The Phase II Enterprise

Actually, I think the original film makers of ST:TMP put a lot of effort and thinking into making the model seem more like a dynamic and operational machine, much like the TOS Enterprise, instead of the more static lit models that came later.

If you really pay attention to the lighting effects of the ship, you'll see that there was a very logical use of everything.

For example, the deflector dish goes from an amber color at low speeds to the blue we are used to at higher speeds. I believe that this also applies to the impulse engine. There is a shot when it first goes to impulse where the exhaust is red as well as the impulse crystal on top. This would explain why the model is shown with blue impulse engines in many early photos of it. That is the color they would have been at higher impulse speeds as well as a blue impulse crystal. Also, the model had 3 different types of identifying lights: navigation lights that worked like strobe lights, position lights that just alternated on and off, and formation lights that remained on all the time.

In regards to the warp engines, they only lit up when the ship went to warp and at that point the impulse exhaust and crystal are off. Back at impulse speeds the warp engine lights were off and the impulse exhaust and crystal were back on.

The filmmakers also took this level of detail to the interior sets, especially the engine room. Just look at the shots of the engine shaft during different power settings. Its lighting and intensity changes with engine speed and power.

My opinion is those guys really paid a lot of attention to detail just in the use of lighting to convey a more "real" atmosphere of how things worked.

 

I do really like the engine room shots in TPM, particularly the intermix chamber. So much better than the cheesy effect they used in TNG. A shame TWOK and the rest didn't use it more.

The most appalling nitpick I had in TUC was how small they shrank Kirk's quarters to that little closet compared to the gargantuan waiting room he had in TMP (probably to make TNG seem bigger more luxurious).

 

I've just been working on a novel set partly in the post-TMP era, and as I've considered the technicalities of the TMP intermix chamber, I've actually soured on it somewhat as a functional design. I mean... it hardly connects to anything. Sure, it has the vertical shaft reaching down to the antimatter tanks and up to the impulse engine, and it has the horizontal shaft leading back and branching up to the warp nacelles... but where are the power transfer conduits supplying warp power to the rest of the ship? What powers the deflector dish? You can see all the way down the vertical shaft when Kirk first comes into the engine room, and there's nothing branching out from it except the shaft to the warp engines. And the support legs holding up the horizontal shaft are too narrow to have any kind of PTCs in them. And heck, forget PTCs; where are the connections for the devices that control, regulate, and monitor the reactor? What are all those engine-room consoles attached to? Is it all wireless? If so, isn't there a risk of signal disruption from the energies of the engines or during a battle?

 

Seeing as they overlooked the need for a matter source to coincide with the antimatter, I think it's safe to say that the design wasn't fully fleshed out before being rushed into production.

Not unlike the ship in the movie, if you think about it...

 

A feature film gives you time and resource to get things pretty much the way you want it. A television production is usually short on both so you cut corners and cross your fingers.

 

Also, there's the fact that they'd already been building the sets for the Phase II TV revival for nearly two months at the time the decision came down to do a feature film instead, and after that it was an additional nine months before they started filming. So it's incorrect to say that the movie was rushed into production or that the sets were designed or built in haste. If anything, that end of the process stretched out unusually long. It was the post-production end of the process -- the editing, sound effects editing, visual effects, and the like -- that was rushed to meet the immutable release date, perhaps because the pre-production took so long.

 

Couldn't it come off of the horizontal shaft going to the nacelles? You can see some angled purple tubes by the guys with the helmets in the back.




It could also go vertically below the tube towards the back at some point. I would imagine the primary hull PTC would be more towards the impulse engines, which is where the vertical shaft ends anyway.

Kind of like a really big tricorder, which seem to be able to interact with starfleet tech as control interface in numerous anecdotes?

Speaking of disruption, I could imagine quite the warp-analogy to EMF around the intermix chamber, so might make good sense to not have the PTC so close.

 

Those are the conduits leading up to the warp nacelles. I already mentioned them.

No, it couldn't. You can't tell from the image you posted, but like I said, there's really nothing beneath the horizontal intermix shaft but some fairly open framework holding them up. This isn't the best shot, but it's the best I can find at the moment:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmphd/tmphd0751.jpg

 

I wasn't referring to TMP and Phase II that preceded it. I was referring more general to TMP and the the later Trek series. It could also apply to TMP in comparison to TOS. In TOS a show of that visual scope really needed first-rate production values, but obviously they were hampered to some extent for television. They did wonders with what they had, but they simply didn't have the time, money and resource to do what would have been preferred. And it's a testament to their creativity that they got as much mileage as they did out of the 11ft. miniature and others f/x elements of TOS.

 

I thought we were both responding to Captain Robert April's assertion that TMP had a rushed production process that led to shortcuts in the set design and construction. In the context of that specific issue, Phase II is directly relevant, because the sets we're talking about were initially built for Phase II and then revamped for TMP.

 

By the designers' own admission, they forgot about the "matter" part of the "matter/antimatter reactor".

Sometimes, y'know, you can have too much time.

 

In "The Cage", the ship's laser cannon was fired by energy transmitted from the ship's engines. There was a suspicious lack of wiring depicted in the original series. Perhaps the designers thought power was transmitted without wires or other conductors. You don't see couplings drawing power from the intermix because that isn't how power is transmitted through the ship. In some ways, succeeding generations of Star Trek seem to have become more primitive by making the sets and technology more realistic by present-day technology.

 

I'm still of the opinion that the big cannon was a phaser, not a laser, but that's another topic...

 

Which designer said that?

 

Either Sternbach or Probert, probably Probert, but I know it was a direct post in the Trek Tech forum by one of them.

 

Would have had to have been Andy, as Rick wasn't involved in the design of the Enterprise proper in TMP.

 

^Rick did some design work on the bridge consoles, at least. His name is on the cover of the Enterprise Flight Manual (the behind-the-scenes Phase II/TMP reference guide for the actors) under "Additional Console Design."

 

I'm about 90% certain it was Probert.

 

I seem to recall that the interview where Probert mentions that is on Ex-Astris someplace.

 

Yes, but that's set detailing, not ship/set design, which was my point.