Shoulda separated the saucer?

[Leviathan]

Saucer Sep as a solution to the Kobayashi Maru?

Evacuate the saucer before heading in, beam out the survivors, then lob the saucer at the Klingons and run like hell.

 

[DonIago]

How would they lob the saucer?

 

[David cgc]

Feels like they imagined saucer separation being a big deal on the show, they made the effects for it and the battle bridge set as part of the "start up costs" for the Encounter at Farpoint and it seemed to be suggested a lot in S1 and 2 before they kind of forgot about it. Agree with someone else that it was kind of a half baked idea and there wasn't a lot of utility for it most the time.

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.

 

[drt]

Babylon 5 did that way better with older more advanced races. Humans, Narn, and Centauri were on one level, Minbari a step above, Vorlons and Shadows a dozen steps up from them, etc.

TOS was better about this, they encountered older advanced races way more frequently than any of the later shows.

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.

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.

 

[Nerys Myk]

How would they lob the saucer?

Green Apollo hand.

 

[cooleddie74]

The Deus Ex Machina Injector.

 

[Nerys Myk]

PICARD: Mister La Forge. Set the controls for lob factor one!!!

 

[David cgc]

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.

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.

 

[drt]

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.