Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter SHIELD Agent 47
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Tradition at this point, I'd say. Someone obviously thought about that at one point because the Battle Bridge on the D existed, but we never saw that on any other ship in the end. Could also be looked at as a gesture to say "These aren't warships. Trust us! If they were, wouldn't we put the bridge somewhere more protected?"
According to lore (dating from the TOS-era, IIRC), bridge modules are meant to be swappable, so having it in an accessible spot probably makes it easier to remove and replace.
Which is kind of funny considering most Honorverse ships are unarmored(or lightly armored) on the top and bottom because of their wedges - meaning it was totally an intentional rib at Trek-style ship design.
I read the first of those. Much as I love Horatio Hornblower and Jack Aubrey, I found it very tedious how much convoluted nonsense they went through to make spaceships just like old sailing ships.
I can't think of a really compelling reason for swapping out bridge modules. Certainly not weighed against the hazard of showing your enemy where the captain and most of the senior command staff are.
I recall that being a movie-era thing in the Pocket canon. Don't know if it was ever more official than that, much less earlier than that.
While the Impeller wedge was clearly made for that reason, there's some stuff it also does much better than other sci-fi in regards to space battles - namely playing fair with Newton, lightspeed lag, as well as engagement at light-hours or light-minutes rather than up close and personal just to name a few things. Same reason I always mention Starship Operators as an overlooked anime that does the same thing, in treating space fights as something of their own rather than banking WW2 fighters.
Trek of course skirts around that with subspace and warp fields, and all its fancy inertia-bypassing tech.
And by giving distances in dialogue in thousands of kilometers when we can see on screen that they're no more than ten kilometers away at any time.
Even if this was canon, it was a rationalization for another oddity of what we see on screen, namely that bridges among identical classes of ships rarely match because they're re-dressed versions of whatever the "other bridge" they had lying around the lot was.
At least bridges on top is consistent across species. The closest thing to saucer sections are what the Cardassians have, only the Klingons and Romulans usually put their warp nacelles on sticks and pair them with the Bussard collectors they don't directly relate to, almost no one else uses deflector dishes, and the Federation is inconsistent in its own tendency to separate command and engineering into separate hulls like the Klingons do.
I'm sure it'd take a semester of electro-plasma system theory to understand, and since electro-plasma system theory doesn't exist, no one on Earth can
Even if this was canon, it was a rationalization for another oddity of what we see on screen, namely that bridges among identical classes of ships rarely match because they're re-dressed versions of whatever the "other bridge" they had lying around the lot was.
At least bridges on top is consistent across species. The closest thing to saucer sections are what the Cardassians have, only the Klingons and Romulans usually put their warp nacelles on sticks and pair them with the Bussard collectors they don't directly relate to, almost no one else uses deflector dishes, and the Federation is inconsistent in its own tendency to separate command and engineering into separate hulls like the Klingons do.
I'm sure it'd take a semester of electro-plasma system theory to understand, and since electro-plasma system theory doesn't exist, no one on Earth can
I absolutely love what Star Trek Online did with their 25th century skins for Walker class and the Crossfield class - the Shenzhou class and the Glenn classOh that is wonderful. = D Sharpest livery since the TOS movies! I know the black is explained as areas of extra ablative armor, but the contrast really makes everything pop.I love how the Sutherland takes even a monster like the Nebula class and reworks it into something classy.
I am quite sad they did not get to appear in Star Trek: Picard.
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The Bridge is purely there for tradition reasons. Given how often ship systems can be taken over from various locations within the ship(including the ships pleasure rooms... I mean Holodecks) pretty much any space on the ship can be used as a makeshift C&C center.
The 25th Century skins are pretty, and much better than the originals they're based on, but I hate to say it, that Georgiou class is even hotter
On further consideration, I've realized that the bridge-at-the-top idea is actually not as nuts as it sounds in-canon if you ignore how the shows actually work. Deck plating is nothing - if your torpedo managed to crack through the shields and the hull, possibly including ablative armor, whether it goes on to vaporize one deck or ten seems like a roll of the dice.
Of course, within the show, it's always decks four through six that are compromised, the ship is only in real danger if one of the bridge consoles explodes, and the bridge is filled with fallen I-beams and crumbled concrete and is on fire before its own spot of hull is ever breached.
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On further consideration, I've realized that the bridge-at-the-top idea is actually not as nuts as it sounds in-canon if you ignore how the shows actually work. Deck plating is nothing - if your torpedo managed to crack through the shields and the hull, possibly including ablative armor, whether it goes on to vaporize one deck or ten seems like a roll of the dice.
Of course, within the show, it's always decks four through six that are compromised, the ship is only in real danger if one of the bridge consoles explodes, and the bridge is filled with fallen I-beams and crumbled concrete and is on fire before its own spot of hull is ever breached.
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Hmm, the fact that so many ships not named Enterprise had bridge windows until the TOS movie era seems like a plausible origin for that tradition....
And a totally unnecessary rationalization too. Just like you can tear out a set and turn a Starship bridge into a child's bedroom, you can change a Bridge without installing a new bridge module. I am sure you can even tear out walls to make it bigger. Especially on the newer jobs with the holographic walls.
And every ship later than the Constitution II has auxiliary rooms around the bridge in the bridge bulge that could be cut into. And the B set bridge is usually smaller than the A set bridge, not larger.
Unrelated, but on the subject of sensible starship design, I'm realizing I like this cutaway of the Enterprise from Star Trek: Beyond. Even with the brewery, the guts make more sense than any cutaway of the Prime canon. The Bussard collectors are reimagined as something actually having to do with the warp nacelles, and the warp core and deflector guts are scaled to fit the ship.
Unrelated, but on the subject of sensible starship design, I'm realizing I like this cutaway of the Enterprise from Star Trek: Beyond. Even with the brewery, the guts make more sense than any cutaway of the Prime canon. The Bussard collectors are reimagined as something actually having to do with the warp nacelles, and the warp core and deflector guts are scaled to fit the ship.
I am very likely the last to know, but I was just thinking while doing my work at work and something occurred to me.
Captain Shaw's death read to me as a pretty standard, "No, I'm going to be a hero and cover your escape" thing and it was that. But it was also a neat callback. At Wolf 359 he got on a shuttle and other people didn't and he's always felt survivor guilt. So what he was saying this time was actually, "This time someone else is getting on the shuttle"
Captain Shaw's death read to me as a pretty standard, "No, I'm going to be a hero and cover your escape" thing and it was that. But it was also a neat callback. At Wolf 359 he got on a shuttle and other people didn't and he's always felt survivor guilt. So what he was saying this time was actually, "This time someone else is getting on the shuttle"
Nice! That's a really neat connection! Really brings it full circle. Neat.
Here's a showerthought I never thought about at a convenient time to express it:
Seven handing over her phaser when she's caught with one to the back of her head.
Except um, Seven, theirs isn't a real phaser, though, unless it was just lying on the turbolift floor while you were in there....
Here's a showerthought I never thought about at a convenient time to express it:
Seven handing over her phaser when she's caught with one to the back of her head.
Except um, Seven, theirs isn't a real phaser, though, unless it was just lying on the turbolift floor while you were in there....
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I'm honestly a little sick of the complaints regarding Deanna at the helm.
Yes, Deanna was at the helm of the Enterprise-D when the saucer section crashed on Veridian III. However, the saucer's crash was a controlled crash, one that had been described in the ST:TNG Technical Manual (implying that it might well be something folks were drilled for and trained for in-universe), and lo and behold, the majority of the people onboard the ship made it out alive. And a Galaxy-class had a crew compliment of over a thousand people. She did the best she could with what she had.
Also, yes, Deanna was at the helm of the Enterprise-E when they rammed the ship into the Scimitar. That particular case, however, was a bit of desperation.
I personally hope that her stint behind the helm of the restored Enterprise-D in Picard Season 3 and the successful rescue will dispel at least some of those complaints.
And though I know it's not very Trek, a part of me does wish that Beverly had fired one last torpedo at the Borg Queen on their way out. Y'know, just to make sure.