TOS Enterprise Cargo Bays

[Vance]

Yes.

Actually, according to Karen, the torpedo bays were asked about directly, and the location was the one that GR gave back to him. Franz Joseph was pretty aware that the VFX didn't always match the 'official word'.

I wonder if Roddenberry was sober when he said that...

Hmm.. this was 1971, right? Really tough call... :P

I thought about redoing the mounts in Jaynz to be more 'show accurate', but, really, if I were going to be show accurate, the pho-torps would actually spontaneously generate about 5m below and in front of the lit dome, so...

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Actually, according to Karen, the torpedo bays were asked about directly, and the location was the one that GR gave back to him. Franz Joseph was pretty aware that the VFX didn't always match the 'official word'.

I wonder if Roddenberry was sober when he said that...

Hmm.. this was 1971, right? Really tough call... :P

I thought about redoing the mounts in Jaynz to be more 'show accurate', but, really, if I were going to be show accurate, the pho-torps would actually spontaneously generate about 5m below and in front of the lit dome, so...

This particular idiocyncracy about torpedo SFX is really one of the main reasons I was "converted" to accepting the physical-torpedo-casing concept.

Imagine that TOS torpedos were smaller, slightly, than TWOK torpedos, and that they're colored the same as the ship's hull.

Now, imagine that they're ejected without their engines firing, and that the engines only "ignite" a certain distance away from the hull, for safety reasons.

What we see in TOS isn't "the torpedo," it's the torpedo's "vapor trail."

If you think of it that way, it actually makes sense for the torpedoes to seem to "appear" in the location there they do.

 

[ahkyahnan]

I understand and completely agree that there's a difference between the ship's consumables, and cargo (or to really make things clear- freight)....

Not to be nit-picky, but in the case of the Enterprise or other non-commercial vessels, the term "freight" is actually less clear. "Freight" designates cargo that is being shipped for a fee from one party to another. Party A wants to ship something to Party B, and they pay a shipping company...Party C...a fee to do so. It's a business transaction performed by a commercial shipping operation. Commercial operations like that call their ships 'freighters', while the military and other non-commercial entities call their vessels 'cargo' or 'transport' ships. They're the same thing physically, but the former entity charges for their services while the latter generally doesn't. Since the Enterprise presumably doesn't charge a fee to transport medical vaccines and such, it would be transporting cargo, not freight.

Mark

I'm not trying to stir up shit, but that's not entirely correct, Mark- Freight can be either a commodity transfered in exchange for some other good/service/money, or something of value (or space junk for that matter) that is just being transported by a vehicle.

That being said, regardless of what the Enterprise is carrying, be it for their use, or another's eventual use, the questions are where do these items go for storage and how do they get there?

I wasn't trying to stir anything up either, and hope I didn't come off that way. Both our posts were referring back to a suggestion to be more specific in terminology, and that's all I was responding to.

The main reason I brought it up (though somewhat off-topic it may be) is because the terms Freight and Freighter are generally considered to be commercial business (i.e. civilian) terms, and normally aren't used by the military. Yet I sometimes see designs for "Starfleet Freighter" and so forth, which I personally believe would be more correctly termed "Starfleet Cargo Ship" or something similar if one assumes that Starfleet is a military organization. It's one of those little things I point out from time to time. If you pull out a Navy Ship Reference book, like the U.S. Naval Institutes "Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet" for example, you'll find classes of cargo ships and transports listed, but no freighters. (Except maybe where the Navy has chartered commercial vessels to supplement its own transport capacity.)

Now granted you are correct that physically these terms refer to the same things, it's just that one isn't normally used in a military, non-civilian, context. So if one assumes that Starfleet is essentially a military-style organization, then in my opinion it doesn't sound appropriate to use the civilian, commercial term. (Sort of like using Cruise Liner instead of Personnel Transport.)

Yes it's being nit-picky, but military terminology tends to be that way, and that's the angle I was coming from. Hope I didn't sound rude. Wasn't trying to.

Mark

 

[Shaw]

One nevertheless wonders about FJ's torpedo placement. Surely he would have had some idea of the fact that the ship always spat fire from the underside of her saucer and seldom was seen from other angles at all.

Was this a simple goof, of being mistaken about the placement? Or a simple goof of assuming that the placement in the episodes was ambiguous and subject to artistic license, rather than set in stone? Or a deliberate choice of matching the torpedo tubes with actual exterior features, in this case the windows below the bridge?

Just thought I'd add a little data to this and let everyone reach their own conclusions (it isn't like anyone would listen to me anyways ).

September 21, 1973:
"FJ begins work on the blueprints of the Enterprise, a.k.a. the Booklet of General Ship's Plans." (source)

September 22, 1973:
TAS Episode "One of Our Planets Is Missing" first airs and included this weapons effect.

 

[ahkyahnan]

Wow Shaw, that's pretty interesting. Haven't seen that TAS ep in a long time and never made the connection. Something new to think about. (I do listen btw. )

Mark

 

[Timo]

Doug Drexler did include this phaser station in his cutaway drawing for the "Captains' Chair" CD-ROM...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[WendellM]

One nevertheless wonders about FJ's torpedo placement. Surely he would have had some idea of the fact that the ship always spat fire from the underside of her saucer and seldom was seen from other angles at all.

Was this a simple goof, of being mistaken about the placement? Or a simple goof of assuming that the placement in the episodes was ambiguous and subject to artistic license, rather than set in stone

Just thought I'd add a little data to this and let everyone reach their own conclusions (it isn't like anyone would listen to me anyways ).

September 21, 1973:
"FJ begins work on the blueprints of the Enterprise, a.k.a. the Booklet of General Ship's Plans." (source)

September 22, 1973:
TAS Episode "One of Our Planets Is Missing" first airs and included this weapons effect.

Thanks for that, Shaw, it's a good point. However, in the interest of nit-pickery , I feel compelled to post a couple of additional items: one which weakens your post and one which strengthens it...

The bad news is that in that TAS ep, Scotty says, "we can cut a piece of the antimatter villi with the tractor beams and transport it aboard like that." So, at least according to the dialog, that'd seem to be (a) tractor beam(s) shown "firing" (though it does seem awfully phaser-like in its effect):

The good news is that while there's no mention of photon torpedoes in the April 17, 1967 revision of The Star Trek Guide, there is mention of an upper saucer weapons mount and the description of the "phaser" includes a "proximity explosion/depth charge" reference (presumably as seen in "Balance of Terror") where the "phasers" acted more like a photon torpedos:

(Despite this saying "The main weaponry," which implies secondary weaponry, there's never a mention of any other weapon system. If anyone has an earlier or later revision of the Guide, I'd love to know what it said.)

So, it sort of seems that the real-world explanation might have been that the "do everything" phaser was later split into two distict weapon systems: the "squirts" of phasers and the "blips" of photon torpedos after the show was underway (the first "photon torpedo" mention seems to be in 19. "Arena", aired Jan 19, 1967).

But the intended split into lower and upper saucer placement seems not to have been actually realized by the various optical effects outfits, and money was tight, so they went with what they already had: namely, both "squirts" and "blips" coming from below the saucer . While the red SFX overlays in "Arena" are new, the underlying ship angles are the same as in previous weapons shots. I freely admit that's a "real-world/budget" explanation rather than an in-universe one, but that's my best guess as to what might have actually happened.

 

[Patrickivan]

Not to be nit-picky, but in the case of the Enterprise or other non-commercial vessels, the term "freight" is actually less clear. "Freight" designates cargo that is being shipped for a fee from one party to another. Party A wants to ship something to Party B, and they pay a shipping company...Party C...a fee to do so. It's a business transaction performed by a commercial shipping operation. Commercial operations like that call their ships 'freighters', while the military and other non-commercial entities call their vessels 'cargo' or 'transport' ships. They're the same thing physically, but the former entity charges for their services while the latter generally doesn't. Since the Enterprise presumably doesn't charge a fee to transport medical vaccines and such, it would be transporting cargo, not freight.

Mark

I'm not trying to stir up shit, but that's not entirely correct, Mark- Freight can be either a commodity transfered in exchange for some other good/service/money, or something of value (or space junk for that matter) that is just being transported by a vehicle.

That being said, regardless of what the Enterprise is carrying, be it for their use, or another's eventual use, the questions are where do these items go for storage and how do they get there?

I wasn't trying to stir anything up either, and hope I didn't come off that way. Both our posts were referring back to a suggestion to be more specific in terminology, and that's all I was responding to.

The main reason I brought it up (though somewhat off-topic it may be) is because the terms Freight and Freighter are generally considered to be commercial business (i.e. civilian) terms, and normally aren't used by the military. Yet I sometimes see designs for "Starfleet Freighter" and so forth, which I personally believe would be more correctly termed "Starfleet Cargo Ship" or something similar if one assumes that Starfleet is a military organization. It's one of those little things I point out from time to time. If you pull out a Navy Ship Reference book, like the U.S. Naval Institutes "Ships and Aircraft of the U.S. Fleet" for example, you'll find classes of cargo ships and transports listed, but no freighters. (Except maybe where the Navy has chartered commercial vessels to supplement its own transport capacity.)

Now granted you are correct that physically these terms refer to the same things, it's just that one isn't normally used in a military, non-civilian, context. So if one assumes that Starfleet is essentially a military-style organization, then in my opinion it doesn't sound appropriate to use the civilian, commercial term. (Sort of like using Cruise Liner instead of Personnel Transport.)

Yes it's being nit-picky, but military terminology tends to be that way, and that's the angle I was coming from. Hope I didn't sound rude. Wasn't trying to.

Mark

No, I didn't think you were being rude. I just wanted to ensure that you and others fully understood that I wasn't trying to be cause problems.

I understand what you're saying. I can't say that I completely agree, but when it comes to a military organisation, then you're probably right about how they would classify things in ways that are more personally self serving and different from civilian organisations.

And, having worked for the Canadian Forces (on civilian contract), man, I don't think we're using enough acronyms in this topic! Futhermore, asTrekkies, we're still not making things convoluted enough.

 

[Vance]

I got all the versions of the TOS guide (there are four of them).. and that section never changed, even after the photon torpedoes are introduced. There -is- a seperate guide for technical stuff, but it's mostly drawings and notes, and not part of the series bible.

 

[WendellM]

I got all the versions of the TOS guide (there are four of them).. and that section never changed, even after the photon torpedoes are introduced. There -is- a seperate guide for technical stuff, but it's mostly drawings and notes, and not part of the series bible.

Thank you for that. So photon torpedoes are never mentioned in a practical sense in any version of TOS's Writers Guide? Nothing but "phasers" as ship weapons right up to the end? Fascinating... Thanks again.

 

[Shaw]

Thanks for that, Shaw, it's a good point. However, in the interest of nit-pickery , I feel compelled to post a couple of additional items: one which weakens your post and one which strengthens it...

I'm sure that even though FJ and I watched the airing of that episode of TAS on the same station back in 1973, he most likely video taped it so as to make sure to get all the dialog right rather than going off memory... unless he was like the rest of us in 1973 and didn't have a video tape machine and had to work from memory.

And one also has to wonder if he would have been watching and taking notes. My guess is that he would have been watching to spend time with his daughter. Would the dialog made much of an impression on him? I doubt it, he said he wasn't that much of a fan of the show anyways.

One should always take into account the period of which we are talking about.

People today often assume that people of the past had the same access to information that we have now. What we have now is an unreal amount of access to study every tiny detail. In 1973 the episode was flashed in front of him (and me for that matter), and what ever impression he walked away from it with was most likely what we got in his work.

I'm glad that in 2009 you can count the hairs of each episode, but when discussing the whys about things that were done back in 1973... try to recall what 1973 was actually like.

And this goes beyond this subject... many people who play with doing technical drawings these days have never attempted to do drawing via the methods employed by FJ (or MJ for that matter). It helps to understand the historical whys if you've walked a mile in their shoes.

But yes, it is interesting that it was described as a cutting tractor beam... but it doesn't change the fact that many people walked away from their one and only viewing of that episode (for many decades!) with it being weapons fire of some type. I saw it once in 1973, I didn't see it again until 2006 (and to date I've only seen it twice). And this being the only time those ports had been used right at the point when FJ started his plans may have had some influence.

But as stated before, I doubt anyone would (or even should) give any weight to anything I say on this matter.

 

[WendellM]

One should always take into account the period of which we are talking about.

Yes, certainly. I remember my family getting its first VCR in 1984. It was a golden event. The first movie I taped was Firefox, the second was Blade Runner (which has stuck with me til today). My first Trek taping was "Arena." I was so psyched...

People today often assume that people of the past had the same access to information that we have now. What we have now is an unreal amount of access to study every tiny detail.

Amazing, isn't it? I sometime marvel (yes, that's right, straight-out marvel) at it. The ability to talk to anyone at any time is amazing (I don't personally own a cell phone for that very reason, but I think that the technology is cool...). The ability to look things up on a world-wide network of computers (I use this one several times a day: IMDB, Amazon, Wikipedia...) - it's awesome: I look back on myself in the 1980s and feel that I was so limited then by only having whatever books were at-hand to go through.

many people who play with doing technical drawings these days have never attempted to do drawing via the methods employed by FJ (or MJ for that matter). It helps to understand the historical whys if you've walked a mile in their shoes.

I took a drafting course in my local university's Mechanical Engineering curriculum (though I was considering EE), and I agree. Once you learn the "proper" way to draw numerals or to draw a simple, straight line, you get a greater appreciation for what those pre-computer pioneers did.

 

[Shaw]

Sorry for taking the thread a little off topic here...

Yes, certainly. I remember my family getting its first VCR in 1984. It was a golden event. The first movie I taped was Firefox, the second was Blade Runner (which has stuck with me til today). My first Trek taping was "Arena." I was so psyched...

That was about when my family got one too... we got Beta rather than VHS, so we were still a little limited with the titles.

Amazing, isn't it?... I look back on myself in the 1980s and feel that I was so limited then by only having whatever books were at-hand to go through.

It is amazingly strange how isolated we were back then. Waiting for the news, running to the library for information... it is no wonder that so many people felt the need to invest in a set of encyclopedias.

I got very good at scanning microfilm and microfiche for information back when I worked in a library in the mid 80s. I haven't used a (non-math) library for information like that in years.

I took a drafting course in my local university's Mechanical Engineering curriculum (though I was considering EE), and I agree. Once your learn the "proper" way to draw numerals or to draw a simple, straight line, you get a greater appreciation for what those pre-computer pioneers did.

Exactly... people are sometimes overly critical of that early work, but when you've done a little yourself it totally helps to understand their environment (and how talented they were).

 

[Vance]

Thank you for that. So photon torpedoes are never mentioned in a practical sense in any version of TOS's Writers Guide? Nothing but "phasers" as ship weapons right up to the end? Fascinating... Thanks again.

Gets worse, even the Phase II guide completely skips over them, largely being a crib from the third (season two) TOS guide. :S

 

[Praetor]

Shameless self-plug: perhaps the cargo arrangement in the TMP ship wasn't all that different from the TOS one after all?

 

[Patrickivan]

Shameless self-plug: perhaps the cargo arrangement in the TMP ship wasn't all that different from the TOS one after all?

No reason why it couldn't be... Each ship in the same class could and probably may have diffferent internal deck arrangements. A constant evolution of new technologies, building techniques, mission requirements, et c., all ultimately leading up to a new class.

By the way, Joker, cool pic! I mean Praetor...

 

[jolau]

One nevertheless wonders about FJ's torpedo placement. Surely he would have had some idea of the fact that the ship always spat fire from the underside of her saucer and seldom was seen from other angles at all.

Was this a simple goof, of being mistaken about the placement? Or a simple goof of assuming that the placement in the episodes was ambiguous and subject to artistic license, rather than set in stone? Or a deliberate choice of matching the torpedo tubes with actual exterior features, in this case the windows below the bridge?

Timo Saloniemi

I always thought that was funny how SFB went with FJ's torpedo placement, than what was shown on TV. Although that spot COULD be the drone launcher for those upgraded to use them.

 

[T'Girl]

During TMP fly-around scene, there was a open cargo hatch on the underside of the saucer, once it was closed you couldn't see where it was. Perhaps it was the same during TOS, they sealed near seamless. This might also go with not seeing docking ports, more windows, and weapons ports. It's alway made sense to me that the phasers and torpedo tube would have armored doors. Would get you around the whole target weapons only deal. One of our planets is missing is also the episode that revealed the warp engines had coils.

 

[James Wright]

Since those "hatches" were on the underside of the saucer section, I figured they were the landing pads used like those on the starship Voyager, Andrew Probert designed the saucer section to be able to land on planets.

James

 

[Solarbaby]

Hi all. I don't know how accurate this is but I found this 3D model of the enterprise cargo bay. You need google sketchup to view it which is free to download.

http://sketchup.google.com/3dwarehouse/details?mid=d0d436df1972ed1853be30a3d3c80fc0&prevstart=0