Re: Never seen TOS scenes, but would've been nice.
My reasoning has been very much inspired by two things: the Enterprise's readily evident mission profile of 5-years deepspace exploration and much of what is written in The Making Of Star Trek. The idea being that if they'd been able to I'm sure the original producers would have made the effort to show more diversity in ship's sets to reinforce the idea that the crew's psychological wellbeing is paramount if you're going to enclose them in a can for extended periods. This rational is what supports the concept of oversized rooms and reasonably high ceilings and diversity of colour. It also supports the concepts of Earth nature sounds being piped subliminally throughout the ship. And yet most fundamentally above all that this is a starship as opposed to a strictly military vessel where crews would be on rotation for missions of limited duration. If the technology and science make it possible then they will do whatever they can to make the ship feel more comfortable and more like a home and much less like a sterile instrument. There's nothing new in this, we do it today albeit on perhaps a more limited scale because most of us can just go outside. But a starship crew, possibly akin to a contemporary naval submarine crew, may not see firm ground and an open sky for months on end if that.
This is one aspect where I feel they started to really drop the ball in the films and even with TMP to some extent. And conversely this is one of those very rare things they started to get back to in TNG. The interiors sets of the Enterprise on TOS looked spare, at times painfully so, because they lacked the time and resource to do otherwise as supported by the indirect evidence onscreen and in print.
The colour choices I played with in my example may have been off in shade or tone, but I think they illustrated a valid concept, one that I got right from the makers of the show itself and simply elaborated upon. And over the years there has been a fair amount of study involving the psychology of colour and surroundings and their effects on human psychological and physical wellbeing. TOS tried to address that laudable idea in the limited manner they were able yet I'm convinced that if they could have they would have done more to reinforce it.
Also note that in many TOS shots you clearly see the use of coloured lighting as opposed to strictly white light. We've also seen the use of subdued and lowered lighting. And finally I ecall a few shots where the floor was definitely not just gray but rather shades of green or red.
My reasoning has been very much inspired by two things: the Enterprise's readily evident mission profile of 5-years deepspace exploration and much of what is written in The Making Of Star Trek. The idea being that if they'd been able to I'm sure the original producers would have made the effort to show more diversity in ship's sets to reinforce the idea that the crew's psychological wellbeing is paramount if you're going to enclose them in a can for extended periods. This rational is what supports the concept of oversized rooms and reasonably high ceilings and diversity of colour. It also supports the concepts of Earth nature sounds being piped subliminally throughout the ship. And yet most fundamentally above all that this is a starship as opposed to a strictly military vessel where crews would be on rotation for missions of limited duration. If the technology and science make it possible then they will do whatever they can to make the ship feel more comfortable and more like a home and much less like a sterile instrument. There's nothing new in this, we do it today albeit on perhaps a more limited scale because most of us can just go outside. But a starship crew, possibly akin to a contemporary naval submarine crew, may not see firm ground and an open sky for months on end if that.
This is one aspect where I feel they started to really drop the ball in the films and even with TMP to some extent. And conversely this is one of those very rare things they started to get back to in TNG. The interiors sets of the Enterprise on TOS looked spare, at times painfully so, because they lacked the time and resource to do otherwise as supported by the indirect evidence onscreen and in print.
The colour choices I played with in my example may have been off in shade or tone, but I think they illustrated a valid concept, one that I got right from the makers of the show itself and simply elaborated upon. And over the years there has been a fair amount of study involving the psychology of colour and surroundings and their effects on human psychological and physical wellbeing. TOS tried to address that laudable idea in the limited manner they were able yet I'm convinced that if they could have they would have done more to reinforce it.
Also note that in many TOS shots you clearly see the use of coloured lighting as opposed to strictly white light. We've also seen the use of subdued and lowered lighting. And finally I ecall a few shots where the floor was definitely not just gray but rather shades of green or red.
