Friday 03 September 2010

Designing the Photorp bay

Shane Johnson’s Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise places the docking port and photon torpedo bay through which Kirk and company board the Enterprise in Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan on Deck 13, or “M Deck”. The portholes that the exterior view shows are nowhere to be seen when the crew step inside the torpedo bay, but two airlocks can be spotted, allowing a small staging area between the outer and inner airlocks.

The torpedo bay is a two-deck facility. The Wrath of Khan depicted a torpedo being loaded in the bay from above, suggesting that the upper deck, Deck 12, houses torpedo storage. From the placement of the docking ports and torpedo tubes on the exterior of the ship, it would appear that Deck 13 houses two adjoining port and starboard torpedo rooms, with a connecting door in the rear of the rooms. Since the shown torpedo bay has no obvious access to the aft portion of the deck, a small hallway probably connects both bays with each other and the rest of the deck.

This deckplan, from David Schmidt’s U.S.S Enterprise NCC-1701A Deck Plans places engineering systems aft to the torpedo bays, thus not allowing the space necessary for the Torpedo Control Control which must be on the same deck according to Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country. Nor does there appear to be turbolift access from the torpedo bays. This plan, however, does provide sufficient space for the launch tubes in one of which Spock and Dr. McCoy “operate” on a torpedo in the same film.

 

N. Ottens
24 July 2007
Last updated: 24 October 2008

Sources for this article include:
• Johnson, S., Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise (1987)
• Probert, A., “Photon Torpedo Tubes,” Probert Designs
• Schmidt, D., U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701A Deck Plans (1992)
• Screencaptures courtesy of Trekcore.