TMP-era Bridges

[Captain Clark Terrell]

Starfleet is supposed to be a meritocracy, favoring egalitarianism over elitism. The producers were always adamant about downplaying the distinction between officers and enlisted personnel -- for instance, I saw a memo recently (thanks, Harvey) in which a producer rejected the idea of an "officers' lounge" aboard the ship because it would be unduly segregating.

And yet, we have situations like this, where there's a clear distinction between Kirk and the enlisted crew member working next to the science station. Of course, this may have been the result of Meyer's over-militarization of ST--as enlisted personnel were much harder to distinguish from officers during TNG/DS9/VOY, etc.

--Sran

 

[Christopher]

I'm not saying it was never done on the show -- I'm just disagreeing with Wingsley's idea that the captain's chair should be special in some way. That strikes me as the kind of elitism that's at odds with what Starfleet was intended to represent.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

I'm not saying it was never done on the show -- I'm just disagreeing with Wingsley's idea that the captain's chair should be special in some way. That strikes me as the kind of elitism that's at odds with what Starfleet was intended to represent.

I agree. Now that I think about it, wasn't the mess hall on Voyager originally supposed to be the captain's private dining room before the ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant? I'm glad that the space was never used for that purpose, as it seemed much more appropriate as a place where the entire crew could eat rather than just Janeway and her inner-circle.

--Sran

 

[Wingsley]

Saying that the notion of the Captain's center seat being different than that of the other bridge personnels' is somehow anathema to Starfleet's integrated ethos flies directly in the face of TOS... and, to a lesser extent, TNG. In TOS, the center seat was obviously used to make an R.H.I.P. styling statement, otherwise, Shatner's chair would've been the same as Sulu's and Uhura's. And in TNG, Picard, the XO and the ship's counselor get premium center seats, with Picard's decked out over the flanking chairs. Toned down from TOS to sure, Christopher and Sran make a point there, but still an R.H.I.P. thing. No doubt about it.

It would be different if these executive chairs offered creature comforts that ordinary crew stations did not. There's no evidence they did. It was just a styling exercise. Too bad the TMP-era didn't do that.

 

[Christopher]

^Again, I'm not disputing that it was done -- I just disagree with the sentiment that it's right to do it that way, that superficial symbols of status are something that it's bad to be without. I'm saying it shouldn't matter, that there's nothing wrong with not giving the captain a "special" ego-boosting seat design.

 

[Wingsley]

I just scanned over some of the screencaps at TrekCore. It looks like the Grissom bridge in TSFS has no railing, and that the stations may all be on the same level (no lower tier for the center of the room). Does anyone else see that?

Yes, I noticed that too. Additionally, the command chair and helm/nav console both appear to be closer to the far wall than on the "bigger ships", implying that the bridge itself might be smaller, and possibly oval. Ex Astris has an excellent set of bridge illustrations that compare all the bridges discussed, including the Grissom. I still wonder to this day why in God's name did they go with pink slip covers on those chairs?

The Stargazer in TNG also used the TMP bridge (because it was originally supposed to be another refit Connie before they decided to invent the new "Constellation class"), but the whole front of it was truncated to make room for the Captain's ready room in the front of the module. Very odd set-up.

Again I wanted to thank 137th Gebirg for sharing the Ex Astris link (embedded in the quote above.)

One thing I noticed about that page with the collection of 3D bridge illustrations on it: there's one missing. Maybe this isn't a surprise, since we only saw a glimpse of it once: the Soyuz-class U.S.S. Bozeman in the TNG ep "Cause and Effect". Our once-off glimpse of the Bozeman's bridge only gives us a single view, presumably looking from fore to aft (or roughly thereabouts), centered on Captain Batesman. So we only ever see a slice of the Bozeman's bridge, with the rest left to our imagination.

The Bozeman images provided by TrekCore are an intriguing mix of eye candy and cheesiness, to be sure. They are a significant departure from other TMP-era designs we've seen, at least in my opinion; YMMV. There is the use of a TNG-style stand-up console, similar to a TNG transporter room control panel, in the background. When the woman in the background with the light brown 80s hair moves out of the way, we get to see what looks like a bald man sitting at an aft station on the bridge's outer rim.

What I like about these images, despite the TNG console that looks out of place, is that TNG apparently made a very clever pseudo-TMP bridge set out of TNG components, and in some respects, this set's overall look is superior to some of the TMP sets. I like the way the upper monitors look different from the solid black wrap-around-the-bridge panels we saw on Excelsior's bridge; that was way too dark for me. Gone are the little round monitors from the early-TMP era. More logical displays are not used.

Were any TMP sets, or set components, used in the Bozeman set? Or was this fabled strictly for this episode? Is there a story behind it?

Has anyone ever tried to extrapolate a 3D image of what the Bozeman's bridge might look like?

 

[Christopher]

^Good catch. The Bozeman bridge looks kind of like a movie-era version of the TOS bridge. It looks like it's another redress of the battle bridge set, with the console and wall details changed and the command chair moved forward.

 

[Timo]

The exterior is also sort of appropriate for the TOS look, as it's basically the Phase II "Mickey Mouse" bridge (with two turbolift bulges) planted onto the Reliant model. But the interior doesn't really do its best at suggesting a design abandoned in the 2280s already.

...wasn't the mess hall on Voyager originally supposed to be the captain's private dining room before the ship was stranded in the Delta Quadrant? I'

More exactly, the corner which became Neelix' kitchen was originally Janeway's own dining alcove. It was separated from the larger (and better-windowed) officer/crew mess by a wall of replicators, but those were thrashed in the "Caretaker" transit anyway and apparently dumped overboard.

None of the other shows had the skipper dining with the crew, although Sisko often ate at the same restaurants, cafeterias and replimats as his officers and crew and the civilians around him. But the dining culture would in the TNG era be greatly affected by the availability of food replicators; everybody ate "back home", in their own quarters.

In the TOS movies, there still were kitchens toiling with the preparation of food, regardless of what futuro-technologies these kitchens had available, and it would have made sense to deliver the end products to centralized eating areas, i.e. dining rooms. And in VOY, the replicators were more or less down for the first two seasons, again forcing a centralized dining system.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

I'm VERY interested in those MSD's on the upper-most left and right monitors. They appear to show profile and ventral (or possibly dorsal) views with component callouts. They may shed some light on the specialized purpose of that vessel, as there appear to be lines connected to the sensor/weapon "spires". Unfortunately, even the remastered pics don't provide a clear notion of what those things are. If they were back-lit cellophane transparencies, I don't recall them showing up in any of the Christie's auctions, either.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

The Voyager mess hall and kitchen setup may have been an optional configuration stored somewhere in the ship's computer. When we see the mess hall of the USS Bellerophon some years later, it has exactly the same setup! Of course this is because they simply re-used the Voyager set, but it suggests that Neelix, upon realizing they needed a cook and kitchen, did a simple search for where an actual kitchen could be found aboard ship and stumbled upon a quick & easy conversion that could be done by swapping out the replicator bank for a bar, oven / range plus assorted kitchenware. The fact that the whole thing was done quickly and without Janeway being even aware of the switch (possibly even between meals, as she seemed accustomed to heading to her private dining room before the surprise) suggests that it's a relatively simple affair to do.

Regarding Bozeman, the TNG-esque console behind Bateson is in fact SO TNG-esque, no one peeled off the TNG-style identification tags on the side! That's understandable as we weren't really meant to look THAT closely at the time. The bridge set itself was the oft-re-used guest bridge set, seen previously as the E-D battle bridge the previous season, the E-C bridge before that, and subsequently as the bridge of the USS Pasteur, among other bridge and non-bridge uses. The various chairs are from the TNG prop warehouse too, with Bateson's CO chair being possibly the first use of the re-upholstered Enterprise-D chair without additional panels that was later seen on the Pasteur.

Mark

 

[Wingsley]

^ Something in the back of my mind said "Battle Bridge" when I looked at the Bozeman bridge, but I wasn't sure. Thanks for the juicy tidbits, Mark_Nguyen.

 

[Captain Clark Terrell]

None of the other shows had the skipper dining with the crew, although Sisko often ate at the same restaurants, cafeterias and replimats as his officers and crew and the civilians around him.

It looks like Kirk ate with other crew members.

--Sran

 

[Albertese]

Interestingly, Franz Josef added the second door (leading to the wraparound/lavatory/gangway) quite independently of Filmation's TAS. It's just a great coincidence that both chose the same location for another door.

What's your basis for that? FJ's manual and blueprints were published in 1975, just after TAS ended its run. They were evidently created during TAS's run. It stands to reason that FJ would've been influenced by the then-current screen incarnation of the series.

Well, the 1975 Manual is immaterial as the first FJ drawings to show the second door on the bridge were from the Booklet of General Plans from 1973. FJ used the simple stardate format for all of his Trek work, YYMM.DD and all of his drawings are dated. The sheet in BoGP showing the bridge (SHT 6 OF 12) is dated 7310.07, or October 7, 1973. "Beyond the Farthest Star' [TAS] aired on September 8, 1973, nearly a full month before the drawing was started. The first five episodes would have aired by then. So it is at least hypothetically possible that he saw an episode.

However, in interviews he claimed to not have ever seen TAS. The sources he used were mainly The Making of Star Trek and various offerings from Franklin Mint, film frames mounted as slides and things of that nature. Given that the guy wasn't himself a Star Trek fan and that he probably had better thing to do at 10:30 on Saturday mornings, I would not be surprised if he actually had not saw the show. Although, I will concede that, despite claims to the contrary, it is surely possible that his daughter of one of her friends had seen the cartoon show and suggested a second door at about that location (which, if you look, is close to but not quite in agreement with TAS).

So, an influence may have crept in, there having been about a month's overlap between the airing of TAS and the illustration in question. But given that the parties involved have claimed that it didn't, and that no other TAS references exist anywhere else in FJ's work, I am lead to conclude that TAS was, in fact, not referenced by Franz Josef. His intent was to take the sets seen on the show and gently re-imagine them into something that he, as an actual engineer (a naval engineer at that, unless I'm very much mistaken) thought would make more sense. Check out his take on the Engineering Deck, or the Sickbay Facility. He took creative liberty with almost every part of the ship, including the Bridge, and I argue that the second door was his engineer's brain think, "hey, it's kinda stupid that the bridge has just the one door."

If you have evidence I have overlooked, I would be happy to be corrected.

--Alex

 

[Christopher]

^No, you make a good case. Still, it's rather a coincidence.

And if FJ never saw the show and went by TMoST, that would explain his irritating handling of the "pipe cathedral" behind the aft grille in engineering. That was supposed to be a forced-perspective illusion, a tapering set piece representing a much deeper, non-tapering one, the same as the horizontal intermix shaft in TMP. But he drew it as a tapered component exactly like the real construct on set. I've always interpreted that as a failure of imagination, as rather foolishly missing the point. But if he never saw the show, he wouldn't have seen how the cathedral looked onscreen. He would've only had the set drawing in TMOST to go on and wouldn't have realized the illusion it was meant to represent. So that would make it a more forgivable oversight.

 

[Timo]

Actually, watching the show would reveal that the set was a failure as far as forced perspective goes: the wide grille allowed for too broadly varying camera angles, mercilessly exposing the tapering...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Albertese]

^^^
Agreed. I would also interpret the "cathedral" as actually being tapered, as the angles it was photographed at make it clear that it is tapered. While I agree that the original intent was likely to represent a much larger, straighter space, it didn't take long for directors to totally ignore that.


--Alex

 

[Mytran]

In its first appearance (Enemy Within) the director set up the shot to preserve the illusion nicely and as a one-off I don't think this set would have been a problem. But the more it got used the less the directors would have been happy to get tied down to just one particular shot. After all, the room would have to be almost exclusively filmed from the entrance POV (just like the TMP Engine Room) which would have been extremely restrictive for other stories - how boring and flat would the Khan fight have looked, for instance?

In Bldsswlf's thread he did an analysis of the FP tubes to see if (with a little squinting) he could interpret them as a "full length" set piece and still match with was we saw each week on the TV show. Basically, the answer was no: there's just too many instances of camera shots revealing the FP angles.

 

[Christopher]

But there are also plenty of TNG/DS9 Jefferies tube shots where you can clearly see that the "tube" in the background is just a flat painting. That doesn't mean we're supposed to take that literally, just that the illusion failed. That's the point where we need to apply our own imaginations to make up for the deficiencies in the illusion.

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Some of the station corridors had that problem as well.

 

[Albertese]

But there are also plenty of TNG/DS9 Jefferies tube shots where you can clearly see that the "tube" in the background is just a flat painting. That doesn't mean we're supposed to take that literally, just that the illusion failed. That's the point where we need to apply our own imaginations to make up for the deficiencies in the illusion.

I think the difference is that we know the function of corridors and jefferies tubes and therefore we can handwave away the perspective issues. For a corridor to be a corridor, it must be shaped as a corridor, painted set extensions or no....

On the other hand, there is no definitive explanation for what those pipes behind that grill are supposed to actually be or do, therefore, there's no necessity that the thing has to be a long parallel structure "in real life." All we have to go on is what we see on screen or, if we'd rather, some idea of what the creator's original intent had been.... But original intent is (IMHO) only useful for filling in otherwise unexplored matters. Too often, writers and directors took the final product in different directions than "original intent" and it's the final product we are left with.

Since there is no functional requirement for the engineering pipes to be forced perspective parallel instead of actually just tapering, I am very comfortable with it actually just being a tapering bit of hardware, as there are so many shots in the final product that demonstrate it to be so with no stated reason why it should be otherwise.

Having said that, there's no reason you have to agree with me, it is just a TV show.

--Alex