Was ANYTHING retained when the Enterprise was refit?

[t_smitts]

From the looks of things, they replaced the bridge, the hull and bulkhead panels, the warp core, the nacelles.

Was ANYTHING left over from the original design?

I think we might be getting into a "ship of Theseus" paradox here:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ship_of_Theseus

 

[Pavonis]

Well, how much of what was on TV screens in the 1960s was simply seen at higher resolution in the 1970s on film? Some of the shapes are different, but isn't the bulk of the saucer the same? The corridors are narrower on the refit, so perhaps more equipment was introduced by lining the original corridors and covering it up with new panels. The bulk of the space frame may be original, with new warp engines, deflector dish, and a bridge module.

 

[Metryq]

The dedication plaque on the bridge, and maybe the toilet seats? (You know those government toilet seat prices are ridiculous.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

They re-imagined the Enterprise, just like they re-imagined the Klingons. The "refit" is just a vague in-universe handwave acknowledgement that things look a little different.

If Kirstie Alley and Robin Curtis look the same in-universe as Saavik, and the bad-rubber-suit Gorn is "really" a fearsome lizard monster, then how much did the Enterprise really change? Certainly it wasn't as radical a change in-universe as the shift from a 1960's TV show to a 1979 big budget movie was in real life.

 

[Garrovick]

I believe that in Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, it was stated that only some of the core structural support elements in the saucer section survived the refit. I can't really imagine much else making it. There are very few external congruences between the TV ship and the TMP ship, other than the basic overall shape.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I think it would be fairly hard to find stuff--deck plates, some bulkheads, internal spaceframe members--and even then they would be modified with some new stuff added to them.

I do like the idea in Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise that the refit originally was supposed to be just an upgrade to her engines, but one thing led to another and it turned into a total shipwide redesign.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I do like the idea in Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise that the refit originally was supposed to be just an upgrade to her engines, but one thing led to another and it turned into a total shipwide redesign.

That was always my thought as well. If they knew from the get-go that they were going to change everything, surely it would have been easier to build a new ship from scratch? Because that's basically what the refit was.

It reminds me of the IMAX film Super Speedway which has a thread about one of Mario Andretti's old roadsters being restored. At the start, it was literally a pile of junk, and at the end, it's a brand new car. You can't tell me that anything from the old car survived into the rebuilding--so in a very real sense it wasn't restored, it was built from scratch. Same for the refit 1701, I would think.

 

[Therin of Andor]

Was ANYTHING left over from the original design?

Uhura's communications earpiece!

When they started filming TMP on the bridge, Day #1 of principal photography, Nichelle Nichols asked Robert Wise, "Where's Uhura's earpiece?"

No one had thought to make one. The props guy ran down to the Paramount props storage and located a box with two TOS earpiece props in it that had sat there since the 60s, and brought it straight to her.

For ST II, the earpiece was replaced with a newly-designed prop.

 

[Lance]

I like to imagine there's just one bathroom somewhere on a lower deck which has been left completely unaltered. You'd literally walk through a door in one of those swish new TMP corridors, and find yourself in a room which is still decked out in bright primary colors. The only addition, of course, being a sign that says "Do not use while in spacedock".

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

The NCC-1701 is the Ship of Theseus.

 

[Maurice]

The name and number.

 

[Marcus Porcius Cato]

Perhaps the refit was from the very beginning more or less a new ship, only called refit to avoid some kind of restrictions in Shipbuilding or ship designs?

Perhaps it was a clause in the Organian Peace treaty which forbade or restricted number of shipbuilds per year or so. When when Starfleet came up to the limit mentioned in Treaty, they decided that by tearing the ship apart and rebuilding it with as much a use of old materials possible they could argue to Organians and the Klingons that those were mere routine refits or whatever and could not be counted against the number of builds.

This might also be a reason why the rebuilt she maintained Constitution Class name and why the designed was retired less than two decade later.

 

[SeerSGB]

From a certain point of view a lot of the original 1701's spaceframe might be in the spaceframe of the refit: just in the form of materials recycled into new construction materials. Save a few key parts for the museums or spares for prerefit ships still on the line, and anything else cut out is "melted down" or "rereplicated" for use as new parts.

 

[Elder Knight]

The dedication plaque on the bridge, and maybe the toilet seats? (You know those government toilet seat prices are ridiculous.)

So you won't have to boldly go where no one has gone before ...

 

[Lance]

I always liked the fact that something that looks very much like the dilithium intermix chamber from TOS is still visible in the wall of Engineering in that footage shot for Phase II. Gave a nice feeling of "This is still the same ship underneath all the cosmetic additions". I'm not so sure if it survived to the TMP version of the sets, though.

 

[Timo]

They re-imagined the Enterprise, just like they re-imagined the Klingons.

Well, not really.

After all, they took care to show the old ship as well, in that Rec Deck display of images. TOS wasn't supposed to be "remembered differently", or forgotten. Not in that particular respect anyway.

The thing about the TMP ship is that, backstage measurements aside, every part of her is bigger than the "original" TOS counterpart. The saucer could have been created by adding a new rim and bulging out the bulges a bit more; the secondary hull could have received a new surface layer of spaces; the neck could have been strengthened.

Basically, the old ship would fit inside the new one, save for the engines and the secondary hull bow.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/constitution/constitution-superimposed.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Marsden]

This seems interesting towards this subject.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

I always liked the fact that something that looks very much like the dilithium intermix chamber from TOS is still visible in the wall of Engineering in that footage shot for Phase II. Gave a nice feeling of "This is still the same ship underneath all the cosmetic additions". I'm not so sure if it survived to the TMP version of the sets, though.

AFAIK, that same engineering set with the dilithium chamber was built for Phase II, first used in TMP, and continued to be used in the second through sixth films plus the engine rooms of TNG and Voyager.

 

[F. King Daniel]

They re-imagined the Enterprise, just like they re-imagined the Klingons.

Well, not really.

After all, they took care to show the old ship as well, in that Rec Deck display of images. TOS wasn't supposed to be "remembered differently", or forgotten. Not in that particular respect anyway.

The thing about the TMP ship is that, backstage measurements aside, every part of her is bigger than the "original" TOS counterpart. The saucer could have been created by adding a new rim and bulging out the bulges a bit more; the secondary hull could have received a new surface layer of spaces; the neck could have been strengthened.

Basically, the old ship would fit inside the new one, save for the engines and the secondary hull bow.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/constitution/constitution-superimposed.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

The pic in the rec room was a cute little nod for fans, but that's about it. Gene Roddenberry himself suggested The Original Series as an inaccurate portrayal of the 23rd century in his novelization of The Motion Picture. And of course, he's on record that the Klingons "always" looked the way they did in TMP and beyond, and that's the way it was until DS9 made a joke of it and Enterprise's fan-wank-tastic final season that said otherwise.

The complete change in look from 60's TV (with randomly blinking coloured squares for buttons) to late 70's movie (with far more realistic interfaces) is subsitution, not a plausible in-universe evolution.

 

[Franklin]

They re-imagined the Enterprise, just like they re-imagined the Klingons.

Well, not really.

After all, they took care to show the old ship as well, in that Rec Deck display of images. TOS wasn't supposed to be "remembered differently", or forgotten. Not in that particular respect anyway.

The thing about the TMP ship is that, backstage measurements aside, every part of her is bigger than the "original" TOS counterpart. The saucer could have been created by adding a new rim and bulging out the bulges a bit more; the secondary hull could have received a new surface layer of spaces; the neck could have been strengthened.

Basically, the old ship would fit inside the new one, save for the engines and the secondary hull bow.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/constitution/constitution-superimposed.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

The pic in the rec room was a cute little nod for fans, but that's about it. Gene Roddenberry himself suggested The Original Series as an inaccurate portrayal of the 23rd century in his novelization of The Motion Picture. And of course, he's on record that the Klingons "always" looked the way they did in TMP and beyond, and that's the way it was until DS9 made a joke of it and Enterprise's fan-wank-tastic final season that said otherwise.

The complete change in look from 60's TV (with randomly blinking coloured squares for buttons) to late 70's movie (with far more realistic interfaces) is subsitution, not a plausible in-universe evolution.

Yep. The Klingons were always supposed to have ridges, but unfortunately, no one could just say, "Oh, OK," and leave it at that. The repercussions are even felt in Abrams' Trek, where he hedges his bets and the Klingons wear those silly helmets that only hint at ridges.

As for the look of the Enterprise, it was more problematic. The most recognizeable symbol of "Star Trek", it wasn't possible to just say it "always" looked that way. There needed to be an explanation of the new look, and a "refit" was as good as any.

I'd be curious to know if anyone at the time considered saying it was a new and different starship Enterprise. Although, I could see them being uncomfortable with that idea because it meant either Kirk's Enterprise was destroyed sometime between TOS and TMP, or it was retired. And of course, there would be registry number issues because the new ship couldn't technically be NCC-1701. Guess it could've been NCC-1701-A, though.

But it's silly to rationalize the ship as a refit of the TOS Enterprise. It's just too different in size and proportion. No attempt was made by the designers (of the model and sets, not in-universe designers) to keep bits and pieces of the old look just as a nod to the idea of it being a refit.