TOS Turbolift

[Christopher]

Depth can be a tricky thing to judge, but I'm also getting the sense that those back walls are a little closer to the doors than they would normally be.

I get the same impression from that screencap. Especially considering where the shadows of Kirk and the door frame fall on the back wall.

 

[Mytran]

Agreed. Also, we know the doors were different widths between the bridge and corridor lifts, and I imagine this could have had some impact on inter-usability as well.


(1) Agreed; I continue to be amazed by the craftsmanship evident in even small aspects of TOS. (2) Thank you for your kind encouragement. (3) I've felt the same about the C/B analysis for some time now, and it's nice to know I'm not the only one seeing it that way.

It doesn't really matter much one way or the other in most contexts, certainly not for anyone building a physical or digital layout of the in-universe ship, but since my goal is to make a credible model of the Desilu set layout, from a TV production perspective, the probable number of turbosets — nice coinage there, BTW, I'm stealing it right now — is a relevant data point for me. (It's not like I wanted this answer; having to build only one would have made my life easier.)

I also have a possibly-unpopular opinion on wall segmentation. First I'll show one of my many (too many) WIP candidates for lift construction at model scale — I think this is attempt #8b — so we have a reference system for the panels. I asked Spock and he said that since we humans divide the clock into 12-hour segments, that would be a logical numbering system. (He also called it serendipitous, which surprised me as I was expecting fortuitous.)

I currently envision 1+2 and 10+11 as permanent pairs, because I have yet to find a production reason why they couldn't/shouldn't be (and it simplifies design and construction for me). But I'm pretty confident that 3, 9, and 12 would have been separable from their neighbors.

• The three narrow flat panels are pushed outward from the curves by about an inch or so (real-world scale), making the joint between them a natural separation point. (In my scale model, it's very convenient to detach there, but the line between 1 and 2 is less so. Perhaps this also translates to full scale?)
  
  
• Panels 4 and 8 are separable from 3 and 9 because there's at least one episode where a bunch of people are unloading from lift B and some of them (McCoy, in whichever one I always remember) clearly enters the lift from backstage, walking right through 4's footprint. If 4 is permanently affixed to 3 and 2, that's just not possible.
  
  
• For the Wolf in the Fold freefall scene, panel 4 was uncharacteristically moved over to replace 8, so the intercom and buttons would be on the left side. I think this was so Pevney could put the camera down near C2 and capture a continuous Kirk-Spock walk & talk down the corridor and straight into lift T1 without a cut, maintaining continuity on the lift controls across the cut to the door-closing scene. This would have been impossible if both 4 and 8 were not individualized.
  
  
• Panels 3, 9, and 12 were occasionally mispositioned, revealing a dark mesh window at position 12 (Corbomite, Naked, Elaan, Is There?, Day Of) and/or swirls at 3/9 (Deadly, Is There?, Let That Be). If the window material was affixed to the panels, then Mytran's 11-12-1 joined panel would not have fit into a joined 2-3-4 or 8-9-10 position, and vice versa, because the widths and edge bevels were different. The Wolf freefall scene mentioned above, for example, reveals that the clockwise edge of panel 4 is different from that of any other panel. 4 and 8 each had one beveled edge (about 45°, and on opposite edges of each other), while the other panels' edges were straight 90°. This is because most edges of the curved panels are cut at 90° to the material to agree with the edge of their nearest curved neighbor and align with the stud the edge is mounted to, while the two edges adjoining the door-wall have a little bevel to make that diagonal meeting-line look better (basically the bevel is perpendicular to the lift doors and parallel to the lift centerline, thus making it diagonal to its own panel). Now, it's possible that the windows themselves were easily removable, but my opinion is that they were securely affixed to the walls to keep them flat, especially since the ones I call "mesh" appear to have been some kind of fabric weave; and the recessed frame around them appears too thin to serve as a "sewing/embroidery hoop" to keep the material taut. (There's more construction detail to be delved into here, but this bullet point is already way too long.)
  
  
• Power management should also be considered. Panels 1, 2, 4, 8, 10, and 11 each need power for control-handle and intercom lamps with local, individual on/off switching (activated by the actors, not the stage crew). Permanently joining 1+2 and 10+11 cleans up the wiring a bit (one pigtail or daisychain connection for two panels), while doing so in a 2+3+4 context would require extra cords back to the supply, or would run wires across the 3/6/9 panels which sometimes need to be moved, and which also have the complication of a rather large lighting mechanism (drum or conveyor) being spun directly behind the windows. (I am building a sweeping-light mechanism for my lift, and let me tell you it is no picnic, especially at model scale. Having additional wires to route in front of it is the last thing I need.)
  
  
• And of course finer granularity on the panels allows for more options when positioning the camera or making a manway for actors to enter/exit the set. The more segments you can leave in place, the better the stability for what will be in the shot (especially given the circular nature of the plan). In my model, it's a lot easier to construct, move, and store the pieces if they are separate and interlock quickly, which is why you see mortise & tenon joints on my panels. Not that I expect this is exactly what was done at full scale, but the point is that a compromise between decent stability and ease of separation is what I need for my model, and what I expect was needed at Desilu. I assume they probably executed this with a different fastening approach, but I will point out that my model's mortise & tenons use scale 2x4s & 2x6s and I believe it would have been feasible in the real world to literally shove the ends of 2x4 rails into slots in 2x6 or 2x8 studs and that would have held together sufficiently for filming, while affording super-fast breakdown and reconfiguration. Just mind all the power cords!

Yep, I'm convinced. My version might be more aesthetically pleasing from a birds-eye view but definitely lacks those real world practicalities!

I'm kind of fascinated with the scene about a minute earlier in Little Girls, where Android Kirk obliviously walks right past Spock who's kneeling/sitting on the floor next to the Jefferies Tube. This is the only time in the series when the A1 turbolift was pushed over to the A2 position, which seems to have been necessary to enable Jerry Finnerman's clever (as usual) camera work in this scene.

Those three wild walls just southeast of the A1 position would have been removed to allow the camera, DP Finnerman, and probably director Goldstone to work in the empty space between the curved corridor and the Jefferies tube. The camera (lower black dot) starts out at hip height, in front of the tube but aimed straight into A2. Finnerman sweeps left about 90° as android Kirk exits A2 and walks by very close, his left hip filling the frame. Spock, kneeling in front of the tube, is now in view. Camera locks on him for about two beats as android exits frame. Spock sees him, shouts "Captain!", and stands up. Camera rises a bit (I think) and pulls/zooms back to keep him in frame.

Spock's eyeline here (green arrow) seems to be in the direction of the yellow door, not actually looking at the android, in what I believe is an attempt to convey more of a straight path for the android. We don't really notice because Shatner is already off camera and has jogged over to the curved corridor. As Spock pursues, Finnerman simultaneously rises, turns again, and wheels over to roughly the second black dot, then captures both characters entering Kirk's quarters. All of this is a single continuous shot.

The sequence intrigues me because I initially assumed the lift was at A1. Only when I noticed that the Jefferies Tube position was RIGHT THERE did I then watch the scene over and over again to work out how it all fit together. My initial sense that the android took a more direct course from lift to quarters turned out to be pretty wrong.

Yeah, that use of the set was somewhat wild but very creative! The mix of tight focus and camera movement convey the director's intention of a busy, industrial workplace. It's a shame that something couldn't have been used to block out the yellow door because that's the only real oddity that's hard to make sense of, as the corridor junction is clearly still open to traffic!

It's definitely hard to figure out which A-frame that lift is behind in MW, and a lot of editing trickery does go on here. The challenge is that the shots are framed very closely and I cannot find any point of reference that definitively places the second lift at H. Assuming that there truly was just one turboset available this early in the series, we might speculate that Corbomite's lift H scene was filmed late enough in its production, and the MW lift was filmed early enough in its own, that no bridge lift openings were required in between and the two H scenes were essentially back to back without a redress. The economy achieved would lend strength to the Mudd's = H interpretation. But the production diaries tell the opposite story.

Corbomite's very first scene filmed was Kirk's medical exam, and Roddenberry insisted they shave his chest (since there's apparently no body hair in the future). It stands to reason that the shirtless turbolift and captain's quarters shots would have been filmed directly afterwards, rather than several days later after Shatner's torso would have a five o'clock shadow and need re-shaving. On the other end, the first 2 or 3 days of filming for Mudd's were on the bridge, with at least two turbolift openings required, followed by the transporter/corridor/lift stuff, and then finally the planetside scenes. So this seems to neutralize the redress-economy speculation; they probably had to move the turboset to the corridor complex separately for each episode, so they could pick whatever location they wanted.

It's hard for me to find any significant difference between the two corridor A-frame scenes. But once the lift doors open, we see the center window in lift panel 12 is the dark mesh for shirtless Kirk, but Swirl 1 for Spock and the ladies, suggesting again that the set was rendered separately for each episode.

My conclusion that H is probably the location is certainly not irrefutable, but I do think it ticks a lot of boxes:

• It has prior usefulness (used in TCM)
• It has lots of clear access from both sides, for easy filming (E is more cluttered)
• The "Turbolift 7" red door setup were not shown to have been replaced.

The switch between the mesh panel and the swirly panel between the 2 episodes is a fascinating detail! I wondered if it was because they wanted to show the motion indicator behind Mudd, but that didn't stop the turbolift in TCM from having two motion panels!
Incidentally, here is a clearer image of "Turbolift 7" from TCM:

I also have to consider that E1 is clearly depicted on all three of the surviving Season 1 set plans: Enemy, Charlie, and Balance. If it wasn't used in Mudd's, then it probably was literally never installed in that location at any time. A lift at the end of the E corridor would then only have appeared once in the entire series, in 3x07, and by then it would be position E2, which lacked the wide rectangular foyer drawn on these plans for E1. This of course doesn't mean they had to use E1, but it does make me want to ask "then why is it on the plans for at least the first third of that season?" (I think I understand why C0 was never used, but I would have no explanation for a phantom E1.)

I think I have an answer to that - again somewhat speculative, but here we go!

If we drawn lines from the two straight corridor sections we can more or less pinpoint the center of the main corridor's radius. It's not perfect because the Season One plan (both BOT & CX) has several measuring errors. The Season Two (JTB) is more consistent with how the set was actually built.
If we take the Bridge and overlay it on that centrepoint, the turbolifts match up pretty well.

To me, this suggests a fanciful desire from Matt Jefferies that the turbolift location E was the main turbolift which ran up and down the saucer, connecting directly to the Bridge at the top. This pleasant notion did not survive the rigours of a TV production schedule, but remained on the setplans nonetheless.

 

[Just a Bill]

Incidentally, here is a clearer image of "Turbolift 7" from TCM

Nice, thanks!

If we drawn lines from the two straight corridor sections we can more or less pinpoint the center of the main corridor's radius.

Some of the plans have the center point marked; JtB is the most clear, but I think a couple of other ones have marks as well. Unfortunately many of these digital files have distortions, having been scanned from paper. I think some had a bit of aspect ratio compression and were then rotated/cleaned up by other people. I've always wanted to do the work to figure out the series of transformations and reverse them, so the corridor's curves fall along a circle, but I've never put in the time.

It's not perfect because the Season One plan (both BOT & CX) has several measuring errors. The Season Two (JTB) is more consistent with how the set was actually built.

One thing I like about the earlier plans is that the engineering corridor appears to be rotated exactly 60° from the transporter corridor, surely an intentional design decision by Jefferies. Then the Season 2 upgrade happened and those changes are a bit more "off the grid," so to speak.

If we take the Bridge and overlay it on that centrepoint, the turbolifts match up pretty well.

I did the same thing a few months ago, and came to the same conclusion as you. I had made a pretty detailed version layered in 3D, with multiple slices from the various set plans all made coaxial, so I could try to find the "best true alignment." I wish I had access to that file right now, but here's a quick-and-dirty restart of what that was like. Just imagine several more slices. I remember there were a couple of permutations where the lift locations aligned almost to the pixel.

To me, this suggests a fanciful desire from Matt Jefferies that the turbolift location E was the main turbolift which ran up and down the saucer, connecting directly to the Bridge at the top. This pleasant notion did not survive the rigours of a TV production schedule, but remained on the setplans nonetheless.

I do think that's true, and you're right — this is a nice explanation for why E1 keeps showing up even though it was (plausibly) never used. Had I been in Matt's shoes, I would have kept it in as well if for no other reason than I had worked so hard to work out the math and make it all believable.

To circle back to my thoughts about crunching the walls for lift A2, I'm now thinking that A3 maybe needed that foreshortening, too.

(In case anyone wonders why I'm abutting my red lift outlines against the "wild" lines, that wasn't how I decided on the placements; I'm just trying to leave an appropriate little gap for two pairs of doors, based on the other lift outlines on the various set plans.)