How did the warp core prop work?

[Vale]

Hello all! Let me start by saying that I'm not 100% sure where this question should go, so I'm trying the Voyager forum first since the Voyager warp core is typically the first one I think of when I think of "a swirly glowy warp core prop". Would this be better in the "General Trek Discussion" section maybe? Apologies if so.

I know how warp cores are supposed to work, in the context of the show; matter, antimatter, dilithium, containment fields, all that fun stuff that is gone over in the technical manuals. But how do the warp core props work? What was going on in the props for Voyager, the Defiant in DS9, and the refit Enterprise in TMP and TWOK to make those swirly glowing effects? We see some scenes in Voyager where the "energy patterns" inside the core are stationary and the warp core is "paused", and then they spin up when the core is restarted – how was this accomplished?

 

[Orac]

Good question.

 

[UssGlenn]

The heart of Dick Brownfield's design was a series of four motors, each driving the rotation of an aluminium-encased hull, and each ball set at a different axis angle to the others. Interior lights were reflected off the balls, onto the surface (the skin) of the warp core. The motors determined the speed of the swirling effect, and dimmer switches controlled the intensity of the lights. The result looked as if the warp core was filled with a swirling, multi-coloured gaseous material.

 

[Finn]

Oh, come on. Light strobes/ devices have been making light shows like that for ages.

 

[Athena28]

All I know is it was pinkish in the earlier seasons & then blue.

 

[Timo]

...So they finally managed to fix what the Caretaker broke?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kor]

Here is an article about the Voyager engineering set, currently only available through the Wayback Machine, which includes some commentary from set designer Richard James: https://web.archive.org/web/20030218052919/http://www.neelix.fslife.co.uk/bts_eng.htm

The effect was developed by special effects artist Dick Brownfield. This is how it worked:

... The heart of Dick Brownfield's design was a series of four motors, each driving the rotation of an aluminium-encased hull, and each ball set at a different axis angle to the others. Interior lights were reflected off the balls, onto the surface (the skin) of the warp core. The motors determined the speed of the swirling effect, and dimmer switches controlled the intensity of the lights. The result looked as if the warp core was filled with a swirling, multi-coloured gaseous material. ...

Rick Berman decided to make it just blue instead of multi-colored, but apparently it still used that same mechanical system.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

What was going on in the props for Voyager, the Defiant in DS9, and the refit Enterprise in TMP and TWOK to make those swirly glowing effects?

VGR's core has been explained. The TMP intermix chamber involved an elaborate series of projected lighting effects created by reflecting light off of shiny objects of various shapes, IIRC. The others like the Ent-D and Defiant cores were much simpler, just stacks of ring-shaped lights strobing on and off in sequence to make it look like a single light source was moving down or up the tube.

 

[Kor]

I especially loved the innovative warp core from Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. It was seven decades ahead of its time, that's how advanced it was!

Kor

 

[WarpTenLizard]

Oh, come on. Light strobes/ devices have been making light shows like that for ages.

True. But for such a large prop, it'd be interesting to know how that was achieved. Did they have to use several smaller strobe-lights inside the large tube, or were they actually able to generate one that huge? Or was it all just CGI?

 

[Christopher]

Or was it all just CGI?

Certainly not. They didn't even use CGI in TNG, except for a handful of things like the Crystalline Entity and the "Galaxy's Child" space creatures. And it would've been totally unnecessary, since this is a simple lighting effect. It's not that hard to make a large light fixture. Look at the giant neon signs that used to adorn Times Square and the like before it all became video screens.