Observations on Janice Lester's isolation room

[feek61]

I rewatched that scene too, just to revell in the closeup - and noticed something else!

Just prior to that scene, Spock meets Kirk coming out of a (implied) turbolift and hands him a phaser before they proceed to Environmental Engineering.
What's curious is that it's the same corridor setup (red doors to the left, blue airlock doors at the end) as was featured in LTBYLB a couple of weeks later, with only a couple of minor adjustments.

I say "implied" turbolift because while the doors are the correct colour, the carpet is not, plus the inner doors are missing. In fact, this is just the side door to the Briefing Room with a change in door colour. but who is going to notice those differences?

This side door was used rarely throughout the show because it requred reconfiguring the wall panels on the Briefing Room Wall but at the time of WOAE, that reconfiguration was still in place from Day Of The Dove so tweaking it for WOAE would have been relatively cheap & painless.

I've always thought that the LTBYLB was unique, engineered to best suit the filming needs of a chase through the corridors. However, since both episodes were directed by Jud Taylor it seems he simply capitalised on a useful configuration which was left over from his previous episode! Or was he just a great forward planner?

Either way, a fascinating glimpse into the production!

I believe this is actually coming from the Transporter room, not the Briefing room which was further down the corridor. In a majority of the corridor scenes in the second season and some in the third season had this door. "The Ultimate Computer" comes to mind but there were many episodes that had this side elevator which is across from the Sickbay doors.

 

[Mytran]

I believe this is actually coming from the Transporter room, not the Briefing room which was further down the corridor. In a majority of the corridor scenes in the second season and some in the third season had this door. "The Ultimate Computer" comes to mind but there were many episodes that had this side elevator which is across from the Sickbay doors.

While the triangular arch certainly could have been moved, the Transporter Room didn't have blue carpet.
Also, the corridor is not curved.
Also also, the orange floor stripe was present on the straight corridor but not outside Sickbay - the floor stripe there was red and in a different location relative to the door on the right in those clips

https://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/screencaps/season3/320-way-to-eden/way-to-eden-br-251.jpg

 

[ZapBrannigan]

Can anybody say where they built the Observation Deck (over the shuttle bay)? Where on Stage 9 I mean, or was it on Stage 10?

Also, I just watched "The Conscience of the King" on Bluray, I'm finally really getting to my BD set, and it was like seeing it for the first time after decades of kinda seeing it. The sound mix is awful, dialogue too soft relative to other sounds, but the picture blew me away.

 

[Mytran]

Can anybody say where they built the Observation Deck (over the shuttle bay)? Where on Stage 9 I mean, or was it on Stage 10?

I don't think there's any official to cooberate this, but my guess would be the same section of stage where the Romulan Bridge was built - the Observation Deck used many of the same components after all!

 

[Just a Bill]

Nice! Another myth dispelled from my headcanon. I would have thought this was the transporter room corridor, but now I know it can't be.

Finally, when Sarek's party disembark and stand by the triangular arch, the right to the right is not at a right angle but flat (demonstrated by the rectangular wall plant-on)

Most likely, the airlock doors and a few other set elements were removed the standard set and carried next door, where they were positioned to form the entrance to the (suitably cavernous) hangar deck set.

I'm sure you must be right, for multiple reasons. The normal A-frame at the end of the transporter-room corridor is mounted to walls that reach both corners without any segmentation; there is a red-alert beacon on the anticlockwise side; and I don't think red/green lamps were usually (ever?) seen above the double doors.

By comparison, as seen in the screenshot you provided, the (presumed) temporary mockup in JtB has the lamps, no RA beacon, and a line of foil tape indicating a splice with a separate panel (bearing the plant-on you highlighted).

Furthermore, they needed space for the alcove that extends out significantly on both sides. It seems like the outboard corners of the briefing and transporter rooms would have not allowed this, nor left enough room for the camera in the security-detail shot.

They probably constructed all this in the open area used for things like the Romulan BoP interior and aux control, which has a wide-open view into Stage 10. And in fact, I believe they captured some of the Kirk reaction shots just a few feet inboard of this position in the so-called "Spock corridor" that could be quickly dressed in the space of Kirk's bedroom side-closet. They may have even built the hangar deck alcove contiguous with that corridor redress (I think the angle into Stage 10 would have been acceptable to the camera). Note how the vertical teal pipes behind Kirk appear in what could be the same location as the one near Chapel in Amok Time that's used to hide the corner joint where the temporary corridor's wild panels meet with the standing curved corridor:

That would have provided a little protection in case the camera saw past the end of the wall -- better to see a peek into the curved corridor rather than the raw stage, or the plywood back of one of the wild bridge segments.

Anyway, now that I know this wasn't happening at the end of the usual long straight corridor, it does make it a little easier to imagine that this area could exist alongside the hangar deck. (But it still doesn't really fit. And the curved corridors hosting the walk-and-talks before and after the welcome-aboard scene don't really make sense in the secondary hull. But that little cheat is not unique to this episode!)

 

[Phaser Two]

I don't think there's any official to cooberate this, but my guess would be the same section of stage where the Romulan Bridge was built - the Observation Deck used many of the same components after all!

I love how the plans called it the "Engineering section." I wonder if the dialogue from the writers influenced the production designers, or vice versa, or neither.

And in fact, I believe they captured some of the Kirk reaction shots just a few feet inboard of this position in the so-called "Spock corridor" that could be quickly dressed in the space of Kirk's bedroom side-closet.

Wait, that's the first time I've heard of the Spock corridor! What does that mean?

Finally, I bet I'm not as grateful for the colored corridor stripes as the actors and directors were. Just in "Wink of an Eye" alone I believe they were walking or running across the same corridor in both directions at a couple of points.

 

[Ssosmcin]

Fan-frigging-tastic thread. I've said it before here many times, but one of the several reasons I love S3 is all the extra exposure the Enterprise received thanks to so many episodes taking place aboard ship. I clearly remember, as a kid, trying to figure out (say) where Kirk and Odona were standing when they (or just Kirk, actually, assuming she was playing a ruse the whole time as seems likely) were spooked by the Gideonites, where the Kirk-Spock-Bele dinner took place on set, how they added in the extra room off of Engineering (impulse or warp/main in universe, your choice) where Watkins was sadly offed by Losira, and exactly where they placed the cameras for all the scenes with the Scalosians in Environmental Engineering. "Day of the Dove" and "In Truth" have a lot of cool set dressing and visual tricks, too. Oh, and I believe the third biobed from "Journey to Babel" that @Just a Bill ably illustrated reappears in "The Tholian Web," both on the Enterprise (for Uhura) and the Defiant no less.

There were just so many geniuses and subject matter experts involved in TOS—across pretty much every possible discipline. Here, the set dressers/decorators/production designers even rose to the considerable challenge of expanding the apparent size of Stage 9 in S3 with quite successful passion . . . all while the studio was doing everything it could to, well, turn out the lights.

Damn. What a show.

Right? The Enterprise just seemed so much larger in the third year since, as you say, they had to spend much more time there. The third season had plenty of its own positive attributes.

 

[Just a Bill]

Wait, that's the first time I've heard of the Spock corridor! What does that mean?

I don't remember where I heard it called that, but it's the space between the officers' cabin and the briefing room when redressed as corridor. They sometimes pulled down a couple of the curved-corridor walls (grey below) and added wild walls (red below; I've exaggerated how far they usually extended, but that little zigzag actually appeared on screen, though I don't remember where). I think it was referred to as the "Spock corridor" because Spock takes that route in a couple of episodes and/or we get a good view of it when Chapel brings soup to Spock's quarters.

Just in "Wink of an Eye" alone I believe they were walking or running across the same corridor in both directions at a couple of points.

Oh yeah, and sometimes twice in the same direction. In Turnabout, Lester and Coleman walk out of the sickbay Laboratory, turn left toward the Brig (which is just a few steps away), then are seen starting back at the end of the very same corridor (outside the ward room) and walking down it again, to avoid revealing that the Brig is literally right around the corner from the Lab. It's all very effective except when I'm looking for it.

A few more examples in my next post...

 

[Just a Bill]

Sorry about the double post, but I think this was going to be too long to be part of the previous one.

walking or running across the same corridor in both directions

As part of my studio set plan model project, a while back I started mapping out walking paths so I could better understand how they used the set, what was really wild, etc. These are early episodes, so I'm using the Balance of Terror set plan here. Of note is that the medical laboratory has not been constructed yet (guest quarters are sometimes there), and an early version of the Jefferies Tube corridor is rotated more clockwise in these early episodes; it runs right past the office portion of Kirk's quarters, and thus the brig/swing set area does not yet exist. (This initially made it a little confusing for me to track the movements until I realized I should've been on the BoT set plan.)

The Corbomite Maneuver — Green is a Kirk/McCoy walk & talk. Yellow is all one Kirk walk from sickbay to his quarters, taking the scenic route. Note that the initial sickbay configuration is very different from what we're used to, and the foot pedals were mounted on a wall that won't even exist later on.

Mudd's Women — A very early, brazen use of double-dipping, disguised with different camera placements and tricks like shooting through red hex-mesh screens. The dotted line indicates a path that's implied rather than explicitly shown. This endless skank parade and Spock's leering smirk are very out of place in the show we would come to know and love. (While tracing these lines, does anybody else hear the hip-swaying floozie music in their head? Doohm dohm do duh duuh...)

The Enemy Within — Path A is Evil Kirk stalking Janice. B is Good Kirk & Spock heading off to Sickbay. C is eKirk retreating to his quarters, and D is the gKirk/Scotty interaction. In this episode, the turbolift at the end of the early version of the Jefferies Tube corridor has been replaced with double yellow doors.

Noteworthy here is path C's red dashed line through the circular wardrobe, which represents a jump-cut: After menacing us with his bloody hand, eKirk starts down that straight corridor but then doubles back and enters his quarters via the left (office) door — yet for the interior scene they immediately cut to him coming in through the right (bedroom) door. Maybe it was an easier camera placement since the counter-clockwise bedroom walls were all wild (and there's a closet doorway you can shoot through), or maybe they just wanted to get straight to the wardrobe/vanity scene without delay.

Even more interesting (to me) is the fact that, in path D, gKirk is walking past the closed doors of the Transporter Room set, while at that very same time eKirk is inside that set holding those same doors open.

 

[Christopher]

I find it mildly interesting that the set blueprints being referenced here are the same ones I have, apparently the only set blueprints that were made available for sale. I wonder how it came to be that these particular production plans ended up being preserved and not others. I'd assume that Roddenberry kept them and marketed them through Lincoln Enterprises, but why only these few? It's kind of a piecemeal selection.

 

[Just a Bill]

I find it mildly interesting that the set blueprints being referenced here are the same ones I have, apparently the only set blueprints that were made available for sale. I wonder how it came to be that these particular production plans ended up being preserved and not others. I'd assume that Roddenberry kept them and marketed them through Lincoln Enterprises, but why only these few? It's kind of a piecemeal selection.

Right, and boy oh boy would I love to find some from different episodes that showed more of the set's evolution, as well as bespoke sets like the hangar deck gallery, arboretum, etc. All of mine are digital, most are not great quality, and I've only ever been able to find the ones for shows 8, 9, 30, and 44. From the standpoint of building a single, idealized Enterprise interior, for me these essentially boil down to two really useful plans:

• First season: Show 8 (Charlie X) gives you the gymnasium plus the weirdly shaped guest quarters that was quickly abandoned, but I generally just use Show 9 (Balance of Terror) as my first-season reference because it has the much more interesting Forward Phaser Control.
• Second season: Show 30 (Catspaw) is low quality and low detail, and doesn't seem to offer anything that's not on the other plans. Show 44 (Journey to Babel) is the real meat and potatoes, and probably what most people use as the basis for any "idealized" construction.

Of course there are the Trials & Tribble-ations plans from DS9, but they don't seem particularly accurate or comprehensive. However, they do have a lot of low-level measurements such as how far the walls are raised off the floor and such, that I sometimes used as a starting point.

Anyone who's lacking any of these may want to have a peek at https://archive.frogland.co.uk/Set Blueprints/Enterprise TOS/stage/index.html (I noticed today that I got a security warning there, so make of that what you will).

 

[Christopher]

Hmm, I don't have the "Catspaw" page. My set includes Stage 9 plans from "Charlie," "Balance," and "Babel"; a page of captain's cabin and briefing room blueprints from multiple elevations dated May 2 & May 22, 1966; and Stage 10 plans for "Consience of a King" [sic] and "The Deadly Years."

Of course, there's also the generic Stage 9 blueprint that appeared on pp. 144-5 of The Making of Star Trek, whose layout is close to the "Journey to Babel" page but has a turbolift at the lower end of the curving corridor, omits the brig interior, and has a couple of boxy shapes on the right side of engineering.

 

[Just a Bill]

a couple of boxy shapes on the right side of engineering

Ooh, intriguing. I haven't seen that book in ages (my copy of TMoST went missing decades ago), but a boxy shape to the right of Engineering just might be the Emergency Manual Monitor. I recently discovered that you can get some rough dimensions of this room from the photos of the Matt Jefferies set model. I thought I was looking at a random room with some weird thing laying inside it on an angle, until I realized that the angled end wall was just bent over and leaning on the console.

 

[blssdwlf]

The Enemy Within — Path A is Evil Kirk stalking Janice. B is Good Kirk & Spock heading off to Sickbay. C is eKirk retreating to his quarters, and D is the gKirk/Scotty interaction. In this episode, the turbolift at the end of the early version of the Jefferies Tube corridor has been replaced with double yellow doors.

Noteworthy here is path C's red dashed line through the circular wardrobe, which represents a jump-cut: After menacing us with his bloody hand, eKirk starts down that straight corridor but then doubles back and enters his quarters via the left (office) door — yet for the interior scene they immediately cut to him coming in through the right (bedroom) door. Maybe it was an easier camera placement since the counter-clockwise bedroom walls were all wild (and there's a closet doorway you can shoot through), or maybe they just wanted to get straight to the wardrobe/vanity scene without delay.

Even more interesting (to me) is the fact that, in path D, gKirk is walking past the closed doors of the Transporter Room set, while at that very same time eKirk is inside that set holding those same doors open.

I agree that there was some trickery with path C on which door Kirk walks through but on path A, eKirk enters in on the circular wardrobe door. The only funny thing that happens is there is a brief shot of eKirk with the turbolift interior? in the background before he goes in the door.

 

[Just a Bill]

Hmm, yeah you're right on both counts. They seem to have edited the "turbolift leer" to come a little later than would have made sense. And yup, I missed the entrance door there. I'm gonna redo those paths (and should probably put the ABCs in chronological order.) Thanks for catching that!

 

[Christopher]

Ooh, intriguing. I haven't seen that book in ages (my copy of TMoST went missing decades ago), but a boxy shape to the right of Engineering just might be the Emergency Manual Monitor.

No, there are two of them and they bracket where the EMM would go. The image is reproduced here: https://forgottentrek.com/the-origi...se-within/images/Star-Trek-set-floor-plan.png

I wondered if they were supports for the EMM set, but apparently it was on stilts. I always sort of assumed they were the big machines on that side of engineering from "The Enemy Within," but the graphic shows the season 2 set configuration.

 

[Just a Bill]

The image is reproduced here: https://forgottentrek.com/the-origi...se-within/images/Star-Trek-set-floor-plan.png

Oh my gosh, thank you for this! It shows a few detail placements that I otherwise would have had to guess at. (And thanks for the quick blast back to my childhood; I can't remember the last time I saw this image.)

I wondered if they were supports for the EMM set, but apparently it was on stilts. I always sort of assumed they were the big machines on that side of engineering from "The Enemy Within," but the graphic shows the season 2 set configuration.

I too have read that EMM was on stilts, and the photos of the Jefferies set model (JSM) seem to confirm that it was indeed elevated. The JSM also seems to imply that the stilts were on wheels so they could roll the whole thing out of the way for normal Engineering shots. (This is how I'm building my model.)

I think you are right about those two big TEW boxy things, and I believe they kept them around for a while even if they were rarely or never seen in later seasons. They're very handy to have around when the camera needs to see the unfinished fourth wall of Engineering. Fans tend to call those unnamed things either "turbines" or, referring to some Scotty dialog, "energizers."

on path A, eKirk enters in on the circular wardrobe door.

Not only that, I also got the wrong exit for when Kirk and Spock head to Sickbay. Here's a revised version, with more distinct colors and re-alphabetized to be chronological.

A - gKirk/Scotty chat while eKirk exits the Transporter
B - drunken eKirk staggers to Janice's quarters (path's accuracy is also drunk)
C - gKirk/Spock head to Sickbay (walking weirdly close to the wall to avoid the cameraman)
D - eKirk enters his quarters & teleports through the wardrobe

 

[Christopher]

Fans tend to call those unnamed things either "turbines" or, referring to some Scotty dialog, "energizers."

Hm. I thought that term came only from The Wrath of Khan (where the energizer was bypassed like a Christmas tree), but a transcript search shows (once I remembered to use British spelling) that it was mentioned in "The Alternative Factor" by Charlene Masters and in "The Doomsday Machine" by Lt. Palmer (relaying a report from engineering).

 

[PCz911]

Oh my gosh, thank you for this! It shows a few detail placements that I otherwise would have had to guess at. (And thanks for the quick blast back to my childhood; I can't remember the last time I saw this image.)


I too have read that EMM was on stilts, and the photos of the Jefferies set model (JSM) seem to confirm that it was indeed elevated. The JSM also seems to imply that the stilts were on wheels so they could roll the whole thing out of the way for normal Engineering shots. (This is how I'm building my model.)

I think you are right about those two big TEW boxy things, and I believe they kept them around for a while even if they were rarely or never seen in later seasons. They're very handy to have around when the camera needs to see the unfinished fourth wall of Engineering. Fans tend to call those unnamed things either "turbines" or, referring to some Scotty dialog, "energizers."


Not only that, I also got the wrong exit for when Kirk and Spock head to Sickbay. Here's a revised version, with more distinct colors and re-alphabetized to be chronological.

A - gKirk/Scotty chat while eKirk exits the Transporter
B - drunken eKirk staggers to Janice's quarters (path's accuracy is also drunk)
C - gKirk/Spock head to Sickbay (walking weirdly close to the wall to avoid the cameraman)
D - eKirk enters his quarters & teleports through the wardrobe

Very cool. Great work on these!

 

[Just a Bill]

a transcript search shows (once I remembered to use British spelling)

Heh, I made that same mistake today. By the way, I think I just confirmed that they did indeed keep those turbines/energizers around even after the EMM was constructed: they both appear on MJ's set model!

Note that the EMM (rectangular with a light yellow floor) appears to have been loose on the model. Here the whole shebang is being held up for the camera — by D.C. Fontana, if memory serves. The EMM has slid down until stopped by the pulled-out bridge wedges, and somewhere along the way it also has spun around about 180° from the facing it would normally have (the black box on the left end is the ladder alcove). This all seems to suggest that the full-size EMM was movable.

I wonder if those bridge wedges were magnetized, or used some kind of repositionable glue like post-its? I also wonder if their order has been swapped; the red handrails don't seem to align properly unless you transpose them, and the one behind Spock's back is too short unless it's extended by the short rail segment on the leftmost pullout wedge.