TOS-E 11 footer construction history?

[Ziz]

I've been doing Google searches all day and can't find what I'm looking for.

I remember a quote from somewhere stating that the 11 footer was originally fully detailed on both sides for Cage and WNMHGB. When the show was picked up for production, that's when the port side was torn apart to add the nacelle and other lighting and was never re-detailed.

Anyone have a link to a site documenting whoever stated this?

 

[Maurice]

I've been doing Google searches all day and can't find what I'm looking for.

I remember a quote from somewhere stating that the 11 footer was originally fully detailed on both sides for Cage and WNMHGB. When the show was picked up for production, that's when the port side was torn apart to add the nacelle and other lighting and was never re-detailed.

Anyone have a link to a site documenting whoever stated this?

Shaw has a lot of info on this in, but there are some details in this specific post (scroll down).

BTW, the port side of the 11' model was never intended to be filmed and was never detailed. In fact, it's missing the boxlike structure that the engineering hull pennant appears on. Photos of the model show this, and Richard Datin told me so in an email some year ago.

 

[Captain Robert April]

I don't think there's any documentation, but some evidence that at least at some point, it was considered, especially the fact that the port nacelle has a registry number and banner. The lack of any real detailing on the interior side of the starboard nacelle, though, and there being no blocky structure on the port side of the deflector assembly, like there is on the starboard and ventral sides, points towards that idea being abandoned pretty early, if it was ever actually considered (the registry on the port nacelle could just as easily have been a well-intentioned mixup on the part of the various Smithsonian "restorations", since I have yet to see a picture of that nacelle from the time the model was on the effects stage).

 

[David cgc]

I've been doing Google searches all day and can't find what I'm looking for.

I remember a quote from somewhere stating that the 11 footer was originally fully detailed on both sides for Cage and WNMHGB. When the show was picked up for production, that's when the port side was torn apart to add the nacelle and other lighting and was never re-detailed.

Anyone have a link to a site documenting whoever stated this?

I think some of the confusion could come from how they used reversed decals in some shots for WNMHGB to give illusion they were showing both sides of the ship. Of course, the fact that they did use reversed decals points to this not being the case.

 

[Captain Robert April]

While it's pretty certain they did film some reversed stuff for WNMHGB, none of that made it to the final cut (the closest is a reversed flyby when the ship is approaching Delta Vega, but it's the same flyby shot they used throughout the series; no reversal of decals for that shot).

There was a flyby that wound up in "Dagger of the Mind", as the Enterprise is approaching Tantalus, and I'm pretty sure it's the only clearly discernible shot where the reversed decals were used, and the configuration of the ship is clearly from WNMHGB.

I say "discernible" because there is another flyby shot, after the model was refit for regular production, where the registry is reversed and upside down on the underside of the primary hull, but the footage isn't reversed. But since NCC-1701 looks pretty much the same when it's upside down and backwards as it does when it's forwards, you have to freeze frame it to tell. I found it by accident.

 

[Ziz]

OK, I found the article everyone is telling me I never read.

page 1 - "The heavy wiring required..."

page 2 - "Since there was now..."

Original edition of "Famous Spaceships of Fact and Fantasy and how to model them" by Kalmbach.

 

[Green Shirt]

Go to the source -- the man who built it. Richard Datin's website. www.startrekman.us

 

[Maurice]

OK, I found the article everyone is telling me I never read.

page 1 - "The heavy wiring required..."

page 2 - "Since there was now..."

Original edition of "Famous Spaceships of Fact and Fantasy and how to model them" by Kalmbach.

Yeah, there are several things that stand out as questionable about that piece. I agree...go to Datin's site.

 

[Ziz]

If the information is wrong, that's a different discussion. The main reason I posted it is people here and elsewhere have been telling me that I never read such a thing simply because they never did either. This proves I DID read it.

 

[Forbin]

AHA!!!

 

[Captain Robert April]

From the currently rebuilding startrekhistory.com....

There have been a point or two that have been contested, but by and large, the consensus is that this is the correct history of the eleven footer.

As for the Famous Spaceships essay, where did anyone get the idea that the spheres on the aft ends of the nacelles lit up? That never happened, EVER!

 

[Balok's Head]

The upper sensor dome was never changed to a taller one during the production of the series.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Yeah, I think that taller dome was the product of one of the Smithsonian's hamfisted "restorations."

 

[Mike Okuda]

With regard to the pencil grid on the 11 footer, Matt told us that he had nothing to do with the added detail on the model. Matt suggested that the grid lines and other details were added at Bob Justman's request, although it's certainly possible that Bob was doing so at Gene's instructions. It appears that the pencil grid and other small details were added by folks at the Howard Anderson Company, since Richard Datin said he did not do them.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The first restoration of the model prior to its first display at the Smithsonian in the 1970s - and it did arrive in pretty bad shape - included bright red opaque acrylic hemispheres for the nacelle caps, an oversized and very deeply concave main deflector dish and a similarly high-profile bubble for the top of the bridge.

The 1992 Mirecki restoration was the first time that the internal lighting and rotation effect was restored to the model.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The old girl could stand one more restoration, mainly to soften up those heavy-handed grid lines and make the lights in the nacelle domes properly multicolored. Did Mirecki use light bulbs or LED's for that part of the job?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

He's got a site online and can probably be contacted there to verify things - he's a very nice guy - but to the best of my recollection he didn't use LEDs (how practical were they, in the early 90s? I don't have any idea). I think he used a lot of automotive lights. The only part of the restoration that's caused serious controversy is the paint job and detailing - the base color was something they matched using areas of the model that had been less exposed to light over the years, and one of the curators met and consulted with Datin at one point.

The more important work, in many ways, was refurbishing the damaged and unusable internal lighting system and repairing a good deal of cracking and damage to the wooden parts of the model.

The thing is of course around eleven feet long, now over forty years old and has no real solid internal armature holding it together - the elements are mainly wood and plastic and simply bolted to one another. It's starting to sag badly again, on display in the museum gift shop. I knew the guy who built an elaborate external acrylic mounting system suspending the model from cables that was used to support and help preserve it when it was part of a traveling museum display after the NASM TOS exhibit closed, but those pieces are not being used to support it now. Unless something is done gravity is going to have its way with the old girl in the end.

 

[Forbin]

....

 

[Christopher]

He's got a site online and can probably be contacted there to verify things - he's a very nice guy - but to the best of my recollection he didn't use LEDs (how practical were they, in the early 90s? I don't have any idea).

LEDs have been around far, far longer than that. They were limited in colors -- it's only in recent years that they've found ways to make white LEDs -- and in intensity, but they've been a commonplace technology since the '60s. So the question is, practical for what purpose?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I know exactly how long LEDs have been around, Christopher - to the best of my recollection they were not being used much for illumination in those days because, you know, they weren't very bright and weren't available in white.

....

Yeah...it'd be in much worse shape now if not for the repair work that Mirecki undertook for the 1992 show - at considerably less cost than the initial estimates for such refurbishment. NASM balked at cost, and had someone not put them in touch with Ed the model would have continued to deteriorate structurally.

BTW, IIRC NASM wired a sort of flashing or "strobing" effect into the model's nacelles at some point during the 1980s but I could be misremembering that. It certainly didn't resemble the original effect, as Ed's does.