely new unit.

 

[yotsuya]

I don't think we can rely on TMP to inform our analysis. It was an almost totally new Enterprise after all. For all we know they cut off the secondary hull and replaced it with a completely new unit.

What I'm saying is not to rely on the TMP design, but the TMP design came from the three seasons and 2 pilots of TOS. So if we know what the TMP design is, we can know which of the episodes they were basing it on. I think the two designs share similarities that aide in understanding each. I would say of all three seasons that That Which Survives has the most detailed information on the TOS system and it parallels the TMP system. I believe it was Mike Minor who came up with the new vertical engine core. He also was just going to replace the warp nacelles, pylons, and deflector dish and leave the rest of the ship the same. That is kind of where the design went, but they kept changing more with each iteration (Jefferies, Taylor, then Probert). They pulled the mystery elements out of the shadows and put them on full display as the main focus of the engine room. Far better than the mystery pipes they never explained. And as someone had pointed out, the TMP design was lacking in several areas that we can pull from TOS to flesh that out.

And one of the things to bring up is the cross section that Jefferies did that was included in TMOST.

I colored in three areas. Red would be main engineering. Gold the pipes structure (assuming it isn't highly forced perspective, which he really didn't leave space for). The blue is an odd structure. It is a short vertical section with a big box on it that sticks into the deck below. I have decided it is a horizontal plasma conduit, but it could be the pre-cursor to the vertical shaft we see in Phase II/TMP and onwards. Of course there is that larger vertical shaft that goes clear through the engineering hull that could be that as well (though the engine room doesn't fit in front of it). This was the first thing I looked at when trying to figure out this ship. In analyzing the layout, I determined that the scene where we meet Sarek and Amanda in Journey to Babel could not take place on either side of the hanger so it must be in front of the hanger. The set design agrees as the back wall is blank (looking down the length of the hanger you would see the doors and for a set that wasn't nearly big enough, just being blank works). That is also the only deck Jefferies left that the engineering room would fit in the entire ship. I put a red box around the area engineering is often put to highlight that there is no room there. Jefferies would have included one of the most important sets. Now I won't claim it has to be the red area I picked, but it would be that deck according to his plans. And in case you are thinking that is just a rough sketch of what Jefferies envisioned....

He kept a virtually identical internal layout as he worked on the Phase II Enterprise a decade later. So the room spaces are not an accident. Between Taylor and Probert, the engine room move up and forward. But at this stage it was still Jefferies work and we can see that much of the internal layout is the same. I consider this to be more significant that the text in TMOST for a lot of things, especially considering designer intent. And Jefferies did work on TOS right through the final episode. I feel confident that the season 3 episodes we have been discussing were cleared with him. He probably designed the set redress for the crawl-way for TWS.

Anyway, that is some of where I am coming from. I love blueprints so when I learned how simiar these two were before Phase II became TMP, I decided to base my decision a lot of Jefferies original cross section (with the hanger from the Phase II).

 

[blssdwlf]

New question; need your thoughts:

1. Could the terms intermix temperature, formula, chamber and shaft imply that matter and antimatter are somehow only mixed together but not reacted yet? In TOS, the matter-antimatter integrator may be intermixing the two streams. In TMP, the vertical intermix shaft does the same thing.
2. Is this unreacted dual-plasma fed into the warp engines were it is reacted for warp power, or fed into a separate matter/antimatter reaction chamber with dilithium crystals to provide main power for the ship?
3. Could the two ionized-plasma fuels be separated yet close together in tightly swirling electromagnetic fields?

Let's see...

Intermix - "to mix together"
Integrator - "one that integrates, or unites, or ends segregation of"

So in TOS, the matter-antimatter integrator is bringing the matter and antimatter fuel into the reaction chamber where they are intermixed. The intermix temperature is how hot the reaction is getting but I'm not sure if it is measured at the reaction or at the reaction chamber wall.

(Correction below on "Corbomite Maneuver")
Looking at the episodes, the matter-antimatter reactors in the engines had individual coolant temperatures and can superheat ("Corbomite Maneuver"). The intermix temperature was called out separately and had a different value. The central matter-antimatter reactor is the only one that has the integrator, bypass control and connection to the main energizer/crystal converter to generate main power ("That Which Survives", "Elaan of Troyius", "The Paradise Syndrome"). Curiously, I wonder what was going to overload in "That Which Survives"?

Regarding TMP, is it an "intermix shaft"? Let's say hypothetically it was... Is each segment a reaction chamber? Where are the reactants (fuel) being fed in from? How can the furthest away segment from the fuel entry points receive the matter and antimatter and not have already reacted in preceding segments/chambers? Where does the reacted energy go? Because if the shaft is truly intermixing matter and antimatter then it must also carry the reacted energies as well. That's at least five functions:
1. Carry matter fuel stream
2. Carry antimatter fuel stream
3. Prevent fuel from intermixing until needed
4. Contain the matter-antimatter reaction
5. Carry reacted energy stream.

I'm thinking calling it a simple power conduit would be better

 

[Henoch]

He kept a virtually identical internal layout as he worked on the Phase II Enterprise a decade later. So the room spaces are not an accident. Between Taylor and Probert, the engine room move up and forward. But at this stage it was still Jefferies work and we can see that much of the internal layout is the same. I consider this to be more significant that the text in TMOST for a lot of things, especially considering designer intent. And Jefferies did work on TOS right through the final episode. I feel confident that the season 3 episodes we have been discussing were cleared with him. He probably designed the set redress for the crawl-way for TWS.

Anyway, that is some of where I am coming from. I love blueprints so when I learned how simiar these two were before Phase II became TMP, I decided to base my decision a lot of Jefferies original cross section (with the hanger from the Phase II).

One side item which is bothering me: the turbolift system. The on-screen TMP LCARS shows a plethora of tubes (no wonder Kirk got lost! This is not the TOS ship internals anymore.). In the secondary hull, it shows three lines (top, middle, bottom) running right down the hull, but slightly off the center line (~10 feet to port). If looking up from the bottom of the ship, then the line could be ~10 feet starboard. Maybe these are all new for TMP and not in the TOS hull...that's my preference.

(anyone have a sharper image?)

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Decker says that the TMP Enterprise is an almost totally new Enterprise.

 

[Mytran]

One side item which is bothering me: the turbolift system. The on-screen TMP LCARS shows a plethora of tubes (no wonder Kirk got lost! This is not the TOS ship internals anymore.). In the secondary hull, it shows three lines (top, middle, bottom) running right down the hull, but slightly off the center line (~10 feet to port). If looking up from the bottom of the ship, then the line could be ~10 feet starboard. Maybe these are all new for TMP and not in the TOS hull...that's my preference.

(anyone have a sharper image?)

There's so many "tubes" there and they're so ill matching of the turboshafts we know about (the Cargo Deck for example) that I instead interpret the picture to be a diagram of power distribution across the ship (or something like that)

 

[BK613]

There's so many "tubes" there and they're so ill matching of the turboshafts we know about (the Cargo Deck for example) that I instead interpret the picture to be a diagram of power distribution across the ship (or something like that)

The only issue with that is that when Kirk re-enters the turbolift on the bridge, you can see the indicator light is on the bridge level, showing that the lift is at that location. IMO, the best in interpretation is that it is not a blueprint but an information diagram, which distorts the layout to better convey location information (or something like that )

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The only issue with that is that when Kirk re-enters the turbolift on the bridge, you can see the indicator light is on the bridge level, showing that the lift is at that location. IMO, the best in interpretation is that it is not a blueprint but an information diagram, which distorts the layout to better convey location information (or something like that )

Kinda like subway station maps?

 

[uniderth]

(anyone have a sharper image?)

https://www.sharperimage.com/si/

 

[yotsuya]

One side item which is bothering me: the turbolift system. The on-screen TMP LCARS shows a plethora of tubes (no wonder Kirk got lost! This is not the TOS ship internals anymore.). In the secondary hull, it shows three lines (top, middle, bottom) running right down the hull, but slightly off the center line (~10 feet to port). If looking up from the bottom of the ship, then the line could be ~10 feet starboard. Maybe these are all new for TMP and not in the TOS hull...that's my preference.

(anyone have a sharper image?)

I hadn't studied that before a couple of days ago and I took one close look at it and determined that is not the turbolift system. Not only does it not show quite a number of known turbolift locations, but it has lines where we know there aren't any. I'm not sure what that diagram is supposed to show, but the only piece of useful information is the bright dot indicating where on the ship it is. If this diagram were accurate, there would be a shaft running through the middle of the cargo/hanger deck and the turbolifts would run outside the hull under the saucer.

 

[yotsuya]

(anyone have a sharper image?)

This is from and HD screen shot I have. Probably the same quality, but I have enhanced it.

 

[BK613]

Kinda like subway station maps?

Exactly.
Improved Readability:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:NYC_subway-4D.svg
vs
Improved Accuracy:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Official_New_York_City_Subway_Map_vc.jpg

 

[Mytran]

My take on all of TOS (especially after reading the 1967 series Bible) is that story was the main concern and tech a secondary concern. So I find it not at all surprising to see such inconsistency in how things are referenced. When it was important to the story they seem to have spent more time on it and the technology is more consistent.

I think we can both agree on that (bold text above). They had a vague notion about how to travel faster than light (warping space/time) and where to get the energy needed for such a feat (matter-antimatter reaction). Beyond that, other elements were added as the plots required.

What version are you hearing Shatner say "warp drive 'n nacelles"? The DVD version does not have that extra syllable at all.

I'll just let Shatner speak for himself

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[uniderth]

I think we can both agree on that (bold text above). They had a vague notion about how to travel faster than light (warping space/time) and where to get the energy needed for such a feat (matter-antimatter reaction). Beyond that, other elements were added as the plots required.
I'll just let Shatner speak for himself

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I hear "Yanny."