WNMHGB Set Plans Reconstruction

[Maurice]

A few things.

I seem to recall reading that the stage where the bridge was had a sloped floor, which caused platforms to have to be built to get the set level. Maybe that's in The Making of Star Trek? If one of the stages had a sloped floor, that might explain the step down at the end of the corridor. (Just where is this seen?)

As to the bridge, they just rotated the command module by one step (half platform), not moved the bridge walls. They moved said module around when the camera was pointing at the viewscreen, but in other views you can see it's not pointed at the viewer (link) and, as pointed out above, you can see that the railings are not all the same length as the one by what would become Scotty's station consists of 3 segments and the one clockwise from it has only 2, which gives away that they're cheating the layout somewhat.

Actually, if they DIDN'T move the sets around after "The Cage", which is more likely [EDIT: Actually, they did, as I reported in this post (link)], then the transporter room should be the door on the right when facing down the corridor towards the briefing room, not the left as draw here.

UPDATE: According to @Harvey, from the production docs it looks like all the Enterprise sets were on stage 15, and all the Delta Vega sets (int and ext) were on 16.

 

[Harvey]

Accompanying this with the mention in the book Inside Star Trek that the sets for the second pilot stretched across stages 15 and 16 at Desilu-Culver made me draw the conclusion the step-down was the connection point of the two stages.

Based on the call sheets for the second pilot, all of the Enterprise sets were built on stage 15, while all of the Delta Vega sets (interiors and exteriors) were built on stage 16.

EDIT: @Maurice beat me to it.

 

[Maurice]

Also, the briefing room ceiling has six segments and in "The Cage" the angled beams each roughly aligns with the segment junctions, so they were rotated 60º from one another. In the 2nd pilot they moved the pillars or the ceiling around and they seem to roughly align to to the center of the segments instead of their intersections.

 

[Firebird]

A few things.

I seem to recall reading that the stage where the bridge was had a sloped floor, which caused platforms to have to be built to get the set level. Maybe that's in The Making of Star Trek? If one of the stages had a sloped floor, that might explain the step down at the end of the corridor. (Just where is this seen?)

As to the bridge, they just rotated the command module by one step (half platform), not moved the bridge walls. They moved said module around when the camera was pointing at the viewscreen, but in other views you can see it's not pointed at the viewer (link) and, as pointed out above, you can see that the railings are not all the same length as the one by what would become Scotty's station consists of 3 segments and the one clockwise from it has only 2, which gives away that they're cheating the layout somewhat.

Actually, if they DIDN'T move the sets around after "The Cage", which is more likely, then the transporter room should be the door on the right when facing down the corridor towards the briefing room, not the left as draw here.

UPDATE: According to @Harvey, from the production docs it looks like all the Enterprise sets were on stage 15, and all the Delta Vega sets (int and ext) were on 16.

I’m pretty sure it’s Inside Star Trek that talks about the sloping floor, but I totally forgot to double check the shooting schedule to verify all the sets were in stage 15. That’ll be an easy fix.

As to the position of the transporter room, there’s a quick overhead shot of Kirk or Mitchell going down the corridor right above the red turbo lift door: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03hd-alt/wherenomanhasgonebeforehdalt0078.jpg
Closer inspection on the left of the frame shows the edge of the corridor floor giving way to the studio floor underneath. One of the behind the scenes books mentioned the corridor set could only be shot from one way and it looks like it’s because they didn’t completely enclose the set.

Additionally, we get a brief glimpse of the corridor outside the transporter room here: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03hd-alt/wherenomanhasgonebeforehdalt0876.jpg
If the set placement had stayed the same from The Cage, we’d see the A-frame doorway from that end of the set, or part of the red turbolift door. The door I used seemed to be the only one that could actually fit the set, since the one Kirk and Spock exit right after telling Scotty to “put all decks in the alert” shows a plain wall that’s right up against the doorframe.

 

[Firebird]

I also should share the image that finally clued me into where sickbay was placed in this layout:

 

[Maurice]

That photo of the sickbay is a nice find!

The A frames were moved around as needed, as they were in the briefing room/lounge. I don't think you can conclude much of anything from their presence or absence.

I'm still curious why you think the transporter room set is behind the green door (to coin a phrase).

My guess is the bulk of the corridor is open on one side. You never see the walls on that side except at the intersection across from sickbay.

 

[Firebird]

That photo of the sickbay is a nice find!

The A frames were moved around as needed, as they were in the briefing room/lounge. I don't think you can conclude much of anything from their presence or absence.

I'm still curious why you think the transporter room set is behind the green door (to coin a phrase).

My guess is the bulk of the corridor is open on one side. You never see the walls on that side except at the intersection across from sickbay.

It looks to me like only one A-frame in the WNMHGB corridor was wild - the one at the Y-end by sickbay. The one down by the briefing room appeared to be set in place, just like it was in the set for The Cage (where the wild A-frame was placed between that and the briefing room).

I covered most of my rationales for placing the transporter room above, but there was another reason I just remembered. When Kirk and Spock haul Mitchell into the transporter room to beam down to Delta Vega, we briefly see the corridor. For a split second, we can see a rectangular wall plant-on that doesn’t match anything seen on the side of the corridor in the long shots. The few shots they did of the corridor remained consistent in terms of set decoration, so I assumed that was a wild section of corridor they put in opposite the transporter room to partially enclose the set beyond, as they did with sickbay.

 

[GNDN18]

It looks to me like only one A-frame in the WNMHGB corridor was wild - the one at the Y-end by sickbay. The one down by the briefing room appeared to be set in place, just like it was in the set for The Cage (where the wild A-frame was placed between that and the briefing room).

I covered most of my rationales for placing the transporter room above, but there was another reason I just remembered. When Kirk and Spock haul Mitchell into the transporter room to beam down to Delta Vega, we briefly see the corridor. For a split second, we can see a rectangular wall plant-on that doesn’t match anything seen on the side of the corridor in the long shots. The few shots they did of the corridor remained consistent in terms of set decoration, so I assumed that was a wild section of corridor they put in opposite the transporter room to partially enclose the set beyond, as they did with sickbay.

That all makes sense. I'm happy that you put that picture up: now we know that Sickbay was on Deck E/Deck 5. I'd never noticed that before.

 

[TIN_MAN]

Great Work!
Don't know if you've thought about this, but since the flats for the corridors came in several standard widths -like 6 ft, 4ft, and 3 ft etc. then by comparing the various widths of flats seen in screenshots and adding them together, you might arrive at a pretty accurate overall length for the corridor set?

 

[Firebird]

Great Work!
Don't know if you've thought about this, but since the flats for the corridors came in several standard widths -like 6 ft, 4ft, and 3 ft etc. then by comparing the various widths of flats seen in screenshots and adding them together, you might arrive at a pretty accurate overall length for the corridor set?

Indeed I did! I built the corridor using pieces of the large, good quality setplan from Journey to Babel, and tried to match the flat size accordingly. I haven't actually tried measuring it myself as yet, though.

 

[Firebird]

Minor update to include the revised bridge layout which shows the adjusted command module (which was annoying to make everything line up correctly):

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Minor update to include the revised bridge layout which shows the adjusted command module (which was annoying to make everything line up correctly):

Good start, but that's not quite right.

A few observations.

- The steps in front of the helm console are not parallel, but sit off to the port side (a little bit counter-clockwise).
- The railing immediately counter-clockwise from the front steps has three vertical supports instead of four, so it's short.
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03hd/wherenomanhasgonebeforehd161.jpg

- The railings on either side of the viewscreen leave a gap more evenly in the middle between them for the viewscreen.
http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03hd/wherenomanhasgonebeforehd113.jpg
http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x03/wherenomanhasgone038.jpg

- The viewscreen is different from the one used in the series.

 

[Mytran]

This is a fantastic thread about a subject very dear to my heart!

If I could post one question to @Firebird - how did you determine the angle of the small corridor to the longer one? The reason that I ask is that when Mitchell walks past it seems much steeper than your plans. Plus, now that it seems the Transporter Room is situated closer to the Turbolift than the episode suggests, there is just loads of room to fit the Sickbay set into!
Maybe the angle could be as steep as this:

 

[Rusty0918]

I must say, I do like the pilots' briefing room better than the one they used for the rest of the series.

 

[Firebird]

This is a fantastic thread about a subject very dear to my heart!

If I could post one question to @Firebird - how did you determine the angle of the small corridor to the longer one? The reason that I ask is that when Mitchell walks past it seems much steeper than your plans. Plus, now that it seems the Transporter Room is situated closer to the Turbolift than the episode suggests, there is just loads of room to fit the Sickbay set into!
Maybe the angle could be as steep as this:

The angle was just an estimate from the footage, but I tried to line up the wall next to the biobed near the entry door to be parallel with the straight corridor.

For the transporter room, it wouldn’t fit in the location they show Kirk and Spock exiting from in the episode. The transporter chamber would be in the middle of the sickbay wall. Additionally, we briefly see the corridor outside the transporter room at one point, and it’s a wall flat outside. If it was at that same doorway they used in the episode, we’d see the edges of the corridor and the studio behind it. Granted, they could’ve moved the flats or put in a wild wall, but there is mention in one of the making of books (I touched on this earlier upthread) that the corridor could only be shot one way, implying they didn’t make much of an effort to enclose the corridor wall opposite the sets.

 

[Mytran]

The angle was just an estimate from the footage, but I tried to line up the wall next to the biobed near the entry door to be parallel with the straight corridor.

For the transporter room, it wouldn’t fit in the location they show Kirk and Spock exiting from in the episode. The transporter chamber would be in the middle of the sickbay wall. Additionally, we briefly see the corridor outside the transporter room at one point, and it’s a wall flat outside. If it was at that same doorway they used in the episode, we’d see the edges of the corridor and the studio behind it.

This more likely location of the Transporter Room is one the great discoveries of this thread, seconded only by the fact that a major clue (that flat wall you mentioned) was in full view all along!

Granted, they could’ve moved the flats or put in a wild wall, but there is mention in one of the making of books (I touched on this earlier upthread) that the corridor could only be shot one way, implying they didn’t make much of an effort to enclose the corridor wall opposite the sets.

I'm certain that this is the main reason why we got that single angled wall panel near the "ladder" end of the straight corridor - so many shortcomings are covered up!

 

[Firebird]

I'm certain that this is the main reason why we got that single angled wall panel near the "ladder" end of the straight corridor - so many shortcomings are covered up!

My guess is that spare panel was to cover for that long shot down the corridor: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x03hd-alt/wherenomanhasgonebeforehdalt0079.jpg
I don't think they could move the camera more than that without revealing the open corridor wall, so they added the wall flat to enclose the set from that angle.

EDIT - touching back on the corridor angle...

If I could post one question to @Firebird - how did you determine the angle of the small corridor to the longer one? The reason that I ask is that when Mitchell walks past it seems much steeper than your plans. Plus, now that it seems the Transporter Room is situated closer to the Turbolift than the episode suggests, there is just loads of room to fit the Sickbay set into!

Check out this shot here: http://tos.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/1x03/wherenomanhasgone027.jpg

The corridor doesn't appear to angle off quite as severely as your proposed layout. It also occurred to me there's another shot of the Y-end of the corridor in TMoST that I used in helping to work out the angle.

 

[Maurice]

In reference to the sets built for "The Cage", emphasis mine:

THE MAKING OF STAR TREK, p.107

...By the time November rolled around, the sets were ready to be constructed. The entire Star Trek production crew was moved south to Desilu's Culver City studio, where they took up residence on Stages 14, 15, and 16. Predictably, the move created a fresh set of problems.

Foremost among the problems were the sound stages themselves. The particular stages assigned to Star Trek had been constructed during the days of silent movies. Consequently, no provision had been made for soundproofing. (This presented many problems during the actual shooting of the pilot.)

For some mysterious reason there is a three-foot drop from one end of Stage 15 all the way across, through, and into the other side of Stage 16. When the large doors separating the two stages are opened up, you have the effect of one long, sloping ramp. This meant that everything had to be built on platforms in order to keep the floor of the set level. The result was more time lost, and extra money spent in the process.


p.108
...
The sets were built right next to the men's room.
...


P.139
...
The second pilot was to be shot in familiar surroundings — Stages 15 and 16 at Desilu's Culver City facility.
...

​

A slope of 3' across 2 stages means the slope from one end of 15 to the other would be about 1.5', which could account for any step down at the end.

The 13th page of photos in the book features one image that appears to be the WNMHGB corridor, and you can see how sharp the bend is.

 

[BK613]

I dropped the photo of Mitchell walking passed the corner into Sketchup this morning as a MatchPhoto and came up with angle values of the bend between 21 and 24 degrees depending on where I placed my axis parameter bars. There are some variables like blurriness, trueness of the sets, and camera distortion that make accuracy difficult, at least within the limits of Sketchup. Hope this helps.

 

[Firebird]

Cross-posting this from the TOS Engine Room thread - here's my attempt to recreate the set layout from the first episodes of Season 1:

I cobbled this together from setplans for Balance of Terror, with a couple details from Charlie X, and then the construction drawings for the conference room.

Subtle differences include:

• The additional doorway between Kirk's quarters and the conference room. That would be removed by the 6th or 7th episode of the season with a simple wall flat.
• The opposite side of the corridor from that doorway was left open, probably for camera and crew access. Many long shots of the corridor conveniently shoot around that opening, or the camera was placed there for panning shots. Sometimes, they would use the red grating to cover up the opening if it got into shot.
• The second crew quarters seen in later season 1 episodes wouldn't be built until Charlie X.