How Useful Are the Cutaway Displays?

[FalTorPan]

At the forward end of the Enterprise-D's main engineering facility was a large cutaway diagram, dubbed the "MSD," of the ship. A similar diagram was shown at the back of Voyager's bridge, and various other Trek ships gained them over time as well.

The cutaway illustrations are fun visuals, because they offer a peek inside some of our favorite ships, and they're often the best visual link between the ship exteriors (realized as filming miniatures or CGI models) and interiors (usually realized as full-sized physical sets). At first glance the diagrams also look very technical.

Thinking "in-universe" for a moment, how useful would such a illustration be, particularly when it's so prominently and persistently displayed, and relatively static in its content? For starters the diagrams generally only show information about features which lie along the centerline of the ship (or a nacelle). In addition the features displayed are basically just labeled with the names of the features. There are no actual status readouts. Arguably, once you know anything about starship technology, the displays are not very useful, because they do little more than display the obvious about things which only exist along the centerline. The diagram does little more than familiarize someone with the very basic, centerline-aligned components of the ship. Anyone who knows anything about how the ship works wouldn't find much use in such an illustration. I keep thinking of Scotty in Star Trek VI, drinking coffee while reading a schematic of the Enterprise-A which points out such arcane features as the navigational deflector and the warp nacelles.

I've never seen a centerline cutaway diagram of a car as a standard display in either a service bay or a dashboard.

In the case of Voyager, one might argue that the only people who benefit from the cutaway diagram at the back of the bridge would be adversaries, who while communicating with the captain, peek over her shoulder so that they know which centerline-aligned parts of the ship to shoot at first!

So... regardless of how cool the cutaway diagrams look, how useful would they really be in the Trek universe, particularly in the way that they're actually displayed?

 

[Albertese]

How useful are the cutaway displays? Not terribly.

All the points you mention are the reasons why i think MSD's are stupid and a waste of time.

However, there could be functionality we don't see on screen. For example, there were at least one or two close ups where the E-D's Engineering MSD was used to indicate system status all over the ship, and, as it is a giant touchscreen like all TNG panels seem to be, you could touch certain areas and see displays of that particular are, even "security camera footage". Maybe the screen can be reset to display crossections at other "slice planes" than just centerline, but centerline is the default...?

Also, the E-D had on the "pool table" a similar technical looking diagram of the Enterprise that was from above. Since it was so close to the big cross section, I posit that the two were meant to be used in concert to see the status of any system.

It's noteworthy that the TOS ship never had anything like this. There were things like the hull pressure diagram which used stylized images of the hull, but mostly things to indicate system status were abstracted diagrams that looked more like wiring diagrams. Indeed, some of the images were loosely based on diagrams from the bomber Matt Jefferies flew during the war. I feel this is by far the more plausible method of displaying ship's status.

--Alex

 

[Bill Morris]

But they aren't really static. And they are interactive. They show status of damage, power distribution, all kinds of things. And they are zoomable and scrollable, able to show great detail and data on demand. That's been shown onscreen many times on VOY and a few times on DS9 and TNG.

Even the ones in my own LCARS system change and show different things in response to keyboard input.

A good example is the Defiant schematic that Smiley showed Sisko in DS9: Shattered Mirror. It only lasted a few seconds, but the whole image rotated, then individual parts were zoomed, etc. It was pretty cool to see. And individual parts of the regular Defiant MSD in Engineering sometimes flashed to indicate problems.

In VOY: Alice the image of an alien shuttle they had purchased rotated on the computer screen, pausing every 30 degrees to become a labled diagram. In VOY: Equinox some component rotated continuously on the display, with the label pointers expanding or contracting to keep indicating its features.

 

[JNG]

It's okay that they are partly for the fans and just to have a cool-looking diagram there, even if the budget doesn't usually allow to show its useful in-universe functions.

However, I don't like the absence of Jefferies tubes and so forth that means they are only a very general familiarization kind of map; considering that they would never have been visible on screen in any detail anyway, designing those extra elements would not have been productive, but it still creates a little bit of a conflict sometimes.

I don't believe such a general diagram gives anything away to enemies that would not already have been obvious from their sensor returns and their knowledge of how starship systems work to support mainly "humanoid" crews. If they were so alien that they could not recognize some of the systems, then the cutaway might not be a whole lot of help on its own.

 

[FalTorPan]

I don't believe such a general diagram gives anything away to enemies that would not already have been obvious from their sensor returns and their knowledge of how starship systems work to support mainly "humanoid" crews. If they were so alien that they could not recognize some of the systems, then the cutaway might not be a whole lot of help on its own.

You make a good point. Any fleet that sees nothing wrong with placing a ship's main bridge in such a visible and vulnerable location probably doesn't care whether an adversary knows the location of the antimatter pods.

 

[Kaziarl]

I would imagine that the MSD could cut through the ship as needed, kind of like an MRI takes slices of your brain, then stacks them on top of each other to get a 3d view of the brain. It would be nice to have actually seen the MSD do this, and maybe in the future we will. But thats my theory at any rate.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I don't think the MSD only focuses on the centerline of the ship. It's there to provide a general, and constant, status report on the ship's major systems. If a transporter room on Deck 14 goes blooey, you'll get a warning about it on the Deck 14 part of the MSD, even though the flaming transporter room is nowhere near the centerline of the ship.

 

[FalTorPan]

I suppose that's possible, but I would argue that such a display isn't the most effective way to commuicate problems of that nature.

 

[Bill Morris]

Subway maps are similar to MSDs to some extent and don't have to be interactive.

As to showing Jefferies tubes or the route to or location of something, just touch the right button, and the display will change to show you what you want to know. Walk to the rear of Voyager's bridge and try it for yourself. You won't be disappointed.

 

[Captain Robert April]

By Jove, it works!

 

[Cary L. Brown]

At the forward end of the Enterprise-D's main engineering facility was a large cutaway diagram, dubbed the "MSD," of the ship. A similar diagram was shown at the back of Voyager's bridge, and various other Trek ships gained them over time as well.

The cutaway illustrations are fun visuals, because they offer a peek inside some of our favorite ships, and they're often the best visual link between the ship exteriors (realized as filming miniatures or CGI models) and interiors (usually realized as full-sized physical sets). At first glance the diagrams also look very technical.

Thinking "in-universe" for a moment, how useful would such a illustration be, particularly when it's so prominently and persistently displayed, and relatively static in its content? For starters the diagrams generally only show information about features which lie along the centerline of the ship (or a nacelle). In addition the features displayed are basically just labeled with the names of the features. There are no actual status readouts. Arguably, once you know anything about starship technology, the displays are not very useful, because they do little more than display the obvious about things which only exist along the centerline. The diagram does little more than familiarize someone with the very basic, centerline-aligned components of the ship. Anyone who knows anything about how the ship works wouldn't find much use in such an illustration. I keep thinking of Scotty in Star Trek VI, drinking coffee while reading a schematic of the Enterprise-A which points out such arcane features as the navigational deflector and the warp nacelles.

I've never seen a centerline cutaway diagram of a car as a standard display in either a service bay or a dashboard.

In the case of Voyager, one might argue that the only people who benefit from the cutaway diagram at the back of the bridge would be adversaries, who while communicating with the captain, peek over her shoulder so that they know which centerline-aligned parts of the ship to shoot at first!

So... regardless of how cool the cutaway diagrams look, how useful would they really be in the Trek universe, particularly in the way that they're actually displayed?

This "general concept" is actually quite useful... but not as-seen on-screen in Trek.

The idea would be to have a holographic display showing various ship's systems which could be highlighted (say, in red) if necessary. Imagine, basically, a "glass starship" where you can see an individual system, or cluster of systems, on-demand.

Today, we do similar (but not identical) things by having 3D-rendered models of various machines or mechanisms which can be panned, tilted, zoomed... all (typically) displayed in simple 2D, of course. Engineers use this sort of thing all the time. Or rather... the good ones do.

 

[Albertus]

At the forward end of the Enterprise-D's main engineering facility was a large cutaway diagram, dubbed the "MSD," of the ship. A similar diagram was shown at the back of Voyager's bridge, and various other Trek ships gained them over time as well.....

...I keep thinking of Scotty in Star Trek VI, drinking coffee while reading a schematic of the Enterprise-A which points out such arcane features as the navigational deflector and the warp nacelles.

So... regardless of how cool the cutaway diagrams look, how useful would they really be in the Trek universe, particularly in the way that they're actually displayed?

Scotty was looking at a deck-by-deck plan of where things could be hidden. Given his immense knowledge of the ship, and because he could not account for torpedoes being fired, quite rightly reviewed the internal spaces of the ship for the 'rogue' boots. Scoty knew his ship, as did Spock.

In the real world, almost all engineering plans are 2D. And people build things which are produced in '3D' like buildings. They have the ability to lay 2D drawings over 2D drawings and build an image in their minds as to how the finished product should be constructed and look.

 

[FalTorPan]

Scotty was looking at a deck-by-deck plan of where things could be hidden.

They looked like external schematics to me. Maybe he was pondering hiding places outside the ship?

 

[B.J.]

In the real world, almost all engineering plans are 2D. And people build things which are produced in '3D' like buildings. They have the ability to lay 2D drawings over 2D drawings and build an image in their minds as to how the finished product should be constructed and look.

As an aerospace engineer in the real world, I beg to differ. Even though we do still produce limited 2D drawings (mostly as a placeholder for certain databases), all the stuff I build is in the 3D world. 2D is excruciatingly limited.

 

[Bill Morris]

NASA perfers 3D cutaways, too. But for a spacecraft that has a large saucer section with mulitple decks, I don't think a 3D cutaway would show much detail if it's a static image. It's the same as with an LCARS MSD-style cutaway. It has to be interactive to make the display change and show you different things.

With an MSD, again, if you want to see power distribution or which toilets are out of service, touch a button on the panel to highlight that, and it will be displayed in relation to the layout of the ship.

 

[Colonel Midnight]

I see the MSD as basically the Trek version of a DC diagram for a ship. (Damage Control)

If you've never seen one in RL -- it's a 2.5D sort of skewed, isometric drawing of the ship and all it's compartments. There's different diagrams for different piping systems (firemain, salt water systems, etc.), all labeled with important valve labels, door numbers, compartment numbers, etc. A typical ship (at least for the Coast Guard) needs about 12-15 sheets in total to represent the entire ship. There's usually a complete set in every Repair Locker, DC Central, Main Control (if separate from DC Central), and the Bridge.

During an evolution (fire drill, casualty exercise, RL damage, etc.), the DC diagrams are marked up with grease pencil to indicate the type of damage, it's status, etc., using a nifty code scheme based on triangles, with the type of damage noted in the middle ('A', 'B', 'C', or 'D' for Fire class, "FL" for Flooding, etc.).

Anyway, since it would be difficult to accurately portray such a diagrammatic system on TV -- I see the MSD as basically being its equivalent. And I like the fact that, most of the time, it IS static -- having a powered status MSD system, as mentioned above, is nifty... but doesn't work too well when the power is out. (Even batteries only last SO long. )

Apologies for the long-winded response!!

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Praetor]

CM, thanks for that. That's more or less what I always thought it equalled to, although hearing that there's a real-world equivalent does lots for me.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

I see the MSD as basically the Trek version of a DC diagram for a ship. (Damage Control)

On the few ships I've seen (some coast guard vessels mainly) it was actually laid out like an elaborate deck plan showing compartments as well as indicators for electrical and piping lines.

A ship the size of the Enterprise would probably need something computerized and moving. Tap one level and it turns into a deckplan. Tap two levels and it shows them side by side or shows one as a transparency over the other.

 

[stoneroses]

A guy I work with has been commissioned to draw TOS Enterprise for a book. It's basicly a users guide for The USS Enterprise and it will be out around the time the movie comes out. Paramout have sent him all the plans to work from.
It will be full of cutaways.
Can't wait to see the book when it comes out.

 

[DEWLine]

Well, if I pick up nothing else in connection with that movie, I might pick that book up.