The President's Office

[Cicero]

Articles of the Federation and several other novels describe the location of the office of the President of the United Federation of Planets as being at the Place de la Concorde (specifically, in the Palais de la Concorde), in Paris. When this was first mentioned in the A Time To . . . series, I suggested that this location was probably incorrect given what we had seen on screen.

I used a series of diagrams to show that the silvery building we see in establishing shots of Paris couldn't be located at the Place de la Concord, but it was - quite rightly - pointed out to me that we needn't conclude that the silvery building housed the presidential office. I concede the point, and I put the issue out of my mind.

Today, while watching Homefront and Paradise Lost, I happened to notice the view out the window of Jaresh Inyo's office. It can be seen here:

A similar view can bee seen through Ra-ghoratreii's window in The Undiscovered Country:

The office cannot be located at the Place de la Concorde; it must be almost directly across the river from the Eiffel Tower, somewhat south of the Pont d'Iena, probably in the area I've circled below.

The most likely candidate in this circle is the Trocadero (also known as the Palais de Chaillot), which is where Diane Duane placed the President's office in the Rihannsu series (given the date of publication, I would guess she deduced the rough location of the office from its appearances in The Undiscovered Country and Deep Space Nine).

I'm not sufficiently skilled in practical trigonometry to say whether the identification of the Trocadero as the home of the Federation President's office is correct, but it is certainly located in that general area in The Undiscovered Country and Deep Space Nine, not at all near the Place de la Concorde, except so far as both are along the Siene in Paris.

I suppose it's possible that the Trocadero is used as something akin to Blair House in modern Washington, and that the Palais de la Concorde happened to be under renovation in both 2372 and 2293, which would allow the recent novels to be correct, unless I don't remember details within those that contradict the Trocadero having served as an office to the presidents in those years.

 

[Sci]

Articles of the Federation and several other novels describe the location of the office of the President of the United Federation of Planets as being at the Place de la Concorde (specifically, in the Palais de la Concorde), in Paris. When this was first mentioned in the A Time To . . . series, I suggested that this location was probably incorrect given what we had seen on screen.

I used a series of diagrams to show that the silvery building we see in establishing shots of Paris couldn't be located at the Place de la Concord, but it was - quite rightly - pointed out to me that we needn't conclude that the silvery building housed the presidential office. I concede the point, and I put the issue out of my mind.

Today, while watching Homefront and Paradise Lost, I happened to notice the view out the window of Jaresh Inyo's office. It can be seen here:

A similar view can bee seen through Ra-ghoratreii's window in The Undiscovered Country:

The office cannot be located at the Place de la Concorde; it must be almost directly across the river from the Eiffel Tower, somewhat south of the Pont d'Iena, probably in the area I've circled below.

The most likely candidate in this circle is the Trocadero (also known as the Palais de Chaillot), which is where Diane Duane placed the President's office in the Rihannsu series (given the date of publication, I would guess she deduced the rough location of the office from its appearances in The Undiscovered Country and Deep Space Nine).

I'm not sufficiently skilled in practical trigonometry to say whether the identification of the Trocadero as the home of the Federation President's office is correct, but it is certainly located in that general area in The Undiscovered Country and Deep Space Nine, not at all near the Place de la Concorde, except so far as both are along the Siene in Paris.

Obviously the President's office maintains an alternate meeting space that they use during the rare periods when the Palais is closed for repairs, upgrades, and renovations.

 

[Cicero]

^ I cross-posted just such a suggestion.

Do any details of the novels (most likely of Articles of the Federation) conflict with the Trocadero having been used as a substitute by Jaresh Inyo and Ra-ghoratreii (and, presumably, by the unnamed president in Swordhunt)?

I prefer the Trocadero as the primary location, though, for two reasons: The Place de la Concorde would still be fully open-air, and the primary office would be the one shown on screen. It's somewhat strange to contend that the main office has always been elsewhere.

 

[Christopher]

Hey, it's just the law of conspicuous landmarks: No matter where you are in Paris/New York/Washington, DC/Egypt, the Eiffel Tower/the Empire State Building/the Washington Monument/the Pyramids will be visible out your window. It's a law of cinematic physics. TV Tropes even calls it the Eiffel Tower Effect.

Indeed, as that TV Tropes page points out, in the holodeck scenes in "We'll Always Have Paris," the Eiffel Tower is visible in shots looking in two opposite directions.

So I wouldn't take the view out the window too literally. Heck, realistically, if you were in a lit room on a spaceship, you couldn't see the stars out the window since they're just too dim. But we always see stars out the windows anyway. It's poetic license. And so is the view of the Eiffel Tower.

A related phenomenon is the depiction of the Golden Gate Bridge in most shots of Starfleet HQ and the Academy. Those facilities are supposed to be on the San Francisco side of the bridge, and HQ was shown there in ST:TMP; but in almost all other representations, the bridge has been shown from the Sausalito side. Similarly, the scene in The Voyage Home where Kirk and Spock were supposedly in Sausalito needing a lift back to San Francisco from Gillian was actually shot on the SF side of the bridge.

So you just can't read too much into the geography of landmark depictions in film and TV. Putting the Eiffel Tower in the window is a convenient visual shorthand to let the audience know they're watching a scene set in Paris. Geographical exactitude takes a back seat to that.

 

[Dancing Doctor]

^ I cross-posted just such a suggestion.

Do any details of the novels (most likely of Articles of the Federation) conflict with the Trocadero having been used as a substitute by Jaresh Inyo and Ra-ghoratreii (and, presumably, by the unnamed president in Swordhunt)?

Articles of the Federation say that Jaresh-Inyo used the "Ra-ghoratreii Room", which had heretofore been used as a conference room, as his office, because the official Presidential Office on the Fifteenth Floor of the Palais was "too large".

His predecessor, President Amitra, had also used the Ra-ghoratreii Room as her office.

 

[Sci]

^ I cross-posted just such a suggestion.

Do any details of the novels (most likely of Articles of the Federation) conflict with the Trocadero having been used as a substitute by Jaresh Inyo and Ra-ghoratreii (and, presumably, by the unnamed president in Swordhunt)?

There's no particular detail in the novels that contradicts the idea of the Trocadero as being Blair House to the Palais's White House. Though Swordhunt rather specifically establishes that the President's office is not in the Palais, which is just incompatible with what Articles establishes; the only way to reconcile the two is to ignore Swordhunt's description of the Presidential office building and mentally insert something saying it's an alternate site.

I prefer the Trocadero as the primary location, though, for two reasons: The Place de la Concorde would still be fully open-air, and the primary office would be the one shown on screen. It's somewhat strange to contend that the main office has always been elsewhere.

Personally, I like the idea of the Palais de la Concorde as this new structure that symbolically represents the entire Federation, housing the primary nexus of the Federation government -- Council and President. It reminds me of how the U.S. President still maintains a ceremonial office in the United States Capitol, or how the Governor of the State of Ohio still has an office in the Ohio Statehouse.

 

[Csalem]

Hey, it's just the law of conspicuous landmarks: No matter where you are in Paris/New York/Washington, DC/Egypt, the Eiffel Tower/the Empire State Building/the Washington Monument/the Pyramids will be visible out your window. It's a law of cinematic physics. TV Tropes even calls it the Eiffel Tower Effect.

I think the worse use of this was in The Mummy Returns where there was a high shot of London and about every London landmark could be seen in the one shot!

 

[Deranged Nasat]

Maybe the Eiffel Tower was fitted with robotic legs at some point, part of a classified project during, let's say, the Romulan War. Now it wanders around Paris as it pleases, often peering in through windows and annoying government officials. That's the most amusing solution, and thus the one I prefer in my present state of mind.

 

[Cicero]

. . . So you just can't read too much into the geography of landmark depictions in film and TV. Putting the Eiffel Tower in the window is a convenient visual shorthand to let the audience know they're watching a scene set in Paris. Geographical exactitude takes a back seat to that.

Somewhat unusually, though, the President's office window view actually does depict a fairly geographically exact location, and depicts it consistently despite the passage of several years of real-world time. (I will concede that the view is slightly different between its appearances in that the matte painting was placed slightly farther away in one instance than in the other.) We see not a general representation of Paris, but a representation of a specific, real location within the city.

Despite the presence of the Eiffel Tower in the view, I don't think it's fair or appropriate to use the Eiffel Tower Effect trope to discredit it.

Personally, I like the idea of the Palais de la Concorde as this new structure that symbolically represents the entire Federation, housing the primary nexus of the Federation government -- Council and President. It reminds me of how the U.S. President still maintains a ceremonial office in the United States Capitol, or how the Governor of the State of Ohio still has an office in the Ohio Statehouse.

I wouldn't be surprised if the location was chosen (in reality) in part because of its historical significance. Much as Starfleet Headquarters seems to have been placed in San Francisco because the United Nations Charter was signed there in 1945, the Palais de Chaillot was the the site at which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948; it later served as the first headquarters of NATO.

The site is also quite beautiful, which I'm sure played a part. There are few good places to locate a hypothetical major office in Paris that afford a good view of the Eiffel Tower, but this is one. It is also currently occupied primarily by museums, the displacement of which wouldn't have the unfortunate effect that covering the Place de la Concorde would - the new complex could be retrofitted to an existing location without much loss to the general public.

I do appreciate your suggestion that a location and building specific to the Federation may have been chosen and constructed, but I continue to dislike the idea that the offices we saw on screen should happen to have not been the true offices of the President of the United Federation of Planets - even if only his offices on Earth. (There is probably room for both the president and the Council within the Palais de Chaillot, like in the fictional Palais de la Concorde, but In the Flesh and In A Mirror Darkly both place the Council in San Francisco, so the point is partly moot - only the possibility that the Council may meet in both cities buttresses claims of Parisian chambers.)

 

[Christopher]

The first season of Fringe was produced in New York City, so the view outside from Massive Dynamic was a real Manhattan vista dominated by the Empire State Building:

http://www.screencaps.org/SciFi/Fringe/Season1/Episode2/FringeS1E2-412.jpg

I'm not quite sure where it's taken from; the relative orientations of the ESB and One Penn Plaza (the big black building on the left) seem wrong to me, as if one of them has been rotated 90 degrees. Maybe they tweaked the real skyline for some reason. But it seems to be from south of the ESB. Then in the second season, production moved to Vancouver, and Nina Sharp got a new office with smaller windows -- but windows that happen to look out on the Chrysler Building from someplace far closer to it than the first-season location.

 

[Cicero]

It looks like that office is somewhere slightly south of Clement Clarke Moore Park, between 9th Avenue and 10th Avenue.

In the case of the Star Trek matte painting, I would surmise that someone may have realized that the apparent location of the President's office in The Undiscovered Country would place it somewhat closer to the Eiffel Tower than was realistic (see this picture - Beware: Nazis - taken on the terrace of the Palais de Chaillot), and moved the matte painting away from the camera.

 

[Stevil2001]

Obviously, after the Eiffel Tower's destruction in 2266 (see "The Voodoo Planet" [TOS]), it was rebuilt in a slightly different location to the original.

 

[Cicero]

The Voodoo Planet?

 

[TerraUnam]

The Place de la Concorde has a good reason in reality to house the Federation Council and President: it marks the eastern end of the Axe Historique, the Historic Axis. It is French tradition to place monumental buildings on this axis. There is the Place de la Concorde with the Obelisk near the Seine, the Champs Elysees, the Arc de Triomphe, the French Parliament, and the Defense Arche across the Seine again (the river curves).

Putting the Federation's government along Paris' established monumental axis is just obvious if you're a Parisian. The name (Harmony Square) also helps.

 

[Christopher]

It looks like that office is somewhere slightly south of Clement Clarke Moore Park, between 9th Avenue and 10th Avenue.

Oh, I guess I was mistaken about the orientation of the big black building. I should really get Google Earth. Anyway, that's clearly nowhere near the Chrysler Building.

As for the Eiffel Tower in ST, it could be that the president's office has a holographic window that can be set to display whatever view is desired. It could've been Mt. Rushmore or Victoria Falls out that window some other day.

 

[JD]

God... I was watching something the other day where some did something like that, but I cannot for the life of me remember what it was.

 

[Sci]

I wouldn't be surprised if the location was chosen (in reality) in part because of its historical significance. Much as Starfleet Headquarters seems to have been placed in San Francisco because the United Nations Charter was signed there in 1945, the Palais de Chaillot was the the site at which the United Nations General Assembly adopted the Universal Declaration of Human Rights in 1948; it later served as the first headquarters of NATO.

I sincerely doubt that they made the matte painting with any specific locale in Paris in mind for the Presidential edifice. You've probably just struck upon a nice coincidence that it could be interpreted as the Palais de Chaillot.

I do appreciate your suggestion that a location and building specific to the Federation may have been chosen and constructed, but I continue to dislike the idea that the offices we saw on screen should happen to have not been the true offices of the President of the United Federation of Planets - even if only his offices on Earth. (There is probably room for both the president and the Council within the Palais de Chaillot, like in the fictional Palais de la Concorde, but In the Flesh and In A Mirror Darkly both place the Council in San Francisco, so the point is partly moot - only the possibility that the Council may meet in both cities buttresses claims of Parisian chambers.)

When did "In A Mirror, Darkly" establish anything about the Federation Council's offices?

And the moot point is speculation that the President and Council are housed anywhere other than the Palais de la Concorde; in the present novels, that's where they sit.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

in the holodeck scenes in "We'll Always Have Paris," the Eiffel Tower is visible in shots looking in two opposite directions.

Plus it has that funky looking tunnel running directly under the tower, which we never see again.

 

[Timo]

It's pretty obvious that the tube is the transportation system by which the tower moves from the Mars field to the bank opposite Place de la Concorde and back...

That matte from "We'll Always Have Paris" makes the tower look positively tiny, really. It looks about half the real size there, even when taking in account that the surroundings have been redone (the bridge and the river banks don't resemble their real-world counterparts much).

OTOH, if we assume the tower was actually doubled in size after the last time it was destroyed, then the views from the various Presidents' offices would be more or less correct if said offices were at the Place de la Concorde. The tower just wouldn't be on the immediate opposite bank, but a dozen blocks farther away!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Christopher]

When did "In A Mirror, Darkly" establish anything about the Federation Council's offices?

Maybe he's talking about "Demons"/'Terra Prime," but that just showed that the council of the Coalition of Planets met in San Francisco. That doesn't mean the Federation Council would be obligated to meet there. Heck, even if the UFP started out with its council in SF, countries move their capitals all the time. The US capital was originally New York City before they built Washington, DC for it.