Enterprise-C question...

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In "Yesterday's Enterprise", Lt. Castillo is found under a pile of debris, forward of his helm console. There is what looks like a large metal railing right in front of him (you can see it when they pull him out and he says his name). What is this? Shouldn't this be where the viewscreen is? Why would there be a railing like that in front of the screen?

Or is there something else there, other than the screen? We only saw a small portion of the C's bridge, after all. A bridge of an Enterprise would surely have a larger bridge than the small part we saw...

 

[Bryan B)]

There's another console ahead of the con/ops seats:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/gallery/bridges/enterprise-c-bridge.jpg

And you're right, we haven't really seen the front of the bridge, could be more...

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

There's another console ahead of the con/ops seats:

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/gallery/bridges/enterprise-c-bridge.jpg

Hmm, I suppose it could have looked like that 'originally', although I could have sworn that the railing in front of Castillo had stairs leading up to it (when Castillo is being helped to his feet, as he's saying his name you can see the railing near his head). I thought that there would have been a 'floor' right in front of the never-seen viewscreen, then there were steps leading down from that, to the actual floor of the bridge.

As for the console in that picture: That looks a bit odd. Partly because of the lack of a seat (what's the operator supposed to do, kneel down? ) but also because anyone at that console would block the view of the screen from the helm and tactical crewmembers.

 

[Timo]

Probably that console would have a chair or two normally, but battle damage would result in some redecoration... There was a big heap of debris there, and part of that could have been former chairs.

Also, this probably is the helm console. After all, Helmsman Castillo was found next to it! And the other two, standalone consoles were occupied by enlisted corpses at the time, indicating that neither of those was the place where Castillo should have been sitting.

Those two standalone consoles further aft would not necessarily have a line of sight to the viewscreen, but that's apparently all right as most Starfleet bridge consoles don't enjoy such a view. OTOH, being on a pedestal, the aft consoles might offer a good view even if the helm console were crewed by relatively tall people. The skipper would of course see the screen from between the forward console folks, much like Kirk sees it past the heads of Sulu and Chekov.

After the original helm console was reduced to scrap, Garrett's crew would reroute helm functions to one of the standalone consoles, and that's where Castillo would sit down for the following scenes. Possibly Yar's console would also be rerouted from somewhere else, not necessarily having been Tactical originally.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

It's fine reasoning but I remain unconcinved, 20 years later. Call me a prude, but I just don't think such an unorthodox design would show up in TNG thinking of the producers. :P The set designer probably read the script, saw that Castillo had to be found under a pile of rubble, and yanked a spare console out of the warehouse to make it up...

It took a while for us to even realize that this was a console of some sort. I think that the console was a simple status display, which is reflected somewhat in the bridge of the Excalibur in various non-canon "New Frontier" sources. As for Castillo, perhaps he went under there to reroute power or something, and an enlisted guy jumped into his seat to steer while he was under there. One fierce folly of photon torpedoes later, a bright light and then here.

Mark

 

[Timo]

That works, too - but there's something appealing about the bridge of this Ambassador class ship being bigger and more complex than the bridge of the preceding, Excelsior class Enterprise.

The dimensions of the set itself can't be varied much, of course. But by introducing an all new console there, the designers would make the set quite a bit busier - even though they could not afford a wraparound balcony with dozens of substations, in the style of the previous Enterprise bridges.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

That works, too - but there's something appealing about the bridge of this Ambassador class ship being bigger and more complex than the bridge of the preceding, Excelsior class Enterprise.

Of course. It's an Enterprise, after all. Somehow it seems wrong to have a ship with that name but have its bridge be as rinky-dinky as the one we saw on the show. Of course we know why it was like that - there wasn't a lot of budget to build a bridge worthy of the name Enterprise. But it's nice to think about what might have been...

Enterprises are supposed to have nice flashy bridges. What we got clearly was not that. I suppose we can take some small comfort in the possibility that the bridge we actually saw was just the Ent-C's battle bridge, though.

 

[Timo]

Oh, I don't know about that. The E-C bridge was by no means small in terms of diameter or height or number of interesting consoles, and it introduced an interesting "transient form" between the older wraparound balcony and the E-D aft-only-balcony-with-ramps. It also cleverly hid its possible failings and its numerous shortcuts by being battle-damaged...

Redone as the bridge of an intact Ambassador, with a bit more detail, this one would be sufficiently "nice and flashy" for me. If it did have that extra helm console, I mean.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

In the end, since we only saw the aft portion of the bridge, an intact version could be as big as desired, I'm sure. For all we know the complete bridge could be three times the size of the one we saw - there may have been a dozen or more consoles, and who knows how big the viewscreen was.

Just chalk it all up to 1) the "Yesterday's" battle damage, and 2) Just not having all the camera angles.

 

[CobraCommander]

By the time the Ent-C went through the rift, Lt. Castillo eould have been the first officer since all other officers in between were dead. As others have pointed out, maybe he was performing some other repair or operation in his new capacity. Another likely scenario could have been that he was blown across the bridge into the mangled mess. As for the whole bridge not being shown, it was probably deemed not economically viable to greatly expand upon a bridge configuration that would only be used for two episodes. Cobra

 

[bryce]

I still like the theory that what we say was the Battle Bridge or the Aux bridge - the main having been destroyed in the battle.

Someone once here posted what a main Ambassador Class bridge *should* look like...

 

[bryce]

^Anyone have these conjectural concept pics of what a real Ambassador Class bridge would look like?

I have some on my old PC's HD - but it's boxed up right now ('cause I' movin') and missing a mouse and keyboard...but I'll try to upload copies of the as soon as I can.

Unfortunately, the versions I have were incomplete - the artist was still finishing them.

They look like a cross between the 1701-A & B bridges - and the Galaxy Class bridge. (Much better than that low-rent bridge we got in the episode. )

I prefer to imagine that the main bridge was damaged during the battle...perhaps hit first so opened to vacuum right off - and the crew met in the Auxiliary Bridge &/or Battle Bridge...(even if the E-C didn't separate, a bridge shielded in the heart of the saucer or engineering section for battle purposes would make sense...and we know even the original 1701 had an auxiliary bridge...and we saw the Defiant's aux bridge...)

Hell, I imagine most large Starfleet ships have at least one secondary bridge - manned by a back-up crew in battle - in case the main bridge was destroyed or damaged and knocked off-line - the back-up crew could take control *instantly*...(in addition to the aux controls in engineering....) Just makes good tactical sense...plus, it's safer...we've seen hull breaches in main bridges before...with crew being sucked/blown out...

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Well, yeah. That's why we HAVE the battle bridge in the first place, and we've seen functional sets like the aux control of the USS Constellation too.

On the side of a smaller & stripped down bridge for the E-C, I remember many fans at the time of TNG wondering why the E-D bridge looked so sparse as well. In a typical episode only one or two extras would be manning those aft stations, plus the conn, ops and tactical stations and whoever is sitting in the horseshoe. For a ship with 1000+ crew, that seems downright spartan compared to the average day on the E-nil, with nearly every station manned constantly plus the frequent yeoman or extra simply STANDING AROUND. The E-C could have been an early subscriber to the more minimalist approach that the E-D followed up on, with seats for no more than six people on the bridge including the CO.

Mark

 

[USS Jack Riley]

I always took those aft stations to be dedicated to science. In a battle setting, those stations should be unmanned to prevent non-essential personal from getting into each other's way.

YMMV

 

[bryce]

The E-C bridge being stripped down (more automation) makes sense...but the bridge looked...cheap...low-rent for a Ship of the Line/flagship on the Enterprise lineage...

As soon as I get my old PC up and re-connected (I have files to get off of it)...I try to find the conjectural E-C main bridge...it really looked like a very plausible step between the E-B & E-D bridges...

And sparser than the E-A & E-B...but a bit more personnel room than the E-D bridge...

 

[F. King Daniel]

I kinda liked the smaller, bare-metal militaristic bridge of the Enterprise-C.

It wasn't beautiful, but that wasn't the point. It's said in the episode that things weren't entirely rosy with the Klingons or Romulans at the time. The Starfleet of the 2320's could have been far more militaristic than the 2290's or the 2360's.

Plus I just like the idea of a cramped, uncomfortable command centre for some reason. I liked the small Stargazer and Hathaway bridges too (those and many more all redresses of the same set, of course).

 

[Timo]

Why would a "more militaristic" bridge be cramped, though? What tactical advantage might that provide? The room would be a smaller target by a few square meters only, probably not worth the effort - when the flip side would be that people operating the ship would be bumping into each other at key moments, might have smaller viewscreens for their all-important tactical awareness, and would have more trouble repairing, rerouting or otherwise rummaging through the bridge gear once battle damage was suffered.

The E-D bridge wasn't made smaller in the Klingon war timeline - rather, two seats were eliminated, basically creating more open floor space...

Timo Saloniemi