How many shuttlecraft did the Enterprise have?

[Warped9]

Phantom - there is undoubtedly something up there in the original footage, but it certainly isn't a section of the observation gallery!

Looks like a section of the lighting rig, maybe? The camera certainly never focuses on it for more than a fraction of a second, so I'm pretty sure it was not supposed to be a part of the set.

Conversely, the opservation gallery that was added by TOS-R was very much supposed to be seen:

It's just a shame that a sideways entrance to the Flight Deck is both impossible on a 947' Enterprise and completely at odds with the landing deck as depicted in both TOS and TOS-R.

Also, the CGI observation gallery drops in height for some reason in between episodes...

It can't be the observation deck in the original shot. For one thing the things that one might think are the bottom of the windows are far too low. And in both the original and TOS-R the observation level looks too far away--the perspective is too exaggerated.

And the simple fact--as you've affirmed--having the corridor and access door on the side of the flight deck is impossible.

It's simply one of those things that was unfortunately messed up both originally and in TOS-R. It's more inexcusable in TOS-R because it's something they should have realized and simply showed the hangar deck doors in background of the shuttlecraft. Then the shot would make sense. Or they should have just left it alone.

 

[Phantom]

It's simply one of those things that was unfortunately messed up both originally and in TOS-R. It's more inexcusable in TOS-R because it's something they should have realized and simply showed the hangar deck doors in background of the shuttlecraft. Then the shot would make sense. Or they should have just left it alone.

Except that the FX even in the original clealy showing the shuttle being rotated 180s degrees, not 90. Clearly the intent was for a side corridor to be there. If there's room for a gallery, why not a side corridor?

 

[Warped9]

It's simply one of those things that was unfortunately messed up both originally and in TOS-R. It's more inexcusable in TOS-R because it's something they should have realized and simply showed the hangar deck doors in background of the shuttlecraft. Then the shot would make sense. Or they should have just left it alone.

Except that the FX even in the original clealy showing the shuttle being rotated 180s degrees, not 90. Clearly the intent was for a side corridor to be there. If there's room for a gallery, why not a side corridor?

Because look at the fact they're walking a corridor to the door and then into the hanagr. They'd be walking outside the hull of the ship. There simply isn't any room available there for that corridor and door to be there. This isn't something you just can't wave away with a wink. The TOS guys screwed up and the TOS-R compounded the mistake rather than fixing it.

Sometimes you can't accept what you see onscreen literally.



Several years ago I photoshopped this image just for the hell of it. This is more along the lines of what TOS might have done with a matte painting in the background or TOS-R could have done with cgi.

 

[Mytran]

It's simply one of those things that was unfortunately messed up both originally and in TOS-R. It's more inexcusable in TOS-R because it's something they should have realized and simply showed the hangar deck doors in background of the shuttlecraft. Then the shot would make sense. Or they should have just left it alone.

Except that the FX even in the original clealy showing the shuttle being rotated 180s degrees, not 90. Clearly the intent was for a side corridor to be there. If there's room for a gallery, why not a side corridor?

Actually, it was never the intent to show the entrance to the shuttle hangar at all! All the Flight Deck footage in TOS was produced during The Galileo Seven and then simply recycled into later episodes. The shuttle rotating on the turntable is no exception, the footage simply ran its course (only slightly overshooting the horizontal position)

For my part, I assume that (in-universe) the shuttle turntable operator missed his mark a little, an error that he naturally corrected before the pressure doors opened to reveal the honour guard.

Warped 9, for years I've felt that your photoshop would have been the right way to go. It would have answered so many questions!

I'm not sure I agree with your earlier observation. The structure looks like windows to me, very visually similar to the ones in the CG version. The camera didn't focus on them any more than it would on any background detail. It wasn't story important, it was just part of the scenery

It might interest you to browse the following thread - starting from post#20, the discussion turns to what that gallery-like structure might be...
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=114692&page=2

 

[Timo]

There are ways to fudge the corridors a bit. The alcoves with trapezoid outlines at the flight deck sides might hide doorways to corridors that run along the sides of the ship - and the doors would simply be slightly angled (just like there are mysterious angled interior frames visible in the corridor set), peeking into the flight deck diagonally, and perhaps looking more or less at the forward wall.

Why our heroes would enter the flight deck from a corridor that essentially comes from the very stern of the vessel is difficult to understand, but perhaps there are no alternatives, any directly forward-leading paths being blocked by warp machinery or something?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

The shuttlecraft bay as seen onscreen was meant to convey an idea rather than an exact literal reality. To that end one is led to the realization the "real" versions would appear somewhat different.

The more I think of it the more I think it makes more sense to try fitting Main Engineering up near the spine of the secondary hull ahead of the support pylons. Hopefully that would allow enough room underneath to have a corridor leading to an access door at the centre of the fight devk's forward wall. Then what we see onscreen would make more sense.

 

[Phantom]

Found a couple of depictions of the Hangar Deck online.

This one was generated for the Hayes' Manual, I think (it looks like that one). Hayes is a semi-official source.

https://www.pinterest.com/offsite/?...e4a5b2e31ca24c9370.jpg&pin=503629170808147853

Leaves open the question of where those dang doors are, since there doesn't appear to be either a rear OR side entrance. Could this be evidence that, original ep not withstanding, the honor guard scene, et al did in fact take place in the "parking bay"?

This one is tiny (for obvious reasons), but I include it just because. It's from Ships of the Line.

http://www.treksinscifi.com/images/stships3.jpg

 

[Warped9]

I can't link to the first image, and while curious I wouldn't give the Hayes manual much credit given how much they got wrong.

The second image is total nonsense because we know there's absolutely no room at the sides of the hangar for that corridor and access door as seen onscreen.

 

[Phantom]

Try this link

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/503629170808147853/

What do you feel Hayes got wrong?

And we still don't "know" that there isn't room. You can MAKE the room, if you give up just a little deck space for it.

 

[Warped9]

Yes, we do know there's not enough room. Everyone who has ever tried to model it comes to that realization. And if you try to "give up a little deck space" you are drastically altering the rest of the flight deck. That door simply can't be on the sides of the flight deck. It just isn't built that way.

Which should get primacy? An interior of which we know exactly what it looks like or a corridor and door with next to no solid clue as to where it's supposedly located?

Haynes got a lot wrong. There are details on the Enterprise drawing that are distinctly different from the ship we know. Their shuttlecraft drawing is a joke seeing it's based on the AMT model kit and also shows no aft cabin. It looks like they based it on the FJ drawings as seen in his tech manual.

Over the years I've seen numerous fan made work that puts Haynes to shame.

 

[Timo]

What can be done with the hangar with relative ease is changing the size of the entire ship. We have to do a bit of that anyway, considering the shuttle itself is of indeterminate size; we could adjust the ship rather than the shuttle to make the best possible fit.

The funny thing is, the only even remotely scale-establishing feature of the TOS ship is to be found at the shuttle facility. No, it's not the outer doors, which are subject to forced-perspective ambiguities. It's the observation gallery, with easily measured dimensions on the set, and measurable inner windows on the model, plus the fact that the set also has outer windows.

But even then we can fudge. And surely we could fudge the shuttle access corridor, of equal dimensions, to lie directly below the observation gallery and parallel to it, just as in the SotL image? There's no room for angling the corridor, but the angle can be overlooked. And that's basically all we need.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The funny thing is, the only even remotely scale-establishing feature of the TOS ship is to be found at the shuttle facility. No, it's not the outer doors, which are subject to forced-perspective ambiguities. It's the observation gallery, with easily measured dimensions on the set, and measurable inner windows on the model, plus the fact that the set also has outer windows.

No. The observation gallery is not "the only even remotely scale-establishing feature of the TOS ship."

The shuttle is said in "The Galileo Seven" to be "a twenty-four foot shuttlecraft." From the way the English language works, and if you're unfamiliar with that then by the process of elimination, that would mean its length. Such explicit naming of a measurement is rare in TOS.* That line of dialog establishes the scale of the shuttlecraft, and everything it comes into direct contact with. Of course, like many things in Star Trek, it's fudge-able to the degree that we're talking about a television show.

The length of the shuttlecraft in Franz Joseph's Tech Manual is right around 7 meters, which is in line with the 24-foot remark. It looks like Warped9 set the length in his plans to 7.888 meters, which is in close accordance.

* - I wonder if that was done, because they built a full-scale (?) prop for the episode?

 

[Warped9]

The way those alcoves are made the curved inside surfaces are next to the outer hull. That's where your corridor would be. the corridor and access door would be outside of the ship.

So the hull at that point has to be easily 20 ft. wider to accommodate such a setup. That means scaling up the ship a lot. Yeah, it could solve certain questions, but it also raises others.

It could be fudged to put a tight corrider leading to those alcoves--a between hulls setup, but it would be snug and nothing like what we see onscren. And the entrance to the flight deck won't look like it does onscreen.

 

[Mytran]

The pressure doors line up to the centre of the turntable circle. Quite apart from other concerns, there's no way any door in those alcoves would be able to line up to that

 

[Timo]

The observation gallery is not "the only even remotely scale-establishing feature of the TOS ship."

The shuttle...

...is of no help in establishing the scale of the TOS ship. Indeed, the whole problematique here relates to determining exactly how the 24-foot craft should be measured against the false perspective of the scale model bay. A leeway of 10% would make a rather massive difference for the 1000-foot starship.

The ship herself has an exterior and an interior. These only come in touch at the observation gallery, as all other sets lack measurable portholes or other through-hull features. Even the bridge is more trouble than worth in this respect, alas.

The way those alcoves are made the curved inside surfaces are next to the outer hull. That's where your corridor would be.

How so? The doors inserted into the SotL drawing are not in the outer hull walls. They are in the side walls of the alcoves - the forward and aft walls. The corridor with a door at the very end would be behind such a door, thus between the outer wall of the ship and the non-alcoved part of the wall of the hangar.

In "Immunity Syndrome", say, the corridor McCoy and Spock use to access the bay would be on the port side of the ship, with that blue door emerging into the forward wall inside the portside alcove. From there, the port side of the shuttle would be visible, just as the set shows, and just as the scale model later shows (the shuttle is seen rotating from a position where its bow points roughly towards the starboard wall to the launch position).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The observation gallery is not "the only even remotely scale-establishing feature of the TOS ship."

The shuttle...

...is of no help in establishing the scale of the TOS ship. Indeed, the whole problematique here relates to determining exactly how the 24-foot craft should be measured against the false perspective of the scale model bay. A leeway of 10% would make a rather massive difference for the 1000-foot starship.

Wrong.

Two things.

1) You edited out some of what I said. I said that establishing the scale of the shuttle establishes anything it comes into direct contact with. That's so, and would include the turntable, the aft of the flight deck and so on. There's no false perspective involved in any of that.

2) You said "remotely." Having an explicit measurement certainly meets the criteria of remotely establishing something. I never claimed it would be established with great precision. You'd already set the standard much lower than that. You can't come along and disallow what refutes that by saying it's not high precision.

 

[Timo]

I said that establishing the scale of the shuttle establishes anything it comes into direct contact with.

So Kirk is four and a half feet tall?

Okay, we can pick and choose our shuttles and use those as indirect means of establishing the scale of the starship, with a big fudge factor. That still isn't a scale-establishing feature "of the ship", though, so there's nothing "wrong" involved in that sense: the observation gallery stands alone in that respect.

But yeah, the shuttle can be used. Although I'd really hate to have to do so, given the midget Kirk problem.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

See the inside surfaces of the alcoves--that's the outer hull. You could squeeze a tight corridor leading back to the alcove, but there's no way to have the entrance as seen onscreen. It's just simpler to put the access door at the centre of the forward wall.



I admit I didn't do that as I opted to put two entrances that do mimic what we saw onscreen, but they're off to the sides.

Here you can see you can get to the alcove, but your entrance won't be like you see onscreen.

Entering the Flight Deck from the starboard side access.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

So Kirk is four and a half feet tall?

lol What?

 

[Timo]

See the inside surfaces of the alcoves--that's the outer hull.

The "back walls" deep within the alcoves? Yes. And that's also the outer wall of the corridor (in "Immunity Syndrome", the right-hand wall when Spock walks towards the blue door that takes him into the bay). The walls into which the alcoves are cut then form the inner wall of the corridor.

And we know for a fact that the observation gallery was wide enough for two people to walk side by side, without counting the inner window angle; a corridor below that would certainly be plausible, essentially being of the same width.

So where's the problem?

(That said, I vastly prefer doors in the forward wall, preferably accompanied by bigger doors leading into shuttlecraft elevators, ST5:TFF style and, with the walls removed, also ST:TMP style. But even better would be doors in a completely separate facility, namely the famous Hangar or Hanger.)

lol What?

The shuttle, like the ship, has an inside and an outside. And, again, a rather severe disconnect between the two. Scaling by comparison to "objects that come into touch" is the unfortunate victim there.

Timo Saloniemi