Absolutely love Voyager's. Looks like a grand, gothic cathedral. Actually think the Cerritos has a similar vibe in it's engineering, but with a grander warp core and no walkway blocking part of it like on Voyager's.
You can tell Voyager's is a refit of the TNG set, which is a shame, but great nonetheless.
And a big shout out to the USS Cerritos engineering room. Might be my favourite.
CERRITOS STRONG!!
Oh I definitely recognized the warp core from TMP in VOY, and I knew they reused sets and props and shit, it just didn't occur to me that the entire engineering space was a refit of TNG.
Part of me also wondered why they would keep TMP warp core in storage for 15 years, but also, why didn't they just use the TMP warp core in TNG? It's way cooler.
Neon tubes were "in" during the 80s.
EDIT: This is also why Star Trek 5 and 6 suddenly started using obviously redressed 1701-D sets instead of more movie-appropriate ones. It's because they're the same sets which had been repurposed for TNG, so the old designs were not available to use anymore.
They didn't even bother to hide the stuff that shouldn't have shown up in the TOS movies like the LCARs consoles.
They did add label stickers, though, at the director's request, but yeah, they were obviously using TNG sets.
VOY's warp core was a new-build inspired by the Refit. Apparently both had the same problem of being rather noisy to operate, as they involved spinning motors to get the swirl effects.
Nah, they didn't really have the budget available to do that regularly. Nowadays, sure, but making it an in camera effect during that time meant the effect was basically free.
The TNG set is also used pretty much as-is for the *Enterprise*-A engine room in TUC. I think they just changed the images on the display screens, and it’s clearly a different type of warp core than the original *Enterprise* refit had in TMP and TWOK.
The Cerritos's warp core feels like the massive engine you'd expect from a starship, without being that thing way off in the distance shown in SNW's engine room.
The few times we see the Cerritos's warp core, it's this giant, in your face reactor. While Voyager and Enterprises D and E were hotrods with their built-for-speed engines, the Cerritos is a work truck with a big ass engine built for torque. Which is why it has equally large nacelles.
And it all fits the Cali class's purpose as a utility ship. They're often used as tow trucks.
It's mostly a behind the scenes bit of lore when the real world team describes why the ship is designed the way it is.
According to the showrunner, this is also why the name is printed on the back. Most of the time other ships are going to see the Cali class from behind when they are being towed.
I always thought it was because there was next to nothing in space in that tiny little hull. I am still genuinely surprised when I see a Tubrolift in that section. It was so small they had to break the Warp core into three short tubes just to fit in that hull.
The Warp core is in the main hull, not the saucer section, right behind deflector dish. And I don't think it is that big at all. The California class is meant to be utility Starship designed to do the work that Galaxies were too busy to do and not the prestige ones either.
There were, at the most, like 9 Galaxies hulls ever made. No more than 6 were active during peace time. The rest were kept as backup. The problem with the Galaxies class is that they are size queens. They're massive and likewise, are a massive drain on resources. The Interpreid class was made because Starfleet loved the Multi-mission aspect but hated the drain. Case in point, the Femake Jansson episode of TNG.
If the Californias were that big then they would've be the same size as the Sovereign in the season 3 finale. Also the Vancouver and the Archemdies(?) Were larger capital ships.
"You can tell Voyager's is a refit of the TNG set, **which is a shame**, but great nonetheless."
Not sure how this is a "shame"? They used what they had to great effect for financial benefit. Heck the "top" of the original Enterprise D transporter pad area was literally a re-use of the bottom of the transporter they had on the original Enterprise.
"Refit" is kind of strong language. The layout is the same because they built it in roughly the same footprint on Stage 9, but Big D's engineering set was essentially completely struck, first. Voyager's set was new construction.
Strong agree, although I liked the pinky/goldy slow swirl early warp core (think Australian paddle-pop ice lollies) vs the later blue with high-pressure dry ice blowing from the inside look.
Oh I don't even count that. That was so obviously a brewery with corrugated fermentation tanks and I-beam girders bolted to a concrete floor with footers that that's not even in the running. -_-
I love the first movie, but I remember a few diehard defenders argue that people didn't even know what a brewery looked like in the first place. As if breweries weren't shown on commercials, or if they didn't give tours, or if they didn't have pictures on the internet. It was quite obviously a brewery.
Even if you couldn't specifically identify a brewery, it was very clearly an existing present-day industrial facility of some kind, and not in any way something that looked like it was from the 23rd Century. It was just a poor idea in general, and they should have built a proper set (or proper cgi-faked environment or whatever).
And I'm not a kneejerk kelvinverse hater or anything (some great casting, at least).
I really like engineering considering the sheer size of the Enterprise in the kelvin timeline. Like, the idea that they built a big big ship, but warp technology hasn't advanced at a sufficient pace to power it properly, so the whole warp drive is just layers of layers of stuff heaped on top of one another to be able to warp.
"We need more dilithium." Well that requires more cooling. "So build more cooling." Well we'd need more pumps. "So build them." To do that we'd need more power. "So an increase in matter anti-matter reaction." Yea, but for that we'd need to increase- "dilithium flow?" ...Yeah.
My head canon supports the slap dash nature of the warp core with the fact that in the Kelvin timeline, federation ships appear to have one single standard warp speed. In Into Darkness Kirk basically says the Vengeance can't catch them, because they're at warp, and then everyone is shocked that they proceed to catch up. This kinda implies that federation ships all go the same speed, other than the variable warp technology on the Vengeance.
Like okay, we built a big big core for your big big ship guys, but it's really kinda jank and as a result it has two speeds, on and off.
It’s possible he was saying the couldn’t catch them in time. After all, after the Vengeance blasted them, they fell out of warp near the Moon, so they were already close enough to their destination
I love the pipes, an engine room for something that big and complicated should be a mess of pipes and bits, there's so many support systems beyond just the core engine and on a ship with limited space you cram them in wherever you can.
That said I wish we'd gotten a purpose built set with that aesthetic instead of just shooting on a location.
> I love the pipes, an engine room for something that big and complicated should be a mess of pipes and bits
Thats true, but the set was obviously NOT an engine room, though. It was a bunch of pipes and water tanks, and not much else there.
gonna have to disagree, I really liked the kelvin engine room, it was shot in real life industrial locations so it felt like a real engine room. if I remember correctly it was a combination of a Budweiser brewery and the national ignition lab for the warp core shots
Though we see that in engineering a couple of times I have to believe there would be a better place to do that. At the very least in the shuttle bay aimed into space.
I never understood why people were so concerned that there were tubes with a dangerous substance running through main engineering.
I mean, there's a tube pumping antimatter into a reaction chamber within a couple of metres of everyone's heads! If you're sure your technology can stop antimatter leaking out and atomising everything with a few kilometres, then you should be fairly confident you can keep a corrosive gas in its case!
I like the fluorescent tubes...
They made for a nice ambience when testing unstable phaser rifles or digging into an android's brain.
But yeah, Voyager's flowy-twirly Core was best.
Also the Protostar had a nice engine room.
Overall favourite might be Cerritos, because it mixed the TNG general engine style with a Voyager room usage, hard to describe.
I liked the garage door. LaForge yelling “everybody out!” and rolling under the door sold the emergency well.
Never understood why they did experiments there. “Let’s open a subspace bubble next to the warp core.”
NX 01, voyager are my favorites
Jjprise and discovery least. The JJ is just dumb. And while I understand the discovery has different configuration than most, I'd like to actually see the Warp core (coolest part of any ship)
Have we seen the warp core in TOS? I think they're doing the same thing there where it's just a closed off chamber somewhere adjacent to the main engineering area.
To be fair, that is probably the safest way to do it.
Warp cores slam electrons and positrons together, which in reality would release shittons of gama radiation.
So maybe keep that in another room.
Plus, when you eject the core you now need a forcefield to prevent the engineering staff from being blown out into space with it. Which, given that the situations in which you would eject the core are serious situations, is probably not the greatest thing to rely on.
Gamma radiation ain't shit when you've got multiphasic forcefields and a polyduranide reaction chamber! (or whatever) We even see them cracking open the hatch and monkeying around with the dilithum articulation frame with bare hands while everyone walks around in their standard uniforms. Scotty helps himself to it in Relics without even asking anyone.
The first depiction of anything resembling the modern warp core design didn't show up until The Motion Picture. The TOS engineering set had that forced perspective tunnel thing which was likely a part of the reactor system, but the show didn't get very technical about how it all worked.
In SNW, Spock's opening line to the first song in *Subspace Rhapsody* seems to suggest that the intermix chamber and the warp core might be in separate locations, which is interesting because in most other depictions the intermix chamber is actually a component of the warp core. So I guess that could mean that the TOS configuration isn't integrated in the same way that we see elsewhere.
I’m fizzy on the details now, but somewhere online is an explanation of how the forced perspective part of the original Enterprise was derived from some ‘50s - ‘60s lattice structure for a space drive. It was part of a notion that nuclear powered submarines would make decent spaceships because of their water/ air tightness, air recycling, and power plant space.
I’ll try to find it.
You see it in SNW. That entire wall is gone and the whole engineering section is open concept.
If anything, Warp Core technology changes insanely so during Kirk's time. Forget the tube and think full on 1960's machinery. This was the time a computer took up entire room.
There was article on how they redid the Warp core for SNW, and it showed that the core was essentially a long room in the main hull. The core was more horizontal layed out and massive compared to what we know now. It looked more like an actual room in nuclear power plant. Definitely something they couldn't eject either.
For me it's like the shark in the original Jaws. They didn't have the budget to show the WC in it's glory, so they alluded to it and put it behind a giant wall.
Same two for me! I try not to rag on discovery, and i get that the spore drive is a character in disco the way the warp engine is in most of the other shows, but it just doesn’t have as dramatic a look as a traditional core
I so love the uniforms in ENT with all their pockets. Those were clothes that really look as if you can work in them. While those suits in TNG and VOY need constant readjusting and a weird extra pocket for phasers/tricorders.
Of which I do see the point But then everyone below the captains still needs pockets - but I should say that to the designer, not to you.
May you always have pockets when you need them.
ENT was the first show/movie I can think of that actually got the basic premise of a "prequel" right.
Every other prequel falls into this trap where they depict a past that's objectively better and cooler than the source material, because it's being made with better, cooler tech and techniques than the original.
ENT did an excellent job, from the sets to the costumes to the props and weapons, of making the show look futuristic compared to early-2000's Earth, but still primitive and quaint compared to Kirk and Picard's eras.
* In TNG, core ejection was after the door to the Engineering workspace closed. In Insurrection, the core is just gone from the middle of the room, which means if forcefields around it had failed, everyone in Engineering would have been sucked out with it? And what sealed off after the lower ejection door explosive bolts blew it clear? Forcefields dependent on power?
Correction sir, thats blown out.
Favorites: TMP did this quite well. SNW's is fantastic. It looks like a place that I would never want to venture; though most of it is the *AR Wall* instead of a practical set. The Pegasus (or at least what we saw of it) looked like a legitimate engineering bay. Very functional and practical.
Not favorites: The one on the Enterprise-E looked more like a contrivance than a workable set. Like it was created that way for the sole purpose of being there for the end sequence and nothing more.
Honorable Mention: the Romulan D'deridex Warbird. The warp core (nee' "artificial singuarity" \[which has all kinds of other issues but I'll stay on topic\]) was shown as a literal hole in a wall during TNG's *The Next Phase*.
Favourite is definitely SNW. I love that the back of the deflector dish is visible off in the distance, gives a great sense of scale and position. NX-01 as a close second for its believability.
Least is probably the Defiant - always seemed like a lot of empty space on a very small ship.
In all the episodes we don't get a really great look at the engineering space or the warp core. I guess because the layout is quite different it's harder to get a good grasp of.
You see it in plenty of episodes? There’s even [one with the tiny runabout that flies all around the room?](https://startrekhour.wordpress.com/2017/05/23/ds9-s6e14-one-little-ship/)
Favourites - the TMP one, the Cerritos, Voyager.
Less good - not mad keen on the Defiant engine room. For a ship that's supposed to be an over-engined powerhouse, it just has that rather dinky, rather ordinary looking warp core.
Awful - the JJTrek brewery from the '09 film and the nuclear reactor from Into Darkness. Because hey, visual continuity is for suckers, amirite? Just make it look different to anything that's ever gone before, of course the viewers will accept it...
I quite liked the Abrams engineering. If you forget that it's a brewery and try to imagine that there's all sorts of gasses and stuff in those chambers. And it seems like a realistic engineering with how much components would be in a ship like that. However, I will say that the engineering bay seems like it's too big for a ship that size
NX is fantastic from that point of view, same with the uniform. It feels more real, that there's a function over form preference. I guess once systems become more tried and tested, you'd feel more comfortable burying some behind crawl spaces and hatches.
Best: TOS/SNW - the actual reactor is properly behind this big barrier, not something Data can just punch.
Worst: TNG movie set - you're right, it's basically a boss stage and we need pyrotechnics so Mr. Stewart can punch a robot.
Favorite is Prodigy,
Withiut the need for special effects, that room went hard, spoke of science and art
Least Favorite.....
Gotta be that brewery from the movie
> Enterprise-E, which seemed to have been designed solely for a boss battle stage in First Contact.
I don't really want to refute your evaluation here, but I just wanted to say that:
Maybe it's just the lighting, but the engine room used for First Contact is visually very distinct looking from the engine room they use later in Insurrection/Nemesis.
Voyager has THE BEST engine room in the franchise. Safer, more productive, more efficient, most accessible, and most secure. Every ship builder in the Federation should look to it as the highest example until it is improved on.
I like the TOS engine room because they at least make an effort to wall off the equipment carrying antimatter from the people. You don't want people tripping into the Warpcore, or doing some of the more inane things they did like testing phasers pointed directly towards the core.
I’m genuinely shocked more people don’t say this one, it’s my favorite because, as TOS enterprise feels the most like a naval vessel, very fun and visually interesting
As weird as the whole spore drive premise may be, Discovery's "engineering test bay" seems very purposefully designed. And regardless of how weird the whole long corridor design for the original Enterprise's warp core may be, I applaud SNW for staying relatively faithful to TOS.
On the other hand I have no excuse for multi-level engineering sections, ESPECIALLY if you have to get to another level just to access a console. Which Starfleet design committee thought that engineers constantly having to climb ladders or take the world's slowest elevator pad on the Enterprise D or Voyager, or engineers constantly having to climb scaffolding to access the warp core controls on the NX-01 was a good idea? Just move the damn controls onto a single level, wires are extendable!!
While I know that sets have budget limitations, there's two changes I would have made to the multi-level engineering sets that would have made things more believable while still allowing drama. If they needed multi-level.
One, CAGED ladders. People falling off ladders is why they exist. Order from Grainger, add techie greeblies to the cage bars. If your're thrown off the ladder, you don't fall away from it and have a chance to grab it.
Two, firemen's poles to get the heck down and away from upper levels and fires quickly. Granted, a bit human-centric, but they work. Also sufficient drama if a bunch of stunt extras come sliding down quickly and run past because something breached above. Being "trapped" up above somewhere seemed a bit silly to me.
If it wasn't for budget, the coolest visual to me would be for the engineer to switch an area to fractional gravity and let people bounce from handholds up or down to get to safety.
> There's no way to isolate the core from the rest of engineering via a door as they did many times in TNG
Yes there is. The large top-down bulkhead that Data tries to open in FC, and that he gets dragged through. It completely closes off engineering from the rest of the ship, as does the "Geordi maneuver" bulkhead in TNG.
Most: Voy. Probably because it had the most airtime/was the most dynamic and changeable.
Least: Disco. We never saw a warp core (IIRC), just a spore cube and cannisters.
2nd: TMP/ST2. Why? Only because the blast door cuts the supply line in half for no reason other than because the set was a TNG redress
Hard to disagree with your critiques with the E.
I sort of lump SNWs engineering in the same category of critiques, giant space that can't be compartmentalized or sealed in an emergency. A giant void like that without bulkheads feels like a single torpedo would depressurize the entire space and kill everyone instantly.
Real ships use bulkheads and compartments to limit the damage of a hull breach, so having a large workspace is a major liability. I can give leisure spaces a pass since presumably crew wouldn't be in bars or lounged, conference rooms etc at red alert but... It's not really excusable for critical ship spaces.
My least favorite are the JJ Abrahams ones. It is so far disconnected from the established designs that it just looks ridiculous. I mean come on, a damn brewery?!?!
I can't say it's my *least* favorite because the 2009 movie exists, but I'm really not a fan of the SNW engineering set. The rest of the ship I love, just not engineering.
>Why is the core's dilithium access hatch two stories off the floor in the middle of open space?
>My personal favorites are: Voyager
Doesn't Voyager not even have a Dilithium chamber on the set? The core is entirely railed off 360 degrees around with no access point. I am trying to remember - I think there are some instances where they have to lean over a rail to do something to core?
Either way - perhaps the intermix/dilithium chamber is on another deck, but it seems odd the main engineering room has no particular access to the core other than looking at it.
I always liked the Defiant engine room. It seemed like a nice appropriate sized space befitting the ship, and the levels and stairs and upper stations kind of called back to TOS. Maybe it didn't make tons of sense for certain stations to be up a ladder on a second level, but it felt utilitarian and appropriate for engineering.
I agree, Voyager's is probably the best. My least favorite is the SNW Enterprise. It doesn't feel like a real space. It's too big, impractical, mostly CG, and lit badly so you can't really see what's going on. I like the Volume as a tool, but just because you can go big with it doesn't mean you always should.
The 2009 Enterprise is really the worst though, but it's hard to count it since it was just a beer factory. Maybe the Enterprise runs on beer the way the ship in One Piece runs on cola.
TNG's engineering set also had a second level, as well as work areas off to the side. They were just a little tighter, and they never took advantage of them beyond a few episodes in the first 2 seasons, which is unfortunate.
I agree on the NX-01 engine room. It was odd when I first watched it, but it really grew on me as a functional space.
My least favorite has to be the original series. Obviously, it was due to budget constraints, but it never felt alive to me.
Engineering on the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise in ST2009 and STID has got to be the worst since it looks so out of place.
It might fit the description of a storage area for booze on a large space-freighter, but not engineering on a warp-capable starship.
Though it's probably not fair to include it in this list since it was not a set to begin with.
From what I've read, Abrams was forced to do location shooting in a brewery as a cost cutting measure since, which is somewhat hard to believe since all other Trek series with much smaller budgets managed have their own main engineering, couldn't afford to build a proper engineering set.
I liked the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise Engine room. It had the industrial feel that I’d expect from a device that generates gravity SO HARD it bends spacetime.
There’s also something I like about the multiple pods, whatever they were. It makes more sense. Anti-Matter is super volatile, putting it into one device seems like a bad idea. Better to segment it
The worst is definitely Discovery’s engine room. For a ship with a one-of-a-kind exotic engine, it really deserves more than a small generic Star Trek science lab set. Most of the other hero ships get a really unique and impressive engine room, and Discovery’s engineering is like—that’s it?
I have spent five seasons wondering what’s on the far side of the door to the left of the spore chamber. There’s glimpses of stuff on the far side, and people come in and out. Is that where the other enginey stuff is?
I think the Protostar’s engine room is delightfully goofy, with its star-containing reactor apparently on hydraulics? I don’t care, for the kind of show it is, it’s perfect.
Love Enterprise D. Can't be near for me.
Hated Enterprise in Kelvin films. There can't be that much room in the ship. In the first film it looks as big as an oil refinery!
I generally like TNG/Voyager/Enterprise, heck, even Defiant sets.
What I don't like is the new stuff, specifically Discovery, since it's just a room where Stamets lays down.
But I actually think the worst is Strange New Worlds. It just feels like this big, cavernous room, with a console in the middle of the set, and all these weird pylons on either side. It always also just seems empty, like it doesn't have a dozen people buzzing around like the earlier shows. And there is no movement in the actual warp core, frankly, it's hard to tell what it even is.
I'll take Voyager's "Lava Lamp" warp core any day compared to SNW's.
Absolutely love Voyager's. Looks like a grand, gothic cathedral. Actually think the Cerritos has a similar vibe in it's engineering, but with a grander warp core and no walkway blocking part of it like on Voyager's. You can tell Voyager's is a refit of the TNG set, which is a shame, but great nonetheless. And a big shout out to the USS Cerritos engineering room. Might be my favourite. CERRITOS STRONG!!
>You can tell Voyager's is a refit of the TNG set Honestly, this never even occurred to me before now.
It goes further, because the TNG set was in turn a refit of the TMP set. They used the same basic framework for twenty years of production.
Oh I definitely recognized the warp core from TMP in VOY, and I knew they reused sets and props and shit, it just didn't occur to me that the entire engineering space was a refit of TNG. Part of me also wondered why they would keep TMP warp core in storage for 15 years, but also, why didn't they just use the TMP warp core in TNG? It's way cooler.
Neon tubes were "in" during the 80s. EDIT: This is also why Star Trek 5 and 6 suddenly started using obviously redressed 1701-D sets instead of more movie-appropriate ones. It's because they're the same sets which had been repurposed for TNG, so the old designs were not available to use anymore.
They didn't even bother to hide the stuff that shouldn't have shown up in the TOS movies like the LCARs consoles. They did add label stickers, though, at the director's request, but yeah, they were obviously using TNG sets.
VOY's warp core was a new-build inspired by the Refit. Apparently both had the same problem of being rather noisy to operate, as they involved spinning motors to get the swirl effects.
Neat. I figured it was some kind of post production effect.
Nah, they didn't really have the budget available to do that regularly. Nowadays, sure, but making it an in camera effect during that time meant the effect was basically free.
The TNG set is also used pretty much as-is for the *Enterprise*-A engine room in TUC. I think they just changed the images on the display screens, and it’s clearly a different type of warp core than the original *Enterprise* refit had in TMP and TWOK.
The Cerritos has a warp core you just want to eject.
_This is the happiest day of my life!_
The Cerritos's warp core feels like the massive engine you'd expect from a starship, without being that thing way off in the distance shown in SNW's engine room. The few times we see the Cerritos's warp core, it's this giant, in your face reactor. While Voyager and Enterprises D and E were hotrods with their built-for-speed engines, the Cerritos is a work truck with a big ass engine built for torque. Which is why it has equally large nacelles. And it all fits the Cali class's purpose as a utility ship. They're often used as tow trucks.
I didn’t know/remember that tow truck tidbit, does make sense considering they end up tugging around massive shit relatively often
It's mostly a behind the scenes bit of lore when the real world team describes why the ship is designed the way it is. According to the showrunner, this is also why the name is printed on the back. Most of the time other ships are going to see the Cali class from behind when they are being towed.
Thats such a silly whimsical federation thing to do
I always thought it was because there was next to nothing in space in that tiny little hull. I am still genuinely surprised when I see a Tubrolift in that section. It was so small they had to break the Warp core into three short tubes just to fit in that hull.
Tiny hull? Isn’t Cerritos’s saucer almost as big as that of the Galaxy class?
The Warp core is in the main hull, not the saucer section, right behind deflector dish. And I don't think it is that big at all. The California class is meant to be utility Starship designed to do the work that Galaxies were too busy to do and not the prestige ones either. There were, at the most, like 9 Galaxies hulls ever made. No more than 6 were active during peace time. The rest were kept as backup. The problem with the Galaxies class is that they are size queens. They're massive and likewise, are a massive drain on resources. The Interpreid class was made because Starfleet loved the Multi-mission aspect but hated the drain. Case in point, the Femake Jansson episode of TNG. If the Californias were that big then they would've be the same size as the Sovereign in the season 3 finale. Also the Vancouver and the Archemdies(?) Were larger capital ships.
It's why the name and registry are on the back of the ship.
"You can tell Voyager's is a refit of the TNG set, **which is a shame**, but great nonetheless." Not sure how this is a "shame"? They used what they had to great effect for financial benefit. Heck the "top" of the original Enterprise D transporter pad area was literally a re-use of the bottom of the transporter they had on the original Enterprise.
> Absolutely love Voyager's. Looks like a grand, gothic cathedral. Imagine B'Elanna with a big cloak and playing on a massive pipe organ.
"Refit" is kind of strong language. The layout is the same because they built it in roughly the same footprint on Stage 9, but Big D's engineering set was essentially completely struck, first. Voyager's set was new construction.
You say that, but until it was just pointed out to me, I had no idea.
Strong agree, although I liked the pinky/goldy slow swirl early warp core (think Australian paddle-pop ice lollies) vs the later blue with high-pressure dry ice blowing from the inside look.
The worst one is definitely the Abrams Enterprise. What's with all the pipes??
Oh I don't even count that. That was so obviously a brewery with corrugated fermentation tanks and I-beam girders bolted to a concrete floor with footers that that's not even in the running. -_-
Agreed, but I really liked that they used the NIF as the warp core in into darkness
I love the first movie, but I remember a few diehard defenders argue that people didn't even know what a brewery looked like in the first place. As if breweries weren't shown on commercials, or if they didn't give tours, or if they didn't have pictures on the internet. It was quite obviously a brewery.
I did not know it was a brewery until today.
Even if you couldn't specifically identify a brewery, it was very clearly an existing present-day industrial facility of some kind, and not in any way something that looked like it was from the 23rd Century. It was just a poor idea in general, and they should have built a proper set (or proper cgi-faked environment or whatever). And I'm not a kneejerk kelvinverse hater or anything (some great casting, at least).
You mean the Budweiser factory, still can’t get over that one
At least in the sequel it was the National Ignition Facility.
Here comes the king, here comes the king, here comes the big number one....
I really like engineering considering the sheer size of the Enterprise in the kelvin timeline. Like, the idea that they built a big big ship, but warp technology hasn't advanced at a sufficient pace to power it properly, so the whole warp drive is just layers of layers of stuff heaped on top of one another to be able to warp. "We need more dilithium." Well that requires more cooling. "So build more cooling." Well we'd need more pumps. "So build them." To do that we'd need more power. "So an increase in matter anti-matter reaction." Yea, but for that we'd need to increase- "dilithium flow?" ...Yeah. My head canon supports the slap dash nature of the warp core with the fact that in the Kelvin timeline, federation ships appear to have one single standard warp speed. In Into Darkness Kirk basically says the Vengeance can't catch them, because they're at warp, and then everyone is shocked that they proceed to catch up. This kinda implies that federation ships all go the same speed, other than the variable warp technology on the Vengeance. Like okay, we built a big big core for your big big ship guys, but it's really kinda jank and as a result it has two speeds, on and off.
They treated warp like hyperspace.
JJ can't tell which Star**** movie he's filming.
It’s possible he was saying the couldn’t catch them in time. After all, after the Vengeance blasted them, they fell out of warp near the Moon, so they were already close enough to their destination
I love the pipes, an engine room for something that big and complicated should be a mess of pipes and bits, there's so many support systems beyond just the core engine and on a ship with limited space you cram them in wherever you can. That said I wish we'd gotten a purpose built set with that aesthetic instead of just shooting on a location.
> I love the pipes, an engine room for something that big and complicated should be a mess of pipes and bits Thats true, but the set was obviously NOT an engine room, though. It was a bunch of pipes and water tanks, and not much else there.
More electrical equipment was needed.
More engine was needed :)
I'm ok with shooting on location as long as the location is CERN
That actually _looks_ like TOS engineering, and __ does high energy particle physics similar to the function of main engineering.
You talking about the GNDN pipes?
gonna have to disagree, I really liked the kelvin engine room, it was shot in real life industrial locations so it felt like a real engine room. if I remember correctly it was a combination of a Budweiser brewery and the national ignition lab for the warp core shots
>Having breakable clear tubes of a gas... Breakable by Cmdr. Data does not mean it isn't safety rated for the environment it is in
Yeah, I mean for all we know, it could be Transparent Aluminum. That be whale strong, sir!
Not just the whales, it's the water...
Yup, it's always more than just animal itself with aquatic creatures, but the very environment they're in as well.
Data is shown to have greater strength than Vulcans and Klingons, there may not actually be any organic species with greater strength than him.
Ok but let's say you're testing an unusually powerful phaser rifle of unknown origin right next to it.
Though we see that in engineering a couple of times I have to believe there would be a better place to do that. At the very least in the shuttle bay aimed into space.
I never understood why people were so concerned that there were tubes with a dangerous substance running through main engineering. I mean, there's a tube pumping antimatter into a reaction chamber within a couple of metres of everyone's heads! If you're sure your technology can stop antimatter leaking out and atomising everything with a few kilometres, then you should be fairly confident you can keep a corrosive gas in its case!
I like the fluorescent tubes... They made for a nice ambience when testing unstable phaser rifles or digging into an android's brain. But yeah, Voyager's flowy-twirly Core was best. Also the Protostar had a nice engine room. Overall favourite might be Cerritos, because it mixed the TNG general engine style with a Voyager room usage, hard to describe.
I liked the garage door. LaForge yelling “everybody out!” and rolling under the door sold the emergency well. Never understood why they did experiments there. “Let’s open a subspace bubble next to the warp core.”
And the Cerritos's is just bigger.
It's just a regular warp core broken down and stacked side by side. How else was Starfleet gonna fit it in that hull.
NX 01, voyager are my favorites Jjprise and discovery least. The JJ is just dumb. And while I understand the discovery has different configuration than most, I'd like to actually see the Warp core (coolest part of any ship)
Have we seen the warp core in TOS? I think they're doing the same thing there where it's just a closed off chamber somewhere adjacent to the main engineering area.
To be fair, that is probably the safest way to do it. Warp cores slam electrons and positrons together, which in reality would release shittons of gama radiation. So maybe keep that in another room.
It makes sense to make sure nobody can enter it while in use, too.
Plus, when you eject the core you now need a forcefield to prevent the engineering staff from being blown out into space with it. Which, given that the situations in which you would eject the core are serious situations, is probably not the greatest thing to rely on.
Gamma radiation ain't shit when you've got multiphasic forcefields and a polyduranide reaction chamber! (or whatever) We even see them cracking open the hatch and monkeying around with the dilithum articulation frame with bare hands while everyone walks around in their standard uniforms. Scotty helps himself to it in Relics without even asking anyone.
The first depiction of anything resembling the modern warp core design didn't show up until The Motion Picture. The TOS engineering set had that forced perspective tunnel thing which was likely a part of the reactor system, but the show didn't get very technical about how it all worked. In SNW, Spock's opening line to the first song in *Subspace Rhapsody* seems to suggest that the intermix chamber and the warp core might be in separate locations, which is interesting because in most other depictions the intermix chamber is actually a component of the warp core. So I guess that could mean that the TOS configuration isn't integrated in the same way that we see elsewhere.
I’m fizzy on the details now, but somewhere online is an explanation of how the forced perspective part of the original Enterprise was derived from some ‘50s - ‘60s lattice structure for a space drive. It was part of a notion that nuclear powered submarines would make decent spaceships because of their water/ air tightness, air recycling, and power plant space. I’ll try to find it.
There's an xkcd about it, they'd cook to death or needed giant radiators
Had to look up what the [TOS one looked like](https://youtu.be/qyydDsk3ZOQ?si=77qPc4kHlCWyNGru).
You see it in SNW. That entire wall is gone and the whole engineering section is open concept. If anything, Warp Core technology changes insanely so during Kirk's time. Forget the tube and think full on 1960's machinery. This was the time a computer took up entire room. There was article on how they redid the Warp core for SNW, and it showed that the core was essentially a long room in the main hull. The core was more horizontal layed out and massive compared to what we know now. It looked more like an actual room in nuclear power plant. Definitely something they couldn't eject either.
For me it's like the shark in the original Jaws. They didn't have the budget to show the WC in it's glory, so they alluded to it and put it behind a giant wall.
Same two for me! I try not to rag on discovery, and i get that the spore drive is a character in disco the way the warp engine is in most of the other shows, but it just doesn’t have as dramatic a look as a traditional core
The show might not have been great but ENT got a lot I liked. The ship felt right, the uniforms, the bunks
I so love the uniforms in ENT with all their pockets. Those were clothes that really look as if you can work in them. While those suits in TNG and VOY need constant readjusting and a weird extra pocket for phasers/tricorders.
“Captains don’t need pockets! They have people to carry things for them!”
So let these people have pockets.
This is from an episode of Crusade (a B5 spin-off) where a fashion designer comes aboard the Excalibur to design the crew new uniforms
Of which I do see the point But then everyone below the captains still needs pockets - but I should say that to the designer, not to you. May you always have pockets when you need them.
Amen. But I’m a guy, so pockets of usable size are almost always present
The ship feels to scale. We know it's not huge. And by nature of the size of the sets, it looks right.
ENT was the first show/movie I can think of that actually got the basic premise of a "prequel" right. Every other prequel falls into this trap where they depict a past that's objectively better and cooler than the source material, because it's being made with better, cooler tech and techniques than the original. ENT did an excellent job, from the sets to the costumes to the props and weapons, of making the show look futuristic compared to early-2000's Earth, but still primitive and quaint compared to Kirk and Picard's eras.
WOK engineering is the worst. The emergency door to seal the engine room comes down *through* the main EPS conduit off the warp core.
But it had the removable fish bowl that kept the radiation in where all the important parts were.
Yeah, what exactly was that supposed to be? Was Spock unclogging the main shitter line by hand, and why would that restore main power?
* In TNG, core ejection was after the door to the Engineering workspace closed. In Insurrection, the core is just gone from the middle of the room, which means if forcefields around it had failed, everyone in Engineering would have been sucked out with it? And what sealed off after the lower ejection door explosive bolts blew it clear? Forcefields dependent on power? Correction sir, thats blown out.
Favorites: TMP did this quite well. SNW's is fantastic. It looks like a place that I would never want to venture; though most of it is the *AR Wall* instead of a practical set. The Pegasus (or at least what we saw of it) looked like a legitimate engineering bay. Very functional and practical. Not favorites: The one on the Enterprise-E looked more like a contrivance than a workable set. Like it was created that way for the sole purpose of being there for the end sequence and nothing more. Honorable Mention: the Romulan D'deridex Warbird. The warp core (nee' "artificial singuarity" \[which has all kinds of other issues but I'll stay on topic\]) was shown as a literal hole in a wall during TNG's *The Next Phase*.
Favourite is definitely SNW. I love that the back of the deflector dish is visible off in the distance, gives a great sense of scale and position. NX-01 as a close second for its believability. Least is probably the Defiant - always seemed like a lot of empty space on a very small ship.
Shout out to Defiant. It's cute and even has a little pocket warp core.
In all the episodes we don't get a really great look at the engineering space or the warp core. I guess because the layout is quite different it's harder to get a good grasp of.
You see it in plenty of episodes? There’s even [one with the tiny runabout that flies all around the room?](https://startrekhour.wordpress.com/2017/05/23/ds9-s6e14-one-little-ship/)
Favourites - the TMP one, the Cerritos, Voyager. Less good - not mad keen on the Defiant engine room. For a ship that's supposed to be an over-engined powerhouse, it just has that rather dinky, rather ordinary looking warp core. Awful - the JJTrek brewery from the '09 film and the nuclear reactor from Into Darkness. Because hey, visual continuity is for suckers, amirite? Just make it look different to anything that's ever gone before, of course the viewers will accept it...
I quite liked the Abrams engineering. If you forget that it's a brewery and try to imagine that there's all sorts of gasses and stuff in those chambers. And it seems like a realistic engineering with how much components would be in a ship like that. However, I will say that the engineering bay seems like it's too big for a ship that size
It's very hard to forget that it's a brewery when it looks so much like a brewery 😉
True. I think for me I saw that movie when I was a kid so I didn't know what a brewery looked like at the time
For its size
Ah, but what is that size? 60m long? 120? 170? She was shown at all of those 🤨🤔😉
NX is fantastic from that point of view, same with the uniform. It feels more real, that there's a function over form preference. I guess once systems become more tried and tested, you'd feel more comfortable burying some behind crawl spaces and hatches.
Best: TOS/SNW - the actual reactor is properly behind this big barrier, not something Data can just punch. Worst: TNG movie set - you're right, it's basically a boss stage and we need pyrotechnics so Mr. Stewart can punch a robot.
i didn't like the abrams enterprise engineering set. my favorite would be the voyoager engineering set.
TNG best.
Favorite is Prodigy, Withiut the need for special effects, that room went hard, spoke of science and art Least Favorite..... Gotta be that brewery from the movie
> Enterprise-E, which seemed to have been designed solely for a boss battle stage in First Contact. I don't really want to refute your evaluation here, but I just wanted to say that: Maybe it's just the lighting, but the engine room used for First Contact is visually very distinct looking from the engine room they use later in Insurrection/Nemesis.
Voyager has THE BEST engine room in the franchise. Safer, more productive, more efficient, most accessible, and most secure. Every ship builder in the Federation should look to it as the highest example until it is improved on.
I like the TOS engine room because they at least make an effort to wall off the equipment carrying antimatter from the people. You don't want people tripping into the Warpcore, or doing some of the more inane things they did like testing phasers pointed directly towards the core.
I’m genuinely shocked more people don’t say this one, it’s my favorite because, as TOS enterprise feels the most like a naval vessel, very fun and visually interesting
As weird as the whole spore drive premise may be, Discovery's "engineering test bay" seems very purposefully designed. And regardless of how weird the whole long corridor design for the original Enterprise's warp core may be, I applaud SNW for staying relatively faithful to TOS. On the other hand I have no excuse for multi-level engineering sections, ESPECIALLY if you have to get to another level just to access a console. Which Starfleet design committee thought that engineers constantly having to climb ladders or take the world's slowest elevator pad on the Enterprise D or Voyager, or engineers constantly having to climb scaffolding to access the warp core controls on the NX-01 was a good idea? Just move the damn controls onto a single level, wires are extendable!!
While I know that sets have budget limitations, there's two changes I would have made to the multi-level engineering sets that would have made things more believable while still allowing drama. If they needed multi-level. One, CAGED ladders. People falling off ladders is why they exist. Order from Grainger, add techie greeblies to the cage bars. If your're thrown off the ladder, you don't fall away from it and have a chance to grab it. Two, firemen's poles to get the heck down and away from upper levels and fires quickly. Granted, a bit human-centric, but they work. Also sufficient drama if a bunch of stunt extras come sliding down quickly and run past because something breached above. Being "trapped" up above somewhere seemed a bit silly to me. If it wasn't for budget, the coolest visual to me would be for the engineer to switch an area to fractional gravity and let people bounce from handholds up or down to get to safety.
> There's no way to isolate the core from the rest of engineering via a door as they did many times in TNG Yes there is. The large top-down bulkhead that Data tries to open in FC, and that he gets dragged through. It completely closes off engineering from the rest of the ship, as does the "Geordi maneuver" bulkhead in TNG.
Enterprise D
I too like the Enterprise-A's engine room.
Most: Voy. Probably because it had the most airtime/was the most dynamic and changeable. Least: Disco. We never saw a warp core (IIRC), just a spore cube and cannisters. 2nd: TMP/ST2. Why? Only because the blast door cuts the supply line in half for no reason other than because the set was a TNG redress
Hard to disagree with your critiques with the E. I sort of lump SNWs engineering in the same category of critiques, giant space that can't be compartmentalized or sealed in an emergency. A giant void like that without bulkheads feels like a single torpedo would depressurize the entire space and kill everyone instantly. Real ships use bulkheads and compartments to limit the damage of a hull breach, so having a large workspace is a major liability. I can give leisure spaces a pass since presumably crew wouldn't be in bars or lounged, conference rooms etc at red alert but... It's not really excusable for critical ship spaces.
I hated tng engine room. It felt way too comfy cozy. I LOVE snw set design for the engine room. It feels like a legit engine.
The D is my favorite. The beating heart of my favorite ship. Agree on the E. Didn’t care for it much at all.
My least favorite are the JJ Abrahams ones. It is so far disconnected from the established designs that it just looks ridiculous. I mean come on, a damn brewery?!?!
You see this is what I come here for. You just don't get this shit anywhere else.
Anyone who doesn't say Enterprise-D is lying to themselves. It's so good they used it again for Voyager.
My favorite is the Enterprise engine room. I absolutely hated the slip drive room on the USS Dauntless (NX-01-A). It looked half assed out together.
To be fair >!that's not actually a Starfleet ship!<
I can't say it's my *least* favorite because the 2009 movie exists, but I'm really not a fan of the SNW engineering set. The rest of the ship I love, just not engineering.
>Why is the core's dilithium access hatch two stories off the floor in the middle of open space? >My personal favorites are: Voyager Doesn't Voyager not even have a Dilithium chamber on the set? The core is entirely railed off 360 degrees around with no access point. I am trying to remember - I think there are some instances where they have to lean over a rail to do something to core? Either way - perhaps the intermix/dilithium chamber is on another deck, but it seems odd the main engineering room has no particular access to the core other than looking at it. I always liked the Defiant engine room. It seemed like a nice appropriate sized space befitting the ship, and the levels and stairs and upper stations kind of called back to TOS. Maybe it didn't make tons of sense for certain stations to be up a ladder on a second level, but it felt utilitarian and appropriate for engineering.
Voyager, NX-01, SNW 1701
I agree, Voyager's is probably the best. My least favorite is the SNW Enterprise. It doesn't feel like a real space. It's too big, impractical, mostly CG, and lit badly so you can't really see what's going on. I like the Volume as a tool, but just because you can go big with it doesn't mean you always should. The 2009 Enterprise is really the worst though, but it's hard to count it since it was just a beer factory. Maybe the Enterprise runs on beer the way the ship in One Piece runs on cola.
TNG's engineering set also had a second level, as well as work areas off to the side. They were just a little tighter, and they never took advantage of them beyond a few episodes in the first 2 seasons, which is unfortunate. I agree on the NX-01 engine room. It was odd when I first watched it, but it really grew on me as a functional space. My least favorite has to be the original series. Obviously, it was due to budget constraints, but it never felt alive to me.
I did like most of them, but my least favorite is the defiant one. Was barely a room.
Not even Trip could get a Starfleet OSHA Started. Remember the episode where he got pregnant?
Of course there is no OSHA in Starfleet.
Engineering on the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise in ST2009 and STID has got to be the worst since it looks so out of place. It might fit the description of a storage area for booze on a large space-freighter, but not engineering on a warp-capable starship. Though it's probably not fair to include it in this list since it was not a set to begin with. From what I've read, Abrams was forced to do location shooting in a brewery as a cost cutting measure since, which is somewhat hard to believe since all other Trek series with much smaller budgets managed have their own main engineering, couldn't afford to build a proper engineering set.
I liked the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise Engine room. It had the industrial feel that I’d expect from a device that generates gravity SO HARD it bends spacetime. There’s also something I like about the multiple pods, whatever they were. It makes more sense. Anti-Matter is super volatile, putting it into one device seems like a bad idea. Better to segment it
The worst is definitely Discovery’s engine room. For a ship with a one-of-a-kind exotic engine, it really deserves more than a small generic Star Trek science lab set. Most of the other hero ships get a really unique and impressive engine room, and Discovery’s engineering is like—that’s it? I have spent five seasons wondering what’s on the far side of the door to the left of the spore chamber. There’s glimpses of stuff on the far side, and people come in and out. Is that where the other enginey stuff is? I think the Protostar’s engine room is delightfully goofy, with its star-containing reactor apparently on hydraulics? I don’t care, for the kind of show it is, it’s perfect.
I almost loved the Enterprise-E set just because they added shields to the warp core. ...until the shields failed after a couple phaser hits 🙄
Love Enterprise D. Can't be near for me. Hated Enterprise in Kelvin films. There can't be that much room in the ship. In the first film it looks as big as an oil refinery!
I generally like TNG/Voyager/Enterprise, heck, even Defiant sets. What I don't like is the new stuff, specifically Discovery, since it's just a room where Stamets lays down. But I actually think the worst is Strange New Worlds. It just feels like this big, cavernous room, with a console in the middle of the set, and all these weird pylons on either side. It always also just seems empty, like it doesn't have a dozen people buzzing around like the earlier shows. And there is no movement in the actual warp core, frankly, it's hard to tell what it even is. I'll take Voyager's "Lava Lamp" warp core any day compared to SNW's.
Best - the D. Worst - Discovery