As a navy veteran I can tell you light on the bridge is the enemy. We like the bridge or the C.I.C. or combat, Information,center to be dark so that the only thing your eyes lock onto is the gauges and computer screens. This will always be the case even on a star ship. My personal favorite was the Enterprise-A bridge and even that one is too bright. But you can see where the inspiration came from on the Titan’s bridge
@@bestoftrekworstoftrek at green alert and @@bestoftrekworstoftrek @@bestoftrekworstoftrekd the way they are on voyager or how the Titan seems to be normally
I'm a 39+ year military veteran, and I agree! There needs to be enough light to move about, but not so much that you would give away positioning as such. Even in fighter aircraft, they would go blackout when operating on night vision. Normally lit controls would be blacked out as well. Trek has gone so much into touch screen, that those glossy panels would be reflecting anything behind the personnel. If anything, those panels should be matte, so not to reflect. That would be better for the show also, less reflective surfaces during filming. For me, I don't like when the bridge personnel don't face the captain, how are they to hear the orders clearly. 'Enterprise', Voyager, and the Enterprise-E model had the best bridges. The newer vast bridges are so unrealistic, that there would be no way to operate/communicate on them in combat. And none of that Kelvin timeline seat belts. To me, they need to be practical swivel into place, seat-integrated personnel restraints.
Well, it is possible, even with today's technology, to make a well-lit room and still be able to see what's on your displays and consoles. It won't be cheap, and probably not entirely practical, because you have to design systems in such a way as to be able to be useful in stressful environments, like combat.
@@Mikethemerciless11 I've been on a bunch of naval vessels and worked on many different types of aircraft. And on both, there is the ability to function is the bright of daylight and the cloak of darkness. A vessel and aircraft has to have the ability to go into night vision mode when it needs to. Although most of the time, it needs to operate as a well lit environment. Star Trek needs to function like this going forward, and stop being all dark & dramatic. Be a little more 'Marvel' and a little less 'DC'.
Now I just imagine an upcoming scene on Discovery where the whole bridge is exploding, but someone needs to make a heartfelt statement, so everything stops dead...even the spark machines and flamethrowers.
I have to disagree about the TOS Bridge I think it its super practical even for filming given a a lot of today is shot on steady cam rigs. Also it was shot on 35mm film which was the cinema standard for wide screen they just never cropped the frame. Every person is within a head turn of the captain and all within earshot of the captain and everyone else on the bridge. The captain has instantaneous access to all the information needed to make a command decision without having to leave the chair. Helm and navigation have a clear view of the main viewer and are out of line of site for the captain everyone else also has an unobstructed from their seated position with the turn of their head or chair Having people just swap stations that is not a part of their department even in a crisis is just not a good idea and dangerous, this only works in Hollywood land. In reality you would never let someone unqualified operate the station as they could do more harm than good.
@@Carwyn.MorrisLike Enterprise recreating part of it, the problem comes in possible shot compositions. It works for a few scenes, but if you have to shoot it day in and day out, there's only going to be a couple of good sightlines, and would get stale pretty quick. Just my opinion. I'm not saying it can't be done.
@@bestoftrekworstoftrek No it wouldn't be an issue because you would be shooting through Wilde walls and shooting into the set. most of the time up to a 1/3rd of the set is taken away and that is standard on most sets. the limitation is on the cinematographer's imagination or what is called for in the script. But there is no more difficulty or limit to what or how you can shoot on the TOS bridge set compared to any other bridge set. They all shoot pretty much the same.
The most hilarious addition to any of the bridges are the two Symbol M2007 Cyclone bar code scanners on the ops and helm of the JJ Enterprise bridge. Was that product placement, or did JJ not think anyone would notice?
The Neo-Connie. Oh man, so much is so wrong with the new "flagship" of the Federation. And you had the Enterprise-F right there, and STO had an amazing layout for it in the Aquarius Bridge design. They even put a transporter pad on the bridge floor, so the captain and command crew didn't have to waste time to beam places.
Considering any of these bridges, the best way to really look at them is as what they really are: Theatrical stages. The original series Enterprise bridge, from a television standpoint, was genius, though not exactly practical because of where they put the turbolift versus where the main viewscreen is located. Other than that, it's great because, back then, camera technology for TV wasn't too mobile, and they used film cameras. You don't have much space to move that camera around as you'd like without some preparation. They were able to do it on a few occasions. Otherwise, they could set the camera on a shot that can see most of the bridge, particularly the principle actors, all in one shot. What's more, if you'll note, the outer ring of the bridge where the turbolift gets off is one step above Kirk's chair. And the purpose of the rail around the bridge is not for safety (and you can actually get around that rather fast if you needed to); it's to catch the eye of the audience member in such a way as to create a demarcation between who's up there versus who's down there with Kirk and the Helm/Navigator. What I'm talking about here is Blocking, and Blocking is all about how you set up a camera shot in such a way as to emphasize what it is you want to do. Spielberg and Hitchcock are masters of this, but here, in the original series of Star Trek, it makes blocking very easy to pull off as you need to. Remember, it's a 48 minute TV show, and they've got to knock out about 24 of these per season. They don't have the kind of time to set up every shot the way Spielberg would do it. The bridge design allows for this rather well. It's not much different than a typical family sit-com set, with a living room or kitchen where the family congregates at; you don't have to do much in the way of blocking to set up what you want. When someone comes out of the turbolift, your eyes immediately are drawn to that. You want to know who's coming out of there and why. It's one of the reasons, by the way, I hate the design of the Orville's bridge; the doors are immediately behind MacFarlane and the other girl (I don't watch the show). That means that whenever those doors open, your eye is drawn to it, and with the Oriville it's bad because it's needlessly distracting, in part because the two characters sitting there are in a natural position of vulnerability. With the TOS bridge, the turbolift is off to Kirk's left, and above, so if a minor, unnamed character comes out, it's noticeable, but not as distracting, for that and other reasons. The Next Generation bridge improves, actually, on all this, but one of the reasons why everything has earth tones is for an illusion of space. It seems bigger there than it otherwise would. Further, you can now move the camera as you like. However, the big problem TNG had was that the consoles were shiny, glossy, and reflective; so reflective that you could see the camera and other people off-screen filming the shot. So they had to put black cards up to hide the reflections, and you can now painfully see all this on the Blu-Ray editions of Star Trek: The Next Generation. What I don't like about the newer designs from the Bad Robot versions of Trek is that the displays are too needlessly interesting that they can be distracting. Hopefully, in the future, for a vessel that's also meant to go into combat, they won't do this. Because the purpose of displays with functional purposes related to a vehicle and whatever it is you're doing is to convey information rapidly. It's one of the reasons why I love the Okudas' designs from TNG through to VOY, because they understood that you don't want fancy animations or displays that tell you too much all at once; complex information needs to be delivered in a manner that, at a glance, you know everything important you need to know. It's why fighter cockpits, even today, can seem rudimentary compared to what we can do in video games, because the pilot doesn't need a fancy display. Too much information all at once can cause something called Headstorm, where your brain is either too focused on whatever, and maybe trying to sift out the wheat from the chaff. When Bad Robot does this in its version of Trek, it's very distracting because you're trying to figure out what that display is trying to show, and I think that's by design because all these productions, storywise, are terrible.
The Voyagers was best in many respects, certainly the most cinematic of the TV series bridges and the best lit. One issue with it is the overabundance of unnecessary stairs particularly where the command chairs are . That one level should have been eliminated, every time the captain got off the turbo lift she had to take two little steps down and then one step back up to get to her chair in her high heel boots and her hair bobbing up and down. If she went to her ready room it was off of the turbo lift down a couple of stairs down a couple more to her room and then to get to her chair a couple out of her ready room and then backup one to her chair. For Tom Paris, getting off of the lift, had to go down two stairs go up one stair and then down two stairs to get into the well that they built the helm into. So if that one level where are the command chairs are was eliminated that would eliminate that one necessary step that is making everybody go up and down, and still have different levels to the bridge, keep the command chairs above line of sight of the helm and place it slightly lower than the stations in the rear like it was on the next generation. If you look at this set the somewhat flimsy railings on the far left and right behind the command chairs look tacked on, and don't even connect to the main rear railing with the computer station on it, completely unnecessary, and without those their the captain could walk straight off of the elevator take one step down and be at her chair and it almost looks like that's how it was originally planned, because as filmed with those little extraneous railings there she often has to grab it just to walk quickly around it because its in the way, and offers no function, it's just an obstruction. It also makes more sense to have one clear primary chair for the captain and one on each side but having two generic seats side by doesn't really look great. And of course this configuration was never used on any other hero ship. It doesn't help that they lack any character and look like stock vinyl seats out of a 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier. All other captains chairs looked special in some way and function. Finally, wonderfully integrated side stations were built on the far left and right of the bridge and almost never used, very occasionally we would see someone in the engineering nook but the accompanying science one on the opposite side of the bridge was almost never shown , which is very unusual for a dedicated in an unexplored quadrant of space, we almost never even saw any blue shirt science people on the bridge which also was a huge oversight of this show, and those side stations really were well thought out , detailed parts of the bridge that were just nearly abandoned, as well as the large flip out computer console the captain had between her and the first officers chair. All of that aside, the bridge looks great has great color and is was always lit well and is better than some of the movie Bridges even. Just a couple of minor changes they could have made over the 7 years of running that would have made a little more logical sense.
Personally, my favorite Starfleet bridge turned out to be a trap... that of the Dauntless. Not so much because of function, but because of the look. As for TNG, the IDEA behind it was that everything would be so automated in the 24th century, that you wouldn't need as much function... to then allow for more character-driven stories. That of course didn't work out the way it was expected to considering how tech-heavy TNG episodes (though certainly mostly character-driven) became as opposed to TOS episodes.
Trek bridge design is optimized to deliver exposition, but it's a hopeless way to run a ship. Realistically sensors should be a whole department with a dozen people, helm control should be integrated with inertial controls and structural integrity fields - again a whole department, and so and for each position. No, the captain should never tell people what weapons to fire when at what targets and how to fire them in what pattern - you train your specialists to make those decisions. A ship's captain should have filtered & condensed information funneled to him so he can set best policy for the mission at hand and trust the various departments to carry it out.
The D's bridge is beautiful, no doubt, and mostly functional. But those panels on the sides with the red lights that don't seem to do anything...I don't think I remember anyone doing anything with them until Generations.
02:54 there's a fan edit with a real STARFLEET ARMADA replacing those god awful crappy ships there's even a CROCODILE DUNDEE meme picture of it " NOW THAT'S A FLEET ! "
My only real problem with the Enterprise-A bridge from Undiscovered Country is the fact they stripped out the gorgeous Okudagrams from the Helm/Nav station, and pasted in random junk and an obviously spray-painted sound mixer board. It was a little less egregious on the Excelsior bridge, since it combined both on a panel that never had a pre-existing design to begin with. ... but to take what we had already seen, strip it COMPLETELY bare, and cover it with crap from the prop dump... it just rubbed me the wrong way.
The smaller ships (your Inrepid, California, and Defiant classes) DO have much better bridges. They're way more economical with their space. It's like the designers lose that ability the bigger the ship gets.
The "best 5" is a pretty fucking low bar... None of them are even slightly "good". They're serviceable for filming, to some extent, but logistically and ergonomically, they're fucking awful for their purposes. Without exception.
As a navy veteran I can tell you light on the bridge is the enemy. We like the bridge or the C.I.C. or combat, Information,center to be dark so that the only thing your eyes lock onto is the gauges and computer screens. This will always be the case even on a star ship. My personal favorite was the Enterprise-A bridge and even that one is too bright. But you can see where the inspiration came from on the Titan’s bridge
Very interesting. As far as realism...that's cool. As far as a tv show that we the audience need to see...bad. Thanks for the knowledge!
@@bestoftrekworstoftrek at green alert and @@bestoftrekworstoftrek @@bestoftrekworstoftrekd the way they are on voyager or how the Titan seems to be normally
I'm a 39+ year military veteran, and I agree!
There needs to be enough light to move about, but not so much that you would give away positioning as such. Even in fighter aircraft, they would go blackout when operating on night vision. Normally lit controls would be blacked out as well.
Trek has gone so much into touch screen, that those glossy panels would be reflecting anything behind the personnel. If anything, those panels should be matte, so not to reflect. That would be better for the show also, less reflective surfaces during filming.
For me, I don't like when the bridge personnel don't face the captain, how are they to hear the orders clearly. 'Enterprise', Voyager, and the Enterprise-E model had the best bridges. The newer vast bridges are so unrealistic, that there would be no way to operate/communicate on them in combat.
And none of that Kelvin timeline seat belts. To me, they need to be practical swivel into place, seat-integrated personnel restraints.
Well, it is possible, even with today's technology, to make a well-lit room and still be able to see what's on your displays and consoles. It won't be cheap, and probably not entirely practical, because you have to design systems in such a way as to be able to be useful in stressful environments, like combat.
@@Mikethemerciless11 I've been on a bunch of naval vessels and worked on many different types of aircraft. And on both, there is the ability to function is the bright of daylight and the cloak of darkness. A vessel and aircraft has to have the ability to go into night vision mode when it needs to. Although most of the time, it needs to operate as a well lit environment. Star Trek needs to function like this going forward, and stop being all dark & dramatic. Be a little more 'Marvel' and a little less 'DC'.
Now I just imagine an upcoming scene on Discovery where the whole bridge is exploding, but someone needs to make a heartfelt statement, so everything stops dead...even the spark machines and flamethrowers.
I have to disagree about the TOS Bridge I think it its super practical even for filming given a a lot of today is shot on steady cam rigs. Also it was shot on 35mm film which was the cinema standard for wide screen they just never cropped the frame. Every person is within a head turn of the captain and all within earshot of the captain and everyone else on the bridge. The captain has instantaneous access to all the information needed to make a command decision without having to leave the chair.
Helm and navigation have a clear view of the main viewer and are out of line of site for the captain
everyone else also has an unobstructed from their seated position with the turn of their head or chair
Having people just swap stations that is not a part of their department even in a crisis is just not a good idea and dangerous, this only works in Hollywood land. In reality you would never let someone unqualified operate the station as they could do more harm than good.
I was only saying it would be a pain to do ultra-widescreen on that set, and part of why the SNW bridge looks SOO much different and bigger.
@@bestoftrekworstoftrek it wouldn't be an issue 50mm anamorphic lens full frame would shoot perfectly fine.
@@Carwyn.MorrisLike Enterprise recreating part of it, the problem comes in possible shot compositions. It works for a few scenes, but if you have to shoot it day in and day out, there's only going to be a couple of good sightlines, and would get stale pretty quick. Just my opinion. I'm not saying it can't be done.
@@bestoftrekworstoftrek No it wouldn't be an issue because you would be shooting through Wilde walls and shooting into the set. most of the time up to a 1/3rd of the set is taken away and that is standard on most sets. the limitation is on the cinematographer's imagination or what is called for in the script. But there is no more difficulty or limit to what or how you can shoot on the TOS bridge set compared to any other bridge set. They all shoot pretty much the same.
The most hilarious addition to any of the bridges are the two Symbol M2007 Cyclone bar code scanners on the ops and helm of the JJ Enterprise bridge. Was that product placement, or did JJ not think anyone would notice?
The Neo-Connie. Oh man, so much is so wrong with the new "flagship" of the Federation. And you had the Enterprise-F right there, and STO had an amazing layout for it in the Aquarius Bridge design. They even put a transporter pad on the bridge floor, so the captain and command crew didn't have to waste time to beam places.
The Inquiry class bridge was the Discovery set with a few changes.
Thanks for the knowledge! The front consoles just look so fake, I assumed.
@@bestoftrekworstoftrek The front consoles are CGI but the set behind Riker is all real. Even the same captain’s chair
Considering any of these bridges, the best way to really look at them is as what they really are: Theatrical stages. The original series Enterprise bridge, from a television standpoint, was genius, though not exactly practical because of where they put the turbolift versus where the main viewscreen is located. Other than that, it's great because, back then, camera technology for TV wasn't too mobile, and they used film cameras. You don't have much space to move that camera around as you'd like without some preparation. They were able to do it on a few occasions. Otherwise, they could set the camera on a shot that can see most of the bridge, particularly the principle actors, all in one shot.
What's more, if you'll note, the outer ring of the bridge where the turbolift gets off is one step above Kirk's chair. And the purpose of the rail around the bridge is not for safety (and you can actually get around that rather fast if you needed to); it's to catch the eye of the audience member in such a way as to create a demarcation between who's up there versus who's down there with Kirk and the Helm/Navigator. What I'm talking about here is Blocking, and Blocking is all about how you set up a camera shot in such a way as to emphasize what it is you want to do. Spielberg and Hitchcock are masters of this, but here, in the original series of Star Trek, it makes blocking very easy to pull off as you need to. Remember, it's a 48 minute TV show, and they've got to knock out about 24 of these per season. They don't have the kind of time to set up every shot the way Spielberg would do it. The bridge design allows for this rather well. It's not much different than a typical family sit-com set, with a living room or kitchen where the family congregates at; you don't have to do much in the way of blocking to set up what you want.
When someone comes out of the turbolift, your eyes immediately are drawn to that. You want to know who's coming out of there and why. It's one of the reasons, by the way, I hate the design of the Orville's bridge; the doors are immediately behind MacFarlane and the other girl (I don't watch the show). That means that whenever those doors open, your eye is drawn to it, and with the Oriville it's bad because it's needlessly distracting, in part because the two characters sitting there are in a natural position of vulnerability. With the TOS bridge, the turbolift is off to Kirk's left, and above, so if a minor, unnamed character comes out, it's noticeable, but not as distracting, for that and other reasons.
The Next Generation bridge improves, actually, on all this, but one of the reasons why everything has earth tones is for an illusion of space. It seems bigger there than it otherwise would. Further, you can now move the camera as you like. However, the big problem TNG had was that the consoles were shiny, glossy, and reflective; so reflective that you could see the camera and other people off-screen filming the shot. So they had to put black cards up to hide the reflections, and you can now painfully see all this on the Blu-Ray editions of Star Trek: The Next Generation.
What I don't like about the newer designs from the Bad Robot versions of Trek is that the displays are too needlessly interesting that they can be distracting. Hopefully, in the future, for a vessel that's also meant to go into combat, they won't do this. Because the purpose of displays with functional purposes related to a vehicle and whatever it is you're doing is to convey information rapidly. It's one of the reasons why I love the Okudas' designs from TNG through to VOY, because they understood that you don't want fancy animations or displays that tell you too much all at once; complex information needs to be delivered in a manner that, at a glance, you know everything important you need to know. It's why fighter cockpits, even today, can seem rudimentary compared to what we can do in video games, because the pilot doesn't need a fancy display. Too much information all at once can cause something called Headstorm, where your brain is either too focused on whatever, and maybe trying to sift out the wheat from the chaff. When Bad Robot does this in its version of Trek, it's very distracting because you're trying to figure out what that display is trying to show, and I think that's by design because all these productions, storywise, are terrible.
The Voyagers was best in many respects, certainly the most cinematic of the TV series bridges and the best lit.
One issue with it is the overabundance of unnecessary stairs particularly where the command chairs are .
That one level should have been eliminated, every time the captain got off the turbo lift she had to take two little steps down and then one step back up to get to her chair in her high heel boots and her hair bobbing up and down.
If she went to her ready room it was off of the turbo lift down a couple of stairs down a couple more to her room and then to get to her chair a couple out of her ready room and then backup one to her chair.
For Tom Paris, getting off of the lift, had to go down two stairs go up one stair and then down two stairs to get into the well that they built the helm into.
So if that one level where are the command chairs are was eliminated that would eliminate that one necessary step that is making everybody go up and down, and still have different levels to the bridge, keep the command chairs above line of sight of the helm and place it slightly lower than the stations in the rear like it was on the next generation.
If you look at this set the somewhat flimsy railings on the far left and right behind the command chairs look tacked on, and don't even connect to the main rear railing with the computer station on it, completely unnecessary, and without those their the captain could walk straight off of the elevator take one step down and be at her chair and it almost looks like that's how it was originally planned, because as filmed with those little extraneous railings there she often has to grab it just to walk quickly around it because its in the way, and offers no function, it's just an obstruction.
It also makes more sense to have one clear primary chair for the captain and one on each side but having two generic seats side by doesn't really look great.
And of course this configuration was never used on any other hero ship.
It doesn't help that they lack any character and look like stock vinyl seats out of a 1994 Chevrolet Cavalier.
All other captains chairs looked special in some way and function.
Finally, wonderfully integrated side stations were built on the far left and right of the bridge and almost never used, very occasionally we would see someone in the engineering nook but the accompanying science one on the opposite side of the bridge was almost never shown , which is very unusual for a dedicated in an unexplored quadrant of space, we almost never even saw any blue shirt science people on the bridge which also was a huge oversight of this show, and those side stations really were well thought out , detailed parts of the bridge that were just nearly abandoned, as well as the large flip out computer console the captain had between her and the first officers chair.
All of that aside, the bridge looks great has great color and is was always lit well and is better than some of the movie Bridges even.
Just a couple of minor changes they could have made over the 7 years of running that would have made a little more logical sense.
It's a solid bridge that holds up really well!
Generations D - Amazing! Liked the Prometheus too
In that same vein, I liked some of the alternate reality bridges from "Parallels"
@@bestoftrekworstoftrek yes! Soooo good!
Personally, my favorite Starfleet bridge turned out to be a trap... that of the Dauntless. Not so much because of function, but because of the look. As for TNG, the IDEA behind it was that everything would be so automated in the 24th century, that you wouldn't need as much function... to then allow for more character-driven stories. That of course didn't work out the way it was expected to considering how tech-heavy TNG episodes (though certainly mostly character-driven) became as opposed to TOS episodes.
Clearly Janeway liked it too, seeing as she copied it along with (and even more faithfully than) the rest of the ship's design!
Trek bridge design is optimized to deliver exposition, but it's a hopeless way to run a ship. Realistically sensors should be a whole department with a dozen people, helm control should be integrated with inertial controls and structural integrity fields - again a whole department, and so and for each position. No, the captain should never tell people what weapons to fire when at what targets and how to fire them in what pattern - you train your specialists to make those decisions. A ship's captain should have filtered & condensed information funneled to him so he can set best policy for the mission at hand and trust the various departments to carry it out.
But then we couldn't have the captain telling them to reverse the polarity of a photon torpedo so it has a rotating tachyon emp pulse frequency
Feel like you neglected the Protostar bridge with the transparent canopy. Such a great design.
Hmm. Maybe the flamethrowers are a by-product of all the New Era Ships also having fireplaces onboard?
Be fun to see more defiant like designs. Stripped down, strictly utilitarian, built for war, etc.
Intrepid bridge was chefs kiss
It's really well balanced
Voyager is my favorite!
The D's bridge is beautiful, no doubt, and mostly functional. But those panels on the sides with the red lights that don't seem to do anything...I don't think I remember anyone doing anything with them until Generations.
They were the computer and supposedly storage
@@mem1701movies"the" computer was a 3 core system, spread over the ship. And not on the Bridge
02:54
there's a fan edit
with a real
STARFLEET ARMADA
replacing those god awful
crappy ships
there's even a
CROCODILE DUNDEE
meme picture
of it
" NOW THAT'S A FLEET ! "
05:03
" TONIGHT I DINE ON
TURTLE SOUP ! "
give a thumbs up
&
leave a comment
if you get the reference
Gonna be real sad if I don't seen the Protostar Bridge on this list. Its become one of my favourites.
It looks great and seems so functional.
The bridge of the inquiry class was a redress of discoveries Bridge yeah that's been thoroughly examined already improving its not CGI
Those front consoles just don't look real at all, but thanks for the trivia!
My only real problem with the Enterprise-A bridge from Undiscovered Country is the fact they stripped out the gorgeous Okudagrams from the Helm/Nav station, and pasted in random junk and an obviously spray-painted sound mixer board. It was a little less egregious on the Excelsior bridge, since it combined both on a panel that never had a pre-existing design to begin with. ... but to take what we had already seen, strip it COMPLETELY bare, and cover it with crap from the prop dump... it just rubbed me the wrong way.
The smaller ships (your Inrepid, California, and Defiant classes) DO have much better bridges. They're way more economical with their space. It's like the designers lose that ability the bigger the ship gets.
SNW, DSC, and PIC Bridges have WAAAAAAAAAYYYYY too much real estate. Let the Widescreen format be damned. Make them smaller!!!
I like the SNW bridge, but as a whole they have way too much dead space.
I don’t like the single helm blocking the viewscreen designs
The A.
WORST
JJ ABRAMS & KURTZMAN DREK
BRIDGE LAYOUTS
The "best 5" is a pretty fucking low bar...
None of them are even slightly "good". They're serviceable for filming, to some extent, but logistically and ergonomically, they're fucking awful for their purposes. Without exception.