Observations on Janice Lester's isolation room

[TrickyDickie]

Ooh... deleted scene from "Court Martial?" Jame Finney's metallic sailor-fuku is pretty distinctive.

Indeed.

 

[Mytran]

My favorite ladder conundrum is trying to reconcile the bottom and top halves of the EMM ladder in Mirror, Mirror:

Either McCoy walked unhindered right through main engineering to approach the guard he incapacitates, and the techs working therein witnessed the crime ... or for some reason the EMM access is a two-story climb from the deck below engineering.

Speaking of the EMM, at the other end of the room there is another potential access point that is not shown on screen. My belief is that Stage 9 had a staircase or lift platform available to use on that end for any non-ladder-climbers. We see Doohan and Kelley both using the ladder in MM, but Mira Romaine does no climbing in Zetar... so perhaps that's how Jan Shutan accessed this set. It also seems unlikely that Scotty would have carried Mira down the ladder after her debilitating episode there, so I might even speculate that there's another exit point in-universe as well. (Or, they just beamed her out. Intra-ship transport was rare in those days, but not impossible.)

Indeed it's quite an odd piece of scene framing and a limitation of the set design.
Assuming that you take the visuals more or less literally, it could be a straight 2-storey climb (for some reason). However, if so that design choice is doubled down on and made weirder in By Any Other Name where Scotty & Spock climb down from the EMM and seem to immediately exit into a full corridor with a turbolift at the end of it - implying that there's no machinery of any sort under main engineering???

The best solution I've seen to this weirdness is in a thread from a few years ago, when @blssdwlf proposed a 2-ladder setup and service corridor which wrapped around the edge of the EMM.
Under this interpretation when in Mirror Mirror McCoy and Scotty knock out the guard and drag him offscreen, they are in fact moving him off to base of the second ladder instead, before ascending to the EMM themselves. This actually makes the kinapping more secure, since the sleeping guard won't be immediately visible to anyone who opens the corridor door and peeks inside.
In BAON we see Spock exiting the same door from MM and the ladder is visible, but that's not the one leading to EMM. Yes Scotty is seen climbing down off the ladder, but he was probably just putting his tools away

So just finished watching "By Any Other Name" and got some more views of the EMM.

There is a scene where we see Spock and Scotty climb down from the EMM and exit into a corridor which I'm going to guess is the one that runs perpendicular to the Engine Room entrance. However, the ladder I see in the EMM is on the right side which to me would eliminate it going to the corridor and instead go to perhaps the engine room itself. So, I added another ladder and a doorway to the corridor

Hopefully when I get down to the lower level there will be enough room for the deflector control station as seen in "The Enterprise Incident" and "Elaan of Troyius"

Speaking of the EMM, at the other end of the room there is another potential access point that is not shown on screen. My belief is that Stage 9 had a staircase or lift platform available to use on that end for any non-ladder-climbers. We see Doohan and Kelley both using the ladder in MM, but Mira Romaine does no climbing in Zetar... so perhaps that's how Jan Shutan accessed this set. It also seems unlikely that Scotty would have carried Mira down the ladder after her debilitating episode there, so I might even speculate that there's another exit point in-universe as well. (Or, they just beamed her out. Intra-ship transport was rare in those days, but not impossible.)

The EMM set was built about 6 feet off the ground, so it's entirely plausible that in-universe there were a few steps off to the side which lead up the next deck, perhaps an engineering maintainance room. On the MM Enterprise where security was tighter however, this might not have been an option.

On the filming set, short stairways where used to get actors onto raised areas of the stage. You can see them next to the Engine Room, on the top left of the JTB setplan. You will see that they are somewhat less steep than the ones in the Engine Room itself!