An elegant, imposing, and/or sporty exterior helps, though.
"Why the Enterprise-D Was Badly Designed"
- Thread starter Danja
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I should have known given the article's source, but I was expecting a rehash of the actual issues, though they're more of a Starfleet thing than a Enterprise-D problem, specifically. The main one being that the main bridge is in an easy to target location. Yes, the shields do protect it, but shields fail, and in a universe where there are cloaked ships, you would not want your bridge to be that easy to take out before shields could be raised.
The "neck" also provides a strategic target point as well, though this was addressed by later designs such as the Intrepid and Sovereign classes, not to mention the other various ships without separate stardrive sections (such as the Miranda class).
Of course, these things could be hand-waved with "The Rule of Cool," since they arguably are there for looks.
Instead the article goes for "too big" and "disproportionate, but mainly in situations with gravity."
The "neck" also provides a strategic target point as well, though this was addressed by later designs such as the Intrepid and Sovereign classes, not to mention the other various ships without separate stardrive sections (such as the Miranda class).
Of course, these things could be hand-waved with "The Rule of Cool," since they arguably are there for looks.
Instead the article goes for "too big" and "disproportionate, but mainly in situations with gravity."
When I first saw a sketch for the E-D, by Probert, in a Starlog magazine, in 1987, I absolutely HATED the design and hoped it was not definitive and it would be changed for the actual show. Vivid memory.
Well, that's what the saucer separation was intended to address.
It would have been fun to a couple separated battle sections in the Dominion War or even in Worf"s "Parallels",,,
There's really no justification for it though. "When the Bough Breaks" is cautionary tale enough.
^If the show's initial premise that it was on a multi-year mission had been fulfilled, it would have, IMO, been justified. Otherwise you're potentially asking parents to not see their children in person until they're teenagers, which to my mind isn't reasonable (at least not if you're expecting them to be happy to serve).
The fundamental problem is that the E-D's design doesn't really make a ton of sense in terms of the missions we ultimately saw it executing, where it didn't seem to be doing a ton of deep space exploration, much less a multi-year mission.
The fundamental problem is that the E-D's design doesn't really make a ton of sense in terms of the missions we ultimately saw it executing, where it didn't seem to be doing a ton of deep space exploration, much less a multi-year mission.
They tend to build a lot of story potential into the design of spacecraft. Voyager had bottle suit exit hatches (primary underside hexes) and a cool dorsal spine hatch identical to the holodeck doors (save on set costs), but writers never took advantage of these.
Tbe saucer separation was supposed to be a standard pre-combat manoeuvre. The problem was the separation scene took precious screen time and killed the action flow. Eventually they just ignored it or dismissed in dialog - "Should we separate the saucer sir?" "No, we could use it's fusion generators..."
Adding to this only the first, hard to film, model could separate.
Tbe saucer separation was supposed to be a standard pre-combat manoeuvre. The problem was the separation scene took precious screen time and killed the action flow. Eventually they just ignored it or dismissed in dialog - "Should we separate the saucer sir?" "No, we could use it's fusion generators..."
Adding to this only the first, hard to film, model could separate.
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In recent years I've come to reassess the Enterprise-D. Originally I thought it frumpy and ungainly, but more recent CGI recreations of the ship have shown that often it was a victim of bad lighting and bad camera angles. These clips make it looks significantly sleeker and more elegant than it ever did in TNG itself:
I do think, though, that there's a curious lack of imagination when it comes to the interior design of the Enterprise-D. There's so much space to work with, but it's just shown to be a maze of endless small corridors and beige rooms. If I had my druthers, I'd have made the arboretum a massive internal space, taking up at least two or three entire decks, with a really good simulated outdoors effect, right down to weather and a day/night cycle. Perhaps civilians and some crew could have houses there, rather than crew quarters in the ship proper. I'd have had "artery corridors", two-level pedestrian walkways linking main areas of the ship, like a cross between Deep Space 9's promenade and that big open plaza/lobby space the Abramsverse Enterprise had. I'd have had a completely different engine room design more like TOS's "pipe cathedral", a much larger forced perspective/CSO set where each diagonal conduit pulsed like the regular TNG warp core – it always bugged me that main engineering for the pride of the fleet was a cramped corridor junction. Let's make the Enterprise-D look like a fun and interesting place to be, rather than the galaxy's largest mobile office complex.
I do think, though, that there's a curious lack of imagination when it comes to the interior design of the Enterprise-D. There's so much space to work with, but it's just shown to be a maze of endless small corridors and beige rooms. If I had my druthers, I'd have made the arboretum a massive internal space, taking up at least two or three entire decks, with a really good simulated outdoors effect, right down to weather and a day/night cycle. Perhaps civilians and some crew could have houses there, rather than crew quarters in the ship proper. I'd have had "artery corridors", two-level pedestrian walkways linking main areas of the ship, like a cross between Deep Space 9's promenade and that big open plaza/lobby space the Abramsverse Enterprise had. I'd have had a completely different engine room design more like TOS's "pipe cathedral", a much larger forced perspective/CSO set where each diagonal conduit pulsed like the regular TNG warp core – it always bugged me that main engineering for the pride of the fleet was a cramped corridor junction. Let's make the Enterprise-D look like a fun and interesting place to be, rather than the galaxy's largest mobile office complex.
They were never going to build that kind of arboretum without a compellingly good reason to do so, given the rare number of episodes in which it would be featured (now, if it had somehow taken the place of Ten Forward as a social location...).
Main Engineering does look a little ridiculous for its ostensible purpose (something more like Voyager's would have been nice to see). I wonder whether having it built for EaF was ultimately a mistake, in that if they'd waited they might have had more of a budget to dedicate to it. OTOH, it's just as possible that if it hadn't been built for EaF then it wouldn't have been built at all, and that would have been deeply unfortunate.
Main Engineering does look a little ridiculous for its ostensible purpose (something more like Voyager's would have been nice to see). I wonder whether having it built for EaF was ultimately a mistake, in that if they'd waited they might have had more of a budget to dedicate to it. OTOH, it's just as possible that if it hadn't been built for EaF then it wouldn't have been built at all, and that would have been deeply unfortunate.
I wonder if they could have just redressed a real world location (like Ocampa-town in VOY's Caretaker) and/or made use of matte paintings. It would only have required a scene or two for the wideshots, then everything else could have filmed in the smaller "lounge area" off to one side of the main space.
It wouldn't need to be in many episodes either - just once or twice establishes the presence of such facilities, then splice in footage/alternative wideshot takes once a season after that.
I disagree, engineering should have never been build. Most "engineering" was just button pushing on a console which they could also do from the bridge or they crawled through a Jeffries tube which was a separate set.
The space taken up by engineering could have been used as a multi purpose civilian set similar to the promenade, there was even space on the stage to expand that set to the right or back.
Exactly. I assumed things like location filming – the famous Tillman water reclamation plant, for example – or the large "outdoor" set they used multiple times (Kamen's village in "The Inner Light", the Romulan/Klingon prison camp in "Birthright", and a Bajoran village in DS9's "The Storyteller", for example). Or a combination. It'd be no different from all those times they did "outdoors" on the holodeck.
There is an argument that the Enterprise-D was big enough/advanced to have fully self-contained engine nacelles with a warp core in each – imagine something like the Defiant's warp core/engineering in place of the nacelle control room seen in "Eye of the Beholder". This would have also been truer to Matt Jeffries' "original vision" for how the ship should work, of course. And TNG did build major sets after the first season – Ten Forward being the most notable example, but also the observation lounge, which in season one was a redress of sickbay. Part of me wishes they had taken the risk of no engineering scenes in season one so we could get a better set later on.
The Enterprise did have a massive arboretum, it is behind the 32 windows (skylights?) located on the saucer behind the main shuttlebay, yet another wonderful place we never got a chance to see (except for one glimpse as it depressurized).
The Engineering set was almost never built at all. Roddenberry hastily wrote a scene where Picard takes a walk through it) in EaF.
I have a set of Ed Whitefire deck plans which show a more appropriate interior for such a giant ship. The front section of the saucer has a huge mulit-deck recreation area with suspended walkways and a place at the front with the hull windows behind it, for an orchestra.
What we ended up with on screen was what could be afforded with a television budget. If the show was in production today they could create incredible virtual sets, but back then they did what they could.
The Engineering set was almost never built at all. Roddenberry hastily wrote a scene where Picard takes a walk through it) in EaF.
I have a set of Ed Whitefire deck plans which show a more appropriate interior for such a giant ship. The front section of the saucer has a huge mulit-deck recreation area with suspended walkways and a place at the front with the hull windows behind it, for an orchestra.
What we ended up with on screen was what could be afforded with a television budget. If the show was in production today they could create incredible virtual sets, but back then they did what they could.
Ten-Forward not being big enough could have been solved by making it an "Officer's Only" club, instead of the main bar/entertainment set for the entire ship. Of course that would mean it wouldn't be as multi-purpose, so it wouldn't have been used as much. The various concerts have to have some place to occur!
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