Inner Turbolift doors?
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Second set of doors on the bridge just Port of the main viewscreen (from "Beyond the Farthest Star"). It looks like the animated episodes have the doors in place of the "Engineering Sub-systems Checkout" station.
A view slightly farther to the left:
Both the FJ and McMaster plans have that door one space closer to the main viewer.
Second set of doors on the bridge just Port of the main viewscreen (from "Beyond the Farthest Star"). It looks like the animated episodes have the doors in place of the "Engineering Sub-systems Checkout" station.
A view slightly farther to the left:
The line at the bottom of the entrance sort of suggests that it could be a turbolift and we are seeing where it separates from the main bridge floor. But, there really isn't room for a turbolift in this spot. Maybe it's just the foyer for the bathroom.
In my ideal version of the Enterprise, the ship is large enough so that the bridge turbolift is not inside the visible housing on the aft of the bridge.
I like to think the captain's chair faces forward, the elevator is on the port side, it all fits in the external bridge structure, and the external feature that FJ took for an elevator housing is just some big unrelated thing.
I like to think the captain's chair faces forward, the elevator is on the port side, it all fits in the external bridge structure, and the external feature that FJ took for an elevator housing is just some big unrelated thing.
I agree. I was never a fan of the "offset bridge" club and in my mind I allowed room for the turbolift to slide to the side and the bridge to face forward. Still, there is a good argument for the offset bridge even though it makes no functional sense other than to explain the position of the turbolift housing seen on the outside shot of the bridge.
As often discussed, the ship could basically be the "official" size as long as the bridge were a bit deeper down than "conventionally" thought. Such sinking is absolutely necessary to explain the movie era bridges and their turbolifts anyway, so why not TOS, too?
That tube thing could just as well be a turboshaft, though. That is, it would be the central turboshaft of the saucer, with side branches to various locations such as the bridge. Turbolifts could wait in these side branches for delay-free use, while the central shaft would extend beyond the topmost deck (the bridge) to connect with starbases or other starships - or to lay turbocabs like eggs for use as lifeboats.
Once we decide on a centerline turboshaft that has side branches a bit lower down, we can make those side branches of arbitrary length. It would take starbase engineers just a few hours to yank out an engineering substation and install a turbolift access station in its place, and a bit more to remove modular stuff that blocks the way from the central shaft to that arbitrarily placed turbolift access station... I mean, the bridge is made of pie wedges in Desilu reality, so why not in Starfleet reality as well?
Timo Saloniemi
That tube thing could just as well be a turboshaft, though. That is, it would be the central turboshaft of the saucer, with side branches to various locations such as the bridge. Turbolifts could wait in these side branches for delay-free use, while the central shaft would extend beyond the topmost deck (the bridge) to connect with starbases or other starships - or to lay turbocabs like eggs for use as lifeboats.
Once we decide on a centerline turboshaft that has side branches a bit lower down, we can make those side branches of arbitrary length. It would take starbase engineers just a few hours to yank out an engineering substation and install a turbolift access station in its place, and a bit more to remove modular stuff that blocks the way from the central shaft to that arbitrarily placed turbolift access station... I mean, the bridge is made of pie wedges in Desilu reality, so why not in Starfleet reality as well?
Timo Saloniemi
The original "zoom in" shot from The Cage suggests that the external cylindrical structure behind the bridge does not line up with the turbolift doors, though oddly the bridge itself does appear to be offset from the centerline of the ship:
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/0x00/thecage011.jpg
Second set of doors on the bridge just Port of the main viewscreen (from "Beyond the Farthest Star"). It looks like the animated episodes have the doors in place of the 'Engineering Sub-systems Checkout' station.ZapBrannigan said:
A view slightly farther to the left:
The line at the bottom of the entrance sort of suggests that it could be a turbolift and we are seeing where it separates from the main bridge floor. But, there really isn't room for a turbolift in this spot. Maybe it's just the foyer for the bathroom.
I'll buy that theory.
If we work from the assumption that the secondary doors were in fact an 'in universe' addition made during a fictional refit somewhere between the events in the live-action episodes and the animated ones, then maybe the line in the floor is simply a seam where one was welded into the other?
My memory has improved since my post number 21.
I vaguely recall Gene Roddenberry in a 1970s interview acknowledging that it was bad design to have no secondary exit from the bridge. He was referencing events like "Space Seed" (heroic camaraderie) and "Day of the Dove" (the icy cold of space).
Now I wonder if that interview was also referencing The Animated Series, which obviously added a second exit.
TAS pre-dates Franz Joseph's labors by perhaps a year. The only question is, did Gene tell FJ to add the exit to his Blueprints package, or did FJ see it on the Saturday morning cartoon, or did he arrive at it independently of GR?
Well as far as bad designs go, the placement of the bridge itself can be considered a bad design. They place it on the top of the saucer section all by itself with nothing surrounding it but the outer bridge wall. I'm surprised that during all the space battles nobody specifically targeted the bridge module. They could have taken out the captain and all the senior officers.
I always thought that a good emergency exit could have been under Kirk's command chair. Have the whole platform slide to the side to reveal a hatch with a ladder/stairs.
I don't think GR approved of Franz Joseph's designs, and FJ himself always claimed he never saw the animated series (although I don't know about the truth of that statement, obviously I can't disprove it -- the placing of the second turbolift is very specific on FJ blueprints, and shall we say "suspiciously similar" to where it is in TAS, but maybe his kids had seen the cartoon and told him where it was located, or something).
Those are some good points, but GR actually did approve of the plans before they were published:
After it was clear that FJ was making a small fortune from two bestsellers (Blueprints, Technical Manual), I think Gene and Majel, and incidentally Matt Jeffries, were not too pleased, and that's when the disapproval-of-FJ phase began (with rules like "nacelles must come in pairs").
FJ's camp would later resent his drawings being used in the movies without payment.
Also, FJ got a taste of what Matt Jeffries had resented when young draftsman Michael McMaster subsequently imitated much of FJ's deckplan work (in McMaster's Klingon and Romulan blueprints), and FJ wasn't happy about it.
Those are some good points, but GR actually did approve of the plans before they were published:
After it was clear that FJ was making a small fortune from two bestsellers (Blueprints, Technical Manual), I think Gene and Majel, and incidentally Matt Jeffries, were not too pleased, and that's when the disapproval-of-FJ phase began (with rules like "nacelles must come in pairs").
FJ's camp would later resent his drawings being used in the movies without payment.
Also, FJ got a taste of what Matt Jeffries had resented when young draftsman Michael McMaster subsequently imitated much of FJ's deckplan work (in McMaster's Klingon and Romulan blueprints), and FJ wasn't happy about it.
For what it's worth, this article from Trekplace.com might be of interest:
"Karen Dick's chronology of Franz Joseph's interactions with Gene Roddenberry and Paramount"
Wow! This isn't really good point about the cage's positioning. I had never thought of it before.
Those are some good points, but GR actually did approve of the plans before they were published:
After it was clear that FJ was making a small fortune from two bestsellers (Blueprints, Technical Manual), I think Gene and Majel, and incidentally Matt Jeffries, were not too pleased, and that's when the disapproval-of-FJ phase began (with rules like "nacelles must come in pairs").
FJ's camp would later resent his drawings being used in the movies without payment.
Also, FJ got a taste of what Matt Jeffries had resented when young draftsman Michael McMaster subsequently imitated much of FJ's deckplan work (in McMaster's Klingon and Romulan blueprints), and FJ wasn't happy about it.
For what it's worth, this article from Trekplace.com might be of interest:
"Karen Dick's chronology of Franz Joseph's interactions with Gene Roddenberry and Paramount"
That timeline is a bit depressing. I'm sure that there are two sides to every story, but I grew up on FJ blueprints and tech manual. I'm bummed to hear that GR was less than gracious about it. If nothing else, jj's movies discredited the "warp engines only come in pairs" retcon for I personally always loved FJ and his destroyers / scouts design
It is a shame it ended up the way it did between FJ and Roddenberry, because there are many things about the FJ blueprints that I like to this day (such as the idea that the secondary doors on the bridge don't in fact go to a turbolift, but are instead access to an 'outer deck' which features various other things as well as a manual escape route via a hatch to a lower deck).
A lot of what FJ proposed was quite sound IMHO.
A lot of what FJ proposed was quite sound IMHO.
Look at FJ's design again. You'll find it's not a hatch, but a labeled gangway behind the main viewer.
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