Where was the TOS engine room?

[Christopher]

^That's a stretch. The overwhelming preponderance of evidence is that the engine room is in the lower hull. The only bits of "evidence" to the contrary are a smattering of inconsistent references in TOS, an ambiguous paragraph in The Making of ST, and Franz Joseph's grossly inaccurate blueprints (which didn't even get the shape of the ship right!). I see no reason to waste energy rationalizing the existence of a second identical engine room in the saucer. It's a silly and unnecessary notion.

 

[Shaw]

I just thumbed through my copy of "Making of Star Trek" and it puts warp engine in the nacelles.

-and-​

MoST also says that the HQ for engineering is in the saucer and that the secondary hull was mostly machine-shops, fuel, food, water reclamation, and is a minimal-crew section of the ship.

Here is the thing about TMoST... it is a nice reference source as long as you read it very critically. The diagrams/illustrations are helpful, as are the memos, but the commentary throughout the book has to be cross checked.

The description of the (fictional) Enterprise is way off... but most people didn't know that so it's description was used throughout most of the 70s, 80s and 90s (including by Franz Joseph for his plans in 1974).

Other notable errors that were often repeated in subsequent decades included the idea that the (model) Enterprise was 14 feet long (with a saucer diameter of 10 feet no less).

Another misconception propagated the book is that the (fictional) Enterprise was much shorter for The Cage and was only later lengthened. There is a memo (dated Aug. 24, 1964) talking about the Enterprise at around 200 feet in length and later commentary in the chapter about WNMHGB saying the "Overall length of the Enterprise was originally estimated at approximately 200 feet." People read that as it not having changed until much later in production, but all evidence points to the size change taking place in October of 1964 (before the models were built, before filming on The Cage had even started).

Don't get me wrong, TMoST is a great book... and back when we had no better information to go off of, it was the reference source for most of us. But today we have way better information than Poe originally had access to, and far more time to consider it than he had (attempting to publish a book while the show was still popular).

 

[F. King Daniel]

I assumed the "pipe cathedral" was the warp core, at the base of the pylons. All the pipes went all the way up to the nacelles - but I know that's "reverse continuity" based on how starships work in later Treks. They easily could have been pipes for anything, as could those tanks the two Kirks were fighting around in "The Enemy Whithin" (which is why I think people are too hard on the pipe-and-tank-crazy brewery on the new Enterprise)

IMO the huge engine chamber in TAS "One of Our Planets is Missing" is the inside of one of the warp nacelles. It could be the inside of the pipe cathedral (the size it's 'supposed' to be), behind the red mesh fence, but that would require moving the engine room further forward in the hull to fit both it and the hanger deck. Did anyone ever ask the TAS artist what it was meant to represent?

Talking of TAS: Was that a proto-intermix chamber in the middle of the engine room? It looks to me a lot more like a coolent pipe as seen in the Willy Wonka scene in STXI.

 

[F. King Daniel]

(double post alert!!)

 

[Christopher]

IMO the huge engine chamber in TAS "One of Our Planets is Missing" is the inside of one of the warp nacelles. It could be the inside of the pipe cathedral (the size it's 'supposed' to be), behind the red mesh fence, but that would require moving the engine room further forward in the hull to fit both it and the hanger deck. Did anyone ever ask the TAS artist what it was meant to represent?

No need. It was stated in onscreen dialogue that it was "the antimatter nacelle." The assumption being that matter was in one nacelle, antimatter in the other, with the reaction presumably going on in the engineering hull between them or something, which certainly doesn't mesh with subsequent canon about the role of the nacelles. In fact, I'm not sure it meshes with the on-camera visuals, which suggest the reaction is going on right there in the nacelle.

 

[Timo]

...Of course, both of the nacelles could be "antimatter nacelles", in the sense of housing or throughputting antimatter. The heroes would just pick one, since it wouldn't make much sense to design a system where this emergency jump-start procedure needs to be conducted on both nacelles (multi-engine aircraft emergency powerup scenarios often rely on utilizing just one of the up to eight engines, too).

It could even be that the nacelles don't hold or throughput antimatter under standard circumstances at all - but that emergency jump-starts can be conducted by using a miniature "warp core" for annihilating a small amount of antimatter right next to the warp coils, rather than a large amount at the other end of the plasma-based power chain. Once the plasma gets energized where it really matters, the system can use some sort of regular power taps next to the warp coils (arguably the optimal place for power taps, right after the warp coils have sucked out what they want to suck out) to bootstrap itself back into overall active status.

But enough speculation here. Another aspect of this is more based on onscreen evidence - namely the idea that the ship would necessarily have more "engine rooms" than just the single set shown. That single set just plain doesn't meet the criteria of being a maze where Evil Kirks or Finneys can hide near-indefinitely. Yet it seems reasonable that there would be several areas within the engineering spaces that would look more or less identical, unless we can specify that they contain unique equipment. And the only unique piece of equipment we can vouch on seems to be the dilithium insertion thingamabob. It also appears to be an absolutely vital piece of hardware...

...So any incarnation of the set that lacks that thingamabob could be argued to exist in parallel with the thingamabob room, not instead of that room. Not in the saucer, most likely, since the thingamabob-less facilities in early TOS were explicated as being on the "lower decks". Thus, probably more or less directly adjoining Scotty's workplace from the latter half of TOS. Symmetry concerns (read: ceiling curvature) would call for such spaces to exist in "diagonal pairs", so that we see a forward starboard and an aft port room and can then infer the existence of forward port and aft starboard counterparts.

The various TAS spaces without the explicit ceiling curvature could easily represent "lower lower decks"; the nice ceiling-to-floor glass cylinder could be something sitting directly beneath the dilithium insertion thingamajig, for example.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[plynch]

So . . . how many angels CAN dance on the head of a pin?

 

[Christopher]

^42, of course.

Or, since this is a Trek board, 47.

 

[Captain Rob]

Those glowing red pipes in the cathedral sure do look like EPS conduits to me. You would have them connected to both the impulse system and the primary warp system.

Forbin: Great video. What would happen to the little guy if the ship went to warp while he's dumping trash?

 

[Christopher]

Those glowing red pipes in the cathedral sure do look like EPS conduits to me. You would have them connected to both the impulse system and the primary warp system.

In exactly the same configuration? And with every last button and display on every last console being exactly the same for both the warp and impulse engine rooms? No. That's just silly. And there's no reason for it. There's no reason even to postulate an engine room in the saucer except out of misplaced loyalty to Franz Joseph's poor judgment.

 

[TIN_MAN]

Those glowing red pipes in the cathedral sure do look like EPS conduits to me. You would have them connected to both the impulse system and the primary warp system.

In exactly the same configuration? And with every last button and display on every last console being exactly the same for both the warp and impulse engine rooms? No. That's just silly. And there's no reason for it. There's no reason even to postulate an engine room in the saucer except out of misplaced loyalty to Franz Joseph's poor judgment.

Okay, two things. First, don't you think the impulse engines ought to have their own dedicated control room even if, under ordinary conditions, they could be controlled and monitored from somewhere else? Seems logical to me, and it doesn't require loyalty to FJ, misplaced or otherwise.

Second, I'm calling foul on your second point. It wasn't FJ's judgement to put the engine room in the impulse deck, he was simply following Whitfield's (Poe's) TMOST and trying to maintain consistancy with the reference sources at his disposal. As to where Whitfield got the Idea to put the HQ for engineering in the saucer is anyones guess, but considering that Gene Roddenberry is on record as saying that the engine room is in the impulse deck of the saucer, it's likely he was the ultimate source of this "missinformation", and both authors (SW and FJ) were simply following his lead, understandably.

 

[Captain Rob]

Here comes the wrench.
Does anyone suppose that there's additional engine room(s) in the saucer section of the refit, -A, -D, or -E? Even though we never see them on screen? If the ship has to separate, then I think you would need separate facilities.

 

[F. King Daniel]

^If any of them resemble a beer brewery, perhaps it's better for the fans we never saw them. Or would everyone accept it without question if it were a product of the TNG brain trust?

And FWIW, I think Franz Joseph's 1701 blueprints (and Tech Manual) are brilliant, outdated premises or not. I don't see why Christopher dislikes them so much.

Not to open a can of worms, but if there are two or more engine rooms, they needn't be identical even if they were represented on-screen by the same set. If you're all willing to say the Space Hippie Escape Vehicle and the Tholian ship arn't the same despite them using the same model (same for Nomad, M-4 and the cloaking device). I don't see why the same set can't be multiple engine rooms - if you're all willing to take what we see in various episodes with a pinch of salt and not literally.
(but salt isn't canon!!)

 

[Timo]

^If any of them resemble a beer brewery, perhaps it's better for the fans we never saw them.

Why? Beer breweries are an excellent example of a complex industrial installation, which is exactly what we want a starship's engine room to look like.

The TOS movie and TNG sets are rather embarrassing contraptions, consisting of blinking lights, cardboard walls and far too little floor space or complexity. That's not machinery - certainly not machinery we could believe propels immense ships across immense distances. Something sufficiently bigger and more impressive can only be achieved by three means:

1) Imply it - like TOS did, with dialogue and a bit of forced perspective
2) CGI it - like no show or movie so far has dared do
3) Go on location - like STXI finally did

If a starship's engine room really consisted of a single identifiable piece of hardware plus two consoles, like in TMP or TNG, what would be the point of having that room at all? Surely the two consoles could also be on the bridge - as they indeed were in both TOS and TNG, to give the Chief Engineers some screen time in bridge scenes.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[John Picard]

Where was the engine room?

Down and to the left. Down and to the left.

 

[scotpens]

Beer breweries are an excellent example of a complex industrial installation, which is exactly what we want a starship's engine room to look like.

A 20th-century beer brewery looks like a complex industrial installation that was built in the 20th century. We want a starship's engine room to look like technology that won't exist for another 200 years.

2) CGI it - like no show or movie so far has dared do

In fact, one of G.R.'s early suggestions was to depict Engineering as a much bigger and more complex area by combining the live set with a miniature or matte painting, but the idea was dropped as too expensive for production.

 

[Shaw]

Why? Beer breweries are an excellent example of a complex industrial installation, which is exactly what we want a starship's engine room to look like.

Not really.

If I was force to make use of locations rather than build an engineering section, I'd most likely use a combination of locations. Actual engineering spaces within naval vessels, plus one of the linear particle accelerators in California (SLAC would be a good choice, the accelerator at Crocker Nuclear Laboratory looks too much like the engine from the NX-01). Work them together along with some CGI and set dressing elements would give you an engineering section that would seem like it was designed for the purpose of warp space flight.

But of course I actually think that type of stuff matters to the audience.

 

[Mytran]

Those glowing red pipes in the cathedral sure do look like EPS conduits to me. You would have them connected to both the impulse system and the primary warp system.

In exactly the same configuration? And with every last button and display on every last console being exactly the same for both the warp and impulse engine rooms?

Except that ... the consoles are different in practically every episode!

Don't buy that argument?
There's also the fact that very similar looking consoles turn up in Auxilary Control, the Forward Phaser Room and a Starbase Computer Centre. If a console style is so ubiquitous, why shouldn't they appear in both impulse and warp control engine rooms?

 

[Maurice]

In fact, one of G.R.'s early suggestions was to depict Engineering as a much bigger and more complex area by combining the live set with a miniature or matte painting, but the idea was dropped as too expensive for production.

What's your source for that? I don't recall having ever read that...or I've forgotten.

 

[Timo]

A 20th-century beer brewery looks like a complex industrial installation that was built in the 20th century. We want a starship's engine room to look like technology that won't exist for another 200 years.

Do we? After all, we're enjoying an universe fundamentally based on the 1960s looks: in this particular case, we accept and indeed favor the looks of a 1960s industrial plant, as used for the TOS engineering sets.

Work them together along with some CGI and set dressing elements would give you an engineering section that would seem like it was designed for the purpose of warp space flight.

Yet we don't know what requirements "warp space flight" would set. However, we know what machinery in general looks like: consoles and vanity covers in some places, exposed piping and cabling in others, both efficiently hiding the real working parts which we typically don't understand much.

Theoretically, piping and cabling might grow obsolete in 200 years. But TOS is built on the premise that it doesn't. Theoretically, control consoles might be abandoned in 200 years, too. But again, TOS shows us they aren't. A "truly futuristic" show would be a major step away from Star Trek - and probably a false step for STXI to take, although that's something of a separate issue.

Timo Saloniemi