Is the bridge at a funny angle?
- Thread starter Mike Doyle
- Start date
That suggests you have a source for this assertion.
The Seaview sets started more logically then got moved around. In the first season the control room didn't connect directly to the nose, and was presumably farther back under the sail. The ship was supposedly at least two decks in the main hull.
The Jupiter 2 also started more logically, as in the pilot it's a single deck ship, but when they went to series they decided they needed more interiors and created the second deck, but they couldn't rebuild the exterior to scale because it would have been like 80' in diameter. That the insides don't fit in the outside mockups is no different from the shuttlecraft or dozens of other film sets I could name.
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No, but I think it's a very solid (as in "apparent") deduction:
• They could only have shaped the saucer's external bridge housing after, or in conjunction with, settling on the basic floor plan of the bridge. The two can't be a coincidence, as I see it.
• They put the external elevator nub on the ship's center line, and kept it there even after knowing the interior plan would be offset for scene composition purposes.
• So I think the centering of the nub must have served its own compositional need, and the standout suspect is to keep the 11-footer as symmetrical as possible for those reverse-decal, flipped negative shots.
Yes, but the Jupiter 2 is an extreme case. It's in a class with the Apollo capsule from The Reluctant Astronaut, which is a great film but not exactly Apollo 13 where the spacecraft is concerned. You could call a square dance inside Don Knotts' Apollo capsule.
I'm aware. But the image upthread wasn't created in a vacuum and the first impression i had was that someone used the stage plan as the source.
Ah, yes. I see what you mean. And you're suggesting that perhaps the orientation was inspired by that? That's certainly possible.
That's amazing.
It's a publicity still from Spectre (1977). I think the three women were demonic temptresses in the mold of those from various Dracula movies.
Let's not even get started about the Millennium Falcon.
I just had the chilling thought that this might the last thing that I remember to argue about in the rest home. Personally I'd rather it be "Is Starfleet a military" or "Why the Star Wars Special Editions are terrible" or even "There is a place in Star Trek for both the Motion Picture AND the Wrath of Khan to be masterpieces". But I'm probably not going to get to choose.
Just so I know: If I just rotate the outside nub on the outside then it still doesn't actually work, right?
To get an actual working solution, Franz Joseph made the external bridge housing less rounded (more vertical), which increased the available space inside. Then he made the nub taller and more deeply inset into the bridge housing. This enabled him to keep the ship's length down to 947 feet, as in stated The Making of Star Trek.
OTOH, If you want to keep the exact shape of the 11-footer, fit the known bridge set in there and make it all work, you have to make the ship bigger. And the nub won't necessarily be the elevator housing.
And I still say MJ did an amazing job, because these are awfully subtle problems compared to other sci-fi shows of the period.
The Friends apartment doesn't match the building they used for the exteriors at all. Neither does the diner on Seinfeld.
Or the Bunker home in All In the Family, or the Full House house, etc. etc. etc.
Just thought of another interesting example: A couple of years ago, HGTV bought the real world house used for exteriors on The Brady Bunch and renovated it so that it matched the sets of the show as closely as possible. (They made a show out of the process, called A Very Brady Renovation.) It was an interesting challenge, as they had to expand the back of the house to fit in the den and put Greg's attic room into a basement.
Comic artist John Byrne modeled the home of Jean Grey's parents in Uncanny X-Men after the Stephens' house on Bewitched because it was one of the few TV houses where the interiors could comfortably fit into the exterior.
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That was an amazing show.
Yeah! I'm not a big one for home renovation shows, but I found it fascinating.
Most fictional movie and TV vehicles don't work in terms of exterior vs. interior. One notable exception is the submarine Proteus from Fantastic Voyage. Because most of the interior was visible through the big window bay in front, the full-size Proteus mockup actually had the complete interior built inside it. The sub had several removable "wild" sections to allow for camera placement.
Agree with the Proteus interior matching, very rare in filns/shows. The only issue though is that it filled it completely, no room for any of the hardware necessary for it function...
That's also true of our shuttlecraft and surely some others people can think of.
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