[TheZookie007]

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

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.

[Palomine]

 Well, I'm a long-lapsed trekkie (my primary interest in watching reruns I've already seen now has more to do with Jolene Blalock's rump than with series plot points or story arcs ) and I find this somewhat amusing. The original author of course has a point... the conceit of a relatively exposed bridge DOES owe more to historic naval architecture than to practical reasoning. However (and forgive my factual fuzziness... I DID say I was a LAPSED trekkie) I do seem to recall that the "Enterprise" Enterprise (which predates the original TOS ship in story chronology) DOES have something along the lines of a 'battle bridge' ...a room deep inside the vessel which served as a contemporary CIC. Since "Enterprise" chronologically pre-dates "Star Trek" I can only presume that the TOS Enterprise had some analagous room... something along the lines of a 'battle bridge/CIC' too, though I'll be damned if I can remember an episode of the original series where the crew runs the ship from someplace other than the bridge. I almost seem to remember from some Star Trek book I read 30 years ago that there IS such a room in the primary/lower hull of the TOS Enterprise, though again I don't recall if it ever was mentioned in an episode.

Someone far trekkier than I can surely elaborate. I'm off for some ped pa lo (thai duck soup with cloves) in an effort to shake this cold I've got.  

[CyberPlainsDrifter]

I've remained a Trekkie thru all the variations.

I do remember that there was a CIC of sorts on the Enterprise in TNG as well.

Placement of the bridge seems to me to be less of an issue of structure & more of an issue of being the best place to have the strongest shields.  After all, without shields, the entire ship was vunerable.  If your shields are down, it doesn't matter where the bridge is located.

I also believe the placement of the bridge had something to do with the keeping it a long way from engineering and yet make it centrally located in the saucer section as well.  I've never thought the bridge was any more vunerable than other section.  I can see why it would be placed on top of the saucer section to avoid space debris while traveling at warp speed (just in case the deflector failed) so the forward sections of the saucer would catch the most damage.  This is why the least tactically necessary of the ship, 10 Forward, was placed where it was on the NCC-1701A, B, C & D.

One last thing, it seemed like that somewhere in one of the episodes, the viewscreen could actually be slid aside to reveal a viewport, but I don't remember exactly which series or episode that was.  I could be wrong on this one.

[titmouse]

Its never said that the bridge is at the top of the ship.
Look at the technical manuals for the various ships.

[midsize]

TV has only recently spent any effort on true realism in most genres. I mean, Hill Street Blues seemed pretty cool in 1980, but looking at it now, it looks sadly dated and hoky compared to Homicide. The new Battlestar Galactica is about the only 'realistic' space-war show I can remember, and that's mostly because it pretty much ignores the fact that it's in space and goes for the 'young aircraft carrier crews in love' look.

Lots of things about Star Trek were stupid and unrealistic, and griping about them has been cliche for 30 years. Why did the 4 most senior officers always beam down to unknown planets to be killed or captured by aliens? Why did female crewmembers of a combat warship on patrol wear micro-miniskirts and go-go boots? Why did Sulu struggle to keep his fingers pressed on the right buttons of his control panel while flinging the ship through high-G maneuvers in a zero-gravity vacuum? Why did the CO of a military vessel have to explain his orders to his subordinates, and only get obeyed when he said 'that's an order, mister!'?

Answers: because it's good TV. Having the bridge where it was just makes intuitive sense to TV viewers. It might be stupid from a reality point of view, but that's why they call it 'fiction'.

[titmouse]

Enterprise nc1701 A had an auxilary bridge (its called engieering) you could also run the ship from the tactical command station.
B had a comand deck and little else. and was built almost excluseively for war.
C (never shown in the series or movies) had a full CIC in the neck of the ship)
D had the battle bridge also in the neck of the ship. (and the D class enterprise could also be run from engeering when nessasary) ALSO the D class ship was more for exploration, almost like scientific cruise ship. as they were generaly at peace with most of the known galaxy. (borg and romulans beign the exceptions as well as various random enemies of the week)
E has a very similar setup to the D class (upgrades in sheilds quantum torpedos ect and was designed to correct several flaws in the D design)

[DruulEmpire]

Actually, the entire Enterprise was stupid -- and I say that not only as a Trekker (NOT a Trekkie) but as an admirer of the sheer artwork of it.  That long dull sequence in Star Trek: Tho Motion Sickness, where the old crew gazed lovingly at the ship for whole minutes before finally boarding, was not lost on me.  You begin to appreciate why "she" is the only "lady" who Kirk was ever true to.

I've seen accounts of the genesis of Trek.  In its earliest concept, with a Captain Robert April (who actually appears in one of the animated episodes), the engines hung low, not up high, and the fore module was a sphere, not a disk.  I think the whole rationale was to embrace a very deliberate effort to create Horatio Hornblower in Space, and to have a ship vaguely suggesting the elegant beauty of a many-sailed battleship.  Once the design was settled on, all "engineering" was basically retrofitted to try to account for the design.  It was built from the picture first with the details filled in later, folks -- shocking but true.

Consider the simple problem of gravity.  Babylon 5 is the only show I've ever seen that actually bothered to have rotating habitats and ships.  In the Trek cosmos you have to believe in some sort of technomagical synthetic gravity seeping up out of the floor.  Compared to basic problems like THAT -- or how and why the engine modules never shear right off -- the exact location of the bridge is relatively minor.  Plus, I like the rationales I've been reading here.

Very few shows or movies ever build from the science up.  We're indebted to Trek, though, because that beautiful ship endures in the pop culture, and the very concept of "starship" becomes something that can be ddiscussed.  It is that triumph, in the social engineering far more than in any "Treknobabble" engineering, that I really respect, and that ain't hay.

[Palomine]

 To be sure... Star Trek is television/film fiction and no one ought to expect too much in terms of realism (unless you like to be disappointed). I'm sure that I remember in TOS (from the show itself, and from books) that the bridge was located atop the saucer section, which as has been pointed out, seems a silly place to put it for a variety of reasons.

However, I take exception with the not-realistic protests re: miniskirted female crewmembers. They AND all the green female aliens wearing push up bras ARE justifiable in every respect: after all, space exploration ought to be FUN!

PS: I used to know the diff btwn trekkie and trekker (and I recall trekker was the preferred label as it tried to avoid some of the derogatory mass-media associations of 'trekkie') but I'm too tired to really care all that much. Whatever I was (trekkie or trekker or whatever) I was. A fan at the time... still not too jaded to catch a rerun once in a while and enjoy it.  

[The Warlock]

Druul, I reccomend the director's cut of The Motion Picture.  

TOS's bridge was definately in the bubble on top of the saucer: in the pilot episode (with Captain Pike) the camera flies from space into the bridge, and it's in the bubble.

On the nacelles, the excuses I've read are always the warp bubble is generated from the nacelles and the forces near them, where the seperate bubbles from each nacelle intersect, is too great for any matter.  So the nacelles have to be a good bit away from the ship.  I think the best Starfleet ship design is the Reliant, myself.

The Warlock

[Tesseract]

[geek] Auxillary Control in the episode 'The Doomsday Machine', aboard the USS Constellation which is the same class as the USS Enterprise. Kirk piloted the ship from there.
I seem to remember something about a secondary bridge, but I don't want to look for the blueprints, they're buried too deep in my archives. [/geek]

[rtpoe]

(dredges Official Enterprise Blueprints up from memory)

According to the blueprints, which may or may not be canonical, on Deck 8 (the largest deck of the saucer section - the one in the middle), an Auxiliary Bridge was at the exact center of the saucer section. Surrounding it were the computer banks, and Sickbay was just outside that.

[3deroticer]

there is another bridge beside the bubble on the saucer and in the movie with the cast of TNG, they seperated the saucer and main hull. the bridge is on top in the middle because if they were attack the sheild were strongest when they could deflect the blow rather than head on.

I have often wonder what would happen if we had a working transporter and use it for travel? I have often think that many of the trekkie technology would have been use for evil. Transporter on mass scale would offer large corporation to import cheap labor from third world country.
The stunn phaser would be use against civil protester.
Medical sprayer could be use to transfer toxic chemical to an unknown victim by way of just passing by a person that they wish to target.

Travelers to outer space would be more like hippies who want to get away from gov't and not like civilize orderly crew that Star Trek has. Outer space travel with limited people that you see every frickin day has got to be sort of a anti-social types that tries to keep to themselves as much as possible.

[Zorak]

With humanities current predilection for war we'd be using transporter technology to kill. Lock on that army and beam them into deep space. They wouldn't even need to be reformed just turned into energy and sent "away".

Death Penalty? Same thing, lock and beam.

[gOOber]

 

[3deroticer]

Breast Melding?

"your boob to my mind, my mind to your boob"

Awesome! Because I can do that! I cant do the mind melding, but I observantly have the skills to do boob melding!