Consider this: the Master Situation Displays, as a rule, show a correct number of decks. But that need not be the case. The Excelsior's MSD shows 36 decks. The Sovereign's MSD shows 24 decks, whereas Rick Sternbach's final blueprints show only 23 (well, the dialogue did establish 24 decks also...).
Furthermore the MSDs are often wrong in their placement of torpedo launchers and other details. So, while important, we always need to question them. And pitted against a single MSD visible in Engineering and other displays, and Drexler's deck plans visible on the bridge of the Valiant and Defiant we have the following:
1) No less than three references to a Deck 5, in "Way of the Warrior", "To the Death", and "Rejoined", which is certainly walkable given that Sisko takes a lift there in "To the Death".
2) A situation in "Starship Down" where Deck 2 is sealed off according to dialogue, while the Engineering lower level remained open and clearly inaccessible from the bridge. Crewman Stevens talked Deck 2 as if he wasn't standing there. Then O'Brien: "They must be dead up there.", not bothering to climb up the ladder and check. Later on, Worf has to take a Jefferies tube from the Bridge to Engineering instead of simply the ladder from Deck 1. This means Engineering is on Deck 3 at least, with a total of four decks at the centerline.
3) An impossibly long turbolift ride in "The Adversary" in which Sisko and Dax talk about Kasidy. I counted at least 12 decks here based on the passing lights, but maybe the passing lights didn't really indicate decks, but rather some other features.
4) A six-deck turbolift schematic with a complete description of every deck, visible in the turbolift in "Adversary" (though I'm not sure if the descriptions are visible).
5) The fact that the Defiant's walkspaces are shorter than usual, while the four decks in the Master Situation Display have the usual height of 12 feet or so. If we had six decks, we wouldn't have to contend with unusually high interdeck spaces.
6) The rows of "windows" on the underside could then be explained as windows.
Note that this doesn't mean that the ship should necessarily be 170m long. If it were that long, then we'd still have high interdeck spaces for our six decks. However, a size in-between might be warranted.
[ December 15, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
I mostly agree.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
Turbolift travel time is no good as a measure of actual distance traveled, though.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Well, if you can count the number of passing lights, you usually know the number of decks traveled (in theory). There's also the travel time to be compared with distance. However, that's just one reason.
Other things need to be fixed in Drexler's MSD. Is it logical that the Defiant should have three shuttlebays, even though they are small? Aside from the scenic art, nothing suggests that. The writers wanted the big shuttlebay because they didn't like the small bays. Why not keep that and abandon the never-seen smaller bays?
We might want to credit Drexler for fleshing out the interior of the Defiant. After all, nobody else has bothered doing that. On the other hand, he didn't bother to keep up with everything the writers and the effects crews were changing about the ship, but rather ensured that his rarely-seen schematics were consistent between themselves. It is far more important to lay out the Defiant based on things that an average viewer would see, rather than those visible on a background display.
I know few people nowdays care about this (everyone's understandably tired of Defiant discussions), but it doesn't seem quite appropriate to settle for Drexler's layout and ignore everything else as if he'd designed the ship.
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
Well I still care about this. But then I have an unusually keen interest in the Defiant.
For me, the big problem with this proposal is that you're suggesting ignoring certain canon information in favour of alternative canon information. Actually that's really the whole problem with the Defiant - the thing is just one contradiction after another. At times it literally gives me a headache when I think about it.
I've considered the 6 deck thing before and it certainly has its merits - for all the reasons you first mentioned and there's one other significant case I can remember.
In "Adversary" there is a scene where Sisko is climbing down a vertical turboshaft. He stops when he reaches the deck intersection and then fires his phaser rifle downwards the vertical shaft. We see the shot (not a beam) travel down multiple decks before stopping at the bottom. This scene is impossible if the Defiant has only three decks in the main body.
There's not much more I have to say on this subject though. The fact is, like most people I've grown to accept Drexler's 4 deck layout.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
While I agree that canon information is self-contradictory, some canon information takes precedence over the other. A background graphic is supposed to help out the story, not contradict it. We already have two plot points that contradict the schematic, along with some other references.
Posted by Ryan McReynolds (Member # 28) on :
And with the wildly contradictory nature of the Defiant to begin with, the MSD takes an even lower peg in my book. It is clear that no two people who worked on the thing had any idea what each other were doing... and Drexler's not exactly known for his accuracy. Look at the aforementioned Enterprise-B and Enterprise-E graphics. We ignore those because we have ample reason--dialogue and/or exterior shots--to know that they are wrong. Why make an exception for the Defiant? Externally, there are rows of windows that support at least six decks and there is dialogue supporting at least five... that's as conclusive as the evidence against the other MSDs.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Now I find myself digging up old ideas from 1997...In order to keep the interior small enough to remain cramped at six decks, it seems logical that the ship's hull would be unusually thick, slicing off some of the horizontal area around the interior. This would be true especially if a lot of the stuff is hidden behind hull plates. At the same time, the interior would be better protected. There can't be more than six decks, I'd imagine, otherwise we'd have heard a reference to Deck 6 at the very least. How many are visible down that shaft in "Adversary"?
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
I had a look at "Adversary". Where Sisko fires his rifle he would likely have to be on at least deck 2 - he's climbed down the ladder of the vertical shaft to get to where he is. He may be further down than deck 2 but it's highly unlikely that he's only on deck 1.
When he fires downwards the shaft it's hard to tell how many decks we can see below Sisko. There isn't any definate count based on the way the shaft is layed out. My guess though is that there's two decks below where Sisko is.
What we see here could be interpreted differently though. Sisko does say at the time that "the Changeling is heading towards the lower deck". If the horizontal shafts are between decks, and are placed above the respective deck, then the vertical shaft can feasibly still be only 3 decks tall.
Back to the bigger issue, is there any evidence in Season 5,6, or 7 that refutes the Drexler layout? It's perhaps understandable that during Seasons 3 and 4 the Defiant's layout was not yet nailed down.
Ryan: I personally don't think it's worth complaining about the Ent-E MSD. The only errors that I know of are the location of the tractor emitters and the aft torp launchers. I do agree though that the Ent-B MSD is an abomination.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
The shaft Sisko is climbing down in "The Adversary" is unlikely to be a turboshaft, really. It's got no room for a turbolift cabin...
If this is a simple vertical Jeffries tube like it seems to be, then we have to remember that the *horizontal* Jeffries tubes could very well lie between the walkable decks, instead of on the same level as the decks. This means that for every deck, there are *two* horizontal exits from a Jeffries tube - one for the deck, and one for the horizontal tube. And thus we can divide the number of "decklike features" we see in that vertical shaft by two, if we wish to do so.
Personally, I favor the six-deck interpretation, even if it means the ship becomes a bit longer than 120m. And I like the idea of a single shuttlebay.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Another thing is that the MSD shows no turbolift shafts, unlike Drexler's other MSDs. Of course, we didn't see a turbolift on the Defiant before "The Adversary", which is when this MSD first appeared.
Yes, the four decks seem to have been accepted by the writers later on. Ron Moore quoted a four-deck count in his later postings. On the other hand, he also quoted the 170m size like everybody else.
Rick Sternbach did the logical thing in the DS9TM, which was to move all four decks into the centerline. Interestingly enough, if you downscale the MSD and fit it into the central body, most of its features end up roughly where we've seen them onscreen. The forward launchers move closer to the quantum modules, the impulse engines move closer to the red lights, the shuttlebay is approximately where it should be, the aft launchers are on the bottom but closer to the centerline, etc.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
Don't know if this helps, but I know there's an episode where Dax shouts out that there's a hull breach on deck five.
Now, I'm no expert on where everything goes and how long the ship is, but if Dax says there are at least five decks, I'll buy it
Of course, if Dax said the Defiant was the flagship, I'd buy that too...
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
She said that twice, in "Way of the Warrior" and "Rejoined".
When two pieces of canon info contradict each other, we have a choice between discarding one and adopting the other, discarding both, or changing both a little. These are the choices, since both pieces of info can't be true at the same time in the case of deck count (I'll assume the Defiant didn't lose decks over time...).
We could compromise and make the ship five decks tall with four decks in the main body and Engineering on Deck 3, adopt most of the MSD information but fit most of it in the first four decks. Since the decks would be a bit shorter, the overall size wouldn't change from 120m, while some of the hull surrounding the ship would be thicker.
I have a feeling that it isn't fair to adopt one thing and discard another since the design of the Defiant has been the work of a lot of people, not just Drexler, even though he contributed the most to this aspect of the Defiant.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Well, if we assume the MSD is correct, then Dax's "deck five" would have been met w/ "Deck what? WTF are you smoking?".
So, basically, if we aren't going to ignore anything, we have to assume there really is a deck five, and something's funky about the MSD.
Best explanation I can think of is that the MSD is "condensed". It's just showing the important info, which only consists of four decks. Maybe, when another deck needs to be shown, it changes. But squishing all the decks into that smal space all the time would only make it hard to read, so it only shows four most of the time.
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
There can still easily be a deck 5 and the Drexler 4 deck layout be correct. If one looks at the actual model of the Defiant, not the MSD, there's still a significant amount of ship below the area that Drexler marks as deck 4. Looking at where the P/S shuttlepod doors are, the base of that would be the bottom of deck 4. Fore of those doors there is a chunk of hull that hangs further below. There's even a couple of "windows" P/S in this area - that can be deck 5. If we want to push it further we can say that the nacelles themselves have walkable areas (this might be one way to access the lower pulse phaser cannons) and that is also part of deck 5.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
That still doesn't explain "Starship Down" and "The Adversary". Furthermore, in "One Little Ship", the same question -- why take the turbolift to the bridge if you could've easily taken the ladder. Are they that lazy?
I'm leaning towards a zoomed-in MSD explanation because it also explains a few other things, including the placements of launchers and impulse engines. Besides, it's just a background graphic, like the one on the Enterprise-B.
[ December 19, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]
Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
My school is laid out like a gothic dungeon, and i always use the elevators, to avoid the awful stairs. My normal route in is to
Enter at the music building, to avoid going up the ramp to the upper commons (its steep and full of people every AM). Take the elevator up one floor to the theatre hall. Walk across the breezeway to the main building. Walk across the commons to the far side Take the fast elevator up one floor to the second floor. Go to the computer lab.
Maybe theyre just lazy like me, i take two separate elevators just to avoid manual climbing. And my school is only a little longer than the Defiant (im not sure if its taller.. its six floors ;-) )
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I was sort of thinking the same thing as what Dax said (our fellow forum-ite...not the beautiful Trill). If the Four Decks account for only the main body of the ship, the little hangy downs in the nacelle "wings" could be deck five. Maybe even Deck six. IIRC, there are at least two rows of windows on the inside of those wings.
Personally, I think the model was designed with those windows without adequate knowledge of how big the ship was or where everything was located. But they're still there...
I'm guessing they're just porthole style windows, but I wonder what they even are. We know that even the captain's quarters don't have windows.
Posted by Phelps (Member # 713) on :
Yes, I agree, but the point is to make every episode fit nicely, not sacrifice any plot points because of a background schematic.
"Starship Down" is pretty clear about the bridge being inaccessible from the Engineering lower level, as I explained in my initial post. If it hadn't been, there would've been no way to keep Kira and Sisko separate from the rest of the crew. Either Kira or O'Brien or someone would've tried to phaser their way through to the others. Instead, Kira's sitting on the bridge all the time, while O'Brien is saying "They all must be dead up there." Crewman Stevens specifically mentions some generators "compensating for the hull breach on Deck 2". When Deck 2 is sealed initially, nobody mentions the people in Engineering.
Later on, I'm sure the writers realized that any scenes such as this one would look funny:
INT. ENGINEERING (CONT'D) where Sisko is talking to Kira and O'Brien
SISKO
So, everything clear?
KIRA
Yessir.
O'BRIEN
Aye sir.
Sisko goes off into the background and starts climbing the ladder to the upper level. While Jake's old man is climbing in the background...
KIRA
Alright, so how about the phaser couplings?
O'BRIEN
Haven't fixed them yet, sorry...
I believe there are door signs about Engineering being on Deck 2, but "Starship Down" makes a plot point out of Engineering being lower down. That can't really be ignored.
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
Today I rewatched the entire episodes of both "Starship Down" and "One Little Ship". There's a couple of things that got my attention.
In "Starship Down" there's a scene in engineering where O'Brien asks one of his people to fetch something from the cargo bay. Moments later it cuts to the very next scene and we witness the same guy get cleaned up by the deck 2 hull breach. It's not solid proof but it does give the impression that engineering is on deck 2.
In "One Little Ship" there's a scene where the Jem'hadar 2nd takes Sisko in a turbolift so the later can help the former restore warp power in engineering. The Jem'hadar tells the turbolift to go to "deck 2, section 5". The next time we see Sisko he's in engineering. Now, later when the runabout is exiting engineering, we can clearly see the door label - it reads "02 05".
Posted by J (Member # 608) on :
Of course for those not familar with the Sternbach system of ship sections... 02-05 would be deck 2 section 5. The problem with this though is that the Defiant should have the 36 section pie like the E-D saucer, and not the fore-aft division that the E-D secondary had.
Anyway, it's obvious that the Defiant's system for sections is not the pie system. The reason for this is that section 5 would be fore-starboard not aft. Which can only lead to the conclusion that sections on the Defiant are from fore to aft, probably 1-6 [if 5 is main engineering, then 6 would probably be the impulse engines].
That ends this totally useless technobabble--- thank you.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Of course, if we assumed that, it would mean that the door was missing a room number. So, either there are no section numbers, and it was just "deck 2, room 5" (which would make sense, since it's such a small ship), or the sections are irregular, and engineering itself comprises "section 5" of deck 2 (which is also possible, but makes less sense).
Posted by Spike (Member # 322) on :
quote:4) A six-deck turbolift schematic with a complete description of every deck, visible in the turbolift in "Adversary" (though I'm not sure if the descriptions are visible).
