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My problem with the discovery bridge that how far everyone is sitting from the others. Like you need to shout through a whole stadium just to inform someone or report to the captain.
Battle ships in the 20th century had armored Bridges yet if they took a direct hit from a main battery gun people would die . There is only so much you can do to protect crew .
Perhaps the most significant safety change Starfleet could make is stop loading explosives into instrument panels and route all the steam ducts away from the bridge...
The company that manufactures explodium has a very powerful lobbying department and all kinds of dirt on the people in Starfleet’s bid review board. Their lock on contracts for supplying instrument panels is air tight.
It actually makes sense to let the panels blow up, because if each panel is equipped with fuses or other breakers of some kind, it would take some time to reset the breakers and even more time to replace the fuses, leaving consoles completely inoperable.
I love how the intrepid class has separated ops and the conn. Think about it. Having Harry and Tom on opposite sides of the bridge means they have to speak loudly to each other. This gives Tuvok an opportunity to scold them as often as possible.
It also means that if something goes wrong with one of those stations, it will be far enough away from the other station that the functions can be re-routed to the other officer.
@@jeffisgay4eva I think you mean how the consoles in every Star Trek show and movie seem to be made of explosives.... It's never some random bits of overhead guff or things hidden in the flooring that pop off. It's always the consoles. It's as if sometime in the 2200s they forgot about the concepts of fuses and circuit breakers, and started building circuit boards out of TNT.
@@Dee_Just_Dee fuses blow, curcits arnt everything, power is thunder, thunder is deadly, and lobbing warheads at your shields cant be good on the deflectors, or anf direct hits to the hull.
Principles of SF Design: 1: Shape 2: Feel 3: How the officers felt 4: Somewhere for a counsellor....on a bridge.... 5: Comfort 6: Style 7: Colour matching 8: Practicality 9: Safety
I blame the Bluegills. The space parasites obviously needed to be able to disable any ship that stood against them. Designing the consoles to explode with only the slightest power surge would do just that. Only, after they were eliminated, nobody realized what had happened, and Starfleet continued producing the Bombsoles, as they had been conditioned to think bridge explosions were normal.
A tradition dating back at least to "voyage to the bottom of the sea". The most efficient way to wire anything is to route the main bus through the control console.
Denise Crosby left TNG in part because she was sick of standing there all the time. It was kinda ridiculous that every other bridge position had a chair, but whoever manned tactical was expected to stand their entire shift.
They could have easily lampshaded that with a scene where Yar (or Worf) was reprimanded for stealing a bar stool out of Ten Forward. "For ergonomic reasons".
@@micklenier6152 They move every minute or two (at least in OZ). I get your point, its bad how Maccas workers are treated but Denise had to stand there for way longer than you see her standing in the one spot. At leaast 'Riker' got to use his Sit down move.
I've always been of the opinion that the exploding panels are a story telling device as much as plot elements. Writers, directors, studio execs, even the audience don't trust views to internalize danger in a space battle. When being attacked, without the exploding panels, the characters "feel less threatened."
In defense of the Galaxy Class I don’t think the third chair is for a counselor specifically. I think Deanna’s role when she’s on the bridge would be that of a first contact specialist/diplomatic officer, it’s just that her specific skill set let her occupy both that role and that of ship’s counselor much that same way Data was both the second officer and the science officer.
Let's not ignore 24th century aesthetics... It would still be unbalanced with only 2 chairs, and if it had two chairs, it would imply equality between CO and XO.
Having a jump seat for any ambassadors, VIPs, visiting Admirals, mission specialists, or civilians aboard ship the Captain needs to talk to without leading the bridge isn't a bad idea. The whole bit in the episode "Disaster" (5x05) with the kids who won the science fair getting to visit the bridge as a special reward comes to mind. Letting one or more of the kids sit beside the captain without displacing the first officer would be an extra bonus. Galaxy-Class ships were also meant to be flying Federation embassies. An extra chair even gives the Captain additional degrees of diplomatic power - you already need the Captain's permission to board the ship or come to the bridge. Adding extra permissions needed to sit down next to the Captain (and on which side of the Captain) all have different potential social and political meanings the Captain can exploit. Come to think of it, that would make a neat episode of Lower Decks. Have some alien who reads way too much into seating arrangements come aboard whose species' definition of "right hand man" means something altogether different from humans.
To be fair, the Galaxy-class was built during the height of the Federation's "Golden Age", where they had had very few to almost no direct antagonists: the Klingons were allies, the Romulans had withdrawn yet again, the Cardassians were a minor power that did not pose much of a threat, the Ferengi hadn't made contact, and no one had even heard of the Borg. The Galaxy was built to be more like a testament to the heights that the Federation could achieve, rather than to be a utilitarian and efficient design. It was meant to showcase the prosperity and strength of the Federation's ideals to potential members and new races they contacted. Once all of these enemies started popping up again in a very short time, that's when they saw the flaws in that particular design and began taking steps to rectify it on newer classes as they were designed. The Sovereign-class shows that in it's design moving away from the expansive Galaxy layout and adopting more cubicle-style stations and streamlining the other stations along the outer rim. I'll also say that even with the Galaxy-class main bridge design, I don't think Starfleet ever 'forgot' how to make an efficient bridge, as the Battle Bridge in the stardrive section of a Galaxy ship was very much like that (and imo should have been the main bridge despite modularity).
So the height of the federation could not get a chair for every console? Frankly, I think the top of the line vessel should at least have the same occupational safety and wellness features of a German grocery store.
@@VelvetCondoms No, it costs too many Energon Crystals to Replicate "Chair" so only the Main Cast get "Chair" and sometimes Background Characters can sit if one of the Main Cast is off doing something else so that there wont be any empty "Chair" in the shot. Worf is not "Main Casty" enough to get "Chair" until he became Captain of the Defiant. O.o
@@grayeaglej - Worf's is literally the only station without a chair. Even the aft wall stations have pop-out stools for users to sit on. Anti-Klingon bigotry is what it was.
@@VelvetCondoms A lot of companies these days do away with chairs and force their employees to stand because they think it makes them more productive and less likely to slack off. Maybe they took inspiration from that I dunno :P
The original series Enterprise bridge was sufficiently innovative and well designed that the US Navy, which was carrying out a major bridge redesign program at the time, paid a visit to the studio to examine it. The individual workstations were surprisingly well designed. US Navy ship bridges didn't have chairs at the workstations at the time. The bridge set built each workstation around the chair. All of a station's viewscreens (whether they actually showed anything or not) were set to be normal to the line of sight of the seated operator. All controls were positioned to be within arm's reach of the seated operator. About the only thing missing from the original series bridge design were restraints so officers wouldn't get flung from their chairs when things went badly. (This was corrected in some of the movie designs, although the restraint design, which involved the arms of the chairs being rolled over the thighs of the seated operator, is somewhat questionable and likely of limited use as it would not have helped control the upper body at all.) Of course, the way it was actually built had a serious flaw that would have been very tedious to correct: There were many instances where it was plainly obvious (and this is a problem that persists into the movies) that there are no labels of any kind on any of the control consoles in the original series, and it appears nobody ever thought this was an issue because there was no attempt to disguise this or not have close enough shots of the consoles to reveal this flaw.
The ergonomics was similar to land based control centres of the time like NORAD SAGE and Mission Control. The thing about the US Navy at the time is that it didn’t actually have the sensors and processing power to make use of this layout. You’d have a CIC with a central chart desk (kind of like the pool table in TNG engineering) and a position plot indicator (like the transparent vertical panels in the rebel bases in Star Wars) that were manually updated.. and then a console for surface radar, air search radar, sonar, and some of the missile systems and gun fire control. It wasn’t until the AEGIS cruisers came in that a layout similar to Star Trek bridges made sense (but there are far more station and they can’t be arranged in a circle for various reasons.
I've spent my life in plant control rooms. Some older plants have control boards with switches, lights, and dials. Everything was hardwired. Now, Ops is full of PC screens. Generally, dual or quad monitors for each operator. Everything is software based so that any operator can access anything he's allowed to. All of the labels are simply text on the screen. Particular stations are more or less a seating assignment. The place where I always thought StarTrek missed was the touch screens. We can put touchscreens in, but the reality is that a mouse and keyboard are more convenient.
@@stevenmiles3012 Touchscreens have been around for 40 years now, and for most applications where you don't hold the screen in your hands (like a smartphone or tablet) or only use it for a few minutes at most, they don't work very well. Humans just aren't well adapted to holding out a hand and making small, precise finger movements for long periods. The traditional term for this in IT is "Gorilla Arm."
I always assumed the third command chair on the Galaxy class was sort of "mission specialist" and Troi was (in addition to being counselor) the first contact specialist.
@@purebloodedgriffinYeah the mind reader and empathic abilities are what she is there for. Captain this person is being (deceitful, truthful, scared, confident, planning on attacking us).
@@cryo1195 she was ranking up points for her evaluation as a bridge officer. Troi remarks that as she takes her own exam, inspired by Beverly's career.
The fact that Starfleet engineering had completely abandoned electricity as a power system, and the entirety of the ship's systems are fed power by a network of highly-pressurized tubes filled with electrified-plasma. I would very much like to hear what the in-universe justification of that design choice.
@@toasteroven6761 careful where you throw those rocks. One might ding off the side of the shuttle bay and cause the XO's console to explode in his face and decapitate him. XD
Most of the criticism of ship deck design also applie to biological Bodies The design requires highly pressured tunes of plasma [ blood ] that rupture so easily
@@Kaiju3301 I refuse to believe that a society literally capable of pulling copper out of thin air via a replicator would find it more expensive than the plasma conduits, control panels, and cleaning supplies they have to keep requisitioning to get all the blood and guts off the areas from where Ensign Ricky got decapitated by his work station....
*the problem is that these control panels by design are all comprised of explodium which is vital to the near instantaneous transfer of data from one system to another as the ship travels at warp speeds and hostile regions of the galaxy...sure they could use other materials as so many new elements have been discovered/ created by this time but these are still very expensive and hard to obtain even if the reliance on actual physical monetary systems are considered outmoded and impractical the worlds where these elements are found still value physical forms of currency (such as the Ferengi (duh)...explodium solves this problem in that it is relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain or replicate despite the inherent danger this element/substance has for going all explodey during critical moments at precisely the most inopportune time for such panels to do so...so Starfleet is kinda stuck with it at least for the moment...it should be noted that the Borg seem to avoid this substance in the fabrication of their ships...not that that's any real comfort to the Federation or StarFleet or reason for them to actively pursue contact for an exchange of technologies...last time did not go so well*
Well, there is a throw-away line about how starfleet engineers can turn rocks into replicators, so maybe rocks are part of the construction of starfleet tech?
I always thought it was interesting how... the computers even function when going faster than light. Like... The energy/info transmitted down wires only moves at light speed... If the ships moves faster than that how do you ever send a signal to the back or forward of the ship? Or am i over thinking this?
I was glad to see that the Defiant bridge design added an important feature to the Tactical station--A CHAIR! The last thing you would want in a combat situation is your Tactical officer sailing across the bridge if the ship took a serious hit that the inertial dampeners couldn't compensate for--especially if the IDS went down (could get very messy!).
Well the 1701 Refir had a chair for weapons control then some higher up 70 years later said. No they will get lazy sitting down all the time. We will make them stand now. As all upper management just makes the worst decisions sometimes. Lol
Yeah but seat belts weren't invented in the Star Trek universe and in the original series those tears weren't even bolt it down they just fall out of the chair and I can share go flying with them
The lack of seating on the Galaxy-class Enterprise's Tactical Station, and by extension the bridge layout in general, actually makes sense when you're considering the Galaxy-class was designed and built during a golden era of peace for the Federation. Tactical isn't required to be manned directly unless there actually is a combat crisis, meaning the Security Officer wouldn't be required to stand at that station normally, and would typically be found at the Security Control station during normal times (The station Worf is usually shown getting up from to move to the Tactical Station). Given the relative non-threat of the Cardassians, the generally secure ceasefire with the Romulans, peace with the Klingons, and the Ferengi and Borg not having yet been discovered, the designers of the Galaxy-Class presumed any tactical threat would be rather swiftly dealt with with minimal damage (since the Cardassians were the frankly laughable 'main enemy' when the Galaxy was designed), with the Security Officer not needing to spend more than an hour tops at Tactical before resuming his normal station at Security Control. Thus the bridge was designed more with the expectation of NOT needing too much in the way of tactical oversight, and the commanding officer of the vessel mostly focusing on what is directly in front of him, typically communications with whoever they are speaking to to foster more diplomatic functions (hence the Counselor's presence on the bridge) and visual assessment of any situation they come across. The Galaxy-Class is not a warship by design intent, more an armed exploratory and diplomatic vessel that was generally not expected to need to do a lot of fighting. Which was a mistake on Starfleet's part based in hubris, and one they started rectifying in later ship designs.
This reminds me of the post WW2 fighters designed without guns. All engagements would be accomplished by guided missile if not with low-yield nukes. Vietnam disrupted this design philosophy.
“Counselor for some reason” The “D”s primary mission was “to seek out new life”, and with the federation having the universal translator, comms was no longer the right name for what Ohura job morphed into in the years following. Though the show basically had Troy living on the bridge when, in my opinion, she should have been called to the bridge from her office as the ship's counselor, it did make sense that the chair next to the captain be the jump seat, used by any guests on the bridge, including the ship's counselor whenever there were conversations between Starfleet and [others]. My one disagreement, otherwise, great video!
I like the idea of windows, for safety outside of combat. Remember, warp is the speed of light. Warp 2 is the speed of light squared, warp 3 is cubed, and so forth: Windows are useless with combat involving ships that warp as part of the tactics. We never get an official explanation, but i assume tacheon particles or other similar active scanning devices are used to actually see.
17:16 in the defence of the councilor's chair, if you were a captain and had an empath onboard, would you stick them down in engineering or get them a chair? I think the designation of "Councilor" is a PR move as " Chief Psychic Witch" might make people a lil uncomfortable lol
The argument for the transparent metal actually makes a lot of sense to me. It makes me think of the scene in the Avengers movie where when the helicarrier is in danger of falling. When that SHIELD agent mentions the navigational systems are down, Fury asks if the sun is coming up and then tells the agent to put the sun on the left of the helicarrier. Being able to see outside would make a lot of sense for that
Also sad we couldn't get the clip here where Data was recalled by Soong and Riker commented they had to look out a window to know they were out of warp.
Just keep in mind that you need to turn of the light inside to see anything through thouse windows. As long as sensors are active and said windows double as screens I give their ability to provide an wiev of the outside a pass thou. If power is cut, do not activate strong emergency light on the bridge or you will not be able to see anything.
@@LoreReloaded I was thinking of worf's computer trick during that battle exercise with a constellation class ship. He tricked the view screen into showing a romulan ship.
Okay, I must completely disagree on the "necessity" of windows on a bridge of a starship. Naval vessel, absolutely... but what you fail to address here is the simple fact that distances in space are so enormous that all anyone would ever see through windows is the background environment anyway. Beyond a paltry few thousand kilometers, even a kilometer-long starship blazing away with all its terrible world-ending Trek weapons would look like nothing more than a single pixel on the screen you're reading this on. If it wasn't moving rapidly, you could not tell the difference between the speck of light that's a starship and the specks that are stars or planets. Eyes are woefully outclassed by these sorts of distances... so a ship with sensors down would be blind whether it had windows or not. To be close enough to actually *see* another starship with unaugmented eyeballs, that other ship must be so close that there is a real danger of collision. And if collision is imminent, the speeds at which such vast distances can be covered would literally make this a blink-and-miss-it window to even register what was happening, let alone have time to actually react. Starship windows exist purely for the scenic views of things like planets and nebula, to be enjoyed from your cabin or public lounges. Holding up a tricorder to the hull would literally tell you far more information about things outside the ship than looking out a window, squinting in vain to find the microscopic flicker of light that is a starbase orbiting a nearby moon. Shuttles, as aerospace craft that frequently use visual flight rules, are a completely different story when in atmospheric flight. Out in deep space though, the windows on shuttles are just as redundant.
True, True. For example, Star Trek Nemesis, when the Scimitar shot out the bridge view screen and just ONE person is blown into space?! That’s science fiction fantasy! But is better than the bridge placement on the USS Vengeance! See thru saucer section, external torpedo launcher?! And I thought the Star Destroyers in the last movie was a lazy design!
Hard agree. Now, having observational domes and telescopes and sextants & charts for emergencies is something that would work better than a bridge window. Bridge window = useless. Observational blisters at specific points = useful in emergencies & nice place to relax. Like Captain Georgiou and her telescope on the Shenzhou. Though you'd need very powerful telescopes for anything further than a few light hours away, and to remember that what you're seeing happened hours earlier.
Even further, with the technology and power they have, they could have easily gotten rid of windows and installed holographic displays or something similar to simulate the view outside through camera's on the hull. These transparent windows would also be a huge disadvantage, as many weapons in the star trek universe are laser based, which means that one single glance across the mess hall could result in anyone inside getting vaporized, along with going straight through into other compartments. It'd probably even be possible to find a position on the ship where one can shoot through a window at such an angle that they can directly hit the warp core after burning through a few decks.
It's best to just ignore the whole bridge layout thing. They make no sense and everybody knows that. You don't have to rationalize everything in Star Trek. It's made for entertainment and the writers are not clever enough to fill every plot hole.
I wrote a book about the original series. I approve of this level of research. one correction: at 4:58, "irregardless" is not a word. Just say "regardless". All good wishes!
It can be argued that the Galaxy Class bridges weren't designed with a combat mentality, while the defiant class was. I'd love to see you compare the Sovereign to the Defiant because for a ship that was designed in an era nearing the end of the Dominion War, I think it suffers the same flaws as the Galaxy, with STYLE over function. I think it could've used a more Defiant Esq bridge, being that it was "SUPPOSED" to be a battleship.
@@hackman669 In Star Trek you have to accept certain things as "the price of admission", but Lore Reloaded is correct in that on any vessel expected to go into combat (of sufficient size) you should have a main and an auxiliary control. In actual combat, the first officer would move to auxiliary control with a back-up command crew. They would constantly be updated by CIC (the combat information center, in case you didn't know the acronym) in case the main bridge suffered a casualty (got blown up or incapacitated). In addition, both bridges should be located in a more interior position on the ship to put more armor, shields, and just plain mass between them and potential damage. You really want your primary computer core, your engineering section, and your command facilities as well protected as possible. If you lose any of those three, your ship is dead in the water. Well . . . space, in this case.
What I was most concerned about safety-wise was seating. Clearly, the occupants of the Bridge get thrown about quite a bit. In most versions of ST, Bridge Officers are either standing, or sitting in very unsupportive chairs. Realistically, they should all be well belted into very supportive couches like what fighter pilots or astronauts use. Worf, responsible for sensors, communications and weapons stood just waiting for any bump to hurl him into a bulkhead and his death. Worse, his failure to complete his duty.
Who needs belts when you have great inertia dampers, t hough I believe the Sovereign class vessels re-introduced seatbelts (but not airbags) and a physical 3D control stick, for whatever reasons. Given the gravimetric forces and acceleration in play, I'm not sure seatbelts would actually help the way they do in car crashes, but I suppose it will help restrain someone or someone's body from flying all over the ship and into someone else's face :D
@@johnny5wd567 Tell you what, we go ten years including repeated intense combat and serious natural and unnatural phenomena never being able to rattle the inertial dampers and I might change my tune. As for seat belts helping one stay in place, I think your right. Volvo made a lovely 2-3 minute training film for truck drivers showing 2 impact dummies in a truck cab. One with seat belt other without. Then they threw the truck off a cliff. Person with seat belt, fighting chance to survive. Person w/o, hurled all over the cab like a dice in a cup. Not so much no chance of survival as a major greasy mess to clean up.
@@DLWELD I agree. I think that was my essential point. I would also point out that some sort of couch/pod arrangement could also be useful for protecting officers in other ways. During DS9, which is the last piece of ST I feel has any significant canon validity, we saw many instances of explosions on the Bridge resulting in the injury or death of other officers. Also, we saw many instances of needing to evacuate. The bench/pod could provide solid physical protection for the officer sitting in it from explosions, and then enclose the officer and whisk them away, either to an escape pod or even become a short term escape pod. How would I depict it? You'd have macho seating positions ala Space Battleship Yamato, with heavy six way + belts. Then, on red alerts, we'd see clamshells extend out of the seats to offer greater protection. When one needed to evacuate, the seat would whisk them away.
The ‘ counsellor’s chair’ is a mission officers chair so any specialist mission specific crewmen could sit there if they where leading a project being observed from the bridge which is why you see doctor crusher commander Shelby and visitors sat there instead when the story needs them
As someone else pointed out, I'd definitely want an Empath on the bridge. She's a walking lie detector, mood assessor, & can be leveraged for huge tactical advantages. Having her as the Counselor should be a plus, not her main role.
@@TheKauff Except when facing Ferengi :P -- though apparently Deanna was able to sense deception from one of them despite supposedly not beign able to :D Empaths could be great tactical as well as diplomatic assets, not just counsellors...
Small point: Kirk's Enterprise did actually have a secondary bridge. It come up in a couple of episodes, and we see it in at least one (unless my memory is playing tricks on me). It's very cramped, but then aside from the mess hall and the Bridge, a lot was on that ship.
John Scalzi explained in his novel "Redshirts" why the bridge is a deathtrap: it's for dramatic effect. It's why consoles explode and kill "red shirts". It's why they are vented into space, sucking out "red shirts" in the process.
I want to see the deepest, crunchiest breakdown possible. Show me all the bridges! How do they compare to the bridges of other factions, like Klingon or Cardassian?
Separate your Command Staff into different compartments. One hit cripples the entire starflleet. American Battleships have 4 separate armored steering / command stations. Even fully automated modern vessels have mandatory external and visual spotters just in case. CIC is buried so deep in a ship the only way to be sure you hit it is to sink the whole ship.
Funny enough, enough yesterday I saw a video of an aircraft invident that killed off almost the entire soviet pasific fleet command. Apperantly the top brass didn't feel that the laws of physics applied to them so they had massivly overloaded the aircraft after a shopping trip.
Yes, but CICs didn't become a concept until World War Two. Mankind had been building ships of war for millenia, but it wasn't until 80 years ago it occurred to anyone that sailing the ship and fighting the shop should be separated. Think about that.
My problem with the discovery bridge that how far everyone is sitting from the others. Like you need to shout through a whole stadium just to inform someone or report to the captain.
@@kaitlyn__L the galaxy bridge is much smaller, the the operations officer can touch the navigation officer if he just strech out his arm, and the captain can do a high five with tactical from their positions. just google image the two bridge and you'll see a big difference
I was totally expecting as you went into discussing the large barrier making up tactical on the Enterprise, that you would have included one particular clip that I recall in which an intruder was on the bridge and Worf literally vaulted over the side of the barrier. I can't remember which episode that was, but it certainly went to show that it was a pain in the ass to effectively move around the bridge in the event of a close quarters combat scenario. Another interesting thing to think about is relief staff. More often than not, an away team was suddenly and rapidly formed and often included Data, and many times Worf. The second they leave their posts to head to the turbolift, two random Ensigns would rush in and take control of those stations. But, where did they come from? They're literally RIGHT THERE at all times, yet have no designated location from which they came lol. Cool video though! I like the breakdowns a lot.
I'm not sure which TNG resource to cite for this, but I seem to recall: the original principle behind the design of the Galaxy bridge was that a ship of the more advanced age would be a lot more automated. Fewer crew members could keep track of things from the bridge. They would be able to do more, and would require far less micro-management from the captain and XO. The three senior officers chairs were instead intended to create the atmosphere of a conference and encourage discussion on the bridge rather than most time being spent asking for status updates on ship systems. In fact, the early design for the bridge had the captain's ready room be OPEN to the bridge and in the back - the idea was that the command crew would mainly be on the bridge to talk about matters, not run the ship. They would simply have a view of crew members entering and exiting the bridge to occasionally check on a station. This huge set ended up being impractical to construct however. And it would have been difficult to frame and shoot effectively. This was intended to flow with TNG's era being one of a much more peaceful Starfleet - one that was powerful enough to explore in a relaxed manner and be less aggressive in reaction to provocation. Now, the actual writing of the series may not have always communicated this well or respected it. It often fell back on basic conventions. However some early episodes do seem to keep this in mind. The first encounter with the Ferengi for example - rather than the bridge crew panicking and going to battle stations when a hostile ship opens fire, it is demonstrated the Enterprise is far superior to a random, unfamiliar threat. And the bridge crew instead calmly analyzes and deliberates the situation.
Seat belts won't help if the inertial dampners fail. You will find crew reduced to a coating of protein on the aft bulkeads. Such was the fate of the Hera in Indistiguishable from Magic. They were grabbed up in the wake of a space whale. Jumping out of our galaxy in a slipstream equal to many factors of warp speed. These transwarp tunnels combined with the impact of the collision killed the power. Thus the dampners and the crew. Reduced to a fine protein slurry on the aft bullheads. Since.the ship was left to vacuum for decades it was petrified. Lousy way to go really.
Most of the "design flaws" in Star Trek usually stem from necessities of filming TV shows versus actual deliberate informed engineering choices. Overall, I'd say space ships are more comparable to submarines. Like submarines, space ships need to maintain atmosphere. Like submarines, the medium through which they navigate provides no human processable navigation clues. Under water, in the depths where submarines usually operate, it's simply to dark and murky. In space, human eyes and visual interpretation and intuition completely fails, because humans rely on depth perception for movement and orientation. Due to the distances and scales involved in space flight, humans can't rely on depth perception. So that's one major point for instrumented flight and essentially makes "windows" completely useless as fallback mechanism, if those instruments should fail. That basically leaves "windows" for entertainment, such as leisurely observing a planet while in orbit in a ship's lounge. Then there's armor and hull plating and hull integrity. While in-universe, those "windows" might be some form of transparent metal, it's speculative at best if they also have the usual hull platings and other forms of overarmor. One could argue, those platings wouldn't be transparent themselves, so that would make windows structural weak points. While the pressure differences in space might not lead to as severe structural failure as it does under water, it could still provide stress points leading to growing fractures in the window and in the surrounding hull (google why airplane windows are round or have rounded corners). Also, as far as we know currently, transparency of a material indicates some (quasi-)crystalline structure, and those tend to shatter when stressed. But even given current day materials one could assume some form of layered composite, much like car safety windows, yet this still means a damaged window section would need complete replacement. But then again, maybe Trek has some kind of molecular welder, able to fix the failures in these composite windows. And I seem to remember Trek ships also having some innate structural integrity field system, possibly able to reduce or eliminate the stress fracturing? Even if this structural integrity field was always active, for efficiency and simplicity, wouldn't it simply be more practical to solve such structural weak points at the design phase? At what point does the handwaving become unbelievable? One thing always bothered me, at least post-TOS, why does the view screen on the bridge never display additional information? This too should be plausible, given the adaptable and configurate LCARS system. I assume this is also more for cinematic purposes, to give the actors reasons to wander around on set, providing dynamic framing, instead of everyone just always sitting and staring at the main view screen. And probably production cost during the time, with CGI being much more expensive. Compare this to Discovery and the Picard series, where ships do have interactive holographic information display on primary viewing areas. The commonly round bridge layout probably also stems from cinematic requirements, such as multiple camera angles showing as many of the crew as possible. But one could also argue, it's due to an engineering problem: how does one route multiple redundant information systems to a central location? The circular layout provides an effective way to route and connect terminals, while keeping the actual conduit short and organized. Here only the forward navigational consoles stand out, since there's practically no need to ever put them in between the crew and the view screen. Lets say, Trek bridge view ports actually did show additional data relevant to the situation, why have this all important information display always be obscured by two consoles and bodies of crew, when they could've been placed literally anywhere else? So again, I'd say cinematography got in the way of "realism". Assuming all of this holds true and isn't handwaved, a more central and more embedded location of the bridge is much more plausible. It's just less attractive for cinematographic and dramatic reasons.
@@LoreReloaded You're absolutely right, and I think those shows did a stellar job, pun intended. I really hope that future sci-fi shows and movies will continue with this trend. But I'm not saying that *all* science-fiction TV shows and movies have a such "nonsensical" bridge design, or will have such a bridge design because of cinematography. I'm just providing the perspective that specifically the creators and directors of Star Trek TV shows and movies might have made those choices for cinematography. At some point things like design, bridge layout and technology becomes a stylistic element, it becomes canon. And to provide continuity, new shows adopt these styling and design cues, adopt the canon (or reboot, like Discovery, and Kelvin Trek). Of course it's also possible that the art department and design team specifically had non-submarine naval ships in mind when designing these, this too would make sense given ship classifications and command hierarchy in Trek. Yet, as often as Trek designs and story was deeply meaningful and intricately imagined, sometimes they just winged it. I don't really know how to sensibly argue for such quirky designs, when, at least to me, the aspects of being part of film and show jump out so much.
I like the argument I read below that the stations on a galaxy-class May well have been able to be configured for whatever you like. As a matter of fact I've always thought that it would have been cool when Captain Jellico took over for a brief period if he had switched tactical and Ops in his efforts to make Enterprise more battle worthy in his opinion. In a battle it seems to me that Ops would be receiving commands more than communicating to the captain whereas the captain would need to have close communication with tactical. They could have had Worf sitting back up front for an episode and the Android who can stand for eternity standing back at Tactical. As for whether or not I would like to see more... I would absolutely love to see you break down every bridge that has ever been shown.
Now that you mention it? Ya that.... would have been cool. Even cooler? If on return picard saw Jelico's method of doing things and 'while i concede that the manner he conducted himself was less than cordule in a situation where a diplomatic integration would have better served. I am going to take some of his changes into consideration on a more permanent basis. Now, Counselor Troi. If I ever see you in that bloody cheerleader uniform again and not in standard issue I will slap you with this wine bottle.'
@@KCKingdomCreateGreatTrekAgain You never hit a woman with the good wine, he would use the space equivalent of Boons Farm for that purpose. Heck I doubt Riker is worth the good stuff.
I am quite a fan of Star Trek Bridge Commander. They put tactical at ops while science and engineering are on the arch (I call it that, forgot if it has a real name). Both tactical and helm are at the front.
i feel like the extra seat next to the captain is over criticized on the galaxy class. you dont HAVE to seat your therapist there, it can be anyone that has expertise for whatever mission or situation you're involved in. and as stated, this isnt a warship, but rather an exploration ship, so looking at it thru the lens for combat efficiency is mostly irrelevant. even when you end up in combat, the point to the galaxy class is you simply have the biggest stick
Windows on the bridge - bridge on top instead of deep inside armored hull, Consoles filled with explodium - and on top of all - Shrapnel made from ROCKS xD Not to mention safety issues with having to stand to operate a console instead of being strapped in to a flight chair during combat where system failures were a given (including loss of inertial dampening and such), no safety gear at all stored close by (like emergency vac suits). No easy access to escape pod (dedicated for the bridge crews). To say that their bridges were poorly designed is... generous at best.
yeah every time I look at a star fleet bridge I can only think of how utterly arrogant or stupid the engineers at starfleet must be. the Navies of the world from 1918 had a better grasp of crew safety.
@@Dies1r4e "we are beyond war" ect They were arrogant, heck thats the point of the Sisko designing the Defiant.... then going back to business as usual swiftly after... ok stupid too
Look at every warship of any navy produced after the age of sail, and note where the bridge is. And yes in combat the bridge of many ships took direct hits. Also note that on almost all seagoing vessels on earth, the bridge crew, and indeed most all watch stations are standing, not too much of an issue because a standard watch is 4hrs in most earthbound fleets.
@@kalynstalinski8375 The bridge? On top, in the tower, to allow visual navigation. The actual CIC is somewhere inside the hull and well-armoured for most ships. ST bridges are bith CIC and bridge, so not comparable to modern naval ships. As for standing? Our ships don't zip around at high speeds with inertial dampeners that can fail. The people that actual travel at high speeds, pilots, are strapped in.
The bridge being "exposed" isn't a problem in Star Trek, it's an acknowledgement of the limits of material science. All star ships had shields. With shields up, a bridge could be put anywhere and be safe. With shields down, a bridge could be put anywhere and NOT be safe. We see photon torpedoes drill straight through the entire primary hull when shields are down. When they are up, the same torpedo just scorches the paint a little. It wasn't until Star Fleet got ablative armor that you had a chance of making a hull that could withstand some punishment while shields were down. As to secondary bridges, even TOS ships had the "emergency" bridge, which was (oddly enough) in the exact center of the primary hull. There were even some episodes where the bridge crew used it.
This makes sense with regard to high-powered weapons such as torpedoes. However, the exposed Bridge can still be a problem in relation to "mid-level" threats, such as weapons, space phenomena, or colliding objects powerful enough for some damage to get through the shields (but not so much that the ship would be blown away no matter what). Or in a shields-down situation, powerful enough to damage the exposed Bridge but not penetrate to a more secure location. Thus an exposed Bridge would still succumb to threats that an internal (and well-armored) Bridge would not be vulnerable to. The exposed Bridge is also easier for enemies to locate and target. "Hit that nipple bullseye right in the center of the disc!" Since most Trek ships don't use windows, the exposed Bridge does not offer extra functionality that makes the additional risk worthwhile. Ask the Bridge crew of the SSD _Executor_ about the virtues of a Bridge built into the bowels of a ship. :)
@@kevincrady2831 "Hit that nipple bullseye right in the center of the disc!" is in keeping with naval tradition tho. In the age of sail officers would be standing on the quarterdeck completely exposed as high value targets. In battleships the bridge crew were basically the only people on the ship not protected by armor (they had armored conning towers that nobody ever used). If your leaders are willing to put themselves in the most exposed places, how can you be afraid at your post?
Listen to the distances described in Star Trek. Ranges between ships where in various large multiples of kilometers. You aren't seeing much through a 'window' then. Also honestly Battlestar Galactica second series had it the best with the command deep in the ship at CIC. 'Bridges' on a starship would have little purpose as the use of human vision being useful would be extremely limited and only place the command center on the exterior of the hull where they are vulnerable.
you know a lot of these layouts actually mirror or mimic real bridges on ships. Most ships in modern earth have an explosed main bridge, and a secondary battle bridge ( called CIC) A small patrol Frigate for example, will have at the front of the bridge, the helm and navigation stations, these are often crewed by 2 different people. behind that on one side would be tactical, on the other would be radar/sonar/sensors. This person could feed information across to tactical, selecting a target, and providing the information to tactical weapons officer who would slew the weapons onto said target. between them was often the captain... who would give weapons release permisison, and had an overview of helm, tactical, nav, and weapons. Behind him would be the engineering, who would monitor engine temps, ship balance and other things. and across from engineering was a back up station... or coffee maker... comically, bigger, wider ships, often put ALL the stations up front in a row.
last I checked teh Water based ships we use arent capable of approaching light speed, also on earth line of sight is not 12 million miles. So the logic is flawed.
A great analysis, thank you for finally putting the window situation in a better light :) Would love more like this! As to the Galaxy bridge, the tactical officer standing up could be a matter of alertness, it's harder to lose focus if you are standing up, and tactical needs to be on the ball for unexpected situations to arise at all times. Of course, if Worf does need a breather he can pull one of the other consoles' chairs out and just sit on that, they are right behind him after all. We also see other officers almost always standing up at their consoles. In fact, to my memory of TNG, the person who sits down at them most is ironically Data, the one guy who has a polyalloy spine :D
As a helmsman on a cargo vessel, I can tell you EXACTLY why the navigation is in line and facing forwards on the ship. Even in the dead of night, with thick fog where I can't even see the front of the ship, using nothing but Radar and Navigational software(I'm no longer looking out the windows), I can "feel" the ship as an extension of my body when I'm navigating. "Spatial Awareness"... And with how humans are physiologically it makes most sense to be forwards oriented. This, "Extension of the body" effect will be very prevalent for the starship pilot too. Flip me round 180 degrees if i have to navigate at night in fog... I'll manage. But I'll have to double check my spatial awareness constantly. Edit: Imagine this: Your driving a car. Except your chair and wheel are turned 90 degrees facing sideways, and you can only look at a screen showing a camera feed of ahead of you. I GUARUANTEE you'll have a harder time than just sitting forwards facing.
Random extra at a console: pretends to be important. Ship: gets a minor hit which is deflected by the shield. Console of the random extra : blows shrapnel and concusses/kill the extra. Some other character: takes the place of the extra and keeps using the console like nothing happens. Random engineer : comes in with a bucked of shrapnel and a shape charge to refill the console. It is fare to assume that the federation likes their officers to not feel safe and face a deadly force feedback to motivate them.
While windows sounds helpful the massive distance involved in space travel would make them impractical, during a fight enemies should be able to fire far beyond practical visual range
Currently, the vessels of all modern navies are configured with the bridge/CIC atop their command islands - this also usually includes the captain's sea cabin (equivalent of the captain's ready room in ST, but ST captains are afforded the luxury of not bunking up within 30 seconds walk of the CIC and/or navigation bridge), CIC and admiral's bridges at the highest points. On an aircraft carrier, escalators to and from the aircraft fighter squadrons' briefing rooms were also included. That being said, the only purpose for having an elevated bridge would be the same as now, to do line-of-sight navigation when imaging systems were damaged beyond repair - but there's a big difference between having a bridge on a vessel going 35-38 knots on the water and one in space doing warp 9, where any speck of dust could puncture the bridge first at sunlight speeds. I would be an advocate for moving these facilities to the center of the saucer, having a battle bridge atop or between the separation points at the neck and the stardrive. And of course, keep the damn Red Devil Fireworks out of the panels. There is such a thing as resistors to keep all of the ship's power from frying your lower decks noobos. Either way, fairplay - but I advocate for putting things in the center and rely on imaging sensors to look out into space.
I would love to see a part 2 covering the Sovereign Class Enterprise E and the California Class Cerritos, also from the odd episode of the Luna class Titan.
Under normal circumstances, nothing in space would be close enough that looking out your window would help a ton. If critical systems can fail, you just make backup systems for them. Falling back on what human eyes can naturally see though... lol
Would love to see a video on the comparisons between Federation ships vs. other species starships like the Klingons or Vulcans! GREAT video as always mate and can't wait for the next! :)
The reason for this is simple, so the camera can see all of them. Also the bridge can be locked out virtually anywhere, even from Neelix's mess hall...
Something of note is that real world warship's Combat Information Centers (CIC) are based on a modified Constitution bridge layout (albeit in the heart of the ship), where all sensor information is processed and targeting for weapons is preformed.
I'm pretty sure the "Port Egress" is just the door to leave the bridge. Nothing to do with the nearby environmental station and meeting table, and certainly not a unique feature of the Defiant bridge.
I think most of the bridge designs are based on how to film the scenes on them. I remember watching an interview about how small the set of the defiant's bridge was and how hard it was to move the cameras around.
Well the entire concept of a bridge stemmed from having a platform between two paddlewheels for visibility over the paddle wheels and instructions were verbally relayed to the coxswain at the tiller or wheel and to the engine room. Remember Roddenberry has a naval background. Keeping the bridge motif at a location for high visibility doesn't make sense for a spaceship that will spend most of it's time in open space when just carrying a wifi connected tablet or smart phone would be sufficient to control the ship.
@@NormandyFoxtrot Yes, but for an interstellar spaceship, the need for a command centre would be few and far between so it could easily be simply space normally used for another purpose such as a conference room, living room, lecture or media theatre or even a patio in a garden area. Granted, with FTL travel such as in Star Trek, there may be more need for 7x24 staffing but certainly for the interstellar ships within our current technology, decades to generations to centuries may pass before such a centre would be needed and if it did exist, it would be more like an office building within the habitat and it's likely that our ship designs will first be adjusted to such sublight concepts before the advent of FTL.
well, I'd have to disagree with you about the windows instead of a viewscreen, even if I see your point. Yes those systems can fail. But what fails? The screen: who cares as long as the other consoles work, you can operate the ship; or do the sensors fail that feeds the viewscreen? Well then a window won't make any difference, your a sitting duck as you may not be able to see, but worst you also cant shoot back. The only point I would give you here is, yeah... the depiction of ship positions or movement in Trek is inconsistent. We see ships face to face to each other in clear visible range... but we also see that the ships are capable of fighing over huge distances or can move at high speed while doing it... in that scenario a window would help nothing if the sensors fail.
Ditto. There's always backups. There's always back up power, in TOS there's batteries,auxiliary control, and engineering where the ship can also be run from. And in the TNG era there's the battle bridge. A bridge module should have its own batteries or power generator in case it's ever cut off from the main power source. I think the view screens they have are probably far more advanced than any of our display screens today. While our screens today the slightest dent and they're ready for the dump, I think they can probably self repair.
@@ZontarDow diamonds? And transparent space metal aren't though in theory you could make the entire ship out of the transparent metal they use for the "window" it would just be too distracting for the crew
@@ZontarDow not only is that not likely true it also doesn't really matter, with few exceptions it is consistently shown that hull materials are useless against both credible enemy weapons and many natural phenomena. The true strength of most starships are its arrays of shields fields and screens, when shields fail ships are often destroyed in single shots.
The window is not going to be any help if you lose the viewscreen. First looking out the window you will go "Yep that's space." Any ship you are fighting or space garbage you are trying to avoid will not be seen due to distance. How many of you have watched the Space Station? A bright light as long as sunlight is hitting it. Second you are looking into the past. The moon is over one light second away. You have one of those small ships moving near the speed of light you wouldn't have time to get out of the way. Third was pointed on this post by another. It's just another weak point.
ST:TNG had a second bridge for backup command. It was called the Battle bridge and was actually located at the rear bottom of the saucer and would remain attached to the warp nacels when the ship separated.
The reason to skip windows is you couldn’t really see anything. Given the scales involved, they would almost never be useful outside a pretty view in orbit, or during docking ops.
I mean, you can't see anything if the viewscreen is down and damaged either. At that point a transparent see-through metallic window would be optimal as noted in the section of the video about the Discovery. Layering in an additional user interface with the functionality of a viewscreen on top of the window and you have a perfect mesh of both worlds.
The ability to see the electromagnetic spectrum is so important that our eyes are fault-tolerance. Hypothetically, you could eliminate one of the hemispheres of the brain and still be able to see out of both eyes. Likewise, if you became blind in one eye, the remaining good eye would still feed visual input into the visual processing neural networks within both hemispheres. The organic quantum computer in your head is HA compliant.
Apperantly some ship designers forget to add them. Picards Enterprise had a secondary bridge only because the drive section needed a bridge of it's own in case of a saucer seperation. On the other side the Empire in Star Wars are no better considering what happened to that superstardestroyer. Correction, Kirk's Enterprise DID have an auxiliary bridge of sort since the ship could be controlled from engineering in an emergency.
The Enterprise D can be operated from Main Engineering. They moved control there after Data took over the ship upon him being recalled by Dr. Soong. Not a dedicated space but doable.
@@michaelpettersson4919 there was also “auxiliary control” such as Kirk used to destroy The Planet Killer. I guess TNG era stuff merged engineering and auxiliary control since engineering was used that way in TOS too anyway.
You’re forgetting that ships like the Enterprise have battle bridges. They may not be used often, but at least the larger ships seem to have redundant bridges. There is also the ability to transfer bridge controls to any number of secondary areas.
@@DrewLSsix except for those times where they use it. Or as I like to call it the only reason we know there is a battle bridge. Also your adding qualifications not outlined in the video. The battle bridge is a redundant feature that specific purpose is a backup command center if the primary bridge is incapacitated in any way shape or form. Also how do you know the battle bridge wasn’t manned during conflicts. Perhaps red alert triggers a second bridge crew to man the battle bridge. Or did you forget there are more than the 6 main characters on the ship? PS. From the TNG area onward federation ships can be controlled from virtually anywhere on the ship. If you include the wrath of khan a starship can be controlled from a completely different ship.
My personal opinion is that the layouts of each station by the TNG era as we see it on the Galaxy class just happens to be set as such. All the different stations are most likely fully configurable and can take up Dutys of another. A good real world example to this would be old and new aircraft, old aircraft maybe had a single TV screen limited to a single function, several dials, buttons and switched locked in a single position, modern aircraft replaced the majority of these with several Multi Function Displays that are identical and share the same functionality across each of them. if you need weapons information one pilot might like to pull them up on the left display, another on the right or on the center.
@@Sorain1 Don't they show this a few times, as another yellow shirt is standing at the station? I assume it's a Security / Tactical station, meant for a promotion above "random Guard".
So, you would say the Klingon Bird of Prey has the most efficient bridge layout then. The captain in the center looking over the entire bridge crew, hell they're all practically within arms reach should some discipline be needed.
In terms of windows on a space ship... I don't think comparing them to real life military vehicles is apt. On land your range of vision is limited by the terrain, on the sea and in the air, by the horizon. A majority of threats will be near enough that visual identification is viable. Realistically speaking, in space, the majority of the time you will be fighting something which is, at best, a speck on a field of specks, to the naked eye. If your sensors go down, you are just as blind as you would be without a window.
18:24: The Galaxy Class Bridge is designed rather well for peace time. The Counsellor Chair as you put it is actually the Mission Chair. Anyone with Mission Specifics can sit there including Dr Crusher, Cmdr Shelby, Ambassadors and even Admirals. Having Tactical up high and behind makes sense as Worf has vantage point to open fire on intruders (whether plot armour dictates he get owned is another matter). All the Captain does need to see is Ops or the Universal I see every station, and Helm - everything else is automated pretty extensively and the Galaxy Class pre Dominion War didnt exactly run a CIC (which would be in the Secondary Bridge buried deep in the Sauce Module (yes the Galaxy Class had three Bridges, the Main Bridge, Secondary Bridge and Battle Bridge)
No one else mentioned that secondary bridge, good point, but in most cases, control for specific systems could be rerouted anywhere, given the proper command codes anyway :) The Galaxy class also had children on board, so yes, given its mission and in peace time, the brdige made sense. Reconfigure for conflict. As Edward Jellico demanded in Chain of Command.... or when engaging that EP-607.
Have to disagree on the Discovery being a good bridge design for three main reasons: 1- Holographic and transparent displays are a terrible idea. In reality anything that happens behind the screen will distract the officer working on it. The last thing you want is the eye of your tactical officer being pulled off a display by something happening behind the screen. 2- the distance between the displays and the captain's chair makes it hard for anyone without magnified vision to see exactly what's going on. 3- the size of the bridge is far too large. For one, space is at a premium in a starship. Even the Galaxy class had a modest bridge that was easy to cover in a few paces. The Discovery bridge would take a good while longer to cover if one needed to replace a downed crewman on the far side. The Discovery bridge is full of an extreme amount of empty space for a bridge on a supposedly functioning ship.
Most modern fighter pilots would disagree about your concerns with the holographic displays, that's literally what a heads up display is. More likely, the officer is expected to be able to distinguish between the real stuff and the hologram stuff in order to do the job.
@@jonathonclary1681 The difference there is that a fighter pilot is supposed to be observing what is beyond the display. The HUD displays important information to the pilot as they are observing their direction of travel. In short, the pilot is supposed to be distracted by what is beyond the display. If you're reading a computer display about a starship you don't need situational awareness outside of the panel that you're looking at. The holographic screen only adds potential for distraction and difficulty of focusing vision for zero added benefit.
@@jpc347 Also it means that possibly you can end up having your controls blinded/blocked. I believe somebody did a video about how silly the Picard floating holo controls/displays were, because bright lights (or other things) behind the holograms would possibly obscure the controls or make words unable to be read.
Having played a lot of Bridge Commander in my time, I was always happy when I got moved from.the Dauntless (Galaxy) to the Sovereign (Sovereign class). Even in the game it was much easier to deal with that kind of bridge. Although they changed things there and they had two people at the back and moved tactical to data's console.
Aside from the explodium consoles and the rocks, it’s interesting that when the ship takes damage the bridge also takes damage. Like in the Reliant V Enterprise fight there are times when the secondary hull takes damage, and the bridge gets wrecked. (Granted that was main engineering so I guess it kinda makes sense)
Addendum for the Intrepid bridge: Having the full on MSD directly behind the captain is opsec *nightmare* everytime he/she talks to anyone via the viewscreen.
I'll assume that gets scrambled by the video processing. Hell, we can Skype from the Enterprise bridge or Endor using face recognition and funny backgrounds. I'm rather sure that this technology will have advanced to not allow potential enemies to glean vital info. Though I'd agree that not having the info on plain view in the first place would be a Good Idea™.
I know it might get too much into the old vs. new trek arguments that you seem to want to avoid, but I'd love a comparison between the OG 60s Enterprise bridge, the kelvin enterprise bridge, and the disco enterprise bridge. Or maybe wait until strange new worlds is out since it looks like they're making some changes to it.
Also this has little to do with the video but star trek lore, sorta... In big battles, why don't starship remote control launch all shuttle craft with an armed photon torpedo or 3 on board, and warp them into enemy command ships? If you're a miranda in the dominion war, you ain't surviving long enough to abandon ship so you may as well use them as space age rocks...
If I recall due to the way warp works you cant do warp speed ramming attacks against non warped ships. Your tactic could work if the ship was fleeing at warp and couldn't out pace the enemy so launching exploding shuttles into them in an attempt to destabilize their fields forcing them to drop warp could work for a time
Warp means that the ship is either stationary, or running at impulse speeds and the spacetime *warps* around it. The warp drive distorts spacetime and folds it, making distances shorter. The warp "speed" isn't speed in reality. It's the rate the spacetime warps around the ship, creating a velocity-like situation... It's the rate that the spacetime flows around the ship. Confusing, I know... Stopping from this situation brings the ship back to relativistic spacetime and it either keeps running at impulse at the speed it was running or keeps moving forward because of inertia.
Defiant's design is probably the best military design, while I agree that Discovery is probably the best scientific design but there's something important to note about windows in a spaceship irl. Windows are useless in deep space. No, really. They're actually useless. The only way they're useful in space is if you're near a sun and close enough to planet to see it (See the movie, Apollo 13). In deep space, they provide no function except a pretty view of the stars. 1. Space isn't an ocean. You're in a 360 degree 3D bubble and as the number of directions you need to look increases, your chances of spotting anything anywhere near the ship become increasingly less likely. 2. Space is big. The odds of anything even coming into visual range are astronomical. This holds true for combat as even today, we already have weapons systems on our fighter aircraft that can accurately target an enemy that is so far away, the pilot cannot even see it. In a realistic space battle, you're never going to get close enough to see the whites of their eyes. 3. Space is dark. Unless they're these idiots on Star Trek that keep their ships lit up like Christmas trees, space is so dark, you can literally look at something right in front of your face and not see it. The only way to be able see something out of a window is if you note the absense of stars, and if you think that's easy, ask NASA how easy it is to see a black hole. It's almost impossible. Ask NASA how long it took observers to realize the horse's head of the Horsehead Nebula was a black hole because there were no stars behind it. Hell, come to think of it, you'd only be able to see the light the ship is creating because those lights aren't pointed at the ship and aren't reflecting off of it. There's actually a lovely scientific discussion asking what the point of cloaking devices in space would even be. Conclusion: You are actually blind in deep space because there's not enough light for your eyes to process and it's too big. Windows on a Navy ship are probably a really good idea. Windows on a space ship are...they're armored, so they're not weakening the ship, but...they're pointless.
Also, if you do have windows you need to be quite close to the window to get a decent viewing angle outside of the ship. The further back you (or your station) is from the window the less of the space outside you see. Not to mention that many things might be too small without a zoom function even if you know exactly where they are outside of that window.
Fully agree, except that the cloaking device also seems to obscure the light from drive cones etc. If a ship is burning, or rejecting heat through its radiators, you can detect them easily against the 3K background of space. The cloaking device seems to prevent that (and also somehow prevent detecting most of the spatial distortions warp drive creates, apparently).
@@kaitlyn__L : I imagine the hiding of light is only a small part of cloaking. It may even be a side-effect. Also there may be situations where a ship could be seen and hiding one's light would be very handy (like that episode where a ship hid really close to the enterprise).
@@brodriguez11000 right, exactly. From the vague ways they describe the mechanism it’s really more like the light happens to get hidden along with the rest.
While keeping the First officer on the bridge makes for good storytelling, realisticly, they would be in a CIC or battle bridge in battle and would usually be working the opposite shift from the Captain.
Here's a question for you. Have you ever been on a Submarine? It's the direct design used for Starfleet Bridges. The Original bridge was designed around the most advanced known Sub. in the U.S. Naval Fleet at the time. By the time TNG came out, we had much larger and much more powerful Nuclear Submarines and thus the design followed the general ideas of the new Sub classes. Oh, here's a great little side note, Ever seen or even heard of a window places on a Naval Submarine? No, well, there's a damn good reason, trying to look out into the black depths of the oceans would be like trying to see with your eye's closed. Yes, the same applies for space. Most think of space as the International space station or from shows and movies,m however, that is far from reality. Space is black, and soundless. You could travel through space more easily in an advanced submarine than anything Star Trek has actually produced. You're right in saying the Defiant was the best designed bridge in the fact it was literally designed after a small high speed nuclear submarine designed to intercept possible hostile targets. TOS bridge was designed around the base idea of the most advanced Diesel Submarine at the time. Also, if you think about it, All submarine bridges are in the forward center of the ship, directly under the main hatch. The only thoughts I have about Starfleet bridges is that they still have a Submarine mentality. Just a little food for thought as someone that has some knowledge about Naval designs and also knows why Gene designed the Enterprise around a Navy Submarine, space, like the oceans, is dark and dangerous. He believed the best hope to get out into space and start exploring would be based around an already proved design, one that we still use almost a century later.
Yes I have been on a sub. Gato class at the navel museum in Buffalo. The one thing I was hoping for with Enterprise was for the ship to be more like a sub, tight quarters narrow walkways ect. In space, just like in the ocean space on your ship would be at a primetime.
Please do more. I like during TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," the bridges switches with the timeline change to the "battle bridge." This created a more realistic CIC.
On the point of having all the primary command staff on the same shift, it's possible that federation culture allows for ships to just "drift" in empty space for 12h while the main command staff is off duty
Alpha shift was generally when the Captain was required to station on the bridge. Beta shift had the XO in overall command of the ship, but the Captain on call (he was always on call). Gamma shift (graveyard) was rotated between the other command officers, but the rest were on call for emergency situations. However, a 4 shift rotation (adding in a Delta shift between Beta and Gamma) would lead to far fewer stress- and exhaustion-related injuries.
@@seannemo8076 maybe so... but he was “warlike” when there was no war.... just ask Riker, he was so right about Starfleets role now being war rofl (if I am unclear to anyone,am being disgustingly sarcastic)
I felt every bridge was poorly made. Every station should have had a solid chair, O2 and restraints at minimum. There sometimes is mention of backup bridge. Iirc Romulins have a 2nd bridge crewed by cadets. If main bridge station damaged. The backup station on 2nd bridge takes over. Overseen by senior Officer. Plus a backup communications system. Exploration ships would have a drone. When gravity, black holes, unexplained phenomena…. The unmanned sensor drone gets launched. How often the ship gets caught getting too close. Also landing team carry Glock as backup. Phasers get remotely disabled too darn often. Or that sword Sulu had in Abrams movie had. Flick out pocket knife, unfolds into sword.
Windows are a dumb idea. As far as "transparent Metals" That is what glass are made of (Silicon dioxide, or in the case of transparent aluminum: aluminium oxide doped with other metals. Windows are of little use, and Submarines function without any windows only using sensors. In space most likely radar, and infra-red optical sensors would be used. Your not going to see a ship that is a few million kilometers away with your eyes, or even with a pair of binoculars. The problem with most TV sci-fi ships enaging in battle, do as if the the enemy has to come close to engage a target. Ship to Ship conflict would happen in light minutes or light hours away (180 Million Kilometers to billions of Kilometers) away. Even modern air combat no longer uses visual observation to engage targets. Two Jet fighters traveling a Mach+ each will be moving at more than 1Km/s. Space ships would be traveling hundreds of Km/s.
The most lethal aspect of the bridge design is its exposed location, right on top like a bullseye. The entire bridge was destroyed more than once, and completely blown off in one episode. 1:36 No secondary CIC? What was auxilliary control or the battle bridge?🙂
@@scottautry9981 YW. I think this guy did another video where I also made this comment. Somebody argued endlessly with me that bridges belong on top, due to Star Trek canon and sea going vessels' current design, to see farther out to sea. If you've ever seen Minbari ships in Babylon 5, personnel can see everything around them with what looks like holograms, eliminating the need for windows in an exposed bridge on top. A modified holodeck, deep in the ship, in a protected area like sick bay could accomplish that safer. Command functions can be transferred anywhere. It seems to me that real starships in the future might protect their bridges better. Star Trek is enjoyable, but still fiction.
Is it really good work tho? Not even 2 minutes in he's talking about how the enterprise doesn't have a secondary place to command, or what ever... how does he not know about the battle bridge. A literal second place to command the ship
Having navigation face forward makes sense because people visualize themselves moving in the direction they're facing. While the viewscreen may be facing any direction, the helmsman would likely have a better sense of steering a vessel if they can visualize it as an extension of their body.
I know this won't be popular but the design of the bridges also had to do with how they were filmed. One simple example is the tactical station on the 1701-D where someone is standing. If they were seated we wouldn't see them necessarily. Not everything is going to be practical, a lot is going to be what "looks good" on camera. So, toss out the realistic expectations of design that makes sense and think about what looks better on camera. A lot is sacrificed in practicality in order to make way for cinematic attractiveness. I know this is a downer for those who mentally live in the Trek universe as if it was real. However, I went to college for work in the film industry. Things are thought of differently in the industry, not in favor of what would necessarily make sense in reality. Ok, I'm done, I won't be looking back for replies since I'm going to be shit on for this.
My counter to this is that there are other series that did it well and were filmed. Bsg, expanse , etc. Now if we want to say that they couldn’t write the stories they wanted due to it.. that’s fair enough but that means the criticism is legitimate
So, apparently a lot of the starfleet ships actually had a second shield for the bridge so it was easier to target other critical systems like weapons or engines. another thing is that some ships did in fact have a separate secondary command bridge that was fully embedded. You can see this on galaxy class ships where the secondary hull would fight with most of the weapons and the saucer would fly away (sometimes at warp as while it could not generate it own warp field it was able to maintain one for some time) with most of the crew to get to safety. In addition engineering could have all controls given over to it on nearly all starships so the bridge was not strictly needed.
Yes I seem to remember that all essential command functions can be controlled from main engineering on all the federation ships portrayed in the various series and movies, except shuttles and the round abouts. Also The galaxy was able to split its saucer and body so the auxillary control has to be located within the body otherwise this function would not be possible.
@@parlertrick original series Enterprise was capable of separating,. It was mentioned once in “The Apple”. Never shown of course. That was a budget buster
To better protect the bridge they needed a dedicated shield system, which the refitted constitution had but not the later ships strangely and ether a deployable blast shield like the Galactica had or some kind of phasic hull plating that's still physically there but allows only visible light through as a window but can in a second turn into a reinforced bulkhead.
Let that dedicated shield constantly alter its shield frequency as well in order to make hostile beaming more difficult. Too many officers has been abducted and too boarding parties have entered, it need to stop. Came to think of it there was a Voyager two parter including time travel with an 20 century industralist that got his hands on some future tech thst made himself extremly resilient to hostile beaming with a device he carried. Starfleet should look into those and make them mandatory for all crew at all times.
As I recall, in Wrath of Khan when they went to yellow alert they showed a schematic of a secondary shield being deployed over the bridge. One assumes that means the bridge has two shields, the main shield for the whole ship, and a dedicated bridge defense shield.
A deployable blast shield would be pointless on most federation ships since armor wasn't a thing and without shields, any blast shield would likely be just as sturdy as the basic hull around the window or the window itself. Now on ships like the Defiant which actually have armor plates, that's a different matter.
I just can't understand why ships aren't fitted with some kind of transporter technology. Once shields are down anyone can ether transport soldiers or explosives anywhere on the ship or capture the crew. It's a huge hole in your defences. Have inhibitors that prevent boarding or abductions independent of the shields, maybe linked to your own transporters so you can only beam on or off the ship.
@@thanqualthehighseer lol yeah. Or keep your shields up, but before entering battle you deploy independent little unmanned carriers that are small enough to be difficult to spot, and contain transporter devices. And they are filled to the brim with missiles. You get to keep your shields up, and make your enemies explode at will.
I feel a lot of that is credited to it's comforting use of wood and warm colors. Most of it's actual flaws come from it's awkward layout. Like the guy mentioned, riker having to hover around constantly to check nav, and god bless worf having to man the completely chairless tactical.
Good vid, I agree with a lot of the points made. Also, thank you for making it, it covers a lot of the questions I've encountered internally. One thing missing from this - and I haven't scrolled the comments - the relationship between ST bridge design, and the inspiration for the layout, and language, being an extrapolation directly out of current/historical Naval precedent, particularly from that of the USA. Consider an ocean-going warship as we have known them across this (21st) and the previous (20th) Centuries - Window at the front, big 'operator' type chair for the Cpt, wheel between them. Doors to the side and rear. A bank of controls, some charts, at specific points around the room. Ship is beneath - partly because it's filled up with all the things that make a ship, partly because the water is beneath, and ship go on water, of course - and so that the Cpt and Cmd officers can see from the best possible vantage point. Basically, the irony of ST, as much as I love it, is that the design ethos has always been taken from something which perhaps, by the 23rd and 24th centuries, will have become obsolete - at least, in space. If your ship sits on the ocean, it's pretty much going to be one way up, and you'll be looking up for planes, across for other ships, and down for subs, mines, and land. In space - you might need to face up, down, left, right, over there, over there - it's truly a 3D environment, so a '....fuck, I've lost the word there - a bridge based on moving laterally makes no sense. We'd probably still need gravity, so we'd be oriented one way up, given that we as humanoids have feet at the bottom, head at the top - but the environment we'd be working in would require spherical multi-directional movement. So, essentially, almost all bridge designs in ST are pretty much nonsensical, in the context, but they help orient us in order to understand what's going on, in the show.
I’ve always found Starfleet’s decision to put the bridge on the outer edges of the hull confusing and counter-productive, not to mention basically tempting the enemy to fire at the bridge directly (as we saw in Nemesis). A great example of a bridge location done right is the CIC aboard the Battlestar’s Galactica and Pegasus, which are located deep within the hull of the ship and separated from the vacuum by hundreds of feet of armor and structural support.
That's because the Replicators don't really replicate, they just transport from storage somewhere in the ship. Those "rocks" are meals, clothing, shoes, etc. Yes there are real replicators, but remember, this is Government Issue. Nuff Said. 😁
The use of "windows" on a Starship is a 20th Century take on 14th-19th Century naval battles with relativistic short range weaponry requiring the need to see your target to aim your broadside cannons. Hell, let's just say flaming arrows and be done with it!? In "modern" 22nd-24th Century space warfare, your long range sensors are your eyes and your intention (if you wish to survive 'til tea-time?) is to detect, aim and hit your target (before they do the same to you) from literally thousands, tens of thousands (if not millions) of kilometers away - railguns, focused lasers (sorry, phasers!), sub-light propelled missiles (oops, torpedoes!), etc... you know, LOOOONG range! So "needing" a window on a Starship is virtually pointless unless you wish to let in some weak ambient, extremely dim natural light making looking out said window to see ANYTHING nothing more than just stargazing. Put it this way, if your enemy is that close you can physically see them, then either they or you (or both!) are already dead... killed a very long time BEFORE you were within visual range of each other!
I would’ve loved to have seen a Galaxy-class refitted for the Dominion War. See what changes they had to have made to have it a true battleship. And what alternations to the bridge would’ve been required. We only got see a glimpse of that from "Sacrifice of Angels" and afterwards. I always felt one of the problems with the Galaxy-class bridges as that they were just too large with too small a crew within it. I’m thinking of how many steps it takes to get from the Captain’s chair to the Conn and Helm. Especially if someone had to take over for whatever reason. The Defiant-class made more sense. It was more compact (cramped, some would say), but people could get from one station to another quickly.
Seeing what they did with the Excelsior class Lakota bridge and the Data's Nebula class command in the Sutherland, I'd much rather they didn't show an upgrade. With their limited construction budget limitations for guest alien or starfleet bridges they tended to have to do them an injustice. There's a few pretty good fan designed updated Enterprise-D's out there that are much better than the rush jobs we've seen on the screen.
@@radioflyer68911 I always assumed the Sutherland was being commanded from an improvised or secondary command center. The plot had the fleet assembled quickly and they had to move officers and crew around to make it work so its an easy thing to assume the Sutherlands bridge was not operational when it was pressed into action.
Thats a trick of filming, the TNG bridge is about the same size as the TOS bridge, in fact most of the bridges fit in roughly the same footprint. The real difference was height, TNG and several others have rather tall ceilings while a notable few have rather low ceilings. ENT, TMP mostly.
The galaxy class can seperate its saucer section, imagine having special saucer sections to change to in times of war. Simple accomodations, more power generation, more shields, more weapons etc.
The closest thing would be the bridge layout from Yesterday's Enterprise. In that timeliness the Galaxy class was a battleship to be used against the klingons.
I would love to see more of this. Just a thought: a little more editing would improve the video greatly imho. Say, when you talked about the battlebridge on the loveboat, it would be great to see it. Also, when showing schematics and talking about certain elements of the bridge, it would be awesome to have those elements highlighted with a circle, an arrow or some such thing. Hope this does not sound like nitpicking, I am currently trying to design a ship for my sci-fi and so Im going through all possible inspiration. Cheers!
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My problem with the discovery bridge that how far everyone is sitting from the others. Like you need to shout through a whole stadium just to inform someone or report to the captain.
Could you do a breakdown of the three bridges of Yamato in Space Battleship Yamato 2199?
WHY not the bridge lay out of the baneblade super heavy tank.
When your warship has no CIC you know you work for starfleet
Battle ships in the 20th century had armored Bridges yet if they took a direct hit from a main battery gun people would die . There is only so much you can do to protect crew .
Perhaps the most significant safety change Starfleet could make is stop loading explosives into instrument panels and route all the steam ducts away from the bridge...
hahahahahhahah
The company that manufactures explodium has a very powerful lobbying department and all kinds of dirt on the people in Starfleet’s bid review board. Their lock on contracts for supplying instrument panels is air tight.
I thought that was what this video was going to be about....
It actually makes sense to let the panels blow up, because if each panel is equipped with fuses or other breakers of some kind, it would take some time to reset the breakers and even more time to replace the fuses, leaving consoles completely inoperable.
@@adamloverin231 That... explains the Oberth.
I love how the intrepid class has separated ops and the conn. Think about it. Having Harry and Tom on opposite sides of the bridge means they have to speak loudly to each other. This gives Tuvok an opportunity to scold them as often as possible.
It also means that if something goes wrong with one of those stations, it will be far enough away from the other station that the functions can be re-routed to the other officer.
Considering the consoles in voyager seem to be made of explosives it works well.
@@jeffisgay4eva I think you mean how the consoles in every Star Trek show and movie seem to be made of explosives.... It's never some random bits of overhead guff or things hidden in the flooring that pop off. It's always the consoles. It's as if sometime in the 2200s they forgot about the concepts of fuses and circuit breakers, and started building circuit boards out of TNT.
@@Dee_Just_Dee fuses blow, curcits arnt everything, power is thunder, thunder is deadly, and lobbing warheads at your shields cant be good on the deflectors, or anf direct hits to the hull.
@@Dee_Just_Dee don't forget the rocks. Starships are full of rocks.
Their consoles had zero surge protectors and seemed to be insulated with powdered magnesium. It seemed safety was priority 5 or 6…
More like "Not on the list".
Principles of SF Design:
1: Shape
2: Feel
3: How the officers felt
4: Somewhere for a counsellor....on a bridge....
5: Comfort
6: Style
7: Colour matching
8: Practicality
9: Safety
I blame the Bluegills. The space parasites obviously needed to be able to disable any ship that stood against them. Designing the consoles to explode with only the slightest power surge would do just that. Only, after they were eliminated, nobody realized what had happened, and Starfleet continued producing the Bombsoles, as they had been conditioned to think bridge explosions were normal.
Almost like they had forgotten the concepts of Low energy control circuits learned in the 20th Century.
A tradition dating back at least to "voyage to the bottom of the sea". The most efficient way to wire anything is to route the main bus through the control console.
The main problem with Starfleet ships is that the control panels are made of Explodium 💥
please let me shoot the warpcore I have been very good this month🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣🤣
Denise Crosby left TNG in part because she was sick of standing there all the time. It was kinda ridiculous that every other bridge position had a chair, but whoever manned tactical was expected to stand their entire shift.
They could have easily lampshaded that with a scene where Yar (or Worf) was reprimanded for stealing a bar stool out of Ten Forward. "For ergonomic reasons".
@@Stoney3K Seems like as time went on the concept of "reasonable accomodations" sort of went by the wayside lol
yup, just like in mcdonald's
@@micklenier6152 They move every minute or two (at least in OZ). I get your point, its bad how Maccas workers are treated but Denise had to stand there for way longer than you see her standing in the one spot. At leaast 'Riker' got to use his Sit down move.
Perhaps because tactical was a position best suited for non humans? I mean werent we basically the most fragile species in Fleet?
Imagine being the guy who has to refill the rocks behind the control panels
sounds like a task for lower decks ^^
Well, the real question is: would that guy receive all the drinks or no drinks at all in the officer lounge?
I've always been of the opinion that the exploding panels are a story telling device as much as plot elements. Writers, directors, studio execs, even the audience don't trust views to internalize danger in a space battle. When being attacked, without the exploding panels, the characters "feel less threatened."
That's funny.
Starfleet design : Put the bridge right on top of the ship.
In defense of the Galaxy Class I don’t think the third chair is for a counselor specifically. I think Deanna’s role when she’s on the bridge would be that of a first contact specialist/diplomatic officer, it’s just that her specific skill set let her occupy both that role and that of ship’s counselor much that same way Data was both the second officer and the science officer.
Yeah similar to previous generations communications officers, though not actually running the phone bank so to speak.
Let's not ignore 24th century aesthetics... It would still be unbalanced with only 2 chairs, and if it had two chairs, it would imply equality between CO and XO.
That chair is actually for a Mission Specialist, Deanna fills this as you said by acting as Diplomatic Specialist
Or just a place to sit for any supernumerary that happens to be on the bridge.
Having a jump seat for any ambassadors, VIPs, visiting Admirals, mission specialists, or civilians aboard ship the Captain needs to talk to without leading the bridge isn't a bad idea. The whole bit in the episode "Disaster" (5x05) with the kids who won the science fair getting to visit the bridge as a special reward comes to mind. Letting one or more of the kids sit beside the captain without displacing the first officer would be an extra bonus.
Galaxy-Class ships were also meant to be flying Federation embassies. An extra chair even gives the Captain additional degrees of diplomatic power - you already need the Captain's permission to board the ship or come to the bridge. Adding extra permissions needed to sit down next to the Captain (and on which side of the Captain) all have different potential social and political meanings the Captain can exploit.
Come to think of it, that would make a neat episode of Lower Decks. Have some alien who reads way too much into seating arrangements come aboard whose species' definition of "right hand man" means something altogether different from humans.
To be fair, the Galaxy-class was built during the height of the Federation's "Golden Age", where they had had very few to almost no direct antagonists: the Klingons were allies, the Romulans had withdrawn yet again, the Cardassians were a minor power that did not pose much of a threat, the Ferengi hadn't made contact, and no one had even heard of the Borg. The Galaxy was built to be more like a testament to the heights that the Federation could achieve, rather than to be a utilitarian and efficient design. It was meant to showcase the prosperity and strength of the Federation's ideals to potential members and new races they contacted.
Once all of these enemies started popping up again in a very short time, that's when they saw the flaws in that particular design and began taking steps to rectify it on newer classes as they were designed. The Sovereign-class shows that in it's design moving away from the expansive Galaxy layout and adopting more cubicle-style stations and streamlining the other stations along the outer rim.
I'll also say that even with the Galaxy-class main bridge design, I don't think Starfleet ever 'forgot' how to make an efficient bridge, as the Battle Bridge in the stardrive section of a Galaxy ship was very much like that (and imo should have been the main bridge despite modularity).
But there was still StarFleets greatest Foe to consider... CEILING ROCKZ!!!
So the height of the federation could not get a chair for every console? Frankly, I think the top of the line vessel should at least have the same occupational safety and wellness features of a German grocery store.
@@VelvetCondoms No, it costs too many Energon Crystals to Replicate "Chair" so only the Main Cast get "Chair" and sometimes Background Characters can sit if one of the Main Cast is off doing something else so that there wont be any empty "Chair" in the shot.
Worf is not "Main Casty" enough to get "Chair" until he became Captain of the Defiant. O.o
@@grayeaglej - Worf's is literally the only station without a chair. Even the aft wall stations have pop-out stools for users to sit on.
Anti-Klingon bigotry is what it was.
@@VelvetCondoms A lot of companies these days do away with chairs and force their employees to stand because they think it makes them more productive and less likely to slack off. Maybe they took inspiration from that I dunno :P
The original series Enterprise bridge was sufficiently innovative and well designed that the US Navy, which was carrying out a major bridge redesign program at the time, paid a visit to the studio to examine it. The individual workstations were surprisingly well designed. US Navy ship bridges didn't have chairs at the workstations at the time. The bridge set built each workstation around the chair. All of a station's viewscreens (whether they actually showed anything or not) were set to be normal to the line of sight of the seated operator. All controls were positioned to be within arm's reach of the seated operator. About the only thing missing from the original series bridge design were restraints so officers wouldn't get flung from their chairs when things went badly. (This was corrected in some of the movie designs, although the restraint design, which involved the arms of the chairs being rolled over the thighs of the seated operator, is somewhat questionable and likely of limited use as it would not have helped control the upper body at all.) Of course, the way it was actually built had a serious flaw that would have been very tedious to correct: There were many instances where it was plainly obvious (and this is a problem that persists into the movies) that there are no labels of any kind on any of the control consoles in the original series, and it appears nobody ever thought this was an issue because there was no attempt to disguise this or not have close enough shots of the consoles to reveal this flaw.
The ergonomics was similar to land based control centres of the time like NORAD SAGE and Mission Control.
The thing about the US Navy at the time is that it didn’t actually have the sensors and processing power to make use of this layout. You’d have a CIC with a central chart desk (kind of like the pool table in TNG engineering) and a position plot indicator (like the transparent vertical panels in the rebel bases in Star Wars) that were manually updated.. and then a console for surface radar, air search radar, sonar, and some of the missile systems and gun fire control. It wasn’t until the AEGIS cruisers came in that a layout similar to Star Trek bridges made sense (but there are far more station and they can’t be arranged in a circle for various reasons.
Rodenberry did not want to spend money for seat belts.
Nasa also said the original bridge design was good
I've spent my life in plant control rooms. Some older plants have control boards with switches, lights, and dials. Everything was hardwired. Now, Ops is full of PC screens. Generally, dual or quad monitors for each operator. Everything is software based so that any operator can access anything he's allowed to. All of the labels are simply text on the screen. Particular stations are more or less a seating assignment. The place where I always thought StarTrek missed was the touch screens. We can put touchscreens in, but the reality is that a mouse and keyboard are more convenient.
@@stevenmiles3012 Touchscreens have been around for 40 years now, and for most applications where you don't hold the screen in your hands (like a smartphone or tablet) or only use it for a few minutes at most, they don't work very well. Humans just aren't well adapted to holding out a hand and making small, precise finger movements for long periods. The traditional term for this in IT is "Gorilla Arm."
I always assumed the third command chair on the Galaxy class was sort of "mission specialist" and Troi was (in addition to being counselor) the first contact specialist.
Yeah it does kinda make sense having the counselor on the bridge, considering it's focus on exploration and contacting new species.
Not to mention a literal mind reader
@@purebloodedgriffinYeah the mind reader and empathic abilities are what she is there for. Captain this person is being (deceitful, truthful, scared, confident, planning on attacking us).
This makes sense, I remember plenty of times the chief medical officer was sitting there instead of Troy.
@@cryo1195 she was ranking up points for her evaluation as a bridge officer.
Troi remarks that as she takes her own exam, inspired by Beverly's career.
The fact that Starfleet engineering had completely abandoned electricity as a power system, and the entirety of the ship's systems are fed power by a network of highly-pressurized tubes filled with electrified-plasma. I would very much like to hear what the in-universe justification of that design choice.
For the power hungry warp-core that makes sense, for probably (relatively) low power bridge consoles yeah, the rocks are gonna fly cause of that.
@@toasteroven6761 careful where you throw those rocks. One might ding off the side of the shuttle bay and cause the XO's console to explode in his face and decapitate him. XD
Most of the criticism of ship deck design also applie to biological Bodies
The design requires highly pressured tunes of plasma [ blood ] that rupture so easily
Copper is expensive
@@Kaiju3301 I refuse to believe that a society literally capable of pulling copper out of thin air via a replicator would find it more expensive than the plasma conduits, control panels, and cleaning supplies they have to keep requisitioning to get all the blood and guts off the areas from where Ensign Ricky got decapitated by his work station....
It would help if all the panels weren't loaded with rocks. Every time a panel explodes, rocks fly out. They are shrapnel machines.
Someone else commented the panels had powered magnesium inside them which controls the power surges.
*the problem is that these control panels by design are all comprised of explodium which is vital to the near instantaneous transfer of data from one system to another as the ship travels at warp speeds and hostile regions of the galaxy...sure they could use other materials as so many new elements have been discovered/ created by this time but these are still very expensive and hard to obtain even if the reliance on actual physical monetary systems are considered outmoded and impractical the worlds where these elements are found still value physical forms of currency (such as the Ferengi (duh)...explodium solves this problem in that it is relatively inexpensive and easy to obtain or replicate despite the inherent danger this element/substance has for going all explodey during critical moments at precisely the most inopportune time for such panels to do so...so Starfleet is kinda stuck with it at least for the moment...it should be noted that the Borg seem to avoid this substance in the fabrication of their ships...not that that's any real comfort to the Federation or StarFleet or reason for them to actively pursue contact for an exchange of technologies...last time did not go so well*
That's Shrapnel Dispensers, my dear sir.
Well, there is a throw-away line about how starfleet engineers can turn rocks into replicators, so maybe rocks are part of the construction of starfleet tech?
I always thought it was interesting how... the computers even function when going faster than light. Like... The energy/info transmitted down wires only moves at light speed... If the ships moves faster than that how do you ever send a signal to the back or forward of the ship? Or am i over thinking this?
I was glad to see that the Defiant bridge design added an important feature to the Tactical station--A CHAIR! The last thing you would want in a combat situation is your Tactical officer sailing across the bridge if the ship took a serious hit that the inertial dampeners couldn't compensate for--especially if the IDS went down (could get very messy!).
Well the 1701 Refir had a chair for weapons control then some higher up 70 years later said. No they will get lazy sitting down all the time. We will make them stand now. As all upper management just makes the worst decisions sometimes. Lol
Yeah but seat belts weren't invented in the Star Trek universe and in the original series those tears weren't even bolt it down they just fall out of the chair and I can share go flying with them
Inertial dampeners were supposed to take care of that. Who knew the writers and directors were going to override them?
To be fair, if the IDS actually goes down, a chair or seatbelt isn’t going to make the 75G maneuvers the ships pull survivable.
@@Vessekx A seat belt would allow the ship's bridge crew to stay at their stations while in battle and taking turbulence while in high earth orbit.
The lack of seating on the Galaxy-class Enterprise's Tactical Station, and by extension the bridge layout in general, actually makes sense when you're considering the Galaxy-class was designed and built during a golden era of peace for the Federation. Tactical isn't required to be manned directly unless there actually is a combat crisis, meaning the Security Officer wouldn't be required to stand at that station normally, and would typically be found at the Security Control station during normal times (The station Worf is usually shown getting up from to move to the Tactical Station).
Given the relative non-threat of the Cardassians, the generally secure ceasefire with the Romulans, peace with the Klingons, and the Ferengi and Borg not having yet been discovered, the designers of the Galaxy-Class presumed any tactical threat would be rather swiftly dealt with with minimal damage (since the Cardassians were the frankly laughable 'main enemy' when the Galaxy was designed), with the Security Officer not needing to spend more than an hour tops at Tactical before resuming his normal station at Security Control.
Thus the bridge was designed more with the expectation of NOT needing too much in the way of tactical oversight, and the commanding officer of the vessel mostly focusing on what is directly in front of him, typically communications with whoever they are speaking to to foster more diplomatic functions (hence the Counselor's presence on the bridge) and visual assessment of any situation they come across. The Galaxy-Class is not a warship by design intent, more an armed exploratory and diplomatic vessel that was generally not expected to need to do a lot of fighting.
Which was a mistake on Starfleet's part based in hubris, and one they started rectifying in later ship designs.
Plus the Next generation the ship is a Civilian ship those crew comfort is importance and having a military bridge design might send the wrong signal.
Well said both of you
This reminds me of the post WW2 fighters designed without guns. All engagements would be accomplished by guided missile if not with low-yield nukes. Vietnam disrupted this design philosophy.
“Counselor for some reason”
The “D”s primary mission was “to seek out new life”, and with the federation having the universal translator, comms was no longer the right name for what Ohura job morphed into in the years following. Though the show basically had Troy living on the bridge when, in my opinion, she should have been called to the bridge from her office as the ship's counselor, it did make sense that the chair next to the captain be the jump seat, used by any guests on the bridge, including the ship's counselor whenever there were conversations between Starfleet and [others].
My one disagreement, otherwise, great video!
I like the idea of windows, for safety outside of combat. Remember, warp is the speed of light. Warp 2 is the speed of light squared, warp 3 is cubed, and so forth: Windows are useless with combat involving ships that warp as part of the tactics. We never get an official explanation, but i assume tacheon particles or other similar active scanning devices are used to actually see.
Yeah, given her utility throughout the show, it should be obvious why a counselor would be helpful to the Enterprise’s mission.
17:16 in the defence of the councilor's chair, if you were a captain and had an empath onboard, would you stick them down in engineering or get them a chair? I think the designation of "Councilor" is a PR move as " Chief Psychic Witch" might make people a lil uncomfortable lol
I've actually read that the chair is for Diplomatic personnel or the second officer.
Counsellor. A councillor is a member of a parish, town, county council etc. A counsellor offers counsel or advice.
That's Lieutenant Commander Psychic Witch to you!
@@Jiraki_the_Wingless
Curious. You use a military rank, but don't wear a uniform.
- this post was made by the Jellicoe gang
I like the little console in front of Troi. The disply readout is just a blury green blob.
The argument for the transparent metal actually makes a lot of sense to me. It makes me think of the scene in the Avengers movie where when the helicarrier is in danger of falling. When that SHIELD agent mentions the navigational systems are down, Fury asks if the sun is coming up and then tells the agent to put the sun on the left of the helicarrier. Being able to see outside would make a lot of sense for that
Also sad we couldn't get the clip here where Data was recalled by Soong and Riker commented they had to look out a window to know they were out of warp.
That’s exactly what I was thinking of but I kept getting hit by a dmca , couldn’t use it
@@LoreReloaded Damn :/
Just keep in mind that you need to turn of the light inside to see anything through thouse windows. As long as sensors are active and said windows double as screens I give their ability to provide an wiev of the outside a pass thou. If power is cut, do not activate strong emergency light on the bridge or you will not be able to see anything.
@@LoreReloaded
I was thinking of worf's computer trick during that battle exercise with a constellation class ship. He tricked the view screen into showing a romulan ship.
Okay, I must completely disagree on the "necessity" of windows on a bridge of a starship. Naval vessel, absolutely... but what you fail to address here is the simple fact that distances in space are so enormous that all anyone would ever see through windows is the background environment anyway. Beyond a paltry few thousand kilometers, even a kilometer-long starship blazing away with all its terrible world-ending Trek weapons would look like nothing more than a single pixel on the screen you're reading this on. If it wasn't moving rapidly, you could not tell the difference between the speck of light that's a starship and the specks that are stars or planets. Eyes are woefully outclassed by these sorts of distances... so a ship with sensors down would be blind whether it had windows or not.
To be close enough to actually *see* another starship with unaugmented eyeballs, that other ship must be so close that there is a real danger of collision. And if collision is imminent, the speeds at which such vast distances can be covered would literally make this a blink-and-miss-it window to even register what was happening, let alone have time to actually react.
Starship windows exist purely for the scenic views of things like planets and nebula, to be enjoyed from your cabin or public lounges. Holding up a tricorder to the hull would literally tell you far more information about things outside the ship than looking out a window, squinting in vain to find the microscopic flicker of light that is a starbase orbiting a nearby moon.
Shuttles, as aerospace craft that frequently use visual flight rules, are a completely different story when in atmospheric flight. Out in deep space though, the windows on shuttles are just as redundant.
True, True. For example, Star Trek Nemesis, when the Scimitar shot out the bridge view screen and just ONE person is blown into space?! That’s science fiction fantasy! But is better than the bridge placement on the USS Vengeance! See thru saucer section, external torpedo launcher?! And I thought the Star Destroyers in the last movie was a lazy design!
Hard agree.
Now, having observational domes and telescopes and sextants & charts for emergencies is something that would work better than a bridge window.
Bridge window = useless.
Observational blisters at specific points = useful in emergencies & nice place to relax.
Like Captain Georgiou and her telescope on the Shenzhou. Though you'd need very powerful telescopes for anything further than a few light hours away, and to remember that what you're seeing happened hours earlier.
Even further, with the technology and power they have, they could have easily gotten rid of windows and installed holographic displays or something similar to simulate the view outside through camera's on the hull. These transparent windows would also be a huge disadvantage, as many weapons in the star trek universe are laser based, which means that one single glance across the mess hall could result in anyone inside getting vaporized, along with going straight through into other compartments. It'd probably even be possible to find a position on the ship where one can shoot through a window at such an angle that they can directly hit the warp core after burning through a few decks.
It's best to just ignore the whole bridge layout thing. They make no sense and everybody knows that. You don't have to rationalize everything in Star Trek. It's made for entertainment and the writers are not clever enough to fill every plot hole.
@@NormandyFoxtrot
Should have gone with the submarine design philosophy used on ENT but even there they put the bridge at a very vulnerable spot.
I wrote a book about the original series. I approve of this level of research. one correction: at 4:58, "irregardless" is not a word. Just say "regardless". All good wishes!
It grated on my ears, glad I'm not the only one who heard it😅
Did you catch armament, a term for weapons, used to refer to armor?
Irregardless tomato tomatoes.
'Ear regardless.' 😆🦻
Irregardless will eventually get into the dictionary just because of common usage.
It can be argued that the Galaxy Class bridges weren't designed with a combat mentality, while the defiant class was. I'd love to see you compare the Sovereign to the Defiant because for a ship that was designed in an era nearing the end of the Dominion War, I think it suffers the same flaws as the Galaxy, with STYLE over function. I think it could've used a more Defiant Esq bridge, being that it was "SUPPOSED" to be a battleship.
The Sovereign class was built PRE Dominion war, the ship was already on a mission when the borg attacked and the Dominion war didn't start until after
"Let's run around like sheep without sense" Starfleet bridge design while in battle
Best design feature in TNG is the battle bridge. Always have a back up in case of an emergency.
@@hackman669 In Star Trek you have to accept certain things as "the price of admission", but Lore Reloaded is correct in that on any vessel expected to go into combat (of sufficient size) you should have a main and an auxiliary control. In actual combat, the first officer would move to auxiliary control with a back-up command crew. They would constantly be updated by CIC (the combat information center, in case you didn't know the acronym) in case the main bridge suffered a casualty (got blown up or incapacitated).
In addition, both bridges should be located in a more interior position on the ship to put more armor, shields, and just plain mass between them and potential damage. You really want your primary computer core, your engineering section, and your command facilities as well protected as possible. If you lose any of those three, your ship is dead in the water. Well . . . space, in this case.
@@hackman669 I contingency your point.
What I was most concerned about safety-wise was seating. Clearly, the occupants of the Bridge get thrown about quite a bit. In most versions of ST, Bridge Officers are either standing, or sitting in very unsupportive chairs. Realistically, they should all be well belted into very supportive couches like what fighter pilots or astronauts use. Worf, responsible for sensors, communications and weapons stood just waiting for any bump to hurl him into a bulkhead and his death. Worse, his failure to complete his duty.
Who needs belts when you have great inertia dampers, t hough I believe the Sovereign class vessels re-introduced seatbelts (but not airbags) and a physical 3D control stick, for whatever reasons. Given the gravimetric forces and acceleration in play, I'm not sure seatbelts would actually help the way they do in car crashes, but I suppose it will help restrain someone or someone's body from flying all over the ship and into someone else's face :D
@@johnny5wd567 Tell you what, we go ten years including repeated intense combat and serious natural and unnatural phenomena never being able to rattle the inertial dampers and I might change my tune. As for seat belts helping one stay in place, I think your right. Volvo made a lovely 2-3 minute training film for truck drivers showing 2 impact dummies in a truck cab. One with seat belt other without. Then they threw the truck off a cliff. Person with seat belt, fighting chance to survive. Person w/o, hurled all over the cab like a dice in a cup. Not so much no chance of survival as a major greasy mess to clean up.
Either they need fully functioning inertial dampers and no movement/vibration on the bridge, or dramatic movement on the bridge and seatbelts.
@@DLWELD I agree. I think that was my essential point. I would also point out that some sort of couch/pod arrangement could also be useful for protecting officers in other ways. During DS9, which is the last piece of ST I feel has any significant canon validity, we saw many instances of explosions on the Bridge resulting in the injury or death of other officers. Also, we saw many instances of needing to evacuate. The bench/pod could provide solid physical protection for the officer sitting in it from explosions, and then enclose the officer and whisk them away, either to an escape pod or even become a short term escape pod. How would I depict it? You'd have macho seating positions ala Space Battleship Yamato, with heavy six way + belts. Then, on red alerts, we'd see clamshells extend out of the seats to offer greater protection. When one needed to evacuate, the seat would whisk them away.
Given the way those consoles explode at every possible moment, would _you_ want to be strapped to one in a crisis?
The ‘ counsellor’s chair’ is a mission officers chair so any specialist mission specific crewmen could sit there if they where leading a project being observed from the bridge which is why you see doctor crusher commander Shelby and visitors sat there instead when the story needs them
As someone else pointed out, I'd definitely want an Empath on the bridge. She's a walking lie detector, mood assessor, & can be leveraged for huge tactical advantages. Having her as the Counselor should be a plus, not her main role.
@@TheKauff Except when facing Ferengi :P -- though apparently Deanna was able to sense deception from one of them despite supposedly not beign able to :D
Empaths could be great tactical as well as diplomatic assets, not just counsellors...
So, visitors get a chair, but Worf....
Small point: Kirk's Enterprise did actually have a secondary bridge. It come up in a couple of episodes, and we see it in at least one (unless my memory is playing tricks on me). It's very cramped, but then aside from the mess hall and the Bridge, a lot was on that ship.
Are you referring to auxiliary control?
@@blkhrtme1 I think they might have used that term, at that.
John Scalzi explained in his novel "Redshirts" why the bridge is a deathtrap: it's for dramatic effect. It's why consoles explode and kill "red shirts". It's why they are vented into space, sucking out "red shirts" in the process.
Exactly!
I want to see the deepest, crunchiest breakdown possible. Show me all the bridges! How do they compare to the bridges of other factions, like Klingon or Cardassian?
Oh the Klingons would love bridges that fought back. Some kind of honor challenge.
Yes would love to see the commentary on the non-human bridges
Can we please add the logic behind Vulcan Bridge layouts also.
I believe they all exhibited the same layout
I guess the Klingon bridge *with the periscope* was just designed to make the other bridges appear less ridiculous.
Separate your Command Staff into different compartments. One hit cripples the entire starflleet. American Battleships have 4 separate armored steering / command stations. Even fully automated modern vessels have mandatory external and visual spotters just in case. CIC is buried so deep in a ship the only way to be sure you hit it is to sink the whole ship.
Funny enough, enough yesterday I saw a video of an aircraft invident that killed off almost the entire soviet pasific fleet command. Apperantly the top brass didn't feel that the laws of physics applied to them so they had massivly overloaded the aircraft after a shopping trip.
Don't forget too put engineering and other vital displays visible to the enemy when communicating with them...
With speed and distances in space a window does not help you in any situation. Light is too slow.
Yes, but CICs didn't become a concept until World War Two. Mankind had been building ships of war for millenia, but it wasn't until 80 years ago it occurred to anyone that sailing the ship and fighting the shop should be separated. Think about that.
@@stefanlaskowski6660 Kings used to lead from the front
My problem with the discovery bridge that how far everyone is sitting from the others. Like you need to shout through a whole stadium just to inform someone or report to the captain.
Im sure that has nothing to do with people building sets in their garage and making unlicensed content.
The Galaxy and Intrepid bridges have the same issue tbh, yet in all the shows people talk to each other at pretty normal volume.
@@kaitlyn__L the galaxy bridge is much smaller, the the operations officer can touch the navigation officer if he just strech out his arm, and the captain can do a high five with tactical from their positions. just google image the two bridge and you'll see a big difference
my head canon is that they use some kind of close range communicators, blu-tooth like so they don't have to shout all the time.
Acoustics must be great for opera.
I was totally expecting as you went into discussing the large barrier making up tactical on the Enterprise, that you would have included one particular clip that I recall in which an intruder was on the bridge and Worf literally vaulted over the side of the barrier. I can't remember which episode that was, but it certainly went to show that it was a pain in the ass to effectively move around the bridge in the event of a close quarters combat scenario.
Another interesting thing to think about is relief staff. More often than not, an away team was suddenly and rapidly formed and often included Data, and many times Worf. The second they leave their posts to head to the turbolift, two random Ensigns would rush in and take control of those stations. But, where did they come from? They're literally RIGHT THERE at all times, yet have no designated location from which they came lol.
Cool video though! I like the breakdowns a lot.
I'm not sure which TNG resource to cite for this, but I seem to recall: the original principle behind the design of the Galaxy bridge was that a ship of the more advanced age would be a lot more automated. Fewer crew members could keep track of things from the bridge. They would be able to do more, and would require far less micro-management from the captain and XO. The three senior officers chairs were instead intended to create the atmosphere of a conference and encourage discussion on the bridge rather than most time being spent asking for status updates on ship systems.
In fact, the early design for the bridge had the captain's ready room be OPEN to the bridge and in the back - the idea was that the command crew would mainly be on the bridge to talk about matters, not run the ship. They would simply have a view of crew members entering and exiting the bridge to occasionally check on a station. This huge set ended up being impractical to construct however. And it would have been difficult to frame and shoot effectively.
This was intended to flow with TNG's era being one of a much more peaceful Starfleet - one that was powerful enough to explore in a relaxed manner and be less aggressive in reaction to provocation. Now, the actual writing of the series may not have always communicated this well or respected it. It often fell back on basic conventions. However some early episodes do seem to keep this in mind. The first encounter with the Ferengi for example - rather than the bridge crew panicking and going to battle stations when a hostile ship opens fire, it is demonstrated the Enterprise is far superior to a random, unfamiliar threat. And the bridge crew instead calmly analyzes and deliberates the situation.
Are there any design sketches for this early concept?
Circuit breakers and seatbelts, cannot have that...
Or even vacuum-rated suits for personnel in case your emergency force fields don’t engage or fail.
Seat belts won't help if the inertial dampners fail. You will find crew reduced to a coating of protein on the aft bulkeads. Such was the fate of the Hera in Indistiguishable from Magic. They were grabbed up in the wake of a space whale. Jumping out of our galaxy in a slipstream equal to many factors of warp speed. These transwarp tunnels combined with the impact of the collision killed the power. Thus the dampners and the crew. Reduced to a fine protein slurry on the aft bullheads. Since.the ship was left to vacuum for decades it was petrified. Lousy way to go really.
We don't do that here!
@@Ozzy_2014 We frequently seen the crew shaken about. Those inertial dampeners are just that, dampeners, not nulliifiers. Some inertia gets through.
Seatbelts are only good for Spaceballs. :p
Most of the "design flaws" in Star Trek usually stem from necessities of filming TV shows versus actual deliberate informed engineering choices.
Overall, I'd say space ships are more comparable to submarines. Like submarines, space ships need to maintain atmosphere. Like submarines, the medium through which they navigate provides no human processable navigation clues. Under water, in the depths where submarines usually operate, it's simply to dark and murky. In space, human eyes and visual interpretation and intuition completely fails, because humans rely on depth perception for movement and orientation. Due to the distances and scales involved in space flight, humans can't rely on depth perception. So that's one major point for instrumented flight and essentially makes "windows" completely useless as fallback mechanism, if those instruments should fail. That basically leaves "windows" for entertainment, such as leisurely observing a planet while in orbit in a ship's lounge.
Then there's armor and hull plating and hull integrity. While in-universe, those "windows" might be some form of transparent metal, it's speculative at best if they also have the usual hull platings and other forms of overarmor. One could argue, those platings wouldn't be transparent themselves, so that would make windows structural weak points.
While the pressure differences in space might not lead to as severe structural failure as it does under water, it could still provide stress points leading to growing fractures in the window and in the surrounding hull (google why airplane windows are round or have rounded corners). Also, as far as we know currently, transparency of a material indicates some (quasi-)crystalline structure, and those tend to shatter when stressed. But even given current day materials one could assume some form of layered composite, much like car safety windows, yet this still means a damaged window section would need complete replacement.
But then again, maybe Trek has some kind of molecular welder, able to fix the failures in these composite windows. And I seem to remember Trek ships also having some innate structural integrity field system, possibly able to reduce or eliminate the stress fracturing? Even if this structural integrity field was always active, for efficiency and simplicity, wouldn't it simply be more practical to solve such structural weak points at the design phase? At what point does the handwaving become unbelievable?
One thing always bothered me, at least post-TOS, why does the view screen on the bridge never display additional information? This too should be plausible, given the adaptable and configurate LCARS system. I assume this is also more for cinematic purposes, to give the actors reasons to wander around on set, providing dynamic framing, instead of everyone just always sitting and staring at the main view screen. And probably production cost during the time, with CGI being much more expensive. Compare this to Discovery and the Picard series, where ships do have interactive holographic information display on primary viewing areas.
The commonly round bridge layout probably also stems from cinematic requirements, such as multiple camera angles showing as many of the crew as possible. But one could also argue, it's due to an engineering problem: how does one route multiple redundant information systems to a central location? The circular layout provides an effective way to route and connect terminals, while keeping the actual conduit short and organized. Here only the forward navigational consoles stand out, since there's practically no need to ever put them in between the crew and the view screen. Lets say, Trek bridge view ports actually did show additional data relevant to the situation, why have this all important information display always be obscured by two consoles and bodies of crew, when they could've been placed literally anywhere else? So again, I'd say cinematography got in the way of "realism".
Assuming all of this holds true and isn't handwaved, a more central and more embedded location of the bridge is much more plausible. It's just less attractive for cinematographic and dramatic reasons.
I reject the filming excuse. The expanse, Battle Star Galactica, and Babylon 5 did it…
@@LoreReloaded You're absolutely right, and I think those shows did a stellar job, pun intended. I really hope that future sci-fi shows and movies will continue with this trend.
But I'm not saying that *all* science-fiction TV shows and movies have a such "nonsensical" bridge design, or will have such a bridge design because of cinematography. I'm just providing the perspective that specifically the creators and directors of Star Trek TV shows and movies might have made those choices for cinematography. At some point things like design, bridge layout and technology becomes a stylistic element, it becomes canon. And to provide continuity, new shows adopt these styling and design cues, adopt the canon (or reboot, like Discovery, and Kelvin Trek).
Of course it's also possible that the art department and design team specifically had non-submarine naval ships in mind when designing these, this too would make sense given ship classifications and command hierarchy in Trek. Yet, as often as Trek designs and story was deeply meaningful and intricately imagined, sometimes they just winged it. I don't really know how to sensibly argue for such quirky designs, when, at least to me, the aspects of being part of film and show jump out so much.
I like the argument I read below that the stations on a galaxy-class May well have been able to be configured for whatever you like. As a matter of fact I've always thought that it would have been cool when Captain Jellico took over for a brief period if he had switched tactical and Ops in his efforts to make Enterprise more battle worthy in his opinion. In a battle it seems to me that Ops would be receiving commands more than communicating to the captain whereas the captain would need to have close communication with tactical. They could have had Worf sitting back up front for an episode and the Android who can stand for eternity standing back at Tactical. As for whether or not I would like to see more... I would absolutely love to see you break down every bridge that has ever been shown.
Now that you mention it? Ya that.... would have been cool.
Even cooler? If on return picard saw Jelico's method of doing things and 'while i concede that the manner he conducted himself was less than cordule in a situation where a diplomatic integration would have better served. I am going to take some of his changes into consideration on a more permanent basis. Now, Counselor Troi. If I ever see you in that bloody cheerleader uniform again and not in standard issue I will slap you with this wine bottle.'
The chateaux Picard 86??
@@KCKingdomCreateGreatTrekAgain You never hit a woman with the good wine, he would use the space equivalent of Boons Farm for that purpose. Heck I doubt Riker is worth the good stuff.
@@singletona082 Picard wanted it too, so did Troy, but the gods of the universe decided otherwise.
I am quite a fan of Star Trek Bridge Commander. They put tactical at ops while science and engineering are on the arch (I call it that, forgot if it has a real name). Both tactical and helm are at the front.
I heard that Shatner, on his recent space flight turned to an engineer and said, "We need more power!" And he said, "I'm not Scotty."
i feel like the extra seat next to the captain is over criticized on the galaxy class. you dont HAVE to seat your therapist there, it can be anyone that has expertise for whatever mission or situation you're involved in.
and as stated, this isnt a warship, but rather an exploration ship, so looking at it thru the lens for combat efficiency is mostly irrelevant. even when you end up in combat, the point to the galaxy class is you simply have the biggest stick
A random price of the hull is scratched.
Console on bridge: Kaboom?
Another console: yes console, Kaboom
Windows on the bridge - bridge on top instead of deep inside armored hull, Consoles filled with explodium - and on top of all - Shrapnel made from ROCKS xD Not to mention safety issues with having to stand to operate a console instead of being strapped in to a flight chair during combat where system failures were a given (including loss of inertial dampening and such), no safety gear at all stored close by (like emergency vac suits). No easy access to escape pod (dedicated for the bridge crews). To say that their bridges were poorly designed is... generous at best.
yeah every time I look at a star fleet bridge I can only think of how utterly arrogant or stupid the engineers at starfleet must be. the Navies of the world from 1918 had a better grasp of crew safety.
@@Dies1r4e "we are beyond war" ect They were arrogant, heck thats the point of the Sisko designing the Defiant.... then going back to business as usual swiftly after... ok stupid too
Look at every warship of any navy produced after the age of sail, and note where the bridge is. And yes in combat the bridge of many ships took direct hits. Also note that on almost all seagoing vessels on earth, the bridge crew, and indeed most all watch stations are standing, not too much of an issue because a standard watch is 4hrs in most earthbound fleets.
@@kalynstalinski8375
The bridge? On top, in the tower, to allow visual navigation.
The actual CIC is somewhere inside the hull and well-armoured for most ships. ST bridges are bith CIC and bridge, so not comparable to modern naval ships.
As for standing? Our ships don't zip around at high speeds with inertial dampeners that can fail.
The people that actual travel at high speeds, pilots, are strapped in.
Padded bulkheads? It would reduce the amount of minor injury alot.
The bridge being "exposed" isn't a problem in Star Trek, it's an acknowledgement of the limits of material science. All star ships had shields. With shields up, a bridge could be put anywhere and be safe. With shields down, a bridge could be put anywhere and NOT be safe. We see photon torpedoes drill straight through the entire primary hull when shields are down. When they are up, the same torpedo just scorches the paint a little. It wasn't until Star Fleet got ablative armor that you had a chance of making a hull that could withstand some punishment while shields were down.
As to secondary bridges, even TOS ships had the "emergency" bridge, which was (oddly enough) in the exact center of the primary hull. There were even some episodes where the bridge crew used it.
This makes sense with regard to high-powered weapons such as torpedoes. However, the exposed Bridge can still be a problem in relation to "mid-level" threats, such as weapons, space phenomena, or colliding objects powerful enough for some damage to get through the shields (but not so much that the ship would be blown away no matter what). Or in a shields-down situation, powerful enough to damage the exposed Bridge but not penetrate to a more secure location.
Thus an exposed Bridge would still succumb to threats that an internal (and well-armored) Bridge would not be vulnerable to. The exposed Bridge is also easier for enemies to locate and target. "Hit that nipple bullseye right in the center of the disc!" Since most Trek ships don't use windows, the exposed Bridge does not offer extra functionality that makes the additional risk worthwhile.
Ask the Bridge crew of the SSD _Executor_ about the virtues of a Bridge built into the bowels of a ship. :)
@@kevincrady2831 "Hit that nipple bullseye right in the center of the disc!" is in keeping with naval tradition tho. In the age of sail officers would be standing on the quarterdeck completely exposed as high value targets. In battleships the bridge crew were basically the only people on the ship not protected by armor (they had armored conning towers that nobody ever used). If your leaders are willing to put themselves in the most exposed places, how can you be afraid at your post?
Auxiliary Control in TOS, the Battle Bridge in TNG
You could also not present for combat at any given orientation using only the "windows."
Unless you had one hell of a tactical officer.
But I would rather be concealed then exposed regardless of armor
Listen to the distances described in Star Trek. Ranges between ships where in various large multiples of kilometers. You aren't seeing much through a 'window' then. Also honestly Battlestar Galactica second series had it the best with the command deep in the ship at CIC. 'Bridges' on a starship would have little purpose as the use of human vision being useful would be extremely limited and only place the command center on the exterior of the hull where they are vulnerable.
Shows how the Tardis circular design for controls really makes the most sense.
you know a lot of these layouts actually mirror or mimic real bridges on ships.
Most ships in modern earth have an explosed main bridge, and a secondary battle bridge ( called CIC)
A small patrol Frigate for example, will have at the front of the bridge, the helm and navigation stations, these are often crewed by 2 different people. behind that on one side would be tactical, on the other would be radar/sonar/sensors. This person could feed information across to tactical, selecting a target, and providing the information to tactical weapons officer who would slew the weapons onto said target. between them was often the captain... who would give weapons release permisison, and had an overview of helm, tactical, nav, and weapons.
Behind him would be the engineering, who would monitor engine temps, ship balance and other things. and across from engineering was a back up station... or coffee maker... comically, bigger, wider ships, often put ALL the stations up front in a row.
last I checked teh Water based ships we use arent capable of approaching light speed, also on earth line of sight is not 12 million miles.
So the logic is flawed.
@@julesmasseffectmusic not really, cuz humans often take an, "if it aint broke don't fix it" approach.
A great analysis, thank you for finally putting the window situation in a better light :) Would love more like this!
As to the Galaxy bridge, the tactical officer standing up could be a matter of alertness, it's harder to lose focus if you are standing up, and tactical needs to be on the ball for unexpected situations to arise at all times.
Of course, if Worf does need a breather he can pull one of the other consoles' chairs out and just sit on that, they are right behind him after all.
We also see other officers almost always standing up at their consoles. In fact, to my memory of TNG, the person who sits down at them most is ironically Data, the one guy who has a polyalloy spine :D
That’s the last time they hire bridge designers from Risa. The wishbone alone screams Jamaharon
The Risans evidently designed their holodecks, too... ;)
As a helmsman on a cargo vessel, I can tell you EXACTLY why the navigation is in line and facing forwards on the ship. Even in the dead of night, with thick fog where I can't even see the front of the ship, using nothing but Radar and Navigational software(I'm no longer looking out the windows), I can "feel" the ship as an extension of my body when I'm navigating. "Spatial Awareness"... And with how humans are physiologically it makes most sense to be forwards oriented.
This, "Extension of the body" effect will be very prevalent for the starship pilot too.
Flip me round 180 degrees if i have to navigate at night in fog... I'll manage. But I'll have to double check my spatial awareness constantly.
Edit:
Imagine this:
Your driving a car. Except your chair and wheel are turned 90 degrees facing sideways, and you can only look at a screen showing a camera feed of ahead of you. I GUARUANTEE you'll have a harder time than just sitting forwards facing.
Random extra at a console: pretends to be important.
Ship: gets a minor hit which is deflected by the shield.
Console of the random extra : blows shrapnel and concusses/kill the extra.
Some other character: takes the place of the extra and keeps using the console like nothing happens.
Random engineer : comes in with a bucked of shrapnel and a shape charge to refill the console.
It is fare to assume that the federation likes their officers to not feel safe and face a deadly force feedback to motivate them.
While windows sounds helpful the massive distance involved in space travel would make them impractical, during a fight enemies should be able to fire far beyond practical visual range
Currently, the vessels of all modern navies are configured with the bridge/CIC atop their command islands - this also usually includes the captain's sea cabin (equivalent of the captain's ready room in ST, but ST captains are afforded the luxury of not bunking up within 30 seconds walk of the CIC and/or navigation bridge), CIC and admiral's bridges at the highest points. On an aircraft carrier, escalators to and from the aircraft fighter squadrons' briefing rooms were also included.
That being said, the only purpose for having an elevated bridge would be the same as now, to do line-of-sight navigation when imaging systems were damaged beyond repair - but there's a big difference between having a bridge on a vessel going 35-38 knots on the water and one in space doing warp 9, where any speck of dust could puncture the bridge first at sunlight speeds. I would be an advocate for moving these facilities to the center of the saucer, having a battle bridge atop or between the separation points at the neck and the stardrive.
And of course, keep the damn Red Devil Fireworks out of the panels. There is such a thing as resistors to keep all of the ship's power from frying your lower decks noobos.
Either way, fairplay - but I advocate for putting things in the center and rely on imaging sensors to look out into space.
I would love to see a part 2 covering the Sovereign Class Enterprise E and the California Class Cerritos, also from the odd episode of the Luna class Titan.
Under normal circumstances, nothing in space would be close enough that looking out your window would help a ton.
If critical systems can fail, you just make backup systems for them. Falling back on what human eyes can naturally see though... lol
“What about automatic fire suppression?”
“That’s the panel that caught fire!”
- The Orville
I love how the Orville so deliberately poked fun at all of the Star Trek tropes.
Would love to see a video on the comparisons between Federation ships vs. other species starships like the Klingons or Vulcans! GREAT video as always mate and can't wait for the next! :)
The reason for this is simple, so the camera can see all of them.
Also the bridge can be locked out virtually anywhere, even from Neelix's mess hall...
Something of note is that real world warship's Combat Information Centers (CIC) are based on a modified Constitution bridge layout (albeit in the heart of the ship), where all sensor information is processed and targeting for weapons is preformed.
It's actually the other way around. When designing The TOS Enterprise Bridge, it was modeled after the Aircraft Carrier CIC.
I'm pretty sure the "Port Egress" is just the door to leave the bridge. Nothing to do with the nearby environmental station and meeting table, and certainly not a unique feature of the Defiant bridge.
I think most of the bridge designs are based on how to film the scenes on them. I remember watching an interview about how small the set of the defiant's bridge was and how hard it was to move the cameras around.
Well the entire concept of a bridge stemmed from having a platform between two paddlewheels for visibility over the paddle wheels and instructions were verbally relayed to the coxswain at the tiller or wheel and to the engine room. Remember Roddenberry has a naval background. Keeping the bridge motif at a location for high visibility doesn't make sense for a spaceship that will spend most of it's time in open space when just carrying a wifi connected tablet or smart phone would be sufficient to control the ship.
@@NormandyFoxtrot Yes, but for an interstellar spaceship, the need for a command centre would be few and far between so it could easily be simply space normally used for another purpose such as a conference room, living room, lecture or media theatre or even a patio in a garden area. Granted, with FTL travel such as in Star Trek, there may be more need for 7x24 staffing but certainly for the interstellar ships within our current technology, decades to generations to centuries may pass before such a centre would be needed and if it did exist, it would be more like an office building within the habitat and it's likely that our ship designs will first be adjusted to such sublight concepts before the advent of FTL.
LOL. Now I want to see the captain yell down for forward 1/2 through a hollow tube down to engineering.
well, I'd have to disagree with you about the windows instead of a viewscreen, even if I see your point. Yes those systems can fail. But what fails? The screen: who cares as long as the other consoles work, you can operate the ship; or do the sensors fail that feeds the viewscreen? Well then a window won't make any difference, your a sitting duck as you may not be able to see, but worst you also cant shoot back. The only point I would give you here is, yeah... the depiction of ship positions or movement in Trek is inconsistent. We see ships face to face to each other in clear visible range... but we also see that the ships are capable of fighing over huge distances or can move at high speed while doing it... in that scenario a window would help nothing if the sensors fail.
On top of that, material that is transparent is inherently weaker then its non transparent counterpart in all cases.
Ditto. There's always backups. There's always back up power, in TOS there's batteries,auxiliary control, and engineering where the ship can also be run from. And in the TNG era there's the battle bridge. A bridge module should have its own batteries or power generator in case it's ever cut off from the main power source. I think the view screens they have are probably far more advanced than any of our display screens today. While our screens today the slightest dent and they're ready for the dump, I think they can probably self repair.
@@ZontarDow diamonds? And transparent space metal aren't though in theory you could make the entire ship out of the transparent metal they use for the "window" it would just be too distracting for the crew
@@ZontarDow not only is that not likely true it also doesn't really matter, with few exceptions it is consistently shown that hull materials are useless against both credible enemy weapons and many natural phenomena.
The true strength of most starships are its arrays of shields fields and screens, when shields fail ships are often destroyed in single shots.
The window is not going to be any help if you lose the viewscreen. First looking out the window you will go "Yep that's space." Any ship you are fighting or space garbage you are trying to avoid will not be seen due to distance. How many of you have watched the Space Station? A bright light as long as sunlight is hitting it. Second you are looking into the past. The moon is over one light second away. You have one of those small ships moving near the speed of light you wouldn't have time to get out of the way. Third was pointed on this post by another. It's just another weak point.
ST:TNG had a second bridge for backup command. It was called the Battle bridge and was actually located at the rear bottom of the saucer and would remain attached to the warp nacels when the ship separated.
Yes. We all saw this on the first TNG episode Encounter at Farpoint 37 years ago.
The reason to skip windows is you couldn’t really see anything.
Given the scales involved, they would almost never be useful outside a pretty view in orbit, or during docking ops.
Plus it’s a weakpoint
I mean, you can't see anything if the viewscreen is down and damaged either. At that point a transparent see-through metallic window would be optimal as noted in the section of the video about the Discovery. Layering in an additional user interface with the functionality of a viewscreen on top of the window and you have a perfect mesh of both worlds.
Combat always takes place within a few ship's lengths of each other.
@@JFrazer4303 With ships capable of moving faster than light? :)
The ability to see the electromagnetic spectrum is so important that our eyes are fault-tolerance. Hypothetically, you could eliminate one of the hemispheres of the brain and still be able to see out of both eyes. Likewise, if you became blind in one eye, the remaining good eye would still feed visual input into the visual processing neural networks within both hemispheres. The organic quantum computer in your head is HA compliant.
Wouldn't the battle bridge be an analog to a secondary CIC
No one is there and they don’t work in tandem even if we accepted that.. which I’m unconvinced
@@LoreReloaded thats a fair assessment
Apperantly some ship designers forget to add them. Picards Enterprise had a secondary bridge only because the drive section needed a bridge of it's own in case of a saucer seperation. On the other side the Empire in Star Wars are no better considering what happened to that superstardestroyer.
Correction, Kirk's Enterprise DID have an auxiliary bridge of sort since the ship could be controlled from engineering in an emergency.
The Enterprise D can be operated from Main Engineering. They moved control there after Data took over the ship upon him being recalled by Dr. Soong. Not a dedicated space but doable.
@@michaelpettersson4919 there was also “auxiliary control” such as Kirk used to destroy The Planet Killer. I guess TNG era stuff merged engineering and auxiliary control since engineering was used that way in TOS too anyway.
You’re forgetting that ships like the Enterprise have battle bridges. They may not be used often, but at least the larger ships seem to have redundant bridges. There is also the ability to transfer bridge controls to any number of secondary areas.
But it's shown that those bridges are not manned, meaning they don't actually serve the function of a backup command center.
@@DrewLSsix For the Galaxy class it is more of a "drive section bridge".
@@DrewLSsix except for those times where they use it. Or as I like to call it the only reason we know there is a battle bridge. Also your adding qualifications not outlined in the video. The battle bridge is a redundant feature that specific purpose is a backup command center if the primary bridge is incapacitated in any way shape or form. Also how do you know the battle bridge wasn’t manned during conflicts. Perhaps red alert triggers a second bridge crew to man the battle bridge. Or did you forget there are more than the 6 main characters on the ship?
PS. From the TNG area onward federation ships can be controlled from virtually anywhere on the ship. If you include the wrath of khan a starship can be controlled from a completely different ship.
And that was mostly used when they wanted to separate the saucer section - only in one episode prior to battle i saw them man it just in case...
@@krzosu the fact that there shows there is more to it than that. Add to that the ability to control the ship from virtually any station.
My personal opinion is that the layouts of each station by the TNG era as we see it on the Galaxy class just happens to be set as such. All the different stations are most likely fully configurable and can take up Dutys of another.
A good real world example to this would be old and new aircraft, old aircraft maybe had a single TV screen limited to a single function, several dials, buttons and switched locked in a single position, modern aircraft replaced the majority of these with several Multi Function Displays that are identical and share the same functionality across each of them.
if you need weapons information one pilot might like to pull them up on the left display, another on the right or on the center.
Good example. Another would be the configurable screens on modern US tactical submarines like the Virginia.
You have to wonder how other shifts picked who was gonna be stuck standing at the day shift's 'Tactical' station.
@@Sorain1 Propably just picked by the Senior of each station and everyone else has to live with it
@@Sorain1 Don't they show this a few times, as another yellow shirt is standing at the station? I assume it's a Security / Tactical station, meant for a promotion above "random Guard".
@@Sorain1 Night shift tactical simply reconfigured a station on the backwall and took a seat. Not much to do for tactical on any given day anyway.
So, you would say the Klingon Bird of Prey has the most efficient bridge layout then. The captain in the center looking over the entire bridge crew, hell they're all practically within arms reach should some discipline be needed.
And, as I recall, the Klingon commander is often slightly elevated in a swivel chair so he can see what is being done without causing a disturbance.
Makes sense, Klingons are a warrior culture, they would be better equipped for fighting.
In terms of windows on a space ship... I don't think comparing them to real life military vehicles is apt.
On land your range of vision is limited by the terrain, on the sea and in the air, by the horizon. A majority of threats will be near enough that visual identification is viable.
Realistically speaking, in space, the majority of the time you will be fighting something which is, at best, a speck on a field of specks, to the naked eye. If your sensors go down, you are just as blind as you would be without a window.
18:24: The Galaxy Class Bridge is designed rather well for peace time. The Counsellor Chair as you put it is actually the Mission Chair. Anyone with Mission Specifics can sit there including Dr Crusher, Cmdr Shelby, Ambassadors and even Admirals. Having Tactical up high and behind makes sense as Worf has vantage point to open fire on intruders (whether plot armour dictates he get owned is another matter). All the Captain does need to see is Ops or the Universal I see every station, and Helm - everything else is automated pretty extensively and the Galaxy Class pre Dominion War didnt exactly run a CIC (which would be in the Secondary Bridge buried deep in the Sauce Module (yes the Galaxy Class had three Bridges, the Main Bridge, Secondary Bridge and Battle Bridge)
No one else mentioned that secondary bridge, good point, but in most cases, control for specific systems could be rerouted anywhere, given the proper command codes anyway :)
The Galaxy class also had children on board, so yes, given its mission and in peace time, the brdige made sense. Reconfigure for conflict. As Edward Jellico demanded in Chain of Command.... or when engaging that EP-607.
Have to disagree on the Discovery being a good bridge design for three main reasons:
1- Holographic and transparent displays are a terrible idea. In reality anything that happens behind the screen will distract the officer working on it. The last thing you want is the eye of your tactical officer being pulled off a display by something happening behind the screen.
2- the distance between the displays and the captain's chair makes it hard for anyone without magnified vision to see exactly what's going on.
3- the size of the bridge is far too large. For one, space is at a premium in a starship. Even the Galaxy class had a modest bridge that was easy to cover in a few paces. The Discovery bridge would take a good while longer to cover if one needed to replace a downed crewman on the far side. The Discovery bridge is full of an extreme amount of empty space for a bridge on a supposedly functioning ship.
Most modern fighter pilots would disagree about your concerns with the holographic displays, that's literally what a heads up display is. More likely, the officer is expected to be able to distinguish between the real stuff and the hologram stuff in order to do the job.
@@jonathonclary1681 The difference there is that a fighter pilot is supposed to be observing what is beyond the display. The HUD displays important information to the pilot as they are observing their direction of travel. In short, the pilot is supposed to be distracted by what is beyond the display.
If you're reading a computer display about a starship you don't need situational awareness outside of the panel that you're looking at. The holographic screen only adds potential for distraction and difficulty of focusing vision for zero added benefit.
@@jpc347 Also it means that possibly you can end up having your controls blinded/blocked.
I believe somebody did a video about how silly the Picard floating holo controls/displays were, because bright lights (or other things) behind the holograms would possibly obscure the controls or make words unable to be read.
Having played a lot of Bridge Commander in my time, I was always happy when I got moved from.the Dauntless (Galaxy) to the Sovereign (Sovereign class). Even in the game it was much easier to deal with that kind of bridge.
Although they changed things there and they had two people at the back and moved tactical to data's console.
Aside from the explodium consoles and the rocks, it’s interesting that when the ship takes damage the bridge also takes damage.
Like in the Reliant V Enterprise fight there are times when the secondary hull takes damage, and the bridge gets wrecked. (Granted that was main engineering so I guess it kinda makes sense)
Addendum for the Intrepid bridge: Having the full on MSD directly behind the captain is opsec *nightmare* everytime he/she talks to anyone via the viewscreen.
I'll assume that gets scrambled by the video processing. Hell, we can Skype from the Enterprise bridge or Endor using face recognition and funny backgrounds. I'm rather sure that this technology will have advanced to not allow potential enemies to glean vital info.
Though I'd agree that not having the info on plain view in the first place would be a Good Idea™.
I know it might get too much into the old vs. new trek arguments that you seem to want to avoid, but I'd love a comparison between the OG 60s Enterprise bridge, the kelvin enterprise bridge, and the disco enterprise bridge. Or maybe wait until strange new worlds is out since it looks like they're making some changes to it.
Also this has little to do with the video but star trek lore, sorta... In big battles, why don't starship remote control launch all shuttle craft with an armed photon torpedo or 3 on board, and warp them into enemy command ships? If you're a miranda in the dominion war, you ain't surviving long enough to abandon ship so you may as well use them as space age rocks...
If I recall due to the way warp works you cant do warp speed ramming attacks against non warped ships. Your tactic could work if the ship was fleeing at warp and couldn't out pace the enemy so launching exploding shuttles into them in an attempt to destabilize their fields forcing them to drop warp could work for a time
Upon impact, I believe 'normal' velocities would resume, and being non Newtonian, warp moment would not be conserved, too.
Warp means that the ship is either stationary, or running at impulse speeds and the spacetime *warps* around it. The warp drive distorts spacetime and folds it, making distances shorter. The warp "speed" isn't speed in reality. It's the rate the spacetime warps around the ship, creating a velocity-like situation... It's the rate that the spacetime flows around the ship. Confusing, I know...
Stopping from this situation brings the ship back to relativistic spacetime and it either keeps running at impulse at the speed it was running or keeps moving forward because of inertia.
Defiant's design is probably the best military design, while I agree that Discovery is probably the best scientific design but there's something important to note about windows in a spaceship irl.
Windows are useless in deep space. No, really. They're actually useless. The only way they're useful in space is if you're near a sun and close enough to planet to see it (See the movie, Apollo 13). In deep space, they provide no function except a pretty view of the stars.
1. Space isn't an ocean. You're in a 360 degree 3D bubble and as the number of directions you need to look increases, your chances of spotting anything anywhere near the ship become increasingly less likely.
2. Space is big. The odds of anything even coming into visual range are astronomical. This holds true for combat as even today, we already have weapons systems on our fighter aircraft that can accurately target an enemy that is so far away, the pilot cannot even see it. In a realistic space battle, you're never going to get close enough to see the whites of their eyes.
3. Space is dark. Unless they're these idiots on Star Trek that keep their ships lit up like Christmas trees, space is so dark, you can literally look at something right in front of your face and not see it. The only way to be able see something out of a window is if you note the absense of stars, and if you think that's easy, ask NASA how easy it is to see a black hole. It's almost impossible. Ask NASA how long it took observers to realize the horse's head of the Horsehead Nebula was a black hole because there were no stars behind it. Hell, come to think of it, you'd only be able to see the light the ship is creating because those lights aren't pointed at the ship and aren't reflecting off of it. There's actually a lovely scientific discussion asking what the point of cloaking devices in space would even be.
Conclusion: You are actually blind in deep space because there's not enough light for your eyes to process and it's too big. Windows on a Navy ship are probably a really good idea. Windows on a space ship are...they're armored, so they're not weakening the ship, but...they're pointless.
Also, if you do have windows you need to be quite close to the window to get a decent viewing angle outside of the ship. The further back you (or your station) is from the window the less of the space outside you see. Not to mention that many things might be too small without a zoom function even if you know exactly where they are outside of that window.
Fully agree, except that the cloaking device also seems to obscure the light from drive cones etc. If a ship is burning, or rejecting heat through its radiators, you can detect them easily against the 3K background of space. The cloaking device seems to prevent that (and also somehow prevent detecting most of the spatial distortions warp drive creates, apparently).
"Windows are useless in deep space. No, really. They're actually useless." They can't be lied to like viewscreens. The ultimate WYSIWYG.
@@kaitlyn__L : I imagine the hiding of light is only a small part of cloaking. It may even be a side-effect. Also there may be situations where a ship could be seen and hiding one's light would be very handy (like that episode where a ship hid really close to the enterprise).
@@brodriguez11000 right, exactly. From the vague ways they describe the mechanism it’s really more like the light happens to get hidden along with the rest.
While keeping the First officer on the bridge makes for good storytelling, realisticly, they would be in a CIC or battle bridge in battle and would usually be working the opposite shift from the Captain.
Here's a question for you. Have you ever been on a Submarine? It's the direct design used for Starfleet Bridges. The Original bridge was designed around the most advanced known Sub. in the U.S. Naval Fleet at the time. By the time TNG came out, we had much larger and much more powerful Nuclear Submarines and thus the design followed the general ideas of the new Sub classes. Oh, here's a great little side note, Ever seen or even heard of a window places on a Naval Submarine? No, well, there's a damn good reason, trying to look out into the black depths of the oceans would be like trying to see with your eye's closed. Yes, the same applies for space. Most think of space as the International space station or from shows and movies,m however, that is far from reality. Space is black, and soundless. You could travel through space more easily in an advanced submarine than anything Star Trek has actually produced. You're right in saying the Defiant was the best designed bridge in the fact it was literally designed after a small high speed nuclear submarine designed to intercept possible hostile targets. TOS bridge was designed around the base idea of the most advanced Diesel Submarine at the time. Also, if you think about it, All submarine bridges are in the forward center of the ship, directly under the main hatch. The only thoughts I have about Starfleet bridges is that they still have a Submarine mentality. Just a little food for thought as someone that has some knowledge about Naval designs and also knows why Gene designed the Enterprise around a Navy Submarine, space, like the oceans, is dark and dangerous. He believed the best hope to get out into space and start exploring would be based around an already proved design, one that we still use almost a century later.
Yes I have been on a sub. Gato class at the navel museum in Buffalo. The one thing I was hoping for with Enterprise was for the ship to be more like a sub, tight quarters narrow walkways ect. In space, just like in the ocean space on your ship would be at a primetime.
Please do more. I like during TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise," the bridges switches with the timeline change to the "battle bridge." This created a more realistic CIC.
Definitely would like to see some of the more obscure Starfleet bridges, and maybe even the few comprehensively-understood alien ones.
On the point of having all the primary command staff on the same shift, it's possible that federation culture allows for ships to just "drift" in empty space for 12h while the main command staff is off duty
I love this idea! I can even hear Picard say " That'll do Mr Data, park it up over there and that will do us for the day" 🤣👍
Alpha shift was generally when the Captain was required to station on the bridge. Beta shift had the XO in overall command of the ship, but the Captain on call (he was always on call). Gamma shift (graveyard) was rotated between the other command officers, but the rest were on call for emergency situations. However, a 4 shift rotation (adding in a Delta shift between Beta and Gamma) would lead to far fewer stress- and exhaustion-related injuries.
@@1Flagwaver Are you agreeing with Jellico?! lol
@@nicholaschisholm7018 Jellico was right
@@seannemo8076 maybe so... but he was “warlike” when there was no war.... just ask Riker, he was so right about Starfleets role now being war rofl (if I am unclear to anyone,am being disgustingly sarcastic)
I felt every bridge was poorly made. Every station should have had a solid chair, O2 and restraints at minimum. There sometimes is mention of backup bridge. Iirc Romulins have a 2nd bridge crewed by cadets. If main bridge station damaged. The backup station on 2nd bridge takes over. Overseen by senior Officer.
Plus a backup communications system. Exploration ships would have a drone. When gravity, black holes, unexplained phenomena…. The unmanned sensor drone gets launched. How often the ship gets caught getting too close.
Also landing team carry Glock as backup. Phasers get remotely disabled too darn often. Or that sword Sulu had in Abrams movie had. Flick out pocket knife, unfolds into sword.
Windows are a dumb idea. As far as "transparent Metals" That is what glass are made of (Silicon dioxide, or in the case of transparent aluminum: aluminium oxide doped with other metals. Windows are of little use, and Submarines function without any windows only using sensors. In space most likely radar, and infra-red optical sensors would be used. Your not going to see a ship that is a few million kilometers away with your eyes, or even with a pair of binoculars.
The problem with most TV sci-fi ships enaging in battle, do as if the the enemy has to come close to engage a target. Ship to Ship conflict would happen in light minutes or light hours away (180 Million Kilometers to billions of Kilometers) away. Even modern air combat no longer uses visual observation to engage targets. Two Jet fighters traveling a Mach+ each will be moving at more than 1Km/s. Space ships would be traveling hundreds of Km/s.
The most lethal aspect of the bridge design is its exposed location, right on top like a bullseye. The entire bridge was destroyed more than once, and completely blown off in one episode.
1:36 No secondary CIC? What was auxilliary control or the battle bridge?🙂
Went looking for this comment the second I heard that. Thank you for not disappointing.
@@scottautry9981 YW. I think this guy did another video where I also made this comment. Somebody argued endlessly with me that bridges belong on top, due to Star Trek canon and sea going vessels' current design, to see farther out to sea. If you've ever seen Minbari ships in Babylon 5, personnel can see everything around them with what looks like holograms, eliminating the need for windows in an exposed bridge on top. A modified holodeck, deep in the ship, in a protected area like sick bay could accomplish that safer. Command functions can be transferred anywhere. It seems to me that real starships in the future might protect their bridges better. Star Trek is enjoyable, but still fiction.
Never mentioned after episode 1 & 2 of TNG.
It didn't exist.
There was no auxiliary conn or piloting stations.
You knocked this one out of the park Lore. Keep up the good work.
Is it really good work tho? Not even 2 minutes in he's talking about how the enterprise doesn't have a secondary place to command, or what ever... how does he not know about the battle bridge. A literal second place to command the ship
Having navigation face forward makes sense because people visualize themselves moving in the direction they're facing. While the viewscreen may be facing any direction, the helmsman would likely have a better sense of steering a vessel if they can visualize it as an extension of their body.
I know this won't be popular but the design of the bridges also had to do with how they were filmed. One simple example is the tactical station on the 1701-D where someone is standing. If they were seated we wouldn't see them necessarily. Not everything is going to be practical, a lot is going to be what "looks good" on camera. So, toss out the realistic expectations of design that makes sense and think about what looks better on camera. A lot is sacrificed in practicality in order to make way for cinematic attractiveness. I know this is a downer for those who mentally live in the Trek universe as if it was real. However, I went to college for work in the film industry. Things are thought of differently in the industry, not in favor of what would necessarily make sense in reality. Ok, I'm done, I won't be looking back for replies since I'm going to be shit on for this.
My counter to this is that there are other series that did it well and were filmed. Bsg, expanse , etc. Now if we want to say that they couldn’t write the stories they wanted due to it.. that’s fair enough but that means the criticism is legitimate
So, apparently a lot of the starfleet ships actually had a second shield for the bridge so it was easier to target other critical systems like weapons or engines.
another thing is that some ships did in fact have a separate secondary command bridge that was fully embedded. You can see this on galaxy class ships where the secondary hull would fight with most of the weapons and the saucer would fly away (sometimes at warp as while it could not generate it own warp field it was able to maintain one for some time) with most of the crew to get to safety.
In addition engineering could have all controls given over to it on nearly all starships so the bridge was not strictly needed.
But after separation the secondary battle bridge was in the usual exposed position. Front top center maked with as "shoot me"-bull's-eye.
As I recall, in “The Making of Star Trek” the Enterprise had an auxiliary control room. It was featured in TOS in two episodes.
Yes I seem to remember that all essential command functions can be controlled from main engineering on all the federation ships portrayed in the various series and movies, except shuttles and the round abouts.
Also The galaxy was able to split its saucer and body so the auxillary control has to be located within the body otherwise this function would not be possible.
@@parlertrick original series Enterprise was capable of separating,. It was mentioned once in “The Apple”. Never shown of course. That was a budget buster
To better protect the bridge they needed a dedicated shield system, which the refitted constitution had but not the later ships strangely and ether a deployable blast shield like the Galactica had or some kind of phasic hull plating that's still physically there but allows only visible light through as a window but can in a second turn into a reinforced bulkhead.
Let that dedicated shield constantly alter its shield frequency as well in order to make hostile beaming more difficult. Too many officers has been abducted and too boarding parties have entered, it need to stop. Came to think of it there was a Voyager two parter including time travel with an 20 century industralist that got his hands on some future tech thst made himself extremly resilient to hostile beaming with a device he carried. Starfleet should look into those and make them mandatory for all crew at all times.
As I recall, in Wrath of Khan when they went to yellow alert they showed a schematic of a secondary shield being deployed over the bridge. One assumes that means the bridge has two shields, the main shield for the whole ship, and a dedicated bridge defense shield.
A deployable blast shield would be pointless on most federation ships since armor wasn't a thing and without shields, any blast shield would likely be just as sturdy as the basic hull around the window or the window itself. Now on ships like the Defiant which actually have armor plates, that's a different matter.
I just can't understand why ships aren't fitted with some kind of transporter technology. Once shields are down anyone can ether transport soldiers or explosives anywhere on the ship or capture the crew. It's a huge hole in your defences.
Have inhibitors that prevent boarding or abductions independent of the shields, maybe linked to your own transporters so you can only beam on or off the ship.
@@thanqualthehighseer lol yeah. Or keep your shields up, but before entering battle you deploy independent little unmanned carriers that are small enough to be difficult to spot, and contain transporter devices. And they are filled to the brim with missiles. You get to keep your shields up, and make your enemies explode at will.
i love the bridge from TNG, it's so cozy, like a living room. maybe not practical, but fun to imagine yourself in
I feel a lot of that is credited to it's comforting use of wood and warm colors. Most of it's actual flaws come from it's awkward layout. Like the guy mentioned, riker having to hover around constantly to check nav, and god bless worf having to man the completely chairless tactical.
I love the detail you put into each video. Keep making them and live long and prosper👌🤔
Good vid, I agree with a lot of the points made. Also, thank you for making it, it covers a lot of the questions I've encountered internally.
One thing missing from this - and I haven't scrolled the comments - the relationship between ST bridge design, and the inspiration for the layout, and language, being an extrapolation directly out of current/historical Naval precedent, particularly from that of the USA. Consider an ocean-going warship as we have known them across this (21st) and the previous (20th) Centuries - Window at the front, big 'operator' type chair for the Cpt, wheel between them. Doors to the side and rear. A bank of controls, some charts, at specific points around the room. Ship is beneath - partly because it's filled up with all the things that make a ship, partly because the water is beneath, and ship go on water, of course - and so that the Cpt and Cmd officers can see from the best possible vantage point.
Basically, the irony of ST, as much as I love it, is that the design ethos has always been taken from something which perhaps, by the 23rd and 24th centuries, will have become obsolete - at least, in space. If your ship sits on the ocean, it's pretty much going to be one way up, and you'll be looking up for planes, across for other ships, and down for subs, mines, and land. In space - you might need to face up, down, left, right, over there, over there - it's truly a 3D environment, so a '....fuck, I've lost the word there - a bridge based on moving laterally makes no sense. We'd probably still need gravity, so we'd be oriented one way up, given that we as humanoids have feet at the bottom, head at the top - but the environment we'd be working in would require spherical multi-directional movement. So, essentially, almost all bridge designs in ST are pretty much nonsensical, in the context, but they help orient us in order to understand what's going on, in the show.
I’ve always found Starfleet’s decision to put the bridge on the outer edges of the hull confusing and counter-productive, not to mention basically tempting the enemy to fire at the bridge directly (as we saw in Nemesis). A great example of a bridge location done right is the CIC aboard the Battlestar’s Galactica and Pegasus, which are located deep within the hull of the ship and separated from the vacuum by hundreds of feet of armor and structural support.
I tell myself that the bridge can be ejected in an emergency and serve as an escape pod, so they can stay in control up to the last moment.
“So unless someone runs to a window…” “They’re going to fall for it!”
YESSS!!
If they didnt store the spare explosive munitions behind every panel, console and chair in an unstable form they might survive more often
That's because the Replicators don't really replicate, they just transport from storage somewhere in the ship. Those "rocks" are meals, clothing, shoes, etc. Yes there are real replicators, but remember, this is Government Issue. Nuff Said.
😁
I always thought that starships were lacking parascopes. I was glad to see Shatner get one in Airplane 2.
The use of "windows" on a Starship is a 20th Century take on 14th-19th Century naval battles with relativistic short range weaponry requiring the need to see your target to aim your broadside cannons. Hell, let's just say flaming arrows and be done with it!? In "modern" 22nd-24th Century space warfare, your long range sensors are your eyes and your intention (if you wish to survive 'til tea-time?) is to detect, aim and hit your target (before they do the same to you) from literally thousands, tens of thousands (if not millions) of kilometers away - railguns, focused lasers (sorry, phasers!), sub-light propelled missiles (oops, torpedoes!), etc... you know, LOOOONG range! So "needing" a window on a Starship is virtually pointless unless you wish to let in some weak ambient, extremely dim natural light making looking out said window to see ANYTHING nothing more than just stargazing. Put it this way, if your enemy is that close you can physically see them, then either they or you (or both!) are already dead... killed a very long time BEFORE you were within visual range of each other!
I would’ve loved to have seen a Galaxy-class refitted for the Dominion War. See what changes they had to have made to have it a true battleship. And what alternations to the bridge would’ve been required. We only got see a glimpse of that from "Sacrifice of Angels" and afterwards.
I always felt one of the problems with the Galaxy-class bridges as that they were just too large with too small a crew within it. I’m thinking of how many steps it takes to get from the Captain’s chair to the Conn and Helm. Especially if someone had to take over for whatever reason. The Defiant-class made more sense. It was more compact (cramped, some would say), but people could get from one station to another quickly.
Seeing what they did with the Excelsior class Lakota bridge and the Data's Nebula class command in the Sutherland, I'd much rather they didn't show an upgrade. With their limited construction budget limitations for guest alien or starfleet bridges they tended to have to do them an injustice. There's a few pretty good fan designed updated Enterprise-D's out there that are much better than the rush jobs we've seen on the screen.
@@radioflyer68911 I always assumed the Sutherland was being commanded from an improvised or secondary command center. The plot had the fleet assembled quickly and they had to move officers and crew around to make it work so its an easy thing to assume the Sutherlands bridge was not operational when it was pressed into action.
Thats a trick of filming, the TNG bridge is about the same size as the TOS bridge, in fact most of the bridges fit in roughly the same footprint.
The real difference was height, TNG and several others have rather tall ceilings while a notable few have rather low ceilings. ENT, TMP mostly.
The galaxy class can seperate its saucer section, imagine having special saucer sections to change to in times of war. Simple accomodations, more power generation, more shields, more weapons etc.
The closest thing would be the bridge layout from Yesterday's Enterprise. In that timeliness the Galaxy class was a battleship to be used against the klingons.
Why are the sets badly designed? Lore : “Vulcans”. *hands raised to face level.*
I find it interesting how Discovery ditches the LCARS interface, and adopts something more like we're seeing in other science fiction.
@@brodriguez11000 I chalk it up to bigger budget and wanting more “eye candy”.
I kind of do miss Spock's peepshow viewer... I'm positive he was watching some green-blooded Pr0n-Farr on that every time he used it!
I would love to see more of this. Just a thought: a little more editing would improve the video greatly imho. Say, when you talked about the battlebridge on the loveboat, it would be great to see it. Also, when showing schematics and talking about certain elements of the bridge, it would be awesome to have those elements highlighted with a circle, an arrow or some such thing. Hope this does not sound like nitpicking, I am currently trying to design a ship for my sci-fi and so Im going through all possible inspiration. Cheers!
I really liked this. You definitely need to do more. Good work!
My latest video is a follow up to this :)