Who designed spacedock and what else...

[Arpy]

...have they done?

 

[Tigger]

The design and construction of the Spacedock physical model was handled by a team at ILM, but I don't know if just one person handled the design or more than one person provided input.

 

[sojourner]

Pretty sure Andy Probert had a hand in it.

 

[Search4]

Probert definitely designed the DRYDOCK, but i don't specifically know about his involvement in Spacedock. Good question.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

According to Memory Alpha, David Carson and Nilo Rodis designed the spacedock. The building and design of the model is discussed at length in the behind-the-scenes documentary on the original two-disc DVD set of The Search for Spock. It is also discussed briefly in this Forgotten Trek article.

Probert did not contribute any designs to TSFS.

 

[Wingsley]

There does seem to be some confusion as to which structure the OP was inquiring about.

SPACEDOCK - the enormous multipurpose structure seen in STAR TREK III - THE SEARCH FOR SPOCK, encompassing massive interior complexes including a huge mess hall and also a gigantic interior garage-like spaceport.

DRYDOCK - a structure larger in overall outer dimensions that Kirk's refit Enterprise, first seen in STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE. This dock is apparently quite large, but clearly much smaller than Spacedock mentioned above.

I do not know who designed either of these (other posters in this thread have more to share then I do in that regard) but I would say that both structures struck me as being unusual in design and texture; not what I expected based on TOS.

 

[trevanian]

According to Memory Alpha, David Carson and Nilo Rodis designed the

Yep, they're the criminals. Too bad, since Carson was a pretty good designer some of the time. Rodis ... well, not my cup of tea is an understatement. SFS is the start of the SWization of Trek with ILM designing instead of just executing, which was the case with most of TWOK (and what they did redesign on TWOK in terms of the cave was a friggin' disaster.)

The spindly drydock in TMP was an elaboration on a boxier version designed by Mike Minor for Phase II that was actually built by Brick Price's people.

 

[FredH]

DRYDOCK - a structure larger in overall outer dimensions that Kirk's refit Enterprise, first seen in STAR TREK - THE MOTION PICTURE.

And next seen in TWOK, in which Spock asks Saavik if she's ever piloted a starship out of Spacedock.

 

[Timo]

So, terminologically speaking, there probably exists a "Spacedock Earth", which is a vast organization centered on the mushroom station but having other docking facilities all around it - just like any harbor down here on today's Earth would have...

I don't really get the hatred for the ILM mushroom design. If anything, it's more true to the spirit of Star Trek than any of the contraptions of TMP. Probert tried to insert "realism" (as myopically squinted from the 1970s) where TOS had had absolutely none. His spindly structures looked like they were built for space, whereas all the technology of TOS was clearly more at home underwater or in some sort of fluid. The ILM Spacedock returned to those TOS roots by presenting a needlessly enclosed and streamlined structure, right down the Enterprise alley of truly futuristic, aesthetically pleasing, and functionally nonsensical space design.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Santaman]

I love the schroomdock, it makes perfectly sense to me, everyone and everything that wants to go to visit/needs to be transported to Earth has to go there where they/it is/are screened and checked before sent on, just like a sort of airport else it would become a huge chaos with everyone beaming to or landing their shuttle jsut where they want to go.

 

[Arpy]

I'm curious what other structures the spacedock's creators came up with. I think one of them came up with the Nebulon Frigate from Star Wars. http://images.google.com/images?hl=en&source=hp&q=nebulon b frigate&um=1&ie=UTF-8&sa=N&tab=wi
I loved spacedock when I was a child, and can see why fans of TMP's more realistic approach would not. I wish we could see what a TMP city in space would look like and a spacedock version of a drydock would look like.

I imagine a TMP huge space city would be a marvel to behold, with thousands of different types of compartments of various shapes and sizes and designs unified in a dazzling colorful space colony. Thinking of this, I wonder if spacedock isn't more a military or airport like installation. It's about transportation, defense, R&D, etc. So, every Federation homeworld has a huge spacedock in orbit and countless other smaller and larger but less monolithic structures.

I wonder what a spacedock designed in TNG era would look like, all organic and sweeping and bright.

I wonder what a drydock...I wonder if the Utopia Planitia Shipyards designed by the spacedock people would be an even larger megastructure than the spacedocks. Instead of the far apart open drydocks glimpsed here http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Template:PicOfTheDay/11_March, there'd be a bunch of closed ovular cylinder pods, each connected by a long pylon filament to another in a vast angularly asymmetrical lattice. A cross between this http://www.flickr.com/photos/clementi/43134730/ and http://www.danhausertrek.com/AnimatedSeries/PodShip.html , http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Beyond_the_Farthest_Star_(episode)

 

[trevanian]

So, terminologically speaking, there probably exists a "Spacedock Earth", which is a vast organization centered on the mushroom station but having other docking facilities all around it - just like any harbor down here on today's Earth would have...

I don't really get the hatred for the ILM mushroom design. If anything, it's more true to the spirit of Star Trek than any of the contraptions of TMP. Probert tried to insert "realism" (as myopically squinted from the 1970s) where TOS had had absolutely none. His spindly structures looked like they were built for space, whereas all the technology of TOS was clearly more at home underwater or in some sort of fluid. The ILM Spacedock returned to those TOS roots by presenting a needlessly enclosed and streamlined structure, right down the Enterprise alley of truly futuristic, aesthetically pleasing, and functionally nonsensical space design.

I'm surprised you think that. You know that TOS got some tech advice they actually took, like the ship being put together in space. We only saw one space station -- using a NASA space station model as a basis, I believe -- as far as other non-starship Starfleet objects, in TRIBBLES, so how can you say that TMP is a step AWAY from the way TOS did things?

As intended by the designer, the TMP drydock was supposed to be an older structure, maybe 22nd century, so it wouldn't have been state of art, just something that worked and still works and probably reconfigurable/modular.

As to the posts about what a TMP era space city would resemble, there are a lot of old posts here from years back that THE GOD THING made which address this. Some involve many separate structures, and most have the non-terrestrial beauty/design element of latticework/spaceframes, rather than the dirtsider/looks like a blimphangar aesthetic (I use that word loosely) of ILM's creatives.

That really does bring ILM's impact on TREK fullcircle. They built a spacedock that made me think of moffet field's blimphangar in the 80s, and the Abrams thing actually shot IN a blimp hangar for the shuttle departure stuff. WW2-era architecture for 23rd century, that's rich indeed. But I guess that's not the issue for most, as long as it looks B-I-G!

 

[Timo]

You know that TOS got some tech advice they actually took, like the ship being put together in space.

And that's a very good example of how they ignored all the advice, so that not a bit of it ever made it to the episodes. Nothing in TOS indicates that the ship would have been put together in space, after all.

We only saw one space station -- using a NASA space station model as a basis, I believe

Not NASA as much as a proposal by Douglas. And that's another case of them not having any sort of understanding of what they were using, really. The whole point of the "sombrero" design of that station was that it could be packed inside the body of a conventional rocket, with each sombrero folding up like a fan, the pie-wedge sectors nesting inside each other. A Star Trek station wouldn't be launched by conventional rockets, and that sort of packaging would make no sense.

Still, the end result pretty much coincides with what Jeffries did on the hero ship: we get two needlessly streamlined space structures with lots of round shapes, pretty much the same thing as the ILM Spacedock...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[BK613]

Never liked the shroomdock. Like the idea of a enclosed space for uncrewed spacecraft but think the design should have been more modular, more scalable, more believable and less Star Wars-y.

 

[trevanian]

You know that TOS got some tech advice they actually took, like the ship being put together in space.

And that's a very good example of how they ignored all the advice, so that not a bit of it ever made it to the episodes. Nothing in TOS indicates that the ship would have been put together in space, after all.

When you put something like that in the bible, you don't need to put it in the ep; you're telling prospective writers, 'we have our heads on straight, don't re-pitch LiS eps here,' (whether it is really true or not, that is the message.)

And there's an even clearer aspect to TOS here, that you seem to be deliberately ignoring: nothing in TOS indicates the ships wouldn't have been put together in space, especially given the wide variety of documentation on post-Apollo (and alternate Apollo) spaceflight that they were drowned in. The only support I can see for your view is an off-camera one, the Jeffires notion that you don't go outside to fix your ship, which is a decidedly backwards one.

If you want to believe trek was supposed to always look like whatever was smooth/cool, then why didn't they buy that LiS space station when they went through that series' leftovers? That's the real precursor to the Abrams orbiting goofballstation, just before you pancake the thing down from sphere shape to saucer shape.

 

[trevanian]

You know that TOS got some tech advice they actually took, like the ship being put together in space.

Not NASA as much as a proposal by Douglas. And that's another case of them not having any sort of understanding of what they were using, really. The whole point of the "sombrero" design of that station was that it could be packed inside the body of a conventional rocket, with each sombrero folding up like a fan, the pie-wedge sectors nesting inside each other. A Star Trek station wouldn't be launched by conventional rockets, and that sort of packaging would make no sense.

But the whole VISUAL point of the Sombrero has nothing to do with folding/deploying ... it is that it looks like a cute variation on the by-then established projection for future spacestation looking like a bike tire -- core, plus exterior that rotates. If it costs less energy to get your gravity that way, and if your station isn't going anywhere, then why NOT use centrifugal/centripetal force instead of whatever fancy thing they stick on ships to keep up and down where they are?

 

[Timo]

Makes even less sense, and I sort of hope the people behind using that station in Trek weren't thinking anything like that. The station can't rotate for gravity - there wouldn't be a single sensible floor anywhere inside if it did.

The window rows are IMHO proof enough that the station was used correctly for Trek, complete with artificial gravity pulling towards "camera down". The sombrero station couldn't rotate for gravity, not in the real world and especially not in Trek, and wasn't built for that. Whether it rotated in the episode is debatable, but if it did, it was probably for the sake of having some movement there - a valid in-universe reason as such, because it might have psychological benefits... (That, or thermal regulation, which a Trek structure would need about as much as a snail needs a snowboard.)

Really, LiS and TOS have quite a bit in common in terms of artistic design. The latter show just has slightly more active retconners to invent functionality to the cool-looking gadgetry - and slightly better original designers who managed to create even more fictional, more outlandish nonsense shapes for the all-important spacecraft and rayguns. But the adherence to smooth exteriors based on simplistic geometric shapes is definitely there in both.

OTOH, I have nothing against Jeffries' "total interior access" scheme. Why would this idea be "outdated"? Today's unfortunate dependence on spacewalks is something that hopefully gets outdated soon, as it makes current manned spaceflight really awkward and gives it bad press over robotic alternatives...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[sojourner]

^ Gonna be a loooongg time before spacewalks go away.

 

[trevanian]

^ Gonna be a loooongg time before spacewalks go away.

Slightly after transgalactic teleportation becomes standard, I would guess.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

You know that TOS got some tech advice they actually took, like the ship being put together in space.

And that's a very good example of how they ignored all the advice, so that not a bit of it ever made it to the episodes. Nothing in TOS indicates that the ship would have been put together in space, after all.

When you put something like that in the bible, you don't need to put it in the ep;

Don't be ridiculous. Roddenberry ignored most of the research and scientific advice he got, from the functioning of weaponry through clothing through the functioning of "artificial gravity" and food storage etc aboard spacecraft, on the basis that it was undramatic or too complicated for television.

Really, LiS and TOS have quite a bit in common in terms of artistic design. The latter show just has slightly more active retconners to invent functionality to the cool-looking gadgetry

True. LIS borrows quite a bit from Forbidden Planet as well, a movie that's fully as plausible as Star Trek.

The Enterprise is a good visual design for a fictional ship in that the assembly of the parts suggests some functionality - "here, the engines are out here where they're safe" - while addressing and incorporating no actual engineering considerations whatever. It's art design, not science.