Theater, training room, briefing/presentation room. Lots of uses. The Enterprise has a crew of 400 and is supposed to spend years in deep space exploring. They need different entertainment options available at the same time. While not full of families like Ent D, we already see the crew enjoying games and music. Roddenberry stressed that Starfleet is not what we think of as a military organization so having even the ship be more geared to the arts makes sense to me. Having a space where the crew can put on or bring in performers or other uses for the space while leaving the gym, rec room, or any other space available for other crew makes sense.
The burning question for me concerning these comments is when did use of the same set dictate that it is the same space on the Enterprise. By that logic the Enterprise has one crew cabin. They were constantly redressing sets to stand in for other spaces and they rarely changed everything they should. In this case they went to the effort to use a different theater for the opening scene. The footlights we see on the Enterprise are absent. The stage has the asthetic design of the Enterprise. I see plenty to convince me 100% that it is a dedicated theater/auditorium on the ship.
For me, the presence of the exercise bars in what is stated to be "the ship's theatre" was a clear indicator that this was a multi-function room rather than a dedicated auditorium
To me it is an indication that they were too lazy to find different panels or change the ones they had. It goes along with how I am treating this whole project. Hollywood often takes a lot of shortcuts to save time and money. I'm accounting for that by removing as much as I can. So when CX has an obviously smaller room and CotK depicts a much larger room, I assume they are different and the apparent similarities are due to those Hollywood shortcuts. Same with the TOS and TFF hangers.
If you're doing an "idealised" version of the interior though, why would things like the wall by the stool or the half height walls behind the mesh screen even be an issue? These are mere necessities of production (like the exercise handles) so you are free to mould the sets into whatever final appearance you desire. You could even put the theatre on the opposite side of the mesh in Charlie X, as suggested upthread by @BK613 After all, how many absurdly spacious, 16' high double room general purpose areas do there need to be on board?
CX is actually a pretty large gym facility when you account for what's on the other side of the screen and the A frame that connects to where the gymnasts were. As BK613 points out, you never see the 4th corner so you shouldn't assume it's a closed corner. Come to think of it, you don't see the part of the wall opposite of the screen wall either. COTK you could argue that it's a different room because the corner where the guy is vanished isn't immediately visible however it does have the gym equipment against the back wall suggesting it is at least another multifunction room. I was just curious if you had found something different about the rooms other than the vanishing guy corner. But I do understand that it's your project and you are selectively using what's onscreen and mixing it in with other sources. So I'm looking forward to seeing what you come up with
If you look at the production order, there wasn't an episode* between CX and CotK that has a scene in Main Engineering so it's a good bet that the gym set stood unmodified. As for lazy, more likely it was that they were crunched for time. Should also point out that everything "theater" in the shipboard room (set pieces, curtains, foot-light bar , etc.) was also planetside in the opening scenes of the episode. So there is nothing that denotes theater in the shipboard room that the Players didn't bring with them. http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x13hd/theconscienceofthekinghd011.jpg http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x13hd/theconscienceofthekinghd442.jpg But in the end, it's @yotsuya 's project. I too look forward to what is done with it. *(Balance of Terror, What Little Girls..., Dagger of the Mind, and Miri)
I checked, and the foot lights and stage are not in the opening shot like the rest of the staging is. It is a completely different set. It also has very worn black black seats so my guess is there was a theater of some sort they used. When they set it on the Enterprise, they made it very different. Also, you don't see the Engineering entrance. You do in Carlie X when the security guards come in. They used the camera angles to portray very different rooms. You never see the rafters in CX, but they are in almost every shot from the stage. We know they are the same basic set, but they went to great lengths with the camera and lighting to portray different spaces. I would be curious to see what the script has for location.
Personally I think it makes a lot of sense to have a dedicated theater, when you consider it'd have some many functions. A live performance is what we see, but it could just as easily show recorded media or be used for large group briefings. Similarly the gym is going to be in use pretty much constantly for exercise and training. The two spaces might be mirrored on opposite sides of the ship, and which is which is just a matter of how the crew happened to set them up.
There's no doubt it was a different set; we have the stage plan to prove. And for that first scene, they simulated an entire auditorium with only 8 seats! https://www.therpf.com/forums/media/set-blueprints.49101/full Good point, but in that case I would want more seating As it stands, there's not more benches than in the chapel from Balance Of Terror
I count 5 in the TOS saucer and 9 in the TMP saucer. Basically the entire Deck 7 on the saucer rim is minimally usable so it is an ideal area for these high ceilinged spaces. I'm only allotting 2 that would take any potential crew cabin spaces on deck 6. I have been thinking of many of these things for years. One nice piece is that the TOS cabin set fits in the space I derrived from the Kimble cutaway poster. I haven't yet figured where to put some of the sets. Forward phaser control is going on deck 10. And the concerns about mobility on deck 6 are ones that most deck plans have done something similar to what I did. So little of deck 5 or 7 gives access to deck 6 that to service the outter ring corridors, you have to have the turboshafts split up the deck. My main concern was senior offices on deck 5 getting where they need to go and deck 6 made that easier.
That's certainly more than I would have expected! I did specifically mention the double-rooms, though, because both the gym and the theatre have that large mesh screen down the middle. In the gym, it's just another exercise area. What do you suppose the room adjacent to the theatre is, though, and why the mesh? Turboshafts can certainly intrude onto the deck, but there are tube layouts that I have seen which solve the issue while still maximising foot access. It would go something like this:
As far as I'm concerened, it is like the exercise equipment on the wall, a residual of the last use of the set. So in the theater, there is nothing there, just wall. I'm using deck 6 to free up deck 5 (where the officers quarters are located) and deck 7 is sickbay and the transporters (and maybe auxillary control?). So that really doesn't work. If the turbolifts are out, people would have to use the access ladders or go out to the outer ring corridor.
Speaking of which, here are the current rough deck plans for both TOS and TMP. On Deck 5 I stuck in the quarters set. On deck 7 I stuck in a transporter room and the sick bay sets, plus the theater that inspired me (scaled accurately). On Deck 6 you can see the area I've allocated. I located the gym on the other side, but I didn't do more than place the two rooms there. To fully place them in the layout they need to be slightly curved and I thought it was more informative to leave them as a squared block. There is an area to run on Deck 6.
And many thanks to whoever designed the 1/350 TMP Kit's hanger interior. It really helped get the beams right. And David Shaw and David Schmidt for their deck plans. If I ever do the full layout I'll be drawing my own, but these made the job pretty quick. I had to add a deck to each and these are by no means final, but a very good indication of where I'm going. The end result is a saucer in TMP that is 80% original and a secondary hull that is about 50% original. And if I keep the same quarter and corridor rings, the Excelsior, Reliant, and Constellation will be really easy to do.
Ah, so kind of the inverse of my diagram; fair enough. What do you imagine is located on the majority of deck 6 though; just living quarters? Otherwise there could be quite a long walk between critical areas! B-C is obviously a pretty long walk, but is there an actual route from C-D at all?
Decks 4, 5, and 6 have no duty areas other than Engineering (and since it is the secodnary this could be the answer to the Engineering B deck - B as in second not as in deck label).