Anyway, yes I know about the "navigation table", but that's obviously not going to be used for the actual navigation station at which a crewman will sit plotting courses all day long. I believe the purppose of the table and the area it occupies is the equivalent of the conference room set on TNG/VOY, or the centre area of Ops in DS9. It's the place where eveyone goes to sit and talk and mull stuff over, using the table as a situation/display thing.
What I mean is a dedicated place where someone will sit down and navigate the ship, like Chekov did. There appears to be no such station on the set.
posted
Oh I'd tend to disagree. I mean it is named a "Navigation" (Astrogation?) table. Perhpas it's a throwback to the plotting tables on current naval surface and submarine bridges, with the chart table and vectoring equipment. I can definitely see a crew needing an officer to man that station at all times. I doubt they'd use it for real meetings (huddles maybe). It's too small.
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posted
Frankly, I don't miss a seperate navigation station at all. Aside from the occasional "course plotted and laid in, keptin," Chekov never did any actual navigating. He fired phasers, except when Sulu did, and he scanned things, except when Spock did.
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Reginald Barclay
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posted
Yeah, but I still liked having two seats in front of the captain. There's nobody for the helmsman/person to turn to and exchange smiles or knowing looks or banter with. Paris always seemed so lonely and isolated. TPTB seem to want it both ways, going back to the past and the future at the same time. Then again, that is Braga's MO.
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posted
I agree. Regardless of the actual usefulness of the navigator's position, it *was* there and I'd have hoped that it wouldn't end up on the list of "things that were, then weren't, then were again". Then there's the whole point of Archer staring at the back of Mayweather's head. At least Sisko had Dax's pretty head to stare at for the longest times.
posted
For all we know there's a 5000 sq foot navigation lab on deck 4 with a crew of fifteen constantly keeping Mayweather advised of the latest sensor telemetry and cross referencing a dedicated navigational computer. Condensing that into a single bridge station would be a big leap forward, no?
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quote:Originally posted by Mark Nguyen: Regardless of the actual usefulness of the navigator's position, it *was* there and I'd have hoped that it wouldn't end up on the list of "things that were, then weren't, then were again".
I've always believed that the navigator's actual purpose during the original series wasn't navigation (something easily handled by the ship's computer), but bridge experience. It's a post almost always filled by junior officers on their first few tours of duty. It lets them observe the captain and senior officers at work, gives them a useful skill, and even allows them to serve as relief for other stations as needed. It's busywork for young officers on the command track.
If that's accurate, there's not really anything too horrible about there being a helmsman sans navigator in any particular time period.
posted
Wel, TVGuide calls the thing a "Nav Table" but it hasn't been called that anywhere else, to my knowledge. It's used for a somewhat different purpose in the "Broken Bow" script and the producers have said that the situation room is intended to be used roughly the same way as the Observation Lounge.
The starboard console that's analagous to Hoshi's could be a Nav station, and of course there could be some kind of console(s) still further forward of what we've seen of the bridge thus far.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
quote:It's a post almost always filled by junior officers on their first few tours of duty. It lets them observe the captain and senior officers at work, gives them a useful skill, and even allows them to serve as relief for other stations as needed. It's busywork for young officers on the command track.
I can buy that explanation. Navigation is a particularly important skill for a command officer to have -- especially if they want to command a ship at some point. Since the navigator probably only has a job to do when plotting the ship's course and/or changes to that (the helmsman can no doubt control emergency situations alone), he has plenty of time to fill in at whatever station need him.
posted
The navigation and helm stations seemed to be capable of controlling more ship's functions than simply flight control. I remember a few TOS episodes that showed the Enterprise's weapons being fired from those stations. I remember another one that had Sulu using his pop-up viewfinder to scan a planet surface.
These features were carried over into TOS movies, too. In The Wrath of Khan, Kirk orders Saavik to call up the Reliant's command console through the navigation station. Sulu targets and fires phasers from the helm. In The Search for Spock, Scotty monitors the automation center from the navigation console (of course, this could have been a special riggin). In The Undiscovered Country, Valeris calls up events in the computer's database from the helm, and Chekov fires torpedos from navigation.
I tend to agree with Ryan, although I'd expand it to say that both the helm and navigation stations are primarily for giving crew members on the command track a chance for bridge duty (with navigation being more so than the helm). Sulu manned the helm and became the captain of the Excelsior. Chekov manned navigation and became the first officer of the Reliant. Then he went back to navigation and seemed to be the second officer of the Enterprise.
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