TOS Enterprise Internals

[Unicron]

I recall the 25th Anniversary computer game has recharging banks for the weapons systems, with phasers having a faster recharge than torpedoes. But that was partly just for usefulness in a game context. Scotty also managed to recharge one bank on the Constellation in "Doomsday Machine" so that Kirk had at least something to work with.

Regarding transporters and shuttles, I might have to look through my nerd library just for fun. I sometimes wonder if the systems as shown onscreen in TOS were somewhat simplistic for the crew complement, assuming there's only a few main transporters at best and a limited number of shuttles (which typically only hold 6 crew apiece). Jackill's books tend to give classes a higher ratio of various shuttles and sometimes fighters, depending on the mission profile, with installations like starbases potentially having a lot of small craft support for various functions.

 

[Henoch]

Yeah it's reasonable to conclude that if "forward" phasers are mentioned there must be phasers at different arcs. Dialogue-wise we know there are forward, port, starboard, midships and aft phasers.

KIRK: Ship damage?
SPOCK: Mainly overloads and circuit burnouts.
KIRK: Weapons status?
SCOTT [OC]: We've only the forward phaser room, Captain.
KIRK: Fully operable, Scotty?
SCOTT [OC]: Yes, sir. But Specialist Tomlinson is manning it alone. No standby crew available.​

By this same logic, if there is a forward phaser room, then are there other phaser rooms, one for each firing location? If so, then internal space is needed for each room. I would put four rooms (forward, starboard, port, midship) at the bottom of the saucer and one in the aft part of the engineering hull.

 

[blssdwlf]

KIRK: Ship damage?
SPOCK: Mainly overloads and circuit burnouts.
KIRK: Weapons status?
SCOTT [OC]: We've only the forward phaser room, Captain.
KIRK: Fully operable, Scotty?
SCOTT [OC]: Yes, sir. But Specialist Tomlinson is manning it alone. No standby crew available.​

By this same logic, if there is a forward phaser room, then are there other phaser rooms, one for each firing location? If so, then internal space is needed for each room. I would put four rooms (forward, starboard, port, midship) at the bottom of the saucer and one in the aft part of the engineering hull.

The midship location should be in the engineering hull as being in the saucer wouldn't really be midship

 

[publiusr]

Which leads to phasers. So, I have a great many ideas.
My other idea for the phasers is that the aft dome and the lower dome are energy transparent and the phasers fire form inside it. This would make a forward twin phaser turret and an aft single phaser turret. This doesn't really fit with where they went in TMP so while I really like this idea, I don't think it is practical. Though someone might find it a preferable idea.

In TMP we saw the phaser banks externally fitted.
But there is nothing to say that they weren't above the lower glowing dome.

I might---for the First Pilot, have the Cage laser canon as the little spire on the dome--and that was what landed somehow.

Omit that spire and have multiple phaser banks aiming down at a uniform dome--which could in turn fire as many beams as it wants--being this time a huge crystal. Defiant had two of them--one in place of an ordinary lighted dome for the shuttlebay---giving it aft coverage.

Achernar (Fj plans) was the first do scatter phaser banks along the hull--so as to save on pure domes of crystal.

This set-up explains why it seemed the TOS Enterprise in some sense---seemed more powerful than the TMP. Whaen the production TOS opened up---all of its phasers fired into the lower sensor dome and came out as two ultra-intense beams---the equivalent of of all the TMPs beams hitting a target at once.

So the TMP had better coverage, the TOS better hitting power.

 

[Henoch]

So the TMP had better coverage, the TOS better hitting power.

Maybe and maybe not...in TMP, the phasers are channeled through the warp engines to increase their power output.

KIRK: All right, explanation? Why was my phaser order countermanded?
DECKER: Sir, the Enterprise redesign increases phaser power by channelling it through the main engines. When they went into anti-matter imbalance, the phasers were automatically cut off.​

 

[blssdwlf]

Maybe and maybe not...in TMP, the phasers are channeled through the warp engines to increase their power output.

KIRK: All right, explanation? Why was my phaser order countermanded?
DECKER: Sir, the Enterprise redesign increases phaser power by channelling it through the main engines. When they went into anti-matter imbalance, the phasers were automatically cut off.​

Well at least someone added a bypass in The Wrath of Khan for the phasers to work even with the main engines down. I guess when the TMP Enterprise was designed the "Doomsday Machine" scenario was considered unlikely and the wormhole-asteroid incident proved that thinking wrong. Ironic that Decker's son was part of the refit/redesign.

The TMP Enterprise is a beautiful ship that took a step forward and two steps back as far as tech goes and that unfortunately dated her more than the TOS Enterprise. IMHO.

As far as coverage and firepower is concerned - I'm not sure that the TMP Enterprise is actually any better than the TOS Enterprise.

 

[TIN_MAN]

The midship location should be in the engineering hull as being in the saucer wouldn't really be midship

Or in the lower dorsal area, about where the photon torpedo launchers were in TMP version? Anyway, I thought the term was "amidships" not midship? Defined as "in the middle of a ship, either longitudinally or laterally".

 

[blssdwlf]

Or in the lower dorsal area, about where the photon torpedo launchers were in TMP version? Anyway, I thought the term was "amidships" not midship? Defined as "in the middle of a ship, either longitudinally or laterally".

In the context of my reply - Henoch had wrote about putting the "midship" phaser control room in the saucer but it is too far forward laterally and longitudinally to be considered "midship" or "amidship", IMHO. The engineering hull longitudinally would be best for where the midship phasers should go (ventral like the TMP Enterprise and maybe a set on port and starboard near the base of the dorsal area or on the dorsal itself like you suggest) for max coverage.

 

[Henoch]

Could this bump feature on the bottom of the ship be the Midship Phaser location? Its Phaser Room is on in the bottom/forward part of the engineering hull.

 

[Nightowl1701]

I always thought that was the tractor beam. It's where I'd put it if I was designing the ship.

 

[blssdwlf]

I'd put emitters further back to the hull's max diameter. The spot you circled in yellow can't fire flat into the aft-port/aft-starboard arcs because of the engineering hull is in the way. The spots I marked in red gives a better coverage, IMHO (and roughly matches the TMP Enterprise phaser emitter locations.)

Could this bump feature on the bottom of the ship be the Midship Phaser location? Its Phaser Room is on in the bottom/forward part of the engineering hull.

 

[publiusr]

Running light maybe. In TOS, there seemed to be a hunger for dilithium that we never saw in TMP. So having, say, whole domes of the stuff except in the drive was considered extravagant. In TNG, the crystals look jagged, as one would expect.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

If all we had was TOS-era and TNG-era, I would like the idea of the weapons firing from the ring, but to me that would make the movie-era look like some kind of outlier.

The idea that the domes are deflection crystals and that the phasers fire into them is interesting and not something I had considered before.

The way I heard the the dialogue about weapons being ready was not, "port, starboard, and midships weapons" but port, starboard amidships weapons." That is, the saucer has 3 main directions of firing: forward, port amidships and starboard amidships.

Cal it oversimplification, and sorry that I do not have time post a picture this moment, but I like the idea that the phasers fire out of the dark or yellow marked areas, mixed in with the what appear to be windows, just above the ring, like the effects shown in the "Corbomite Manuever," rather than from the ring itself; thus the weapons' locations are both visible/knowable (from the paint job) but also hidden (under painted hatches, per Jefferies' wish for the ship to be smooth-looking).

 

[yotsuya]

I feel compelled to go with the locations shown in the original episodes. The Remastered didn't change that much, but they standardized it. The original FX all are lead back to just above the ring.

https://cdn.shopify.com/s/files/1/2...28f8-4f63-40db-8b34-daea0418194e_1010x700.jpg

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

This screencap shows what I was talking about, with at least one beam up bit higher:

And this image shows the painted yellow or black hatches and the underside of the saucer to which I was referring, which could be the step before ball turrets:

 

[publiusr]

Arena had them higher still---and Arena gave us another goody

• The phaser control room reported that the "aft phasers" were ready, making the first reference in dialogue to the Enterprise having aft weaponry. Aft phasers were later shown to have been a feature of the USS Defiant in Star Trek: Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly", which, perhaps not coincidentally, is the first of a two parter featuring a Gorn.

 

[Mres_was_framed!]

Arena had them higher still---and Arena gave us another goody

• The phaser control room reported that the "aft phasers" were ready, making the first reference in dialogue to the Enterprise having aft weaponry. Aft phasers were later shown to have been a feature of the USS Defiant in Star Trek: Enterprise episode "In a Mirror, Darkly", which, perhaps not coincidentally, is the first of a two parter featuring a Gorn.

This image from area even more "aligns" (pun intended) with the idea of the phasers coming from emiters under hatches. It works for the photon torpedo tubes as well, but TrekCore did not have as good of a screencap from Arena for that.

I suppose that "phasers" of "The Enemy Within" could be actually photon torpedoes with a terminology error, again coming from under those hatches, but that idea is not one I really like. I do not see why energy-only weapons would need a dedicated control room, but, if a photon torpedo is more or less of a charge within a case, the rooms seen in ST:2, ST:3 and ST:6 make sense, as there would need to be a physical firing system, either somewhat crewed, or mostly unmanned, with access just for maintenance and the occasional last minute alteration to torpedo

 

[publiusr]

That is the most intriguing VFX shot of the series. It actually corresponds well to the drawings here:
https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/uss-enterprise-space-cruiser-sheet-1.jpg
—which has the phasers farther up the saucer. Now, if I’m not mistaken—the phaser streams there seem to come from the lines that encircle the saucer’s lower cone. While too early for the Ent-D phaser strip idea—I could see them as racetracks with nodular phaser banks—similar to the racetracks we saw in the laser drill ship here:

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Laser_Drill
https://mobile.twitter.com/thespaceshipper/status/1104743712175808513

The FJ Achernar has fixed phaser banks—pointing towards TMP.

Ships often have new structures added or deleted. Naval missiles were on rails…but now are in clusters fired vertically.

One solution would be the first pilot to have that lone dome phaser that lands (Cage)…inner banks that emerge from the lower dome…with racetrack systems tried on the dome rim and higher up the saucer as experimental systems added over time…as you might expect.

 

[Henoch]

That is the most intriguing VFX shot of the series. It actually corresponds well to the drawings here:
https://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/uss-enterprise-space-cruiser-sheet-1.jpg
—which has the phasers farther up the saucer. Now, if I’m not mistaken—the phaser streams there seem to come from the lines that encircle the saucer’s lower cone. While too early for the Ent-D phaser strip idea—I could see them as racetracks with nodular phaser banks—similar to the racetracks we saw in the laser drill ship here:

https://marvelcinematicuniverse.fandom.com/wiki/Laser_Drill
https://mobile.twitter.com/thespaceshipper/status/1104743712175808513

The FJ Achernar has fixed phaser banks—pointing towards TMP.

Ships often have new structures added or deleted. Naval missiles were on rails…but now are in clusters fired vertically.

One solution would be the first pilot to have that lone dome phaser that lands (Cage)…inner banks that emerge from the lower dome…with racetrack systems tried on the dome rim and higher up the saucer as experimental systems added over time…as you might expect.

For in-universe, this can be a very good explanation for the early red/orange phaser VFX from the lower circumferential tan ring then the transition to the blue/silver-ish phasers fired from the turret ring. Instead of the racetrack nodules, I can buy a simpler, phaser emitter ring/strip (a la TNG), maybe all three rings are various energy emitters...phasers, subspace radio, transporter beam, pick your poison.

 

[publiusr]

And a nice way to sell more blueprints