Idiot sci-fi question: Why did the starship Enterprise have such a stupid bridge?

[SUBMAN1]

Another one to entertain!

-S

PS. Here is the background info:

There, I said it, the USS Enterprise (all of them) in Star Trek (all of them) had a stupid bridge. It was illogically designed, awkwardly placed, and was a complete backstep from modern thinking and plain old common sense. Here's why:


First, some ground rules: The starship Enterprise was a military vessel. Don't give me that Roddenberry-esque utopian hokum about Starfleet being an exploratory and diplomatic body. The crew had military ranks, the ship had weapons, and people got court-martialed. So, first question, why is the main control center of the ship–where all your high-ranking, high-value officers sit and work–placed on the top of the vessel where's it's easy to hit? Seriously, if Sulu ever misjudges the top of the doorjamb in spacedock, every major character gets scraped out of continuity like extra icing off a cupcake. Why Khan didn't aim for the bridge instead of engineering when he busted his sneak attack in Star Trek II I'll never know. One decent shot and it's just Scotty, Bones and some cadets versus the Nightmare from Fantasy Island, which lasts all of 5 seconds. Instead, he aims for engineering and yucks it up long enough to get pwned by some prefix-code shenanigans and later the cunning tactic of "moving in the z-axis." They just don't make genetically modified supervillains like they used to. I guess the short answer is that Starfleet can design a dumb bridge because all the bad guys are even dumber.


Second question: Why does the Enterprise have just a bridge? All modern naval vessels have this neat room called the Combat Information Center (CIC), where all important command decisions are made. So, even though many warships still have a conventional bridge up top where it can get blasted–a pragmatic necessity since, when all else fails, you'll need to look out an open window to see and steer–the high-ranking officers are nestled below decks behind lots of armor and with multiple methods of egress. If you get stuck on the bridge of the Enterprise–which happened in several episodes–you're effectively trapped, sealing the commanders off from their crew. And don't tell me there wasn't room for a CIC, the darn ship had an auxillary bridge (and a bowling alley), so they could have spared the space for a rational command center.


So, fearless readers and unapologetic Trekkies, let this here Trivia Geek in on the secret–or at least your crackpot theories–and explain why the starship(s) Enterprise had such a stupid bridge.

[Ducimus]

:rotfl:

[Iron Budokan]

Um, you'd better sit down for this one. Take a deep breath. Get ready to have your entire worldview shattered. Okay, here we go, it's gonna be a big one:

Star Trek isn't real.

Oh, and Elvis is dead. (I threw that last in for extra credit.)

[XabbaRus]

Hey they had a Battle Bridge but it was used just once or twice. I remember the bit in ST:TNG movie where the saucer and body split Riker went to the Battle Bridge..

Agree SUBMAN they really should look at how a real warship works and then design something....

The best starship is USS Defiant.

[SUBMAN1]

Yep!

[DeepIron]

Well, considering it was a stage set, the bridge was laid out for the convenience of camera angles and lighting....

[joea]

Originally Posted by XabbaRus

Hey they had a Battle Bridge but it was used just once or twice. I remember the bit in ST:TNG movie where the saucer and body split Riker went to the Battle Bridge..

Agree SUBMAN they really should look at how a real warship works and then design something....

The best starship is USS Defiant.

The Battle Bridge was also exposed cause the Enterprise-D would spilt into two sections, saucer and the ship drive section.

Yea you're right though Subman.

[STEED]

Best end of year thread for 2007. :rotfl: :rotfl: :rotfl:

[mapuc]

Originally Posted by Iron Budokan

Um, you'd better sit down for this one. Take a deep breath. Get ready to have your entire worldview shattered. Okay, here we go, it's gonna be a big one:

Star Trek isn't real.

Oh, and Elvis is dead. (I threw that last in for extra credit.)

WHAT!! Is Star Trek not real?? And I how thought so...But Santa is real I know for sure.

Markus

[SUBMAN1]

Originally Posted by mapuc

WHAT!! Is Star Trek not real?? And I how thought so...But Santa is real I know for sure.

Markus

He just doesn't know, so don't worry about it. He is not able to peer into the future like the rest of us can. He is stuck in like, 2007 or something.

-S

[AntEater]

Strangely enough, I was asking myself the same question one day or the other.
Actually the most realistic space opera CICs were those of the Earth Destroyers in Babylon 5, which were pretty much like a normal CIC on a warship.
Unfortunately they went back to the star treck kind of bridge for the white stars.
The Excalibur in Crusade had a mixture between the two, with a pretty circular bridge, but still with two dumb ahead looking pilots.
I suppose the Jeffries bridge design (a guy named Jeffries did the set for Star Trek, so they named the tubes after him) was more of a plot device.
It was build like a movie theater in order to have the whole command staff in one location and zoom in on everybody as needed. It saved set space and created a stage like athmosphere.
The whole "everybody staring ahead at the main screen" thing is idiotic as well, as there's mostly nothing to see except space.
I suppose the analogy Jeffries took was the quarterdeck of a sail warship "tack to starboard, Mr. Hornblower!" and so on.
Basically SciFi bridges oscillate between a plane cockpit and the Quarterdeck of HMS whatever.
Modern CICs are too unkown for the causal viewer.

Actually one of the most useful bridge designs was with the failed B5 pilot "Legends of the Rangers", where the ship had a circular CIC with a holographic display at the center and some kind of VR environment for the pilot and weapons officer.
The pilot sucked anyway....

[Blacklight]

Hmmm... Well Star Trek ships have one thing that modern naval ships lack and that's SHIELDS. The Enterprise is surrounded by a large force field bubble (That can be weakened on various sides until it's broken through but let's not get into the logic of that). It's possible that placement of everything on the ship including the bridge could be simply due to the designers considering that the "Shields" would be enough proper armor for the ship. Considering the destructive force of the weapons we're dealing with in the Trek universe, once a ship's shields are gone, it's pretty much going to be blown to smitherines anyway so that may make physical placement of control centers and engines a moot point.
I DO know that the engines are designed to be ejectable in case of a "core breach".

As for fireing arcs, The Enterprise has several but is never really shown using them. It CAN fire at targets directly "Above" or "Below" it. You can actually see this happen in various episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Voyager, and Deep Space Nine (Original Trek just recycled footage of phasers and photon torpedoes fireing and sometimes they would mess up and when Kirk would say "Fire phasers", they would show the photon torpedo footage or vise versa would happen ).

My sister is a Treker. I'll have to call her up and get more accurate info from her.

[Dowly]

Stupid show, stupid bridge. :rotfl:

[MothBalls]

Originally Posted by Iron Budokan

Oh, and Elvis is dead.

No, I'm not dead.

[Onkel Neal]

Originally Posted by SUBMAN1

Another one to entertain!

-S

PS. Here is the background info:

There, I said it, the USS Enterprise (all of them) in Star Trek (all of them) had a stupid bridge. It was illogically designed, awkwardly placed, and was a complete backstep from modern thinking and plain old common sense. Here's why:


First, some ground rules: The starship Enterprise was a military vessel. Don't give me that Roddenberry-esque utopian hokum about Starfleet being an exploratory and diplomatic body. The crew had military ranks, the ship had weapons, and people got court-martialed. So, first question, why is the main control center of the ship–where all your high-ranking, high-value officers sit and work–placed on the top of the vessel where's it's easy to hit? Seriously, if Sulu ever misjudges the top of the doorjamb in spacedock, every major character gets scraped out of continuity like extra icing off a cupcake. ...

Ok, whew, I'll have to come back when I calm down and refute this crazy premise that the Enterprise had a dumb bridge. But first, let me say, there is NO SUCH THING as extra icing on a cupcake. Huh? Got it? Ok, rethink the whole arguement, cuz that one analogy shot it down.



Neal