Does anyone else prefer TMP's orbiting space station to the gargantuan orbiting megalopolis from ST3?
Yes. Really, I never cared for any of ILM's Trek ship or station designs.
Star Trek: TMP questions and observations
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Yes. Really, I never cared for any of ILM's Trek ship or station designs.
I thought of something along those lines, too, that it would have been difficult to stage an exciting escape scene from the office-station. I suppose a good writer could have done it. That would not be me.
I suppose I just go for the right-on-the-edge-of-believability of the office.The ST3 spacedock didn't really start to bother me until years after the fact. It just seemed too fanciful for the time. 27th century or something, maybe...but not 23rd.
Pretty fair chance in my mind that they were basically running away from anything TMP...
Hmm, that is true, drt. Time for something new by 3, I guess. But then they went and used it in that Next Generation episode, which by the scale of the ship would make it even larger! Just imagine if it popped up in the new movies: darn thing grows by leaps and bounds!! 
I'm watching TMP Director's Edition right now. The Ilia theme is 3:01 at the very beginning of the disk. The Paramount logo doesn't appear until 3:05, and the opening credits after that.
Politics... It wouldn't surprise me if Nogura was so mad that he made Kirk take a demotion. Kirk, in turn, said that Decker had to take a demotion.
Politics.
I don't know that Kirk would have been able to make that call. It's always been my impression that Kirk had give up a great deal to get the Enterprise back. We don't know that he would have been allowed to keep the vessel had Decker remained aboard following TMP. Nothing's explicitly stated in the script, but I think he was on an extremely tight leash. Any decision regarding rank changes would have been Nogura's rather than Kirk's.
--Sran
Does anyone else prefer TMP's orbiting space station to the gargantuan orbiting megalopolis from ST3?
I always liked that appears more "credible", seemingly build from technology from "times past", not to mention it doesn't overwhelm the Enterprise in terms of "awe".
The period for awe was TMP, when the refit 1701 was new. Starfleet is more than just large ships, so it was sensible to show how far space station tech advanced in the late 23rd century. Personally, I thought the SfS additions only added to a sense that it was more than one type of vessel serving every purpose, or the K-7 for every kind of station.
That's interesting. I didn't even think that this could be just a temporary structure built solely for the refit. I thought it was just another starbase.
Then again, there's the image on the cover of the Typhon Pact novel Raise the Dawn...
which many people thought was Deep Space Nine mark II, but it wasn't the new station itself - just the temporary habitat intended for use by the construction workers who were building it.
In this link, the new DS9 is the top image, the construction habitat is the bottom one.
In this link, the new DS9 is the top image, the construction habitat is the bottom one.
... so I guess it's not entirely without precedent.
^We never see it used that way again after TMP. The model is reused and flipped upside down to pose as the Regula I space laboratory, as well as several small starbases during TNG and DS9. But the idea of the floating office isn't used a second time that I'm aware of.
--Sran
--Sran
I doubt it was a temporary structure built solely for the Enterprise refit. I imagine it's the office complex for whichever dockyard did the refit (San Fransisco Fleet Yards?) and is therefore a more-or-less "permanent" structure.
It makes sense that they might need a temp structure for building a space station, as in your novel cover example, but the infrastructure for ship-building would be more long-term, I would think. Building and dismantling a dockyard to build or refit a single ship doesn't sound like it would make much sense.
^Agreed. The Enterprise was commissioned from the San Francisco Fleet Yards. I'd imagine that any other ships that were built there probably had access to the station just as the Enterprise refit team did. Given the way the structure is organized, I wonder it had living quarters in addition to the office space we saw when Kirk beamed to the station. There would have been a point in time during the refit when the Enterprise wasn't habitable. It would have made sense for members of the crew to be stationed nearby in the event of an emergency. I suppose some of them could have stayed on Earth, but the station would have been another option.
--Sran
--Sran
trevanian
Rear Admiral
Considering the office complex itself is not complete, what with all those half-finished sections, I'd guess it is pretty new. Probert's idea for the dock was that it was very old, possibly a century, so it would contrast with the refit, and I guess with the complex as well.
But the dock does have an area on the port side (where the travel pods and work bees can dock) that could be used as a conference area, going by the amount of space it takes up. The office complex would then be more like an on-site hotel for the workers, if you assume they don't beam down to Earth each day.
I love the look of TMP tech, including Epsilon 9, especially compared to the very earthbound look of the ILM SFS stuff like the mushroom dock, which just looks like a glorified blimp hangar to me, and always has. I find the latticework of a zero-gee structure with all the filigree to be pretty exotic, whereas the spacedock of ILM's is just bulk.
I've never really thought about it over the 34 years since TMP, but, it makes sense that the office complex is the "construction trailer" for the space dock. You tow it to whatever wet dock a large refit is underway, and tow it away to another site when the refit ship leaves.
I always thought Epsilon was too much the design child of a "what would present day NASA (1970s) build?" The erector-set structure is not at all in line with anything seen on TOS, and does not look like it would fit in the evolutionary deign period between TV and movie.
I don't remember getting a good sense of what Epsilon 9 actually looked like from afar, I just recall fairly close up shots of a latticework type structure. Which, oddly, was the same sense I got from Vger itself. There was no instance in either case of getting a "reduce magnification, let me see all of it" type shot, so to speak.
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