Timo,
In "Power Play", it's canon that our heroes accept that USS Essex was a Daedalus class Federation starship that disappeared over two hundred years prior to the episode, and that the class was retired soon thereafter, in 2196 sharp. They also accept that she was captained by one Bryce Shumar at the time.
An impersonator claiming to be Shumar then goes to claim that the ship's registry was NCC-173 and that she had 229 crew.
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What the episode leaves wide open is what this Daedalus class is supposed to look like. For all we know, it features a saucer and four nacelles.
Yes, everything but the crew number was ringing a bell. Some people have made some very large scale Daedalus era ships (similar to that class), but usually that class is interpreted pretty small. And, in general, while its not necessarily canon, I personally would tend to go along with the commonly accepted design. But all bets could be off.
One suggestion is, since it was close to the class being retired, that it had been converted to support duties. One possible conversion would be to a starliner/transport responsible for ferrying large numbers of personnel back and forth between postings (i.e., Earth to Starbase 6, where they become the crew of a ship, etc.). Removing all science labs, excess cargo (other than consumables and essentials), perhaps even large recreation areas and converting those to cabins, using bunk-bed type arrangements, could conceivably increase the crew capacity to several times the original complement. The life support systems would be the main issue.
Oh, and regarding FJ's layout, his Decks 2 and 3 are quite busy with things that were never established to actually be there, while lacking some things that should be there.
We know Deck 2 holds some sort of guest quarters where the Romulan Commander can be accommodated in "The Enterprise Incident" (she thinks she's being taken to the brig, but she's mistaken).
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We also have the chase scene from "Let That Be" that indicates that "Recreation Room 3" spans Decks 3 through 5 - perhaps it is the same structure we later see in ST:TMP, situated just aft of the saucer core?
My personal take, considering the length of the turbolift ride from Deck 1 to "Deck 2, guest quarters" in "The Enterprise Incident" is that the destination is not what we would call Deck 2. Now whether you want to consider this a production error (someone got confused and counted the decks from the bottom, the scriptwriter just made it up and it was meant to be corrected but never was, Nimoy blew the line, etc.) or a diversionary comment while Uhura sent the turbolift to a different deck to confuse the Commander, that's up for people to decide for themselves. I personally believe it was a production error, and don't count it. If the ride took 5-10 seconds (which it should), I would count it as canon.
As to Recreation Room 3, I seem to remember the issue is that the pair are running past the same room on two different decks. As such, the simplest explanation is production error, but again that's a personal choice. A three deck tall rec room would presumably consume a vast amount of real estate. The Rec Deck seen in ST:TMP -- if you take a real close look at it -- is very hard to explain. It has to be almost as wide as the secondary hull, and appears to be three decks tall. Frankly, it looks wider. The vast majority of this volume is unused (unless we suggest anti-grav boots). I would love to have some scaled production plans of that set.
Please understand I'm not just using "production error" to explain away everything I don't like or is not FJ. I try very hard to only use it when there is a valid reason to think something something is not right or there is a clear contradiction.
We also have reason to think that Deck 3 holds Spock's quarters in ST2, and might hold top officers' quarters in general, considering the door sign on McCoy's quarters.
Considering the redesign of the ship, which when you start taking a close look at in in ST:TMP may indicate they borrowed some TARDIS technology from Dr. Who, I generally don't think the designs are comparable. Its not even clear if they have a similar deck layout, and the compartment design may be different as well (considering what happened to the turbolift diagram). Of course, STIII's use of FJ's blueprints indicates that some comparison is possible, but may be complicated. This needs to be looked at more closely.
In contrast, there shouldn't be any torp launchers up there, contrary to what FJ posits, so that could give some additional room.
Unless you count TAS!
Presumably FJ had some reason to put them there. He presumably was aware of where they had been fired from in TOS. Its possible somebody in the production bemoaned the fact that the right way to do things would have been to not have all the weapons fired from the same location but that's what was done for budgetary reasons. Certainly that's what they've done since ST:TMP on (except for that one episode of TNG phasers from the photon tubes!). My hunch is that he had what he felt was a genuine reason for contradicting TOS in this case, and where he makes similar contradictions in the plans its because he is trusting his source material (and/or didn't have access to the contradictory material in the actual epsodes). It was not accidental, it was not haphazard, there had to have been some reason, in my opinion.
Still, fitting all the labs in there sounds pretty strange - why in the superstructure, rather than in the main body of the saucer? Labs in general require lots of logistics connections, so squeezing a lab in a tight corner is never a good idea. Also, it would be nice to have the lab personnel accommodated close to their workstations.
I don't think we ever get a long continuous shot that would establish a laboratory as lying next to a curved corridor, now do we?
He put them there because that's what TMoST's text description of the Primary Hull told him to do. That's what he did for every deck in the saucer. Presumably it came from some version of the Writer's Guide. The lack of curved corridor doesn't support the Franz Joseph arrangement, but it doesn't contradict it either. Most of the labs we saw were medical or biological, the only exception I can think of is possibly where Sargon's androids were being built (which was still the standard lab set). The lab set was essentially part of the sickbay set, so it would have opened on to the curved corridors, but you may be right that this wasn't clearly demonstrated.
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There is no "sociology" lab on deck two, you're misreading the abreviation "SOC" which stands for "
Science
Officers offi
Ce.
Which unfortunatly leaves only 13 labs in FJ's plans, but that's ok as we need to include the 'biopsy lab' mentoned onscreen, which I propose puting in FJ's medical section "General Utility Room" (GUR). We're also missing the 'nuclear electronics lab' and the 'electromagnetics section' referenced onscreen, but I believe these are just different names for FJ's "ion study" and "high energy" labs respectively?
Good catch. But there really should be such a lab, because I believe we have at least one anthropologist mentioned (and finding dead formerly civilized planets must happen from time to time). Correct me if I'm wrong, someone. In any case, the Science Officer's office might double as a lab. There is also a small Communications room in the lab section, and this might count as a lab. The GUR might be set up as various types of labs, essentially a multi-role room. Or it might be where the coffeemaker is kept. The nomenclature you mention might be used for the physics labs, just another way of describing them. The number of labs ultimately hangs on the show's dialog, I think.
Timo, FJ has a GUR (general utility room) on deck three, if we swaped this out with one of the labs obove we would have a space for the 'guest quarters/Cpt's day cabin on deck two? I have no problem with torpedo banks on deck three, but perhaps they should be phaser banks? On the other hand, it would make even more sense if this facility was a science probe launcher?
One possibility is that this FJ feature is meant to reflect what was planned for at some point, and we see it in TAS. As such, to keep both "canon" (yes, I know the franchise policy on TAS, just play along for a minute), a refit putting the Photons there is an option. The franchise in one of their magazines had a schematic indicating launchers in both locations (pod and base of the sacucer). I tend to put the probe launcher elsewhere, in the mast of the "Sensor" that's part of the Main Deflector for example, but that's me. In part its how I conceive of TOS Phot Torps differing from TMP (where it would be more practical to use the same launcher).
CuttingEdge100, Dispite what I've said above, I find it interesting that in "The Man Trap" Sulu and Rand stumble upon a dead crewman on deck nine, shortly after we see them in the botony lab together. So perhaps this is a hint that the science labs should be on these lower decks?
Well, FJ has large "botony" areas in both the Primary and Secondary Hull. Are these labs? Umm, well, you can study plants there, but they are primarily for recreation not for sequencing DNA. Unless there was equipment there we didn't see. Is this what we saw on screen? Well, if so, obviously only a small part of it. So its a bit up in the air. Conceivably a small terrarium for botony might be an discretional addition to a ship, not part of its plans, and not standard. Hard to say.
See, this is the kind of stuff I wanted to discus in my "pros & Cons" thread over in the art forum, but nobody seems interested.
I do the best that I can TM. Please make suggestions as to what more I can do.
