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Post by Atrahasis on Apr 5, 2005 11:14:20 GMT -5
This will be a little difficult to explain, so please bear with me. First off, I disagree with the idea that Jefferies was not almost single-handedly responsible for the artistic style that was on TOS. Sure, on the important stuff he had major approval input from GR et al. But my distinct and strong sense after all these years is that he had a lot of free reign. The schedule demanded it. You know, I would cede that point to you about his contribution to the overall artistic style for TOS, but as for the ship itself, it had to have been more of a collaborative effort, from concept to the final model and alterations afterwards. It's an assumption, I know, but one based on the fact that the show was a major group effort. But didn't he design the first rudimentary Excelsior as well? I know ILM built the model, but up till now I thought Probert had a hand in it. That's one to check up on I guess. Anyways, the point I was making is that the ship went through an evolution after starting off rather crudely, and it looks like a lot of people had a hand in its development over time inlcuding a possible size change. That's fascinating, I didn't know the early concept for the ship was for half the final size. If an angled bridge was OK with him, it's OK with me too. But what annoys me are the "straight bridge theorists" trying to sink the bridge into deck 2 so that the turbolift is inside the B-C deck. That might have been OK and necessary for the years before production when the ship was only 500 feet and they were still deciding on the details of the ship, but when we're talking about the finalized 947 foot design where the bridge was obviously upped to deck 1....that's another story entirely.
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Post by USS Mariner on Apr 5, 2005 16:31:26 GMT -5
You know, I would cede that point to you about his contribution to the overall artistic style for TOS, but as for the ship itself, it had to have been more of a collaborative effort, from concept to the final model and alterations afterwards. It's an assumption, I know, but one based on the fact that the show was a major group effort. But didn't he design the first rudimentary Excelsior as well? I know ILM built the model, but up till now I thought Probert had a hand in it. That's one to check up on I guess. Anyways, the point I was making is that the ship went through an evolution after starting off rather crudely, and it looks like a lot of people had a hand in its development over time inlcuding a possible size change. That's fascinating, I didn't know the early concept for the ship was for half the final size. If an angled bridge was OK with him, it's OK with me too. But what annoys me are the "straight bridge theorists" trying to sink the bridge into deck 2 so that the turbolift is inside the B-C deck. That might have been OK and necessary for the years before production when the ship was only 500 feet and they were still deciding on the details of the ship, but when we're talking about the finalized 947 foot design where the bridge was obviously upped to deck 1....that's another story entirely. Before I start, sorry about all that, Atra. I had a really bad day yesterday (stupid excuse, I know) and I guess some of that followed me onto the board. I usually don't do that to people. Anyways, I can confirm that it was indeed Bill George who designed the Excelsior, and built the filming model. Thanksfor this info goes to the Designing the Excelsior Article from the Star Trek: The Magazine. It is worthy to note that Nilo Rodis was one of the key artists of that film, and he was the one who penned the now incorrect 467m rendition of the Excelsior and the other ships (the BoP included, which was his pride and glory.) Probert merely handed me the preliminary size chart from Season 1 TNG, so that might have caused the mix-up. Aridas, thanks for the info. It looks as if Jeffries was smart enough to let the model have a centerline exterior tube for the sake of filming considerations, since the model needed identical sides in order for both halves to be represented by the finished right side. It may not have been his choice to have the tube placed to the right side where it should have been if the model was built whole. There's a great example of this feature on the IDIC pages. As for Matt being comfortable with a skewed bridge, that's probably because he knew the ship had artificial gravity anyways, and needed some kind of "inertial canceling" system in order for the crew to not be turned into the dreaded chunky salsa. Thus, the direction might not matter in reality. Also, it's been made very clear throughout all Trek series that bridges face forward, including Phase II, where he establishes exactly where the turbolift alcoves are. I'd be comfortable with the bridge being upside-down if this precedent wasn't set in stone. I like how Captain Robert April managed to have the bridge and "Deck 2" exsist without being in a totally ludicrious configuration. In any way, I think it's best if we drop the matter, seeing as it looks as if there's enough evidence for us all to have our own cakes, from the same baker ofcourse.
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Post by Atrahasis on Apr 5, 2005 17:30:48 GMT -5
Yeah no problem, Mariner...in fact I like it when people stick up for what they believe in. I do it all the time, and I expect others to do the same. It's actually weenies that I can't stand.
But if you're talking about precedents in Trek being set for the internal arrangement of command bridges, neither has there been any example of the room being sunk into deck 2 and deck 1 presumably being filled with an enormous amount of greeblies, like the "straight bridge theorists" have to claim. Most of the Starfleet designs have had the bridge at deck 1 with a round little sensor atop, and this is actually the proper tradition that has been set.
The fact that the bridge is angled 30 degrees or whatever is more acceptable than what the "straight bridge" theory is claiming, because with the angled bridge all we have to accept is that the ship had some internal assymetry to it. The fact is that ALL ships have internal assymetry in them, the left will not be the same from the right. Even the window arrangement at the bottom of the TOS E's saucer indicates an internal assymetry, there being a lopsided arrangement to them. The TMP ship had lots of internal assymtery as well, from the location of the rec room seen in TMP to the chamber that Spock died in, which was a spot to the side somewhere.
On the other hand, to accept the "straight bridge" theory you not only have to sink the entire room down and dream up an enormous amount of new equipment that fits into where deck 1 used to be, you also create another kind of assymetry in the process, because the turbolift would have to be off to the side somewhere.
This imo just unnecessarily complicates things, and not only goes against precedents and tradition, but it also asks one to swallow a whole lot of new and unnecessary contrivance.
I know I've come off as sounding hard on the idea here, but lately it has become one of those things that just annoy me. It's a creative solution, I'll give them that, but I just can't escape the little voice in me saying "Yeah, but they haven't considered this or that..." when I think of what they did to get their straight bridge.
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Post by USS Mariner on Apr 5, 2005 17:40:39 GMT -5
Yeah no problem, Mariner...in fact I like it when people stick up for what they believe in. I do it all the time, and I expect others to do the same. It's actually weenies that I can't stand. But if you're talking about precedents in Trek being set for the internal arrangement of command bridges, neither has there been any example of the room being sunk into deck 2 and deck 1 presumably being filled with an enormous amount of greeblies, like the "straight bridge theorists" have to claim. Most of the Starfleet designs have had the bridge at deck 1 with a round little sensor atop, and this is actually the proper tradition that has been set. The fact that the bridge is angled 30 degrees or whatever is more acceptable than what the "straight bridge" theory is claiming, because with the angled bridge all we have to accept is that the ship had some internal assymetry to it. The fact is that ALL ships have internal assymetry in them, the left will not be the same from the right. Even the window arrangement at the bottom of the TOS E's saucer indicates an internal assymetry, there being a lopsided arrangement to them. The TMP ship had lots of internal assymtery as well, from the location of the rec room seen in TMP to the chamber that Spock died in, which was a spot to the side somewhere. On the other hand, to accept the "straight bridge" theory you not only have to sink the entire room down and dream up an enormous amount of new equipment that fits into where deck 1 used to be, you also create another kind of assymetry in the process, because the turbolift would have to be off to the side somewhere. This imo just unnecessarily complicates things, and not only goes against precedents and tradition, but it also asks one to swallow a whole lot of new and unnecessary contrivance. I know I've come off as sounding hard on the idea here, but lately it has become one of those things that just annoy me. It's a creative solution, I'll give them that, but I just can't escape the little voice in me saying "Yeah, but they haven't considered this or that..." when I think of what they did to get their straight bridge. All true, but the odd thing about the Enterprises' saucer exterior, is that although only one side of the ship was filmed (which included the little hatch details on the side,) people always model the other side of the saucer with all windows as what was on the unseen left side. Although your Constitutions correct this error, it makes you wonder a bit on how assymetrical ships really are. I know that things aren't perfect, obviously seen in Ed Whitefire's Galaxy deckplans and even the Bridge exterior of the E-D itself, but the reason for exterior symmetry isn't totally a product of design, but necessity. The camera technology and budget of TOS wouldn't allow a proper, 360 degrees completed model with as many assymetrical details as we could stick on it. With TMP and later, technology advanced enough to allow ships to literally be anamorphous blobs and still be filmed on time and in budget (though making a little bit of symmetry speeds up the process.) Although that's not what the Galaxy and later ships are, they aren't perfect. As for the "enormous" amount of equipment that gets stuck into the space under the dome, why not simply put computer and sensor systems here? The bridge already has a direct link to the main computer via the library computer station, and it ties into almost every other system in the ship. Also, if we stick the bridge in the dome as is demanded by precedent, then there is practically no space for the supposed sensor to go. We can excuse this on the Enterprise-class and future ships due to having smaller, more powerful technology which would have allowed other ships to raise their bridges up further. Infact, if early Starfleet ships had their bridges in the middle of the ship, this could help with the "buried" bridge problem, because suddenly the Constitution isn't as bad. For reasons I can't think of, engineers wanted bridges on top of the ship as time went on, but the bulky size of all other technologies forced them to remain in the center (if we just chalk up the NX to being a strictly Earth-ship, or mentally alter the design to something more fittingly shaped like my CC-01) and be very small cubby holes like the Orbiters' cockpits are.
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MGagen
Extra in Red Shirt
Posts: 8
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Post by MGagen on Apr 6, 2005 13:52:59 GMT -5
Hello, I just discovered your board; and like a moth to the flame I can't help but comment on one of my favorite subjects. Atrahasis, I really like your analysis. You seem to be a very clear thinker. As Aridas Sofia can attest, I've covered much of this ground myself over at TrekBBS with a certain fan who's building his own version of the E. (Early on, he wasn't calling it his version, he was claiming it was the version.) You are of course right that the orientation of the bridge makes no difference on such an advanced vessel. And Aridas has hit the nail on the head when he mentioned the original 540 foot size of the ship design. I have assembled evidence that the bridge set was designed and built while the exterior was still in its design phase. The scale drawing that the models were built from was intended to yield a 135" 1:48 scale model. While the quarter size approval model was still under construction the scale was changed to represent a larger ship. The upshot is that the bridge could have faced forward when it was contained within the teardrop shaped blister, but once the ship was rescaled and it was moved into the dome, the location of the turbo tube locks it into an offset alignment. Jefferies could have moved the tube a few degrees around to the port, but he obviously prized external symmetry more than he cared if the bridge was skewed. That brings me to one point where I differ with you... Jeffries seems to have had a lot of his own wonderful ideas about how the ship should be....some of which were ultimately discarded or not used, by of course the producers... >>SNIP<< In the end, I have to come down on the side of the producers when deciding which detail is right or wrong, because Jeffries was just someone hired to do a convincing portrayal of a ship that Gene wanted.... In my opinion, Jefferies was "just someone hired" to design the ship Gene wanted in the same way Michaelangelo was just some guy the Pope hired to paint his ceiling. The Creation fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by the Pope; but the details, the genius, the staggering design and execution were Michaelangelo's. And just as the producers departed from Jefferies' concepts, so the Church later hired others to paint clothing on many of the figures they deemed immodest. The altered scene was indeed "canon." But who would argue that this was anything but a diminishment, a debasement of the original work of genius. Now views of "canon" vary from person to person. I acknowledge that what we've seen onscreen for the most part depicts what's 'real' in the Trek universe. However, I believe there is great value in understanding the original intentions of those who worked on the show. Jefferies is the designer of the ship. He's the best guide for what it was intended to be. How it eventually turned out is, as you say, something different. Where they didn't hew to his vision, more's the pity -- but that's life in the wild world of series TV production. In Jefferies' defense, his cross section doesn't make deck two unusable. The bridge is sunken about half way into it, but that is only the center part of the deck. There is still a full height deck surrounding it on all sides. I believe this was intentional as he has described in interviews that he figured the consoles would be repaired/upgraded from the back. There is not room in the dome for a Franz Joseph style perimeter corridor, but the amount of sinkage built in to MJ's design puts the control panels at the right height to allow access from behind from deck two. I might also add that there is an external clue that the bridge is sunk about half a deck: The height of the turbo tube. Mark
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Post by Atrahasis on Apr 6, 2005 19:23:01 GMT -5
Hey, welcome! Sponge Bob is one of my most favorite things too. Yeah, it all stems from my belief that the way inertia is nullified on these ships is by an all-encompassing field that reduces mass to quantities that are more easily manageable by relatively weak directional "magnetogravitonic" forcefields that come out as vectors from the walls and floor. Up till recently, mass was thought to be one of those immutable intrinsic qualities of an object, but there are theories now that say that mass is like a ghostly quality that could be reduced if you know how to. So an object that weighs 1 kg can be reduced to .001 kg or whatever and it doesn't lose chunks of itself. It's still intact, but you've applied a field to it that reduces its effective mass. If you didn't have this mass reduction you'd need incredibly powerful forcefield vectors to counter the movements of the ship, which doesn't sit right with me because it sounds like it would require enormous amounts of energy. However, if you have technology that redcues mass it makes everything much more manageable and maneuvers like pivoting at Warp 2 become much more likely. There's also less shear and contorting forces all around because of the reduced mass, which always bothered me because even if you have powerful directional vector fields, it would still be hard to counter the forces acting on an object that may not be so linear. Given all of that, it wouldn't matter if a room is angled because inertia would be effectively nullified, to the point that under normal travel and maneuvering conditions, the crew feels nothing because everything "weighs" less than a feather. To understand this, imagine how hard it is to break a feather that is floating in the air. In contrast, imagine how easy it is to break a house-sized object whose walls are only as thick as tinfoil. The house-sized object weighs more, but it doesn't take a lot of make it crumple. On a starship, it wouldn't take a lot to reduce people to "chunky salsa" either if people retained their original mass, but if they become like the feather, their chances of survival greatly increase. And in such an all-encompassing field system, I can't see the angle that a room faces as being all that important. Also of course, there's the fact that just about every room in the saucer is probably angled. But now I'm repeating myself...
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Post by aridas sofia on Apr 6, 2005 19:37:28 GMT -5
I don't think any of us are saying the bridge, or any other room, NEEDS to be straight on true for reasons of momentum. That would be crazy, because the sublight speeds these things are said to maneuver at would indeed turn anything inside to fine paste if there weren't compensating technologies. Mark and I are saying that's the way it appears MJ might have wanted it. And if so, there could be many, many reasons why it would be done that way that would have nothing at all to do with momentum. The arrangement of the lifts, the placement of phasers or torpedo tubes on the B/C deck, achieving an optimal defensive stature for the bridge while providing it the best possible position as a command center -- any and all these things could factor in to making a forward-aimed bridge optimal. Your imagination is the only limitation to finding a justification if, indeed, you believe as we do that Jefferies might have intended it that way.
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Post by CaptainPierce on Apr 6, 2005 21:01:25 GMT -5
In my opinion, Jefferies was "just someone hired" to design the ship Gene wanted in the same way Michaelangelo was just some guy the Pope hired to paint his ceiling. The Creation fresco on the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel was commissioned by the Pope; but the details, the genius, the staggering design and execution were Michaelangelo's. And just as the producers departed from Jefferies' concepts, so the Church later hired others to paint clothing on many of the figures they deemed immodest. The altered scene was indeed "canon." But who would argue that this was anything but a diminishment, a debasement of the original work of genius. Nicely said. I am so going to rip this off the next time I see a stupid debate on what's "canon" or not...
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Post by Atrahasis on Apr 6, 2005 23:24:08 GMT -5
I don't think any of us are saying the bridge, or any other room, NEEDS to be straight on true for reasons of momentum. But the "straight bridge" argument is basically a version of that argument....basically saying that the momentum buffers (inertial dampeners) would find it hard to compensate for the skewed bridge, and moreover that this is either impractical or simply not the norm on the ship, and that's why it's "better" to straighten it out. But of course a brief thought as to how the majority of the rooms around the saucer are arranged blows that supposition out of the water.
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MGagen
Extra in Red Shirt
Posts: 8
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Post by MGagen on Apr 7, 2005 10:18:00 GMT -5
I disagree. They aren't making that case, or else all the chairs on the outer consoles would need to be facing forward as well. I think the straight bridge argument is really an argument from aesthetics. A rotated bridge is just plain distasteful. And they have a point. I'd much rather imagine that the bridge faces forward.
But I won't ignore the geometrical impossibility of this. The bridge dome is of a certain size and profile. The bridge set itself is of a certain size and layout. If this bridge is in that dome at all, then it is rotated clockwise by 35.5 degrees. The only alternatives to this are locating it somewhere else (which the above mentioned fan has finally done) or bastardize either the bridge itself, or the dome is sits in.
And when you finally get down to it, can we really blame Uncle Matt for favoring the external symmetry that is plainly visible over the internal asymmetry that is hidden? I believe he didn't intend for it to be rotated in the beginning, but after the scale was changed he figured it was the lesser of two evils.
Mark
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Post by Atrahasis on Apr 7, 2005 10:56:00 GMT -5
Oh I agree that it does come down to a matter of taste, but among the many supporting reasons that the straight bridge theorists are using is that "inertia equipment" one having an easier time if everything is facing forward, because if it isn't presumably you'd have to adjust the inertia equipment to accomodate the skewedness, and that to some people is just plain madness. I guess it depends on the "sophistication" of the straight-bridge theorist who is speaking, but they do put this argument forth, because it's the closest thing to a technical argument that they have (which you need to have any credit at all). It's also one that cleverly (and perhaps unwittingly) masks or distracts from the preference for a straight bridge as being simply a matter of taste, by sounding technically reasonable, at first glance anyways.
It's all pointless to argue about it any further, because presumably we'll get to see our answer in the upcoming episode with the Defiant...watch the schematics on the walls!
People can probably guess where my money's at.
I know, I know, people will probably find ways to argue even after this.
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Post by aridas sofia on Apr 7, 2005 11:12:17 GMT -5
^ Wacha gonna do if Okuda shows it facin' forward... within that dome? ;D
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Post by Atrahasis on Apr 7, 2005 11:27:32 GMT -5
What indeed?
I'd probably write him a strong letter of protest.
...Or just go watch "Lost" or "Desperate Housewives" and try to forget.
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Bernard Guignard
Commodore
TreknoGraphx Cad Schematics are our Speciality
Posts: 342
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Post by Bernard Guignard on Apr 7, 2005 13:23:23 GMT -5
5 to 10 that the clip will be so fast or blurred that this discussion will keep going on ;D
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CptSavage
Commodore
I'll take The Rapist for $200
Posts: 341
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Post by CptSavage on Apr 7, 2005 14:05:22 GMT -5
These are gonna be the first Ent eps I've watched NEW in probably over a year.
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