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.
posted
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.
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
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
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.
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
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
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"?
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
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.
Registered: Jul 1999
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posted
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.
posted
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.
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
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.
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
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.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
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.
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