Friday 12 March 2010

Phase II interior design

Mike Minor, who had provided many of the wall paintings seen in the original series, as well as having designed the Melkotian from “Spectre of the Gun,” and the Tholian web, part of the Emmy Award-winning visual effects in the episode of the same name, also returned to contribute to the updating and redesign of the series. Jim Rugg, another veteran from the first season of the original Star Trek, was brought back to be in charge of special effects.

Mike Minor’s initial designs for the new Star Trek series are clearly the evolutionary step between the original series and The Motion Picture. The bridge-wall control modules survived almost intact to The Motion Picture (note the holographic starmap projector in front of the captain’s chair), while the transporter room is essentially a redress of the original set with a more streamlined console and new all displays. The Star Trek II Writers/Directors Guide described the new bridge as . . .

A circular, platformed set where Captain Kirk presides over the whole ship’s complex. Access is achieved to this set by means of turbo-lift elevators which open directly into the set. Kirk sits in his command chair in the inner, lower elevation, facing the large Bridge Viewer. Directly in front of him, also facing the Viewer, sit the Navigator and the Helmsman at their individual console. In the outer circular elevation of the set are various positions for Communications Officer and various Technician Crewmen and other ship's officers. Directly behind the Captain, the Science Officer presides over a console which is known as the “Library-Computer Station”.

Another traditionally important set was Sickbay, which was described in the Star Trek II Writers/Directors Guide as being:

A three-room complex. The doctor’s office has direct access to a ship’s corridor. There is access from his office to an examining room, also a sickbay proper. Access to the sickbay proper can also be made directly from the corridor. Within the sickbay, there are built-in bed positions with a complete diagnostic panel above each. This medical device scans the patient continually, takes readings nad registers same upon the diagnostic panel instrument face. Thus, blood pressure, pulse rate, heartbeat, respirations and various other readings are continually recorded and displayed for each patient without the necessity of physical contact between doctor and patient.

Mike Minor’s concept of a modified, Phase II transporter room, combines the “psychedelic” back panels of the 1960s with the new console design of the 1970s. The Star Trek II Writers/Directors Guide described the Transporter Room as follows:

We assume there are various Transporter Rooms through the vessel. The one we use has access from a main corridor. The Transporter control is operated by the Transporter Officer and a Technician. They, in concert or singly, can transport up to six people at a time, “beaming” them either from or to the starship. At certain times, objects out in space which are small enough and in reasonably close proximity can be brought aboard also. At one end of this set is the Transporter chamber itself. It is a circular platform with several steps leading up to its six positions. Each person to be transported stands upon one of six light panels. There is a light panel above each position also. Within this chamber, people are made to disappear and appear optically as they are "beamed" to and from vessels or planet surfaces.

Mike Minor also provided concepts for the new recreation room set, which was, as described in the Star Trek II Writers/Directors Guide,

. . . a redress of other sets to give us a variety of mess and recreation facilities. In these, crew members can relax and enjoy their leisure time. Various games such as three-dimensional chess can be played here.

The recreation room was ought to have played a more important rule than it did on the original series:

Star Trek will take more looks into the private and offduty lives of our characters. More realism here [...] in very human areas such as when and what they eat, 23rd century bathing, changing clothes, playing and relaxing.

Test footage

These are rare frames from test footage shot on the partially completed Engineering set on December 22, 1977. Oddly enough, the scene was shot in wide-angled format, suitable for motion pictures, but definately not for television. Plans to change Phase II into Star Trek: The Motion Picture were well underway, though still unofficial.

     

     

The Engineering set built was a smaller, less expensive version of Mike Minor’s original concept. On his early painting, we can see that Minor’s most enduring influence on the look of Star Trek has been Engineering: both the design and physical elements of his design were used in The Motion Picture and the other films, as well as on the Enterprise of The Next Generation and on the Starship Voyages.

 

N. Ottens & T.C. Tobias
5 October 2005
Last updated: 18 April 2009

Sources for this article include:
• Reeves-Stevens, J. & G., Star Trek Phase II–The Lost Series (1997)
• Fantastic Films Magazine (August 1978); photographs by Susan Sackett; thanks to Mr Pierre Fontaine.
• Mike Minor sickbay concept art courtesy of Ray Cole’s Star Trek Museum.