I'm building the entire Starship Enterprise interior at 1:25 scale

[Macintosh]

...So there's a secret shuttlebay in the saucer superstructure beneath the bridge now?

I just think this is such a fantastically inefficient use of the ship's limited volume. What does this offer that escape pods, or being able to eject the bridge module itself as a giant lifeboat, don't?

 

[blssdwlf]

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,

LOL, I don't believe anyone else on this thread except for me has attempted a "What Would the Thermians Do" approach. I don't believe anyone on this thread is even advocating for that either. YMMV

...So there's a secret shuttlebay in the saucer superstructure beneath the bridge now?

I just think this is such a fantastically inefficient use of the ship's limited volume. What does this offer that escape pods, or being able to eject the bridge module itself as a giant lifeboat, don't?

Yeah! Back onto the thread. The bridge does look good so far in his build

 

[BK613]

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.

How come no one ever does the drawing in TMOST? I mean, didn't MJ return to that ship as his jumping off point for Phase II? Isn't that his truly intended design, of which the 11 footer, 3 footer, etc are just approximations?

 

[fireproof78]

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,

I don't either. I think any recreation is by extension going to be influenced by expectations. That's why I ask the question that perhaps few may recall. "What was expected of the blueprints when published at the time?" What knowledge would be given? Did we expect that the designers of the ship had been laid out deck by deck in exquisite detail despite only seeing limited spaces on the show?

Perhaps tangential to the thread, but a source of remarkable fascination for me.

 

[BK613]

I don't either. I think any recreation is by extension going to be influenced by expectations. That's why I ask the question that perhaps few may recall. "What was expected of the blueprints when published at the time?" What knowledge would be given? Did we expect that the designers of the ship had been laid out deck by deck in exquisite detail despite only seeing limited spaces on the show?

Perhaps tangential to the thread, but a source of remarkable fascination for me.

Add to the expectations in that question the inaccuracies found in Blish's book covers and the AMT model, one should understand that 'close enough' seemed to be the rule of the day. In that light, FJ's blueprints were a step up. I was more impressed by them than I ever was of his Tech Manual.

 

[aridas sofia]

How come no one ever does the drawing in TMOST? I mean, didn't MJ return to that ship as his jumping off point for Phase II? Isn't that his truly intended design, of which the 11 footer, 3 footer, etc are just approximations?

I think the closest we can come to Jefferies’s idealized version would be his construction plans for the 11-foot model. There apparently were compromises translating the secondary hull from those drawings into wood that he addressed in his Phase II design. But we can only infer what those original construction plans look like.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

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"

What's this from? It's not included in the tech manual. I've never seen it before!

 

[Warped9]

...So there's a secret shuttlebay in the saucer superstructure beneath the bridge now?

I just think this is such a fantastically inefficient use of the ship's limited volume. What does this offer that escape pods, or being able to eject the bridge module itself as a giant lifeboat, don't?

He has totally lost me with this.

 

[drt]

What's this from? It's not included in the tech manual. I've never seen it before!

I believe FJ sent it to a guy writing an AMT model building manual.

 

[Henoch]

LOL, I don't believe anyone else on this thread except for me has attempted a "What Would the Thermians Do" approach. I don't believe anyone on this thread is even advocating for that either. YMMV

Bob Comsol did a great effort to make a screen accurate 1080' TOS Enterprise back in ~2012+:
Kirk's Television Enterprise Deck Plans WIP
Unfortunately, all the picture links are broken due to age (I saved them to my hard drive. Yeah.)

 

[Mytran]

Bob Comsol did a great effort to make a screen accurate 1080' TOS Enterprise back in ~2012+:
Kirk's Television Enterprise Deck Plans WIP
Unfortunately, all the picture links are broken due to age (I saved them to my hard drive. Yeah.)

Big fan of that project too!
Some of the broken links are because TrekCore recently did a reorganisation of their TOS screenshots, invalidating links on a lot of old TrekBBS threads.

As for Bob's self created pictures, many were hosted on my old Photobucket account (Bob was very new to the whole online images thing and didn't know how) which sadly meant that when PB did away with their free hosting tariffs his work either got watermarked or disappeared entirely

 

[BK613]

Bob Comsol did a great effort to make a screen accurate 1080' TOS Enterprise back in ~2012+:
Kirk's Television Enterprise Deck Plans WIP
Unfortunately, all the picture links are broken due to age (I saved them to my hard drive. Yeah.)

Currently (12-08-2023), this post in another thread (linky) has an example deck showing the zaniness that was that project.

 

[blssdwlf]

Bob Comsol did a great effort to make a screen accurate 1080' TOS Enterprise back in ~2012+:
Kirk's Television Enterprise Deck Plans WIP
Unfortunately, all the picture links are broken due to age (I saved them to my hard drive. Yeah.)

Wow, that brings back some memories! Yeah he's not in this thread but he did have interesting ideas and was one more person who attempted it although he veered a little away from being "screen accurate" about 2/3 way in his thread.

 

[TIN_MAN]

Pardon my ramblings.

A big part of the appeal (at least for me) of a complete set of deck plans is that they go beyond what was possible to depict onscreen and takes it to the next level of believe-ability. IOW it's possible to depict the things that could not be practically achieved on a television (or even movie) budget.

If I may be so bold, it seems that some Thermions/Canonistas/literalists -call them what you will- confuse their "head canon" with "what's onscreen" because "seeing is believing" and they either don't realize, or prefer to ignore, that there is no real starship to compare notes against.

For those of us who have attempted, or have watched while others attempted, a "screen accurate Enterprise", it has become painfully obvious that it is simply not possible, because sooner or later choices and compromises have to be made anyway, so why not just accept that what's onscreen is not "real" or perfectly consistent to begin with, and allow for a little common sense compromises across all source materials.

While I admire the ingenuity that Robert Comsol and others have put into their labors of love, more often than not what they end up with is a totally unbelievable "Winchestermansionprise" which no sane architect or engineer would design, so it ends up being less realistic rather than more-so, which, for me at least, is a non-starter.

 

[blssdwlf]

Pardon my ramblings.

A big part of the appeal (at least for me) of a complete set of deck plans is that they go beyond what was possible to depict onscreen and takes it to the next level of believe-ability. IOW it's possible to depict the things that could not be practically achieved on a television (or even movie) budget.

If I may be so bold, it seems that some Thermions/Canonistas/literalists -call them what you will- confuse their "head canon" with "what's onscreen" because "seeing is believing" and they either don't realize, or prefer to ignore, that there is no real starship to compare notes against.

For those of us who have attempted, or have watched while others attempted, a "screen accurate Enterprise", it has become painfully obvious that it is simply not possible, because sooner or later choices and compromises have to be made anyway, so why not just accept that what's onscreen is not "real" or perfectly consistent to begin with, and allow for a little common sense compromises across all source materials.

While I admire the ingenuity that Robert Comsol and others have put into their labors of love, more often than not what they end up with is a totally unbelievable "Winchestermansionprise" which no sane architect or engineer would design, so it ends up being less realistic rather than more-so, which, for me at least, is a non-starter.

Just some points of clarification as "Thermians" and "Canonistas" are both "Literalists" but do have some differences:
"Thermians" follow what's onscreen as that is the real starship to them.
"Canonistas" has a wider range of potential "real starships" as canon material includes more than what is aired.
And then there are those that do their own version as they have their own personal vision or "head canon".

Also, no one in this thread is advocating for a "Literalist" approach that you are claiming. Warped9 and a couple others object that Mr Trek's ship no longer represents a Season 1-3 Enterprise or one that they would recognize. A couple are objecting to the larger shuttlebay that isn't in MJ's internal layout. And others like myself are interested in seeing where Mr Trek takes his version.

YMMV, obviously

 

[TIN_MAN]

Also, no one in this thread is advocating for a "Literalist" approach that you are claiming.

Just for clarification, you assume facts not in evidence, I never was "claiming" that anyone in this thread is advocating a "Literalist", or Thermion, or whatever, approach. By focusing on my admittedly poor choice of words you are missing the broader point I was trying to make.

But enough said about that, lets please get back to our regularly scheduled topic before we derail this thread any further.

 

[ZapBrannigan]

I think jamming a whole 'nother flight deck into the teardrop superstructure is madness. And I'm sure the crew would appreciate it when the ship is about to blow up, because it's been so mismanaged by the man on top, and then he gets away in a dedicated escape ship. It reminds me of Jack Palance on Buck Rogers, when the walls are closing in: "Prepare my personal cruiser."

 

[Warped9]

If I were to attempt such a project I’d be inclined to tackle it much like I did my 29th century Enterprise design as well as parallel my approach to the shuttlecraft.

The 11 footer would be the starting point given it was most representative of what the ship was supposed to look like. Yes, the 11 footer was modified at least twice after initial construction so you have to choose which version you want to depict just as you choose which version of Polar Lights’ 1/350 scale model kit you want to build.

I would also try to put my mindset back into that time when the show was in production, much like I am doing in my TOS Unseen project in the Arts forum. Thats means largely ignoring influences post TOS. In other words: how would Matt Jefferies have seen it? Of course this means you might not include things that are obvious today because, to try being more authentic, you’re trying to recreate a period specific perspective.

I don’t know if I would detail every room of every deck, much like I didn’t on my 29th century Enterprise. I would construct the individual decks then set the individual rooms or sets we saw onscreen into their most likely locations. The idea here would be to give writers (and fans) a somewhat more concrete idea were things were located and how the ship is laid out.

I would most likely use Jefferies’ cutaway drawing as a starting point, but allow myself some wriggle room for modification. Inevitably one could include a few areas that were hinted at, but never seen onscreen. To be sure I’ve already tackled the shuttlecraft as well as hangar deck so all I would do there is leave my shuttlecraft as is, but modify my hangar deck model some to make sure it aligns more closely with everything else I’d be trying to do. For example the clamshell doors on the 11 footer are not perfectly spherical as they are on my model so this would have to be addressed.

This could actually be a fun project and, like the shuttlecraft, involve lots of discussion and feedback to try making this as well thought out as possible. And I can’t think of a better place to share and explore it than here on the TrekBBS, where one can tap into the insights of quite a few very smart and devoted fans.

Ultimately I’d be approaching this much like I did the shuttlecraft in that I’d be trying to depict a “real” starship rather than just recreating filming production sets. Thats means some production compromises might have to addressed. One example: aren’t filming sets often done at something like 9/10 scale or whatever? If you’re doing a “real” ship then maybe this has to considered and “correct” the size of the areas you’re recreating.

I do know there wouldn’t be any ridiculous hangar with escape shuttle below and behind the bridge. Seriously, WTF!

 

[JonnyQuest037]

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.

Yeoman Rand's cabin number is Y3-90.

 

[blssdwlf]

Just for clarification, you assume facts not in evidence, I never was "claiming" that anyone in this thread is advocating a "Literalist", or Thermion, or whatever, approach. By focusing on my admittedly poor choice of words you are missing the broader point I was trying to make.

But enough said about that, lets please get back to our regularly scheduled topic before we derail this thread any further.

So getting back to topic, does Mr Trek's build meet your personal realism scale?