The 1701-D Never Felt Like a City

You know, you can edit your original post.

 

I don't get that sense at all. The other day (I think I was watching Macrocosm) made me think how cramped and dark the ship seemed to me.

 

^ I felt that way too

 

The shuttlebays seemed too small, too. And cheap looking. Even the shuttles seemed truncated from how they'd been in STAR TREK V. I understand the reality of there not being CGI at the time, or whatever, but even without the CITY in the SKY moniker, there were too many sets that seemed too damn small.

And yes, I understand how the holodeck works, but the room was too small. I did like the simplicity of the yellow stripes on black, however. I hate how the later series and movies have to show all of these knobs and nubbins all over the place, to give it "realism," but the idea is so absurd in the first place, I felt it was overkill. The simple look served the room much better.

The arboritum is way too small, that's entirely true. I mean, shit, the rec room in TMP dwarfs TNG's shuttle bay and the first ENTERPRISE is like what? Half the size of a Galaxy Class Starship. I love the "D" so much and alot about it is surprisingly "right." But alot of it is presented very strangely and inappropriately and it always seemed to come down to money. They should've just not presented the ship as being so massive and gigantic, then. But they did and this is the way they went about representing it ... what can you do?

 

One wonders then if they'd had more of a DS9 setup they'd have been better with the city-like feel. DS9 of course had the promenade, which while only one third of the full circle it was meant to be, evoked the size of the "town's main street" they were going for. Other than that, DS9 itself had analogues for all of the "typical" starship sets except for engineering, though they eventually got that with the Defiant. You can argue that while not THAT much bigger than the E-D bridge in terms of area, Ops was certainly taller and that played into the perception of size.

Mark

 

I agree, that the sets didnt reflect the size of the ship. It was all too small. But in the end: Its a TV show with limited budget, so you have to fill the gap with your imagination.

 

I felt like the Galaxy-class starships, like the Enterprise-D, were like flying cities. I like the family atmosphere they foster. In a Star Trek book about Voyager, two officers discuss their lives and careers and realize that they are explorers--that is who they are and what they do. So, why not have at least part of your family with you? True, there may be more dangers in space, but where is anyone safe? Having your family with you makes you happier and inspires you to greater efforts at your work.

 

The basic problem is that conceptually the 1701-D was intended to be a living breathing city, it was meant to be less overtly a spacecraft than the Original Series ship and more like a pleasant environment for our folks to live in. However, practically there were certain tropes that are just what a Star Trek ship is. And the majority of the 1701-D sets adhered to that. Maybe only the bridge and ten forward truly presented us with the 'technology unchained' viewpoint of this being a less cluttered claustrophobic vessel than the TOS ship, and it's not uncoincidental that these were the only two sets not adapted from the TOS movies, but built entirely from scratch to match TNG's brief.

Realistically, in order to live up to Probert's design of the 1701-D as more of a big community (rather than simply a military vessel with civilians aboard), we needed to see more large sets, maybe have corridors with a 'plaza' attached, and so on. But really, it would've been unnecessary detail from a story view-point, not least that the set décor already polarized opinion at the time about it maybe not being "Star Trek enough" for some people's liking. Most critics at the time felt it looked too much like a luxury hotel or some kind of cruise liner (which is more the vibe they were actually going for! ).

 

Even a large starship would make best use of space, and likely have few overly large rooms...on the other hand, interiors such as those seen in the JJ movies really do look cinematic.

 

To be clear, by "mall" they meant public spaces, like the National Mall in Washington D.C., not a mall as in a shopping center.

I've said it before, but the failure to sell us on the size and complexity of the D is merely the fault of producers who didn't think it important to do just that. They did throwaway matte paintings for planets of the week, so why not just once or twice use that technique to show us the main shuttlebay or the primary civic center of the ship? Why? They just didn't think to do so.

 

I hoped the remastered version would fix that. Maybe replace some footage.