Hermes, Saladin vs D7 Crew Sizes

[Mytran]

I suppose I have difficulty with that setup because we never saw anything like it in TOS - all the offices, crew cabins, rec rooms, labs etc were shown windowless and the crew perfectly content with that!

Of the few rooms that did did get shown with windows, a big deal was made of the fact that they featured windows. The casual "office with a view" of the 24th century was a long way off, a trend which continued into the movies.

 

[blssdwlf]

I like to think that the TOS Enterprise's "rectangular" glowing squares were dual-purpose windows where majority of the time the glowing bit is from some sensor emitter right behind the glass and a few were used as actual viewports

 

[Timo]

The "sensors right behind the glass" idea makes it extremely awkward to use the portholes as conventional windows... And the two windows we did see in TOS (and the one in Pike's cabin or ready room or whatnot) were not associated with such sensors, but with corridor spaces.

If Starfleet thinks it's a good idea to provide corridors with a view, then all bets are off as to what the portholes we see from the outside might be for. Some may bring luxury to accommodations and entertainment spaces, but others may open into vacubroom closets or cold storage vaults. Perhaps the portholes are positioned not for the needs of the interior spaces, but for strategically important visibility into key sectors outside the ship, and for inspection of the ship's own structures, and for aid in docking - in situations where outside cameras (or whatever they use for vision) have been fried somehow.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

There's no reason to have ALL the portholes obscurred by sensor equipment - there would still be some spaces dedicated to stargazing, I just don't think there's a need to have that many.

In TOS we only saw 2 viewing rooms - in Conscience of the King the Observation Deck (not a regular corridor by any means, but a specialised space) and the room (it was a room) in Mark of Gideon, which had its viewport shuttered and featured an array of conduits and machinery on the walls - hardly luxury, more like an engineering inspection area.

The "window" in Captain Pike's quarters only became such in TOS-R and features an absurdly thin wall - I'm not sure it really counts as a porthole, maybe a wall mounted viewscreen? Pike did seem to enjoy his TV!

 

[Timo]

The observation deck in "Conscience of the King" is rather clearly intended to be for observing the shuttlebay: the angled windows to the right could not exist elsewhere in the ship, and our characters are first seen gazing through them as if this is the spectacular view Kirk wanted to impress Lenore with, the stars being almost an afterthought.

http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x13hd/theconscienceofthekinghd193.jpg

The "Mark of Gideon" room-with-a-view does appear to be a dedicated alcove separated from the corridor by the familiar red grillework. (With a fairly thin space wall, mind you!) I'd tend to agree it's not a luxury facility for recreation purposes, which was my original point: the windows appear to exist for a purpose unrelated to entertainment, and since we can't divine the purpose, there's no good basis for arguing that a hundred such portholes would be either too much or too little.

Why not have portholes? We never had a plotline where transparent surfaces would have been a weakness for the starship. And most TNG era vessels are covered with transparencies - indeed, even in the TOS movie era, an explorer or a warship appears to feature more of them than a passenger vessel like Sydney!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mytran]

I'm not so sure about the CoK windows being almost an afterthought - Kirk introduces both the portholes and shuttlebay in the same sentance, giving equal weight to both purposes perhaps (then again, he is being the King of Cool at this point).

The room in MoG is indeed a proper room with standard walls making it distinct from the corridor, although the camera angles do not make this immediately obvious. The purpose of the room appears to be mainly engineering in nature, with the inspection port almost an afterthought.

The observation deck in "Conscience of the King" is rather clearly intended to be for observing the shuttlebay...as if this is the spectacular view Kirk wanted to impress Lenore with, the stars being almost an afterthought

All in all, it appears that characters simply aren't that bothered by stargazing out of physical windows - as far back as WNMHGB Kirk uses a desktop viewer to stare at the path ahead.
And I suppose, when you've got perfect 3-d holographic viewscreens, why bother with old fashioned portholes?

As for the movies and TNG, they are both different kettles of fish, produced decades later and with different production budgets and asthetics. But if I could make a final observation on the refit-E's numerous windows on the rim of the saucer (discounting the rec decks at the rear) - they're in the exact same position as the sensor array on the E-D. By assigning these 72 lighted areas the job of sensor equipment, it creates a design lineage to its descendant. If not - 72 windows is helluva lot!

The windows on the saucer rim have always been problematic in any case, being either very low down (on deck 6) or very high up (on deck 7). It's a curious design choice, but less so if they're not supposed to be used for casual stargazing.

IMO, of course

 

[blssdwlf]

Speaking of movies, did you ever notice that the few times that we could see behind the portholes on the TMP Enterprise was during the docking sequence and there is one porthole that a person peaks out from but the other two look like they are dedicated to some kind of sensor machinery?

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd0376.jpg

And one that looks kinda like a porthole is used to illuminate the warp pylon:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0265.jpg

And the portholes near the front look like some machinery (or bulkhead) is pushed up next to them...
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/twokhd/twokhd0270.jpg

 

[Albertese]

On my most recent iteration of gently re-imagined TOS E deck plans, I have the rectangular windows as straight up windows and the round ports being sensor view ports. I got the idea from one of you I'm sure (possibly blssdwlf, I agree with about 87% of his ideas...) and I'm surprised of how sensible it looks on the actual page. It gives a nice balance of spaces all around the outer areas of the ship. I'm no where near done with that project, but it does seem pretty reasonable so far.

(One caveat: I'm purposely ignoring the nitty gritty of the show in a similar spirit as Franz Joseph did on his prints -- very much based on the show without being slavishly devoted to the show. I feel free to play around with things a bit and I'm intentionally doing things a little differently from how they were on the show... So, there!)

--Alex

 

[Mytran]

No argument from me - sticking slavishly to the show is a right pain in the neck sometimes! However, that's my self imposed remit so what can I do?

I'd look forward to seeing your work when its ready - new versions of the Enterprise are always fun!

 

[TIN_MAN]

^^ I second that!