posted
The concept of "pop-out" phasers and of torpedo tubes that look like standard portholes is the best think to come out of the NX-01 concept. Now it is trivially easy to equip the TOS vessel with the required six torpedo tubes and "phasers 1-4", "amidship phasers", "aft phasers" and "phaser guns" and whatever other weapons one wishes to add.
I doubt it is practical to nail down the exact weapon config of NCC-1701, though. It might be best to assume that the ship was at least as flexible as NX-01, and got new stuff refitted into its weapon berths and old stuff removed between episodes. Certain primary weapons might have stayed, of course. This is very similar to what happened to large real-world gun-armed warships, too: secondary and tertiary gun mounts would change rather often.
posted
Okay, that might work. But the basic configuration would something like:
- 2 forward ventral phaser turrets (or banks? what where they called!?), possibly with 2 generators each, to account for the phaser 1-4 references. - probably 2 aft phasers. Perhaps on the ventral engineering hull? - Six torp tubes... that's a lot. We know of two tubes near the forward ventral phasers. The rotating magazine theory might work. There aren't many other useful places for tubes anyway.
The quite silly concept of a Phaser Control Room in BoT might have something to do with the quite unusual proximity blast firing mode. Was the phaser control room ever used again?
quote: The quite silly concept of a Phaser Control Room in BoT might have something to do with the quite unusual proximity blast firing mode. Was the phaser control room ever used again?
I'm not certain, but I don't think it was. After that it was Sulu or whoever was at the helm who controlled the phasers.
-------------------- "I am an almost extinct breed, an old-fashioned gentleman, which means I can be a cast-iron son-of-a-bitch when it suits me." --Jubal Harshaw
Registered: Feb 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
One possible location for the aft phasers could be either side of the shuttlebay's observation dome, since thats where they are on the Constitution-Refit. It's also possible for that yellow rectangle behind the bridge to slide open and sport an aft fireing pop-up phaser turret. You may also note that there are several mysterious panals on the ship's underbelly of which one could also be hideing some kind of weapon, perhaps even another set of torpedo tubes. Of course it all depends on just how much you want to speculate.
posted
The long phaser beams firing down on the planet were used in a few episodes... I'm thinking of "Who Mourns for Adonais?" and "The Alternative Factor," and maybe "Return of the Archons." I think they were red in all those instances, because they were the "paint-on" types.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Harry: The quite silly concept of a Phaser Control Room in BoT might have something to do with the quite unusual proximity blast firing mode. Was the phaser control room ever used again?
Im not sure where the 'proximity blast' concept is coming from becasue this wasnt mentioned in the episode at all...
-------------------- Hey, it only took 13 years for me to figure out my password...
Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Futurama Guy: Also, what is the difference between the Helmsman, Navigator, Conn Officer; did the two positions get integrated into one? Helm+Nav=Conn? If so why doesnt NX-01 have both a Navigator and Helmsman?
Also what is the Con (with one 'n')? Just the Captains chair? In ST3 Kirk told Sulu he had the "Con" when Kirk left the bridge to go to Spocks quarters to find McCoy there....
Just some thoughts.
I believe that some time in between TOS and TNG the Helm and Navigation positions were combined to become the Conn station as we see it now. As for why ENT seems to have a TNG-like Conn, I dunno. My guess is they didn't want to hire someone else for the Nav billet, and didn't want to have the "Nameless Ensign of the Week" manning the post.
As for the "con", I got this definition from Hazegray.org. Conn – Has several uses, all to do with control of the ship. (1) (General Usage) When an officer announces "I have the conn," he or she is then legally responsible to give proper steering and engine orders for the safe navigation of the ship. (2) (Submarines) In submarines, the term used to refer to the conning tower, a structure built atop the hull from which periscope attacks on shipping were conducted. In more modern times, ‘the conn’ refers to the submarine’s control center, an analogous compartment located within the pressure hull. (3) In general, the area of the ship from which conn orders are given.
I would personally attribute the missing n in con from a typo in the closed captioning.
Exactically. The Conning Officer, in today's Navy, is also usually the Junior Officer of the Deck. The OOD is the Captain's representative, and is effectively in command during his watch. The JOOD/Conning officer handles all mmaneuvering orders, at the direction of the OOD. Trek seems to use "Conn" in the sense the real service uses OOD, except that the Captain actually stands the watch on a regular basis. Also, per the TNG tech manual, the navigator and helm positions were combined to create the conning position, which is confusing, but too much so. ENT ought to have had a separate navigator, as the main reason TNG can combine the positions so well is the increase in computing power and reliability. Basically, the TNG conning officer inputs a destination, the computer figures out the course, the conning officer confirms and engages the autopilot. The computer then updates position data in realtime. During the ENT era, the computer probably can't do all that, so an actual watchstander whose job is determining the required course and then updating positions is needed. Then again, I think B&B are not making a prequel, but are rebooting the franchise at a point before it existed, so continuity can be tossed out the airlock and coming events from the previous universe can be ignored...
-------------------- Darkwing If you don't drink the kool-aid, you're a *baaad* person - Rev Jim Jones It is useless for sheep to pass resolutions in favor of vegetarianism while wolves remain of a different opinion - William Ralph Inge Almond kool-aid, anyone? - DW [email protected]
Registered: May 2002
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Futurama Guy: Im not sure where the 'proximity blast' concept is coming from becasue this wasnt mentioned in the episode at all...
It's at 25:30 on the "Balance of Terror" DVD, just before the Enterprise enters the comet's tail.
KIRK: "Battle status?" SULU: "All stations manned, Captain." STILES: "Phaser weapons energized, set for proximity blast."
posted
Indeed I stand corrected...but whether or not they fired them full phasers or proximity phasers, they all looked like purple torpedoes.
-------------------- Hey, it only took 13 years for me to figure out my password...
Registered: Jan 2003
| IP: Logged
capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
of course, a nice way to explain it is that in ENT, the navigation is so complicated that they need several junior officers below decks plotting the courses and feeding them through the situation table and the helm, while in TOS it is slightly more advanced and an officer on the bridge operates the equipment that does the job of several ENT crew.
damn, now im helping them find excuses for ENT being just like Voyager...
Registered: Sep 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
Just like Mayweather could have a horde of underlings feeding him information, I trust Sulu or the navigator in TOS could be getting assistance in handling the weapons. The guy or gal in the phaser control room would okay all of Sulu's button-pushes, or then veto them if his or her gauges showed the finicky thing was overheating again...
Alternately, perhaps navigation tasks only become overwhelming for one person at warp 6 and beyond? Single-pilot ships in TAS could navigate just fine at warp speeds...
posted
I imagine the real reason that Enterprise doesn't feature a navigation station is that during TOS having two stations was often superfluous. We saw Sulu reaching over to handle things on the navigation console more than once, as I recall. (Of course, having said that, within the show the station must have been important, since the often-incapacitated person manning it was always quickly replaced.)
As Star Trek bridges go, Enterprise's shows an unusual clarity of purpose in its design. What the guy sitting next to Scotty did the world may never know, for instance. The movie bridges, the Enterprise D, and the Defiant had extra stations for various tasks. DS9 was a mess. (A good mess! But, it seemed like there was a whole chunk of Ops that was almost never seen. What do all those stations do, I used to wonder.) Voyager was a bit tighter, but the science station is barely even seen, and I don't think Engineering had someone in it all the time. It seems that, with this new Enterprise, the design philosophy has been to boil down the bridge to its essences. So we get a station for flying the ship, one for shooting, one for keeping this fixed up, one for science, and one for talking to people. (A position that would be superfluous were it not various other criteria of the show.)
Which isn't to say that this is good or bad, though I obviously happen to think that the original helm/navigation split was, at best, not quite fully thought through. (At least, dramatically.)
Registered: Mar 1999
| IP: Logged
posted
Alot of DS9's "extra" stations that were never used likely were made for the stations original purpose: ore processing. In TNG/DS9 era starships most command and bridge functions can be re-routed to any available station: Geordi and Data often re-routed Engineering or Science functions to the stations behind Worf's tactial station. In TOS the split stations were Navigation and Helm but the stations in TNG era were for Helm and Ops. SMaller less advanced starships likely use various department heads for shipwide functions while by TNG's era one person (or Android) can override or directly control most internal ship's functions via advanced automation.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
I think Reverend mentioned the engineering colored 'hatches' as being possible locations for weaponry. I disagree. The same panels are on the refit Enterprise, yet all it's phasers and tubes are now visible.
posted
I'd suggest that all the FJ phasers were there on the TOS ship, just retractable behind completely concealing panels. Two pairs flanking the bridge, one pair just ahead of the lower sensor dome, and possibly another pair further forward of that lower dome (to account both for the "phasers 1-4" reference and the fact that the VFX people sometimes fired the phasers from there in side pictures). Add plenty of ventral and aft phasers wherever you please - the TMP ship could have fewer of those "secondary guns", since there apparently are more of the mains.
That would leave *all* the visible surface features for torpedo tubes, portholes and engineering paraphernalia. Easy to fit six tubes there: two to four on the underside in "portholes", just like NX-01 does it, and two on the topside where FJ puts them.
Thus we also preserve continuity in the sense that torpedo tubes have never been completely invisible and are in fact quite prominent in TOS movie and later ships, whereas phasers in both ENT and TOS are almost perfectly hidden, and only jut out from TOS movies onwards.
![[Wink]](wink.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
