I saw some concept art from the beginning of TNG recently in another thread that I'd never noticed before, where the main bridge was put at the top of the neck, so it would've been part of the battle section rather than the saucer. Which makes a lot more sense dramatically with how regular separations were envisioned; if the ship is split up, the more powerful, active half is going to be the one doing something dramatic and interesting, so you'd want your expensive, main bridge set to be part of that half of the ship. It just doesn't work practically to imagine most episodes where the action had to be transferred to the cramped, recycled battle bridge with hardly any room for characters while the part of the ship that's just waiting around gets the "good" bridge.
It may be a big chunk of what killed the separation concept was one of Roddenberry's final notes on the -D's design, to move the bridge up to the top-center of the saucer like on the prior Enterprises. Maybe if they'd had more money or had foreseen this complication earlier in production, they might've put as much effort into designing the battle bridge as the main one and the producers would've wanted to separate the ship more, to have an excuse to use the set.
TOS was better about this, they encountered older advanced races way more frequently than any of the later shows.
Oooo.... will have to rumage for that. Seems like the battle/stardrive section could have been designed that wasn't as awkward looking if they had gone that route.
Last edited:
Green Apollo hand.
The Deus Ex Machina Injector.
PICARD: Mister La Forge. Set the controls for lob factor one!!!
Here it is: https://forgottentrek.com/the-next-generation/designing-the-next-generation-bridge/
Personally, I think the -D looks much better separated. The saucer is just too big. Even just making it circular like the Ross class from STO is a massive improvement.
I had never seen that particular image - it looks like they'd already decided on the general saucer/cobra head design*, just with the main bridge in the battle bridge location. It also occurs to me that they with this bridge placement might have facilitated more saucer separations since they wouldn't have to stop the dramatic flow of the narrative to switch locations.
* = I also recall an earlier design where a d-shaped chunk of the saucer (with smallish warp engines) would separate from the main drive section.
...tractor beam, decompress main shuttlebay, saucer impulse engines, giant spring, spatial trebuchet...
It would have been worth the time for the script to have referenced it - even saying the saucer separation subsystem had been disabled would have helped... where is the ship's computer core that the Bynars needed it? (We saw one room in "Evolution", but for the sake of redundancy for unnecessary things like life support and such, wouldn't such a large ship have multiple cores in a mesh network situated between both saucer and engineering hulls? The core in "evolution" could be a mere controller for all the other processors, like the Atari Jaguar game console from 1993 but more elaborate?) Either way, the Bynars, led by a leader not named John, would likely have wanted every last bit available anyway (no pun intended).
That is probably the first case of where separating the saucer can sap the story's drama. Which is odd, since the tin of tuna I was opening with the electric opener while four cats gawked at it had more suspense than that story had... but even TBOBW, in a more tense situation, had made the time to pop the lid off the ship.
I'm baklogged, but am itching to get back to TNG1 - imperfect or not, it did feel more exploratory and universe building and that's always a plus...
+1
The writer's strike forced the issue as the season already lost a number of episode slots, required recycling an abandoned Phase II script, and also had to resort to a clip show to make up for lost time.
Ouch! That one is too perfect. Beautiful observation and is a perfect workaround for what the plot wanted to unconvincingly contrive instead: The overly-contrived blood transfusion subplot where no Vulcan (for which they and Romulans have a canonically direct progenitor (but with Romulans left home to make their own little empire elsewhere)) had compatible blood yet we're lucky Worf (from a completely different species with so many innate biological differences and even more contrived biological redundancies, also told to us later in the show's run) apparently was just the oh-so-perfect match. (Yep, as much as I love "The Enemy" for the Geordi subplot, the Worf one just craters too much to roll with, but the production plays it all so sincerely that despite the problems it's still a compelling watch through and through.)
But even "Disaster" had a great explanation for not separating, ironic as the rest of the story is just dumb (the numerous issues with the Beverly/Geordi situation alone are so beneath TNG's scripting acuity up to that point that it still amazes.)
The 7th season 55mph-in-space extravaganza could have separated before attempting the rescue, that's a perfect little scenario in which to do so. "Force of Nature", was it?
I'd really have to rewatch a number of episodes popping into my mind - "The Survivors", "The Nth Degree" (or briefly say how it couldn't be done because of Barclay), "Angel One" (where Data was the only one standing due to the space cooties that blossomed and spread after a recent field trip), "The Pegasus" (too risky for the whole ship due to its mass, but the Romulan ship would still be out there and the saucer looks like it was never designed to have its own warp core...)
I recall the TNG Technical Manual stating the latches holding the saucer and stardrive sections together were only rated for a certain number of separations - if it wasn't in that book, maybe it was another "semi-official" source (as in, written with backstage input) or a non-canon spinoff work.
This gets me thinking; maybe "in-universe" it was discovered over time that separating the two hulls and operating them as distinct spacecraft put a lot of strain on one or both of them? If the Galaxy-class was designed to operate primarily as a single shape and its interior structural elements, SIF fields, and all that were optimized for "connected" flight, perhaps separating the stardrive and racing it around put unforseen wear and tear on it.
Maybe the Galaxy, Odyssey, or other early Galaxies separated several times in their early years and reported strain/burnout of their stardrive's SIF fields without the saucer fields there to help...also complained about losing the power from the saucer's fusion reactors and the coverage/range of its huge phaser strips on the dorsal and ventral surfaces.
This could lead to Starfleet discouraging "willy-nilly" Galaxy-class saucer seperation sometime during TNG's early seasons ("warp core or anti-matter pod breaches ONLY!"). Maybe the problem could be mitigated in future Galaxy production blocks after it was discovered in the early ships, and maybe the lessons learned were helpful during the creation of the Prometheus class and its "multi-attack mode."
This gets me thinking; maybe "in-universe" it was discovered over time that separating the two hulls and operating them as distinct spacecraft put a lot of strain on one or both of them? If the Galaxy-class was designed to operate primarily as a single shape and its interior structural elements, SIF fields, and all that were optimized for "connected" flight, perhaps separating the stardrive and racing it around put unforseen wear and tear on it.
Maybe the Galaxy, Odyssey, or other early Galaxies separated several times in their early years and reported strain/burnout of their stardrive's SIF fields without the saucer fields there to help...also complained about losing the power from the saucer's fusion reactors and the coverage/range of its huge phaser strips on the dorsal and ventral surfaces.
This could lead to Starfleet discouraging "willy-nilly" Galaxy-class saucer seperation sometime during TNG's early seasons ("warp core or anti-matter pod breaches ONLY!"). Maybe the problem could be mitigated in future Galaxy production blocks after it was discovered in the early ships, and maybe the lessons learned were helpful during the creation of the Prometheus class and its "multi-attack mode."
I doubt the writers would have cross referenced the number time saucer separation was used with number in the Tech Manual or any other source if they used it in a script.
"On no! We're at the limit! We can't use saucer separation again!!!!"
Maybe the tech manual was an after-the-fact rationalization for the writers’ choices. Basically semi-official head canon.I doubt the writers would have cross referenced the number time saucer separation was used with number in the Tech Manual or any other source if they used it in a script.
"On no! We're at the limit! We can't use saucer separation again!!!!"
I would go for that. I don't think they were meant to last forever, like every time there is a problem you are splitting the saucer and stardrive. In [i[Generations[/i], when there is no time and the core is going and they force the separation faster, it looks like they broke the connections and there is material flying away.
Just as a slight aside, was it ever discussed as to what would happen if two different Galaxy-class sections were joined up? Let's say that the saucer in Generations did not crash land - could the star drive of say, the Venture, show up, connect, and then head back to a starbase? I know that Geordi was able to retool another Galaxy's stardrive in PIC, but he had plenty of time to do all the necessary work. Could it be done on the fly, so to speak?
I like to think that Apollo’s species resolved their interpersonal conflicts with giant-green-hand boxing matches.
EDIT: Regarding saucer separation, I thought it was very strange that the officers transferring to the Battle Bridge wouldn’t immediately site-to-site transport there, instead of wasting precious seconds or minutes going there by turbolift.
Last edited:
Similar threads
