Canon violation, he should be a Commander.Now I know, was it something I said?
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USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?
- Thread starter EJD1984
- Start date
The bridge is no more vulnerable when it's perched atop the saucer than it would be if it was deep within the ship.
The reason? SHIELDS.
It's not the hull's job to protect the bridge. That's what shields are for. Any attack powerful enough to punch through a ship's shields will hit the bridge no matter where it is.
Since starship bridges are designed to be easily swapped out and replaced when needed, it makes sense to have them on top of the saucer where it's easiest to get at them.
Plus it enables the bridge to be used as an emergency "lifeboat" although I don't know if any canon ships can do this.
Plus it enables the bridge to be used as an emergency "lifeboat" although I don't know if any canon ships can do this.
Bridges on modern warships are atop the superstructures for visibility, and that's what they did with TOS. It makes sense. They weren't going to do a window in the 1960s as they didn't have the tech to pull it off properly. It looks though, like they were going for a massive sunroof dome at one point. If Desilu had had the budget and the money for it, they might well have tried the window, but that was so far on the horizon no one would have thought of it. The show was right in the second real decade of massive television use and having a big-ass color TV at the front of the bridge was cool. Later on it was just tradition.
Take a look at the Zumwalt bridge. Lots of screens, still has windows.
ISS has Cupola. it's cool and a nice pretty place to view earth, but its real function is to handle docking and Canadarm2 chores.
If it's a neutral point, then that's tantamount to saying there aren't any practical reasons for having it. It's just change for the sake of change, best avoided.
As I've pointed out before, a window doesn't actually let you see what's in front of you. You're staring from a lighted room into a dark space: you see your own reflection. Even if you turn the lights out, it's still space and everything you're interested in is Really Far Away, so you can't see anything useful.
The window adds no value. (If anything it detracts, since (as I've also mentioned) it constrains the positioning of other bridge stations by being at the front, making the bridge less customizable.) So why have one?
Why have a window... 25% different and to tie back to the JJ-verse Kelvin design. With how much that secondary hill protruded with the deflector, it always looks like JJ's Enterprise had an erection...lmao!
Problem being, on several occasions chronologically after this, that drawback is integral to the plot or action. So it’s a cock up, if it is indeed, as they say, Prime. It’s change for changes sake (it’s not something that could be convincingly well done pre cgi) that actively messes with established continuity. Even if it were a full reboot, it doesn’t actually add anything, and takes away something useful for story purposes....I.e blinding the ship.
I agree with Lawman above, you wouldn't be able to see anything outside of the window. So if they lost power to it, they'd still be just as blind as having a normal view screen without power.
It isn't that much different from the TOS Refit or Phase II model.
But they don't. A viewscreen can show you anything at any point around the ship, at whatever magnification you need, converting everything to visual wavelengths, supplementing with additional sensor data, and so on. A window does none of that (unless of course you overlay it with viewscreen tech, making its window-ness moot). A window serves literally no practical purpose that I can think of... which is why I asked my perfectly sincere question to @CorporalClegg about what purpose(s) he saw in it.
They can do all of that with the window too. They've shown the Discovery and Shenzhou's windows acting as normal view screens in the show.
I guess we have to figure on it having some kind of aesthetic value? I remember the "E" having new tech for the viewscreen in First Contact, but was just a blank wall most of the time. That was awful.
Perhaps not necessarily. From the helmsman's point of view, if they are having to maneuver and suddenly lose access to tactical, they can still use a local star or planet as a fixed point of reference while manouvering or docking the ship.
I liked that version, actually.
I mean, is there any reason to have the viewscreen on when they're not actually using it?
So many reasons why I love Deep Space Nine the most
So long as you had a telescope to hand right?
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