The Bender version.
I'm building the entire Starship Enterprise interior at 1:25 scale
- Thread starter Mike Nevitt
- Start date
Ah, screw the whole thing…
Your claim is not supported by the available information about the timeline in which Franz Joseph created, obtained Roddenberry’s support, published, AND THEN got Ballantine to buy in. He made one thing that they sold as something else. I keep saying it - he drew the class ship. He was covering his ass. He did not want to be accused of not crossing his t’s and dotting his i’s, so he made a sister ship. Ballantine bought it and sold it as Enterprise. It wasn’t drawn as Enterprise.
You make it sound as if he connived this scheme to defraud Star Trek fans when his motivation was to serve the interests of his daughter and her friends, who were Star Trek fans. Plus, getting an accurate set of drawings of the 11-foot model might have been impossible, and even if he had, he no doubt was told by Jefferies of the series of scale and size changes that afflict that model. Both of them had aerospace backgrounds and both of them settled on the same course when afforded the opportunity - come up with something new. In Jefferies’ case, it was the Phase II Enterprise. In Franz Joseph’s, it was Constitution.
These points are well taken.
In fairness to the idea that the plans are supposed to apply to the Enterprise, there are a couple of items in the text on sheet 1.
1. The plans are stated to be general plans for the USS Constitution class, not just the Constitution.
2. The purpose of the plans is stated to be "... for the specific use of Academy cadets to familiarize themselves with the general arrangement of starships ...", that's starships in the plural, of which the Enterprise is one.
2. The purpose of the plans is stated to be "... for the specific use of Academy cadets to familiarize themselves with the general arrangement of starships ...", that's starships in the plural, of which the Enterprise is one.
However, as they are general plans, and variation between ships in the same class occurs in the real world, it is very reasonable to accept that the plans were never meant to align precisely in every detail with either the internal or external configuration of the Enterprise.
Heck, it was canonically established on TOS that at least some internal variation exists among starships, namely the back of the captain's chair, a nice dramatic variation to underscore that two ships that otherwise appeared identical on screen were in fact not both Enterprise.
I’m done arguing this after repeating myself enough about it.
He didn’t do what was on the screen. I don’t give a damn what his intent was. If Ballantine hadn’t promoted it as being “authentic,” something most potential buyers would interpret as replicating what they saw onscreen, one could not be disappointed they didn’t get what they were expecting.
FJ chose not to do what countless fans have indeed done: work it out to make things fit and make sense. Instead he chose to make a facsimile and call it something else. Roddenberry signed off on it not caring, maybe even not really knowing himself, that what FJ did didn’t really match what Matt Jefferies had designed. If Roddenberry noticed it was off he seems to have thought, “It’s close enough.” They all seemed to have assumed no one was going to really notice.
It would be interesting to know if anyone who saw the original drawings when they first came to light, at a convention I recall hearing, ever pointed out some of the many discrepancies. Maybe not since Trek tech nerds are a subset of the larger Trek fan base.
FJ, along with Roddenberry and Ballantine, mightn’t have intended to intentionally defraud the Trek fanbase, but thats exactly what happened. People can keep rationalizing it, excusing it, and parsing words and meanings to explain it, but it doesn’t get around that what was put forth was not what fans could reasonably have expected to get.
In the end the biggest thing I got out of FJ’s work was the style in which he presented the material. The actual content I now largely ignore. Think of me pigheaded and stubborn if you want because I really don’t care.
By your use of "defraud", you seem to be accusing the named parties of something serious and criminal. That's way over the top.
In the bigger scheme of things they didn’t do anything criminal, but the end result was disappointing.
As a teenager in those years I was tremendously excited to get my hands on FJ’s blueprints and technical manual. And I didn’t go looking for discrepancies and inaccuracies, but the more I studied the material realization dawned and grew that a lot of things were off.
Note, too, that there were discrepancies between Matt Jefferies’ drawings as seen in The Making of Star Trek, the ship we saw onscreen and the AMT model kit. In those days I struggled to understand why such differences existed. My general assumption, given a lack of specific information, was Jefferies’ drawings were possibly preliminary and the final 11 footer was the final form. I also figured the AMT kit seemed to be more in common with the drawings while having elements of the 11 footer.
So the expectations I had when discovering FJ’s blueprints were the discrepancies and inaccuracies had finally been corrected to properly reflect what we saw onscreen. Then one realizes the discrepancies were compounded. FJ’s blueprints seemed to have more in common with the inaccurate AMT model kit while incorporating elements of Jefferies’ preliminary drawings.
So in the end my assessment of FJ’s effort was loved the style of presentation, but very disappointed with the lack of accuracy. I didn’t want drawings of the Constitution—I wanted drawings of the Enterprise.
Okay. But that isn't fraud.
It is if you’re promoting one thing, but delivering something else rather than what you promoted. It mightn’t be criminal, but it is dishonest.
This is my question. What was expected at the time of publication by fans?
I am wondering which ship Franz Joseph - or Mr Trek - should painstakingly document since- as David Shaw has shown us -no fewer than four entirely different models were used to depict Enterprise over the course of the two pilots/ 79 episodes. These words “authentic”, “fraud”, “dishonest”, blah blah blah, are used without reference to any real object. This is like debating - not arguing, by the way - with smoke and mirrors. You keep pointing to the One and Only True Holy Grail and yet, there is no such thing. Having lived through these same decisions and having done just the same kind of thing Franz Joseph did, I can attest that it comes down to artistic choices. You decide you are going to start with the 11-footer. I decide I am going to start with the 3-footer. Joe Blow decides he is going to start with the AMT. Trekkie Ted for some reason known only to him decides he wants to start with the little metal model dangled in front of the Doomsday Machine. Who is right? Oh, maybe you’ll say EVERYBODY knows the 11-footer is meant to be the REAL Enterprise, but that’s your conclusion and your artistic choice. Is it not just as valid to say there were four distinct and different representations of that ship - none of which match Jefferies’ drawings in The Making of Star Trek, btw, so there is a fifth because those drawings show up onscreen, too - so I’m going to mix their features to come up with something representative of all of them? Why, from on high, might the mighty Trek Gods frown upon such an artistic choice, particularly if cloaked behind the rationale that it is another ship?
I just wanna know, cause now my goat is got up and I might just have to break out my tools and do it, and I don’t, you know, want to ruffle any feathers.
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Fraud isn't automatically criminal. Most commonly it's a tort, and it requires intent to deceive, intent to induce reliance, and damages. I think you're using a loaded term unnecessarily. And that's all I'll say about it as I hear Digits' point that this is a rehash (although a new discussion to me, but all the same).
If this place were sent up as an SNL sketch, they'd have us arguing passionately about the internal layout of a "deflector dish" that never existed, or the exact arrangement of some science fiction deck plans. Of course, we aren't really like that. 
Pardon my ignorance, but I'm truly curious: did Jefferies do up deck plans for TOS specifically? Or was that more general and based upon episode by episode need?
Tying down a stardate to a set of plans freezes the design.
A few thoughts;
At the time he was working on the plans and tech manual, FJ knew he didn't have access to the 11 ft. model, or the props etc. this is one of the reasons he chose to do things the way he did, because he knew his information was limited, but he also knew that this applied to the fans (at the time) as well. So while some fans have been more accurate over the years, this is only because they have access to better information.
As for the plans, it's worth noting that on page 5 in note 12 we find this "REFER ALL QUESTIONS CONCERNING INDIVIDUAL SHIP MODIFICATIONS TO:" etc. etc., so FJ was acknowledging that some things would be different from ship to ship within the class. Examples that spring to mind would be things we see onscreen like Scott's Emergency manual monitor in Engineering, or McCoy's decompression chamber in Sickbay, neither of which were not present in the Constitution as drawn by FJ.
One of the reasons I do not subscribe to the "what Would The Thermions Do" school of thought is that not everything that ended up onscreen was what would have been preferred given sufficient time and money. This is why I don't fault FJ for doing his own thing when it came to representing those locations on the ship that had been mere redresses of standing sets, rather than completely new sets, such as the Botany lab or the Phaser room etc,
At the time he was working on the plans and tech manual, FJ knew he didn't have access to the 11 ft. model, or the props etc. this is one of the reasons he chose to do things the way he did, because he knew his information was limited, but he also knew that this applied to the fans (at the time) as well. So while some fans have been more accurate over the years, this is only because they have access to better information.
As for the plans, it's worth noting that on page 5 in note 12 we find this "REFER ALL QUESTIONS CONCERNING INDIVIDUAL SHIP MODIFICATIONS TO:" etc. etc., so FJ was acknowledging that some things would be different from ship to ship within the class. Examples that spring to mind would be things we see onscreen like Scott's Emergency manual monitor in Engineering, or McCoy's decompression chamber in Sickbay, neither of which were not present in the Constitution as drawn by FJ.
One of the reasons I do not subscribe to the "what Would The Thermions Do" school of thought is that not everything that ended up onscreen was what would have been preferred given sufficient time and money. This is why I don't fault FJ for doing his own thing when it came to representing those locations on the ship that had been mere redresses of standing sets, rather than completely new sets, such as the Botany lab or the Phaser room etc,
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Thanks, I'd overlooked that. Revise what I said above to FJ definitely admitting individual ship variation.
He was clever in that way. He also knew that the location of the "windows" on the outside didn't always make a lot of sense if they were actually windows, so instead referred to them as "environmental system reactors"
Note "O"
Seeing that paint guide reminds me of something else I once saw someone talk about here, that the FJ manuals were sort of dual-use in-universe and fan-art guides (for making models, costumes, prop reproductions, and so on). In that case, the ship drawings matching the AMT model rather than one of the studio models could be regarded as a feature, rather than a bug.
(Though, checking on it, it looks as if those aren't actually stock numbers of real-world paints, so maybe not...)
(Though, checking on it, it looks as if those aren't actually stock numbers of real-world paints, so maybe not...)
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