Star Trek: Pitch & Guide> Guide part5–An Overview Of The Sets

Last time we met the rest of the crew. Today’s entry is going to be short because there won’t be as much quoting as usual and will be more of an overview than a deep dive. That’s because there isn’t as much to talk about as when the sales pitch did their set listing. In that, they had to let the network and production company know how much it would cost to build the important sets, at the time hoping to use the multipurpose backlot sets to stand in for alien worlds.

For the series, especially in the gap between the first two seasons, this wasn’t an issue. Sets were designed that could be redressed into other rooms if necessary, reducing the space and materials needed. In the writer’s guide it was more about letting the writers know what sets they had available to work with, in hopes that they wouldn’t have to build more sets. However, it’s only Enterprise sets, nothing about the alien worlds, starbases, or (though the show never got there) what they would need if they were brought back to Earth. Something like the Mirror Universe would require changes in symbols, but that was more about altering the costumes and introducing a pain inducer prop.

As a result, what follows is just random trivia rather than going over every detail. There’s only minor trivia to be had, and little to affect the story beyond “here’s what we already made, please consider a way to use this instead of forcing us to make a new room”. It’s of minor interest and I break this out to make deadline and to be thorough in examining the guide. Let’s begin.

• The Bridge: Nothing we don’t already know. There’s the chair, there’s the conn, there’s Spock’s station, there’s communication, and there’s a bunch of other stations Scotty sat in a few times but otherwise we don’t learn what the other stations are. I guess they were there just to fill in the space.
• Elevator: Nothing we didn’t learn previously, that it can be voice or manually operated and it goes sideways as well as up and down. Beats walking all that way.
• Ship’s Corridors: Every sci-fi show with a large enough ship has one of these sets. They represent whatever corridor the characters on camera are in at the time. They may even be modular to make the halls look different, but this guide doesn’t state one way or the other.
• Transporter room: The closest thing we have to trivia in this one. The guide says that a technician and transporter officer are usually in the room, but either could operate the transporter. More often than not the transporter officer, sometimes Mr. Scott but not always (“beam me up, Scotty”, as written there, was never said in the original show–the quote was just to help identify what show it came from or something), was there by himself. I never heard of a dedicated transporter officer until The Next Generation and Miles O’Brien as transporter chief until he moved to Deep Space Nine as chief engineer. This could also be redressed into the chapel, but the only time I saw it looked like a larger room for the doomed marriage. Looked more like the rec room set.
• Sickbay: This one I will quote: “A three-room complex. The Doctor’s office has direct access to a ship’s corridor. There is access from his office to an examining room, also a Sickbay proper. Access to the Sickbay proper can also be made directly from the corridor. Within the Sickbay, there are built-in bed positions with a complete diagnostic panel above each. This medical device scans the patient continually, takes readings and registers same upon the diagnostic panel instrument face. Thus, blood pressure, pulse rate, heartbeat, respirations, and various other readings are continually recorded and displayed for each patient without the necessity of physical contact between doctor and patient.”
• That’s all stuff we guessed, but I did notice no mention of the things on the wall the patients had to push with their feet like a pedal machine. Did that ever do anything important?
• Engineering Deck: If you’ve seen the show, you know what it is. Not much added here.
• Briefing Room: Again, if you’ve seen it, you know what it is. The guide does mention being able to redesign it to look like a wardroom, where the commissioned officers have lunch, but on the show Kirk and Spock were seen eating lunch in the regular mess hall.
• Recreation Room: The “dining room” entry just says “redress of other sets as required”, but I always thought it had it’s own set, combined with the recreation hall given that we see a spot that dispenses food (or the occasional Tribble), but still has a spot for the 3D chess game and an area where Spock can play his Vulcan harp while Uhura sings about his evil pointed ears. Not sure why the Kelvin timeline made them a couple…or most of their other decisions.
• Quarters: Kirk, Spock, and the passenger quarters (VIP I guess) share the same set unless a larger room is required for the VIP quarters. That does make sense. On a ship like this the quarters probably all had the same layout, depending on how the general crew were listed. We never really see them on screen but other media would mention roommates so it’s possible the command crew would have quarters to themselves and the regular crew had different arrangements.
• Gymnasium: We’ve seen the gym a few times. Plenty of room to judo throw people before overpowered teens made them disappear.
• Shuttlecraft and hangar: The guide lists both exterior and interior sets for the shuttlecraft, with the hangar as a separate set. I don’t remember seeing them in a hanger outside of the launching shuttlecraft, which was stock footage of a miniature in the original series. The shuttlecraft exterior, which only showed up on alien planets they couldn’t transport to for various reasons, would be more like a prop, something for the actors to walk in and out of and pretend to attempt to repair.
• I’ll quote the hangar deck section, though. “A miniature set, optically created to be a “huge football field” size area where our shutttlecrafts or crafts are stored. It is at the rear of the thick cigar-shaped “engineering section” of our vessel and on the scale model is visible the huge hangar doors which roll open when a shuttlecraft departs from or returns to our vessel. Caution–miniature and optical work like this is expensive and must be a vital element in the story when used.” Don’t worry, that’s what the stock footage is for.
• When it comes to the final “Others” section, the guide asks for the writers to use judgement. This is referring to the one time use alien sets (though a few of those were recycled) versus any new ship sets. One of the examples of previously used one time sets was the observation deck, which was used for character moments in The Next Generation even before the addition of the Ten Forward bar. Also listed were the computer bank and botany section. How many of those were redresses of previous sets they don’t say and I’m trying to remember when they were used in the first season. The big fight in “Court Martial” comes to mind for the computer bank after looking it up, but I’m totally blank on the botany and observation decks, though I do recall the latter vaguely.

This is all important to the writers because keeping the budget of the show in mind when putting the final draft together is important. There’s a reason that we didn’t get the really unusual aliens until the animated series, advances in makeup and less expensive puppetry and animatronics, and of course CGI that could look real if done right with enough time and money.

In the next installment we look at more terminology as we get closer to the end of this series of articles. Two more to go unless I do a final thoughts.