The Enterprise Flight Manual

[Gotham Central]

I've always loved the Trek reference materials. However I find the Enterprise Flight Manual to be the oddest bit trek material ever produced since it was actually designed to be used by the actors so that they could use their various consoles "properly."

That always came across as an almost obsessive level of detail. Did the actors ask for it? Did the buttons on the TMP-TSFS Enterprise actually work...in the sense that pushing them caused actual things to happen on the set (like blinking lights or changed images)?

Given that the 24th century shows used faux touch screens, I would assume that there was no need for the actors to have similar manuals. However, I seemed to recall that Will Wheaton mentioned that he was taught that there actually was a correct way to look like he was using the helm panel. So was a manual produced for the actors to use on the later series? I know that Tech manuals were created but those were more for the writers and less for the actors.

I'm particularly interested in whether or not something was needed for Enterprise since that show used actual buttons and working computer screens.

 

[Maurice]

This is discussed in the book Return To Tomorrow, but in short one of the key designers of the consoles was Lee Cole, who had an aerospace background, and she decided to try to design controls and instruments which could serve multiple story purposes for the Star Trek II series. She was after verisimilitude and the idea that actors would thus be consistent in the way they operated the control (as opposed to the mostly random way they operated things on TOS). A number of practical switches were built into the consoles so that the actors themselves could switch various lights and readouts on and off. In part this was to eliminate the need for an off-camera technician to try to switch things on and off in sync with the actors. Supposedly Spock's two side consoles rolling on and out were one such practical gizmo. However, most of the controls were simply simulated with backlit art and designed as touch-interfaces (note the phaser firing pads on the weapons console in TWOK) since Cole knew that kind of tech was coming.

When the TV show transmogrified into TMP, Robert Wise wanted more physical switches and stuff because he wanted the actors to have things to interact with, which is why you then got all those sliders on the weapons console, the throttle on the helm, etc., to add interactive gizmos to the touch controls.

 

[publiusr]

Now if I had unlimited funds--this is how I would build a bridge.

First I would look at as many out of date control panels as I could find. Okudagrams and flat screens would be there, but I'd still go for knobs, leveler, sides, buttons ovf every shape and size.

I would surround the bridge with a ring of desktops off screen, with rear mounted projectors, and folks running the bridge as if it were a huge aircraft simulator. This would never be filmed. They would prompt the actor, and be used as a working bridge for tourists to pay to use. Disney might do this if they ever get Trek from Paramount--something I hope they do just for quality control if nothing else.

The bridge would be atop a building, with glass elevators that actually went down, so we could see decks through the camera, and every thing would work.

The building would only be a few stories tall, just enough for a good sized saucer.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I recall, as a youngling, getting annoyed that TNG used different buttons for "engage" the two times we actually saw a close-up of the helm panel. Based on that, I doubt there was any manual for the actors.

The button clusters were all labeled, though, so maybe some of the actors sitting there cared enough to stab at the right areas of the console.


I love Michael McMaster's TOS bridge manual - that someone went to the effort of trying to make sense of which buttons did what and how those dozen unlabelled helm switches flew a giant starship, is pure Galaxy Quest uberfanboyism.

 

[Maurice]

The labels on many of the LCARS panel buttons were just bits of people's names.

 

[nonbelligerency]

I've noticed that in many TNG episodes, if Worf is called away to a planet or another part of the ship, he reaches over to a few specific controls before leaving. Like he's doing a Ctrl Alt Del sequence- 'locking his terminal' before leaving.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I've noticed that in many TNG episodes, if Worf is called away to a planet or another part of the ship, he reaches over to a few specific controls before leaving. Like he's doing a Ctrl Alt Del sequence- 'locking his terminal' before leaving.

Or deleting his browser history!