This endeavour could be seen as tangential to my current thread TAS made real. There I am trying to reconcile TAS designs in a 3D fashion as they could have appeared as live-action miniatures in TOS. To some extent I made an effort to adapt or correct the stylized designs into more credible three-dimensional forms that TOS could actually have constructed for filming. That said there are more than a few TAS designs that could have worked well enough if they had been conceived in 1966-69.
What that thread largely overlooks is that those designs did not yet exist some years earlier while TOS was in production and therefore it was highly unlikely Matt Jefferies or anyone else on TOS’ production team would have come up with those specific designs drawn so effortlessly in animation. Jefferies and company would have been more constrained by real world limitations of resources, budget limitations and time constraints. Even if we accept the conceit of TOS having a modicum of extra time and money to realize more miniatures various episodes they would still have been constrained by actual physical resources.
So: What was possible at the time with available resources and references?
We can answer some of that given what was actually seen on TOS already as well as other sci-fi series and films during the era.
We know it wasn’t a lack of imagination and creativity. The Klingon D7 battle cruiser (albeit built for TOS by AMT Corporation although designed by Matt Jefferies) clearly shows elaborate designs in physical form were very possible back in the day. Even so we can also accept that most featured miniatures were not going to be massive working objects like the 11ft. Enterprise filming miniature. At best they were going to be maybe 2-3 ft. miniatures that could conceivably have had a few working lights like the shuttlecraft Galileo miniature.
This project also depends on a challenging conceit: effectively forgetting everything that has happened in terms of science fiction since the late 1960s simply because the creators of TOS, unlike us, would not have had access to anything that followed up to the present day. And so my references need to be restricted solely to what influences were available then.
The other conceit is I will be using 3D modelling to envision what might or could have been done back in the day.
It must be noted that not everything unseen on TOS actually needed to be seen. In “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” references were made to Earth ships that had disappeared and were lost decades to centuries earlier. Although it might have been nice to catch a glimpse of these ships as a schematic or photo on some monitor screen it wasn’t really essential to the story. In “The Cage” it can even be argued the S.S. COLUMBIA might not even have really existed, but was a fabrication of the Talosians to lure the passing Enterprise to Talos 4.
Other films and television productions of the time often enough reused props and miniatures from earlier films and series. I believe the miniature of Klaatu’s ship from 1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still showed up a couple of times in Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and perhaps elsewhere. This practice wasn’t usually seen in TOS although the Horta costume seen in “The Devil In The Dark” was first seen in an Outer Limits episode, “Probe.” There might have been other instances as well that escape me at the moment so if anyone knows of other instances please feel welcome to mention them. Given the Enterprise sports a very prominent saucer in its design it’s not really inappropriate for other designs (besides Starfleet vessels) to be saucer based. So something inspired by or based on Klaatu’s ship or the C57D cruiser from Forbidden Planet is not far-fetched. Note a saucer like ship was seen in “The Alternative Factor” although it was only seen grounded.
I have long liked the spaceship Cosmostrator from 1959’s First Spaceship On Venus—a striking and exotic design that would not have looked out of place on TOS. So rocketship like designs, suitably modified, could also have worked on occasion for TOS. Indeed Kara’s ship from “Spock’s Brain” is such a design. On close inspection it is actually quite a good modification of the classic sci-fi rocketship.
Although it might not have been his intent Matt Jefferies’ design for the Botany Bay sleeper ship looks rather like a submarine model kit modified to look like a near future spaceship. On close inspection it’s obviously not a kit bash, but it does illustrate how inspiration from an unlikely source can work.
Today there are essentially no limitations to what can be done in science fiction with the availability of computer modelling. Whatever can be imagined can be built and rendered directly to finished product on film with no cost in physical materials. The only real constraints are imagination and time. In the 1960s one had to be aware of what materials were available, what was possible in terms of construction, how quickly one could work within the allotted time and how much money was available.
In my TAS made real thread we periodically speculate on how certain miniatures could have been realized on TOS. If TAS stories had actually been produced during TOS or in a speculative fourth season it’s safe to assume there would have been some serious changes made for the stories to work as live-action, and the designs seen in TAS would most likely have been quite different from what we’re presently familiar with.
So to begin the speculation.
“The Cage” – The first pilot was essentially a proof of concept to show Gene Roddenberry’s idea could be realized for television. So it’s easy to see not all the later familiar ideas were nailed down and fully fleshed out yet. Still, I already mentioned above that depicting the lost ship Columbia onscreen wasn’t really a necessity and would add nothing to the story. Certainly a miniature wasn’t required and even seeing a schematic of the ship on a display screen would have added nothing but perhaps a bit of prehistory worldbuilding. And given the pressures of time and going over budget it’s easy to see why no one likely gave much thought to what the Columbia could have looked like. Certainly an enhanced version of "The Cage" could shoehorn a schematic of the Columbia somewhere onto a screen, but I question whether it would be worth it given everything about the Columbia could simply have been a Talosian fabrication to lure the Enterprise.
If there is anything that went unseen in “The Cage’ it’s additional views of the 11ft. Enterprise. We see it in one opening sequence and then nothing afterward. What else we see afterward are long shots of the smaller 3ft miniature which differed from the 11 footer in some distinct details, primarily in the contours of the saucer. And note that neither the 11 footer or the 3ft. miniature were lighted—they were both static miniatures at this point.
Yes, it would have been nice to have seen the 11 footer lighted as it would be later for the second pilot and throughout the series, but it’s understandable at this point they simply couldn’t allow for additional time and money to light the model for a pilot episode that might not even sell as a series. And even if it did sell it wasn’t uncommon for a pilot episode to not ever be broadcast.
Nonetheless that first opening sequence featuring the Enterprise banking toward us remains a dynamic and impressive shot introducing the ship to us. It could only have been made better if it had been lighted and if we could have gotten to see a few other views of the ship throughout the episode.
Something else of note about the first pilot version of the 11 footer is that it was not a complete miniature besides not being lighted. It did not have any detail along the inboard sides of the nacelles, on the hangar deck doors or on the sides of the secondary hull near the navigational deflector. It raises the question of whether they would have added those finishing touches if given a little more time. Of course, we know the 11 footer was lighted for the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" althought the nacelles domes remained unlighted, the upper formation lights were not yet added and the above aforementioned details were still absent. And in WNMHGB we finally got to see other views of the 11 footer.
To that end I think one of the first models I should build for this Unseen TOS thread is the pilot Enterprise. It’s also ironic that considering my fascination with TOS and having made numerous TOS based designs I haven’t yet gotten around to making my own 3D model of the Enterprise. Since we are exploring unseen Trek based on the idea of a little more time and money available I think at least I could add lights to "The Cage" version of the ship. To make it more complete I could add a few details from the WNMHGB and series versions. In the least I think I should light the windows even if I leave the rest as is.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" - As stated above the 11 footer was revised with some detail changes and, more significantly, lights were added. The only thing really left unseen was the lost ship Valiant. However, as is the case with the unseen Columbia in "The Cage" the appearance of the Valiant really isn't necessary to the story although it might have been interesting to have seen a glimpse of the ship as a schematic or illustration on one of Spock's monitor screens.
Still, unlike the Columbia, over the years there has been more interest in what the Valiant could have looked like. Many fans (myself included) have speculated with drawings and models on what the Valiant could have looked like based on what skant information is given in the episode. We know it predates the Enterprise by around two hundred years and the Enterprise crew is surprised to learn the ship had somehow managed to make it to the edge of the galaxy, the inference being a ship that long ago had no business being that far out and it is never explained how the Valiant got so far into the galaxy.
In Star Trek's early days much of the science, technology and terminology was still evolving. In "The Cage" it's implied ships like the Enterprise are significantly faster than ships of only twenty years prior, but it isn't clarified whether they mean ships specifically of the Enterprise's class or ships in general of that era. This does tie-in loosely with what we would learn later in the series. In "Balance Of Terror" it's implied ships of a century prior to the storiy's events were "primitive" compared to the Enterprise. It's reasonable to assume technological advancement over a century could be significant, but using the word "primitive" connotates a truly drastic difference between the old and the new. Nonetheless later episodes references would be made to "starships" of a hundred years prior (Archon and Horizon) and fifty years prior (another Valiant). We would also learn Zefram Cochrane developed (invented?) the space warp more than 150 years before the events in the episode "Metamorphosis." The final bit of backstory we have is learning Earth was using sleeper ships in the late 20th to early 21st centuries.
Another point to consider is that when TOS was produced there was a lot less general understanding of how big interstellar space is and what is required to travel those distances. The distinction between impulse and warp back in the day was not as clear as it is now. We should also clarify what a "starship" actually means. A starship is a craft meant to travel interstellar distances. Yet faster-tha-light propulsion is not a requirement unless you want to reach your destination within the crew's normal life span as well as those left back home waiting for your return or at least to get a message from you. But to tell the stories told in Star Trek starships pretty much have to be FTL driven unless specified otherwise.
So older ships referenced dating 20 ("The Cage" and "The Ultimate Computer") to 50 ("A Taste Of Armageddon") to 100 ("Balance Of Terror," "Return Of The Archons" and "A Piece Of The Action") to 200 ("Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "Metamorphosis") years prior may be significantly less advanced and significantly slower than the Enterprise they nonetheless possess some form of early FTL drive. The only non-warp ship we will see dating more than two centuries prior is the sleeper ship Botany Bay ("Space Seed"). It is the only visual clue we get in TOS regarding what Earth ships looked like centuries before the Enterprise.
Still, despite my rambling, none of that was yet established when WNMHGB was produced. To that end we can still deduce a few things from the references regarding the Valiant.
- 200 years earlier Earth was sending ships into space with more than a handful of crewmen. This implies a vessel of decent size to sustain that crew for an extended period of time.
- The Valiant's recoder marker identifies (perhaps grandiosely) the ship as a Galactic Survey Cruiser, which imples a FTL ship meant to explore interstellar space and return to port. The reference to "the old impulse engines" suggests that while it was an interstellar vessel the Valiant was nonetheless quite primitive compared to more modern ships and expected to remain relatively close to home--hence the surprise to find the ship had somehow made it to the edge of the galaxy.
The challenge is trying to envision what the old Valiant could have looked like while trying not to be too influenced by what we know would come later in the series and subsequent productions. Assuming they ever did try to visualize the Valiant it's most likely it would have appeared only as a schematic or illustration on a monitor screen rather than as a physical miniature. Nonetheless in exploring the possibility we can render it here as a 3D model which could be converted to a schematic or illustration or photo.
What that thread largely overlooks is that those designs did not yet exist some years earlier while TOS was in production and therefore it was highly unlikely Matt Jefferies or anyone else on TOS’ production team would have come up with those specific designs drawn so effortlessly in animation. Jefferies and company would have been more constrained by real world limitations of resources, budget limitations and time constraints. Even if we accept the conceit of TOS having a modicum of extra time and money to realize more miniatures various episodes they would still have been constrained by actual physical resources.
So: What was possible at the time with available resources and references?
We can answer some of that given what was actually seen on TOS already as well as other sci-fi series and films during the era.
We know it wasn’t a lack of imagination and creativity. The Klingon D7 battle cruiser (albeit built for TOS by AMT Corporation although designed by Matt Jefferies) clearly shows elaborate designs in physical form were very possible back in the day. Even so we can also accept that most featured miniatures were not going to be massive working objects like the 11ft. Enterprise filming miniature. At best they were going to be maybe 2-3 ft. miniatures that could conceivably have had a few working lights like the shuttlecraft Galileo miniature.
This project also depends on a challenging conceit: effectively forgetting everything that has happened in terms of science fiction since the late 1960s simply because the creators of TOS, unlike us, would not have had access to anything that followed up to the present day. And so my references need to be restricted solely to what influences were available then.
The other conceit is I will be using 3D modelling to envision what might or could have been done back in the day.
It must be noted that not everything unseen on TOS actually needed to be seen. In “The Cage” and “Where No Man Has Gone Before” references were made to Earth ships that had disappeared and were lost decades to centuries earlier. Although it might have been nice to catch a glimpse of these ships as a schematic or photo on some monitor screen it wasn’t really essential to the story. In “The Cage” it can even be argued the S.S. COLUMBIA might not even have really existed, but was a fabrication of the Talosians to lure the passing Enterprise to Talos 4.
Other films and television productions of the time often enough reused props and miniatures from earlier films and series. I believe the miniature of Klaatu’s ship from 1951’s The Day The Earth Stood Still showed up a couple of times in Voyage To The Bottom Of The Sea and perhaps elsewhere. This practice wasn’t usually seen in TOS although the Horta costume seen in “The Devil In The Dark” was first seen in an Outer Limits episode, “Probe.” There might have been other instances as well that escape me at the moment so if anyone knows of other instances please feel welcome to mention them. Given the Enterprise sports a very prominent saucer in its design it’s not really inappropriate for other designs (besides Starfleet vessels) to be saucer based. So something inspired by or based on Klaatu’s ship or the C57D cruiser from Forbidden Planet is not far-fetched. Note a saucer like ship was seen in “The Alternative Factor” although it was only seen grounded.
I have long liked the spaceship Cosmostrator from 1959’s First Spaceship On Venus—a striking and exotic design that would not have looked out of place on TOS. So rocketship like designs, suitably modified, could also have worked on occasion for TOS. Indeed Kara’s ship from “Spock’s Brain” is such a design. On close inspection it is actually quite a good modification of the classic sci-fi rocketship.
Although it might not have been his intent Matt Jefferies’ design for the Botany Bay sleeper ship looks rather like a submarine model kit modified to look like a near future spaceship. On close inspection it’s obviously not a kit bash, but it does illustrate how inspiration from an unlikely source can work.
Today there are essentially no limitations to what can be done in science fiction with the availability of computer modelling. Whatever can be imagined can be built and rendered directly to finished product on film with no cost in physical materials. The only real constraints are imagination and time. In the 1960s one had to be aware of what materials were available, what was possible in terms of construction, how quickly one could work within the allotted time and how much money was available.
In my TAS made real thread we periodically speculate on how certain miniatures could have been realized on TOS. If TAS stories had actually been produced during TOS or in a speculative fourth season it’s safe to assume there would have been some serious changes made for the stories to work as live-action, and the designs seen in TAS would most likely have been quite different from what we’re presently familiar with.
So to begin the speculation.
“The Cage” – The first pilot was essentially a proof of concept to show Gene Roddenberry’s idea could be realized for television. So it’s easy to see not all the later familiar ideas were nailed down and fully fleshed out yet. Still, I already mentioned above that depicting the lost ship Columbia onscreen wasn’t really a necessity and would add nothing to the story. Certainly a miniature wasn’t required and even seeing a schematic of the ship on a display screen would have added nothing but perhaps a bit of prehistory worldbuilding. And given the pressures of time and going over budget it’s easy to see why no one likely gave much thought to what the Columbia could have looked like. Certainly an enhanced version of "The Cage" could shoehorn a schematic of the Columbia somewhere onto a screen, but I question whether it would be worth it given everything about the Columbia could simply have been a Talosian fabrication to lure the Enterprise.
If there is anything that went unseen in “The Cage’ it’s additional views of the 11ft. Enterprise. We see it in one opening sequence and then nothing afterward. What else we see afterward are long shots of the smaller 3ft miniature which differed from the 11 footer in some distinct details, primarily in the contours of the saucer. And note that neither the 11 footer or the 3ft. miniature were lighted—they were both static miniatures at this point.
Yes, it would have been nice to have seen the 11 footer lighted as it would be later for the second pilot and throughout the series, but it’s understandable at this point they simply couldn’t allow for additional time and money to light the model for a pilot episode that might not even sell as a series. And even if it did sell it wasn’t uncommon for a pilot episode to not ever be broadcast.
Nonetheless that first opening sequence featuring the Enterprise banking toward us remains a dynamic and impressive shot introducing the ship to us. It could only have been made better if it had been lighted and if we could have gotten to see a few other views of the ship throughout the episode.
Something else of note about the first pilot version of the 11 footer is that it was not a complete miniature besides not being lighted. It did not have any detail along the inboard sides of the nacelles, on the hangar deck doors or on the sides of the secondary hull near the navigational deflector. It raises the question of whether they would have added those finishing touches if given a little more time. Of course, we know the 11 footer was lighted for the second pilot "Where No Man Has Gone Before" althought the nacelles domes remained unlighted, the upper formation lights were not yet added and the above aforementioned details were still absent. And in WNMHGB we finally got to see other views of the 11 footer.
To that end I think one of the first models I should build for this Unseen TOS thread is the pilot Enterprise. It’s also ironic that considering my fascination with TOS and having made numerous TOS based designs I haven’t yet gotten around to making my own 3D model of the Enterprise. Since we are exploring unseen Trek based on the idea of a little more time and money available I think at least I could add lights to "The Cage" version of the ship. To make it more complete I could add a few details from the WNMHGB and series versions. In the least I think I should light the windows even if I leave the rest as is.
"Where No Man Has Gone Before" - As stated above the 11 footer was revised with some detail changes and, more significantly, lights were added. The only thing really left unseen was the lost ship Valiant. However, as is the case with the unseen Columbia in "The Cage" the appearance of the Valiant really isn't necessary to the story although it might have been interesting to have seen a glimpse of the ship as a schematic or illustration on one of Spock's monitor screens.
Still, unlike the Columbia, over the years there has been more interest in what the Valiant could have looked like. Many fans (myself included) have speculated with drawings and models on what the Valiant could have looked like based on what skant information is given in the episode. We know it predates the Enterprise by around two hundred years and the Enterprise crew is surprised to learn the ship had somehow managed to make it to the edge of the galaxy, the inference being a ship that long ago had no business being that far out and it is never explained how the Valiant got so far into the galaxy.
In Star Trek's early days much of the science, technology and terminology was still evolving. In "The Cage" it's implied ships like the Enterprise are significantly faster than ships of only twenty years prior, but it isn't clarified whether they mean ships specifically of the Enterprise's class or ships in general of that era. This does tie-in loosely with what we would learn later in the series. In "Balance Of Terror" it's implied ships of a century prior to the storiy's events were "primitive" compared to the Enterprise. It's reasonable to assume technological advancement over a century could be significant, but using the word "primitive" connotates a truly drastic difference between the old and the new. Nonetheless later episodes references would be made to "starships" of a hundred years prior (Archon and Horizon) and fifty years prior (another Valiant). We would also learn Zefram Cochrane developed (invented?) the space warp more than 150 years before the events in the episode "Metamorphosis." The final bit of backstory we have is learning Earth was using sleeper ships in the late 20th to early 21st centuries.
Another point to consider is that when TOS was produced there was a lot less general understanding of how big interstellar space is and what is required to travel those distances. The distinction between impulse and warp back in the day was not as clear as it is now. We should also clarify what a "starship" actually means. A starship is a craft meant to travel interstellar distances. Yet faster-tha-light propulsion is not a requirement unless you want to reach your destination within the crew's normal life span as well as those left back home waiting for your return or at least to get a message from you. But to tell the stories told in Star Trek starships pretty much have to be FTL driven unless specified otherwise.
So older ships referenced dating 20 ("The Cage" and "The Ultimate Computer") to 50 ("A Taste Of Armageddon") to 100 ("Balance Of Terror," "Return Of The Archons" and "A Piece Of The Action") to 200 ("Where No Man Has Gone Before" and "Metamorphosis") years prior may be significantly less advanced and significantly slower than the Enterprise they nonetheless possess some form of early FTL drive. The only non-warp ship we will see dating more than two centuries prior is the sleeper ship Botany Bay ("Space Seed"). It is the only visual clue we get in TOS regarding what Earth ships looked like centuries before the Enterprise.
Still, despite my rambling, none of that was yet established when WNMHGB was produced. To that end we can still deduce a few things from the references regarding the Valiant.
- 200 years earlier Earth was sending ships into space with more than a handful of crewmen. This implies a vessel of decent size to sustain that crew for an extended period of time.
- The Valiant's recoder marker identifies (perhaps grandiosely) the ship as a Galactic Survey Cruiser, which imples a FTL ship meant to explore interstellar space and return to port. The reference to "the old impulse engines" suggests that while it was an interstellar vessel the Valiant was nonetheless quite primitive compared to more modern ships and expected to remain relatively close to home--hence the surprise to find the ship had somehow made it to the edge of the galaxy.
The challenge is trying to envision what the old Valiant could have looked like while trying not to be too influenced by what we know would come later in the series and subsequent productions. Assuming they ever did try to visualize the Valiant it's most likely it would have appeared only as a schematic or illustration on a monitor screen rather than as a physical miniature. Nonetheless in exploring the possibility we can render it here as a 3D model which could be converted to a schematic or illustration or photo.
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