The Excelsior - uncovering the design

I'm not sure where you are getting that the TNG bridge was sunken from the start. Granted, the notion that the conference room is on the same level (implied but not actually shown to be the case) does cause some awkwardness, but... the TNG bridge is very clearly intended to not be sunken, as evidenced by the direct (and not thick) window in the ceiling. The Stage 9 team (among others) strived for accuracy, and they seemed to have no problem making it not sunken, though they did take some artistic liberties in other places, so I'm not mentioning it as anything more than anecdotal evidence. If anything, yours is the first I've heard any notion of the TNG bridge being sunken.

As for seeing the notch in the Akiras, my spouse, who knows nothing of Trek ships and has no horse in this race, clearly pointed out the differences between the Excelsior saucers and the Akira saucers in the fleet shots, mentioning not only the clear notch at the front, but also the undercut (from this distance and resolution, basically a slight ring of differentiation in color) that the Excelsior saucers have that the Akiras do not.

And last but far from least, if you are discarding onscreen evidence like MSDs (which is a totally valid thing to do), it basically destroys any notion that what you are doing is based on anything more than your own preferences, no matter how rigorous your "logic" might be. MSDs (particularly ones seen in good detail and close up) are just as much canon as exterior model shots. Your descriptions of them as "no chance that any drawing made by the production team of the Excelsior or Enterprise B is going to be accurate" is accurate, but also quite damning, as the production team are also your source of unimpeachable "evidence" for exteriors. Which, again, is all fine for whatever you want to do for your project. The dividing line between "this is for drama" and... whatever other criteria there is, is imaginary. Because it was ALL for drama. I too love making logical connections and attempts to rationalize conflicting information, but at the end of the day, if a ship was shown big or small, it was for drama, if a ship is designed with certain proportions or scale or details, that too was for drama (or in some cases, for comedy).

For the record, I too am in favor of taking MSDs as Stylized with a capital S. But that's my preference, not any sort of logical fact. I too pretend the TOS sets represent shorter "real" decks because of the way everything was shot for TV at the time having absurdly high ceilings for studio control of lighting, etc, but that is also just a preference. If a project requires ignoring half of what is onscreen, it's not really about lining up "the facts" anymore. Which again, is totally a valid and fun thing to do!

 

The TNG bridge is sunken half a deck into the surrounding structure. The Conference Room is on the 1/2 deck below and that deck goes all the way around the bridge with windows on nearly all sides. Check all the cross sections and you'll see what I mean. It is identical to the TOS series bridge in that respect.

There are plans made for detail and there are plans made for other purposes. TOS had this in spades.


All seen on screen so all canon. Please note the last one. It does not match any of the others in terms of shapes. While not quite so extreme, this is why I discount most MSD's. I think they are a great source for information, but as far as the drawing goes, they are nearly worthless except for the ships the art department designed (Galaxy, Intrepid, etc). Even then you have the giant rubber duck in the TNG MSD.


I'm not sure if this is accurate to what was on screen, but it has quite a number of errors. Most notably the pylons are off center from the hump (that was due to the photo they used to get the outline).


I have compared this to what you see on screen and except for the colors (on screen there is a lot more in blue) it seems to be accurate (courtesy of Doug Drexler). But the number of issues is huge. Again the off center pylons. There are decks where there actually is the lower hanger. The main deflector is too high. The phasers and RCS on the saucer are in the wrong places. The bridge is the wrong shape (the one on the model is narrower). And the two additions on the saucer were designed as impulse engines and here they are hangers and the details are not form the centerline and also have ships stored on the outside of the hull. A great many of the physical features do not line up to the model.

Basically, since for some ships you have such different variations on the deign that appear on screen as the same ship, you have to pick one to be THE canon version and then incorporate what you can from the others. David Shaw did this in his TOS plans. He took the 11 foot model, used Jefferies cross section (and the Phase II cross section) and the pressure compartment drawings (one of the uses of the TOS MSD) and put them together.

So as far as I'm concerned, for the Excelsior, canon starts with the original studio model. Every later drawing that does not agree I ignore. The changes to the model have to fit with the scale and details of the original. The original model was used many times and we have over 400 details photos of it to get the details. The MSD's of the Excelsior Class are chock full of errors so they are useless in determining anything. Doug is a consummate artist, but his sense of scale is a bit off. His MSD's look stellar, but the details are not very exact. His TOS one is a totally different scale.

My pattern for canon starts with the main studio model for each ship. Then whatever agrees with that and whatever other sources exist. For the Excelsior that is very little. We have the exterior and the size and we've had three bridges, an engine room, two cabins, and some deflector machinery. And a lot of that is contradictory. The MSD does not aid in figuring any of that out. If anything it just makes things more confusing. So I ignore them most of the time. For an accurate MSD you first need accurate drawings. No one ever bothered to do that in the Star Trek production. They grabbed a photo...

...and did a quick sketch. That became standard and carried over into the AMT kit and Jackill's drawings, and CG versions. Frustration over this led me to draw it myself. I'm sure my results are not perfect, but better than anyone else has ever done. So the only real link to the drawings and the scale is the canon listed size which is supported by the model wall in the Ent D Conference Room and at least one other display (this time of top views) in a much later episode. I don't really accept FX scaling, but they tried to make the Excelsior smaller than the Galaxy and larger than the Constitution. At 467 it fits what we see. at 700 it is too large (Roddenberry was insistent that no ship was larger than a Galaxy Class during the TNG years). Is 467 the perfect scale? Probably not, but if you can make everything work at that scale, why change it.

 

Ah, I see the miscommunication. Indeed you are correct. I incorrectly thought you were referring to sunken as distance from the top of the bridge (set or real) to the exterior, rather than the distance from the floor of the bridge in relation to the surrounding decks. With TNG, the bridge top matches the exterior "dome", as opposed to TOS where the bridge top (if the bridge is sunken) is lower than the dome.

 

There's a bit of missing the forest for the trees here. I agree with your scaling, and I even agree with most of your datapoints and conclusions. Would it be a bit absurd to reverse the notion that MSDs should match the exteriors to measuring exteriors with how well they match MSDs? Yes, probably. But choosing one over the other is a choice, a set of preferences, not some fact based logic.

As you know, canon is all the things, all of them, including all the datapoints that do not agree with each other. You seem to be surprised you get pushback on some of these points, yet the conflation of opinion with fact keeps happening, so it should be no surprise at all. You see ships with Excelsior saucers where there clearly are ships with notches that aren't Excelsior saucers, and keep asserting it even when it is quite conclusively shown to be not true. If you acknowledged it as an error or even just as a difference of opinion, that would be fine. But people can see the facts even if you keep saying other things are the facts, so of course they will keep pushing back.

 

Well, in both ships the bridge is the very top structure, just inset 1/2 a deck into the deck below. The difference is that the TOS Enterprise was designed in the pilots with a bridge that was on its own deck and then moved down for the series. TNG was designed inset so that it was close to the conference room. The original Excelsior bridge is only inset into the top platform (so that is not under the bridge but around it). The revised bridge is ridiculously small. But it is till large enough that if you lower the bridge half a deck, the structure nicely covers the dome AND has an upper lounge area for the bridge crew or senior officers. So when you see the bridge in TUC and Generations, that lounge is behind and just above the bridge. The turbolifts are under that raised upper circle, not the bridge dome. Everything fits nicely when you do that and then the bridge dome becomes a sensor suite like most of the plans indicate. And all the rows of windows align to decks.

 

Both ships the bridge is the very top habitable structure, but not in the same way. If, as you say, on the TOS Enterprise, there is a sensor suite above it that is a distinct area above the bridge, even if too small for a deck. Some folks certainly see that as something (theoretically) visible in unseen upper areas of the bridge, rather than a separate space, but either way, there's a good amount of space between the ceiling and the exterior dome, more than just hull thickness. As opposed to TNG which has a literal window in the ceiling with exactly zero space between interior set window and exterior model window, with the hull thickness clearly indicated by the set.

 

My reasoning is that the models appear on screen more and are more researchable and had more care in their design and construction than an MSD.

Yes, canon is the sum of everything. For me the exterior takes precedence over anything else and then I fit in the rest. But claiming that the Excelsior must be longer because the decks on an MSD would be too short is just one example of why I discount them. Such details on an MSD are to give the impression of information while not being exact. And on the Ent B, are those hangers or impulse engines? They are impulse engines because that is how they are portrayed on the model. The bear no resemblance to hangers. So they look like impulse engines and the designer intended them to be impulse engines so therefor they are. Drexler got the MSD wrong.

And nothing has been conclusively shown about the Centaur class. I told you my reasoning for the scale. Others agree with the scale (not sure how many here). I think the larger scale is indicated in the episodes (again, I don't think FX scales in Star Trek can be trusted). I think the logic of the design requires the larger scale for the hanger and the windows to make sense. I also think it fits with the Akira and some of the other in the size of the windows on the saucer. I can't discount those windows. They are very clear on the model and in the episodes. The bridge scale is of no importance because the greebles around it disguise that it is a reuse of the TMP/Reliant bridge. Sure the people on here being very vocal that they disagree are not on the same page, but there should be plenty of room for differences of opinion. We have a set of facts for the Centaur. It has windows, it has a hanger, it has a bridge, and the builder intended one scale and the FX team intended another. I think in the end the FX teams scale is the one that is canon because it is what appeared on screen.

I've had similar discussions with my TOS parameters because I cut down the decks to 8.25 feet ceilings in the saucer and the sets were 10 foot tall. And I've explained my reasoning there. I take the TMOST descriptions as a guide and all the TMP production drawings and Kimble's cutaway painting and reverse engineer what the TOS ship looked like if it was refitted to the TMP ship. Considering the parameters of Hollywood television production, especially what Star Trek was using, it all makes logical sense. I have to discount Jefferies deck plan, but they are vauge anyway. I do pull out details from it, such as where I believe he had his engineering pieces. But I strongly feel that to have the right TOS plan you have to start with the much more detailed TMP design and go backward. They took a lot of shortcuts in how they made the sets in every single Star Trek series and movie. One ring corridor, one quarters, etc. A real ship has a lot more variety than that, but is expensive to create just for the odd scene. A production can do more with clever camera angles and redressing the same set different ways.

 

That is nitpicking. That the TNG set has a real window above or how thick the hull is on either one is irrelevant to what I was saying.

 

Considering the breadth of your projects, I'd certainly hesitate to call what anyone else does "nitpicking", as I haven't seen such picking of nits since the days of Phil Farrand.

"There is space above the bridge" is different than "there is not space above the bridge". The ships in the fleet shots that you circled as Centaurs are not Centaurs. Nitpicking? Perhaps. But certainly no more so than any of the choices you're making and setting forth as definitive. And at least the above two statements are demonstrably factual and not opinions, even though I have zero investment in being right about either point.

Again, for what it's worth, I agree with almost all your conclusions.

 

It is nitpicking because you have for some reason focused on the area above the bridge rather than the bridge itself. In both ships the elevators are right there at the top of the ship and clearly mark an area we can translate to the interior set (by accounting for a reasonable hull thickness). Both bridges are sunk about 1/2 deck into the deck below. I don't really care what is on top of the bridge as that had nothing to do with with what I was saying. I don't know why you think that is important, but it isn't. Both bridges are right there at the top of the ship. One has a sensor dome over it and one has a window. On both you can see the elevators and the windows for the decks below. I think the TNG bridge with its window is what Roddenberry wanted for TOS (the opening shot of The Cage). But when filming, no one ever looked up, not on either show. So the existence of the window is unimportant in this topic.

 

Thank you! I've no issue with people ignoring what they like to make their own idea of an idealized ship, but at that point it's no more the actual Excelsior depicted on-screen than the USS Ingram NCC-2001.

 

When you have multiple differing sources, you either figure out which one is the most accurate or you merge them. Given that each ship has a hero model that is greatly detailed and that such model is usually the source for all other renderings of it, I take the model as the gold standard and dump anything that does not agree. Anything else is an approximation rather than an exact drawing. Excelsior is an ILM built model. So ILM held the plans and stored the model. If they wanted a drawing they drew one using whatever sources they had. For TNG Season 1 they used the FASA drawing of the Excelsior.

There comes a point where taking every single thing we see on screen creates an impossible to reconcile situation. My solution is to rank each source starting with the model. Model, construction drawings, design drawings, drawings by the creator, drawings made from photos... and down it goes. Others can have a different order, but mine starts with the hero studio model (11 foot TOS Enterprise, 8 foot TMP Enterprise, 7 foot Excelsior, 6 foot Ent D, etc.). No other version of the ship is as detailed or precise. Oher versions might be made (even made first like the 33 inch Enterprise), but that hero model is the ship and anything that doesn't agree I ignore. I take plenty of other things into account, but if they disagree with the model they aren't going to add much to my work. One of the key things I take into account is Hollywood methods of production. Some sets are too big, some too small, some distorted, some all of the above. Drawings are made for a particular use. That use is convey some information. Beyond that use it may or may not be accurate and may or may not agree with other sources. When the graphic artist included something to fill up space are we to take it literally or make adjustments? The TNG giant rubber duck for instance. Many of these drawings have details that were not meant to be seen. Most MSD are there as set dressing more than information on the ship. So they fall way down my list, especially when not done by someone who knows the ship well.

 

Absolutely! And I do the same thing. But it is just a matter of preferences, not one of facts. And doubly so when we start talking about Centaurs that are not Excelsiors (pieces) that are actually Akiras and there's just no way that adds any facts to your deep dive on... uncovering the Excelsior design? No.

What you are doing is maximizing information on the original Excelsior model and it's variations, and extrapolating outward from there. It's the opposite of uncovering.

It's great work, but that's where the pushback comes from. You keep declaring things that are preferences to be facts, and claiming things that are facts are just preferences (or that they are wrong). And that is absolutely fine insofar as it's not the Excelsior project you want to do.

But you are working on the original Excelsior model. Not the design. Not the ship from the movies and shows. The model itself, per your own words of excluding anything that doesn't jive with that primary source.

You've mentioned Shaw's great work. His projects are quite clear that while his exterior dimensions are about as close as possible to being correct to whichever model he is working on at the time, any more details are extrapolations from one possible way of doing things, not declaring them the be all end all, and not dismissing other definite facts as somehow lesser.

 

I have been very clear that everything is my opinion and everyone is welcome to their own opinion. I don't know where you're getting all this that I am setting out facts. I have opinions. I think some other methods are silly but everyone is welcome to follow those if they want. There's just my opinion. I'm not going to jump on someone and tell them at the facts don't side with them. I would let them know that it is my opinion that things I consider important don't jive with what they're doing. But each project on this site has its own parameters. Periodically the topic originator asks for input. So I'm really at a loss as to why my opinions in my topic are the cause for so much pushback when I've stressed that they're my opinions. I'm not citing facts. I am putting together disparate information from the production of a television series that has a lot of mistakes in it. I mean seriously if you have another place to start other than the original studio model of each of these ships for what should be the canon look for these then by all means go do your own project on that. My methodology for determining what the Canon look of a ship is is to go with the original large hero model as the external appearance that then dictates everything. Within reason. I'm not going to say that the port side of the TOS Enterprise should be windowless because they didn't finish the studio model on that side. For that side I extrapolate from the 33-in model and the typical pattern that exists for the movie Enterprise and the Excelsior that port and starboard windows don't have to match, but a lot of them do. And that's how I arrive at what I think the port side would look like. It's just the process. Is mine. No one else has to follow it. No one else has to agree with it.

But I started this topic to explain to everybody how I got the drawings that I have. Multiple different versions drawn in multiple formats from the mid-80s to now figuring out the design figuring out the lines figuring out the proportions. Taking the photos that are quasi-orthographic and adjusting them and tweaking them and manipulating them to correct for perspective distortion. Comparing the the size of the parts in each view to arrive at a consistent size for each part based on where they fall in the photo. It takes a lot of work to do all that. And you either agree with the end result or you don't. I think my drawing speak for themselves. They're more accurate than anyone else's. You can bring up one of my drawings and photos of the model and line things up and it comes out exactly like the model. Is it perfect? No. I don't have access to the original model so my drawings can never be perfect. I do have some measurements off the original model so those areas are closer than anyone else has ever gotten. Except for the CG model that they did in Generations. They took those measurements off the original model and it's a very close match, but in a format that they couldn't share with anyone and that has never been used again.

But you seem to have a problem with my methodology and you seem to think I am forcing my opinion down people's throats when I am not. This is my topic. About my project. I don't mind input, but I do object to being told I'm wrong when you aren't even paying attention to what I'm saying about how I'm doing things. I'm working on four ships at the same time. Excelsior, TOS Enterprise, Phase II Enterprise, and TMP Enterprise. Excelsior has been the hardest because there are no drawings for it.

I'm sorry you don't agree with me about what I think the Centaur scale is. But that's the beauty of things, we don't have to agree. But rather than saying I am citing facts and as others have said I have an agenda or I'm ignoring facts, it would be nice if people would actually pay attention to what I'm saying and recognize that I perhaps I'm taking a different look at things than others are. When I'm going for is a consistency over time. I'm looking at the designs of these ships over the 200 plus year span of Enterprise through Voyager. So I'm looking at design progression and how each ship fits with those around it and all those things. Well keeping in mind the real world design progression and what went into the actual model designs, as well as the in-universe design progression. So some of the steps I take and some of the decisions I make don't meet with your approval. That's not my concern. I find the discussion interesting, but I do take issue when you start accusing me of things that aren't even remotely true. Yes I have strong opinions about my project. And there are things I don't budge on. Because it's part of the core of how I'm looking at the entire Star Trek universe. I think that there's an underlying consistency that everything can be brought to with just a few tweaks here and there. I think there are a lot of Hollywood shortcuts that can be undone to give a better look at what these ships would have looked like in the real world. If you don't want to follow that, then you don't have to read about my projects. There are a lot of projects going on in this site. So I'm get finished some don't. So I'm going for 10 pages, some for hundreds. It's all driven by the people who are trying to work on the projects and those who would like to provide input. And like everyone else who gets input, I'm going to take some of it and I'm going to ignore some of it.

I really don't understand why there's any pushback about any of my decisions because all of these things are based on opinion. What one person thinks is the most important thing to focus on another person thinks is not important at all. Some think that the creator of the Centaurs opinion about the size is the most important thing, I think the physical model is the most important thing and what it shows us about the scale. Some people think that to fit everything in the TOS Enterprise that you have to have 10-ft ceilings in 947 ft, other people think you have to enlarge the ship, and I think you shorten the ceilings and follow the TMOST description of the decks. No one way is right or wrong, it's all opinion. My number one opinion and where I start is to respect the model. If it's got a cannon scale that we can see somewhere then that is important. But as I've pointed out certain model makers have added things to models to change the scale and then we have to decide if it does change the scale. I think the guy who put the windows on the Centaur change the scale and I think when Bill George changed the bridge on the Excelsior it did not change the scale.

So please keep commenting, but please stop trying to tell me I'm doing something wrong or I have an agenda or that I should listen to the pushback when all that goes against the core of what I'm trying to do. It's all opinion.

 

For the class that started with The Great Experiment, I think those extra impulse engines are some sort of experimental warp drive boosters. I predict they don't provide much benefit.

In reality they added them because the original ones were to small. How they came to that conclusion mystifies me, but that what was reported.

 

That's a very strange response, and one that misses the point by far. You keep responding to very specific parts of people's comments, but ignoring the clear larger intent. For one, I DO agree with you about the Centaur size, so it's weird to throw that back at me. All I pointed out was 1) I think it's pointless to extrapolate anything about the Excelsior from the Centaur, but by no means do you have to agree with that, and 2) several shots that you seem to think are of the Centaur are plainly not, which isn't a matter of opinion, as others have showed upthread.

I mean, that's just not true. You've literally done that upthread. You're now painting a picture of "just making some opinionated choices" but that stands in direct contrast to how you have responded to others in this thread.

And really, I have almost universally praised your work, your opinions, and your choices. So don't try to quote me back to me in a (mis)leading way. I'm NOT saying you are wrong. I'm saying maybe if you saw the way you have framed some of these things, you'd understand why people push back. And yes, there is SOME disagreement with SOME of your conclusions, that's not where most of the pushback is. I'm sorry you keep not seeing that.

I love what you are doing here. Seeing your updates is a highlight of my day.

 

I like the idea of them being experimental warp drive boosters. Their placement is just so terrible for pretty much anything other than windows. (That would be one heck of a rec deck! ) Ugh. Makes for a nice ship silhouette, but...

John Eaves is John Eaves, and he is always going to do the things he does. I'm sure his brief had specific language about making the B look different from the Excelsior, but he loves extra impulse engines (or enlarged ones, or ones further out to the sides), he loves "plating" textures, and he loves cutouts, so every one of his designs has at least one of those, but usually some combination of all of them. Just look at the impulse deck on his Pike Era Discoprise!

 

I can't speak for @Spaceship Jo , but I've shown both screencaps showing the Centaur as roughly similar in size to the Jem'Hadar bug, and comments by Buckner about Hutzel wanting the ship to be small, and all you do is talk about the windows and the shuttlebay, and see numbers of Centaurs in the CGI fleet scenes when they're actually Akiras. This is not a full-fledged filming model built by professionals; this is a quick and dirty kitbash that uses out-of-scale parts, and even parts that become something completely different from the original parts intended for the actual Excelsior model kit (e.g. the Excelsior nacelles were turned 90 degrees such that the reinforcement on the bottom now becomes the warp field grille???) Its design and attributes should not be used as proof of anything. All we should take from it is what we see on screen, contrary to what you believe.