What is the ''OFFICIAL'' length of the 1701?
- Thread starter miraclefan
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The overall dimensions of the primary and secondary hulls are pretty comparable. It's the neck where things get weird, so whatever else happened, there's a pretty strong argument that the neck is a completely new build.
If we took the interior cargo/shuttle/flight deck and engine room+front hallway for the TMP Enterprise you would need a minimum 355m length ship to fit everything in. And that isn't considering the rec deck which appears to be a whole different problem
Andrew Probert did say he designed the refit as 1000ft but he didn't have much control of the design once it left his desk.
The comparison above I'm using the actually filmed.
I bet if we were to use the flight deck for the TOS Enterprise as a starting point the size of the ship *probably* would go up as well. I am starting to realize that the bridge isn't as important for scaling since there are no irrefutable external features to tie it to, IMHO.
Actually, the design of the TMP primary hull had a lot of back-story to it. It's actually an improved, modernized version of the Dreadnought primary hull, and matches it in width and capability.
(Remember, when TMP and Phase II were being worked on, the Technical Manual was still considered the primary Star Trek resource. This wouldn't change until The Next Generation was being worked on.)
Actually that's a very good point. Every cross-section I've seen of the TOS E, no matter how well done, gives us a flight deck that looks distinctly more cramped than what we see onscreen. It would be interesting to see how big the ship would get if the flight were more like what we saw onscreen.
So, if I look at my 30-year-old TMP blueprints set, and it says the refit Enterprise is 305 meters long, is that just rhetoric or is there something behind that "official" figure?
Also: if the matter-antimatter intermix tube (or whatever it was) supposedly extends upward through the secondary hull, the entire interconnecting dorsal-neck, to the saucer's impulse engines, (that's the impression it gave me, anyway) does the neck allow for it to shoot straight up like that, and would there be a way to run a turbolift shaft there as well?
Also: if the matter-antimatter intermix tube (or whatever it was) supposedly extends upward through the secondary hull, the entire interconnecting dorsal-neck, to the saucer's impulse engines, (that's the impression it gave me, anyway) does the neck allow for it to shoot straight up like that, and would there be a way to run a turbolift shaft there as well?
Yes. Andrew Probert likes his ship lengths as round numbers of feet and has said many times that 1,000 feet was his intention. See the Trekplace interview, for example:
He also explained to me over email that the Enterprise-D was supposed to be 2,000 feet long exactly, but that it changed to the current size (2,108 feet according to most sources) when Gene Roddenberry asked him to lengthen the nacelles. So when the vertical warbird was revealed, I had a little fun and guessed correctly that it was supposed to be is exactly 8,000 feet long.
I like the idea of the TMP prise at 355 M (at least!)
especially with respect to those gorgeous matte paintings of the hangar bay and cargo decks.
just about the right size to be able to fit in the JJ-Galactiprise's beer bottling decks
especially with respect to those gorgeous matte paintings of the hangar bay and cargo decks.
just about the right size to be able to fit in the JJ-Galactiprise's beer bottling decks
In order to revise the 1,000 feet, someone would have to measure the various scale incidents accurately and give a convincing argument for why the length must be changed. No doubt there are reasons for revising it, but it is hard to do with designs as intricate as Probert's -- fit in one misscaled set correctly and everything else can be thrown out of proportion.
Sure - the long hallway forward of the TMP engine room and the cargobay that doesn't "quite fit" as aired pushes it outside of 305m. And that isn't including the rec deck. Interestingly when you look at different versions of Probert's matte paintings you can see where he curved the hull in to compensate but that unfortunately never made it to the big screen.
Note - I'm not saying that there is "one size". Just the designer's version and the aired version.
Note - I'm not saying that there is "one size". Just the designer's version and the aired version.
Probably a coincidence, since the original concept was for the saucer to remain largely untouched from the way it was in TOS; just make it wider by adding to the diameter. As for capability, there's the issue of that third warp nacelle that clearly isn't there in the refit...
The only thing Roddenberry considered the primary Star Trek resource was himself, and that didn't change until the day he died.
Yes, but when they dumped the Phase II model for TMP they really seemed to go to a lot of their sources and cribbed details from all over. As I said, the saucer matches up more with the DN for the movie-version, particularly with the markings, and it's not a coincidence that the phaser banks, etc, are all marked the way they were.
And we should thank God that he wasn't the only one working on Star Trek for all those years, truly.
^ 947m or 947ft? that'd make a difference
Hey, it just shows my level of proficiency is up to Jet Propulsion Laboratory standards. [obscure Mars Observer reference]
'Elementary my Dear Watson. Elementary!'
At this point I'm supposed to do some sort of Yoda quote about the 'path to the dark side' or something, right?
My own guess is that the changes in design that happened between model and set construction -- overlooked by the designer or not -- may result in 'hyperinflation' of the ship back to an original larger design... as others have claimed to have found. This would be fine but the clear indications (from my perspective) seem to be that the design evolved in the other direction (a smaller ship). The same could be said about my deckplan study: the window placement would make a bit more sense if the ship were 10+% larger than 947 feet ('...fool me once, well, you don't get fooled again...').
To put it another way, we seem to have official dimensions of the ship, presumably defined by the designer. We then start comparing the set and the models and come to the conclusion that this has to be wrong, because there are discrepancies. But this observation is based on the assumption that any particular model, set, text description, or plans is 100% accurate, perfectly thought out, and part of a coherent, all-encompassing design. I believe this is not the case, that there are contradictions (at least in the data available to us), that the TMOST plans don't match the model (at its official scale, as textually described), that the set doesn't (perhaps) perfectly match the model, and that the model(s) themselves weren't perfect representations of the intended design, oh and by the way it seems likely that the designer continued to change the design during production and beyond.
So, in the same way that the 11' studio model probably has some assembly errors, that its not even symmetrical, and isn't consistently detailed in all areas, my personal take on all this is that inconsistencies need to be resolved through a series of reasoned compromises that preserve a maximum of 'data integrity' from all sources. The clearest text data from the designer is the dimensions handed down to us via TMoST. If MJ wanted the ship to be 940' long, he would just have the spec sheet retyped. He didn't, so for me those figures carry a lot of weight. Secondly, the studio model gives us proportions of the various components, in as fine a detail as we can reconstruct with it hanging in the Smithsonian. Its been speculated that there were assembly errors and that certain parts may not have been constructed exactly as intended, and we can use the specs from the text to massage these back towards our hypothetical intended design. Detailing on the 11' model is probably our best indicator of internal design, with the caveat that obvious errors may need correcting to correct what we perceive as construction errors (i.e., things that don't make sense in a real world ship). Finally there is fine detail like the bridge set, which to me (if it is really necessary) points me (I'll leave 'us' out of it for the moment) towards slightly enlarging the bridge detail rather than ballooning the size of the ship or sinking the bridge.
The odd-man out of this mix is the set of plans reprinted in TMoST. They aren't consistent with the studio model(s) in many ways. I have heard claims that they are examples of poor work or mistakes. My own opinion is that they are artifacts from the changing nature in the design process (even during production of TOS). Since they don't match the production design, presumably they either precede or post-date the time when the studio models were made. I believe that the most consistent explanation is that they represent one attempt by the designer to reconcile various issues in the original design by reducing the number of decks to make the contradictions inherently presented by a somewhat smaller ship and rather generous deck heights in the studio sets. Among other things. He appears to have continued this trend with the Phase II plans (not that I'm an expert on them).
And all would be fine with him doing this, after all its just a TV show and who is going to notice or care? Obviously the designer did, and wasn't satisfied with the compromises that then existed. The stumbling block is the 11' model's details, which contradict this revision via window spacing (or at least that is what I have concluded). So while, to me, the designer (of any ship) is 'trump' on almost every matter to do with his design, I believe the revised set of plans we receive via TMoST and the related Phase II plans (to the extent they are meant to represent details of the original ship) contradict the Canon (onscreen model) in a substantial and irrefutable way and therefore should be set aside as not representing the ship we actually see in production Trek. While these particular designs may exist somewhere in an expanded Trek universe, they never existed onscreen, aren't Canon, and therefore are curiosities rather than references.
Now this flies in the face of the efforts of a lot of other people, and what I say is not meant as any disrespect to them. My hypothesis is not proven, and is voluntarily admitted to be speculative... traits which it shares with other theories of this sort when push comes to shove. The advantage of this theory is that you don't have to 'throw the baby out with the bath water'. Up to now contradictions have been ignored or explained away, as mistakes or examples of shoddy work coming out of the design shop. From this perspective there aren't, generally, full-blown 'contradictions' in the data... just changes in design over time, some of which appear to have had consequences on other aspects of design. It doesn't have all the answers. Why does the ship's interior appear (based on several pieces of evidence) to have been designed for a somewhat larger vessel than what we end up with? I can only speculate that this decision was made by someone other than the designer, who then had to try to pick up the pieces. I don't believe that was an isolated incident.
After looking at your work, and that of other experts in TOS shuttlecraft, I tend to agree with the spirit of all your findings (however marginally different they are). However, there is the possibility that different size shuttles were carried, or that there might even be variations in the "Class F" of different lengths. Confusion, slips of the tongue, rounding errors, senior moments... its hard to say what the best 'in universe' explanation for the comment is. But certainly, the contradictions of TOS shuttles boggles the mind in comparison to the nitpicking about 1701 itself (of which we should be glad).
Its interesting that MJ's shuttlecraft drawing has odd discrepancies between the scale model, the interior set, the 'scale' human drawn in association with it, and the scale added to the drawing itself (at least in comparison to the human). One conclusion might have been that the original design of the shuttlecraft might have been much smaller than the end result(s). Smaller and more economical to build, but also smaller and difficlut/impossible to film in the 1960s) So it might be possible that the comment on shuttle length crept into the script based on an earlier design. Essentially, it would be another example of an artifact of 'design evolution' presenting itself unintentionally during production.
[If we took the interior cargo/shuttle/flight deck and engine room+front hallway for the TMP Enterprise you would need a minimum 355m length ship to fit everything in. And that isn't considering the rec deck which appears to be a whole different problem
The ST:TMP sets (inherited also by later movies) aren't terribly coherent designs, in terms of scale or layout... unless one believes the ship employs Tardis technology [I had intended a Long-Winded Treknology (TM) article on the subject, but until my health improves its on hiatus]. I don't believe this is the fault of the designers themselves, it appears they were forced to create sets that were massively over scale (another example of executive decisions derailing competent design), among other issues. I wouldn't recommend trying to reconstruct the exterior scale of the ship based on the interior sets.
Of course not, we all know the official dimensions for any UFP starship are whatever the current publications of the franchise deem!
Happy holidays everyone.
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