Sunday 05 February 2012

Designing Lounges

Andrew Probert, senior illustrator on Star Trek: The Next Generation’s first season, allocated many windows of the Enterprise-D model for observation decks. Having such a large ship with families, singles, lovers and loners aboard, Probert designed those decks as comfortable places where people could go and relax. “They were simply lounges,” says Probert, “and they were different-sized, ranging from a two-person lounge to a fourteen-person lounge, where you could have family gatherings or parties, and they would all be very darkly lit, so you wouldn’t get gross window reflections, allowing you to see outside a lot easier.”

The rim section of the saucer section was created by Probert to be a single deck in height, with windows along the curved corners of the ceiling and the floor with the sensor strip running in between. “I thought it could be more romantic or just quiet,” he says, “some space away from the aluminium gray walls of the ship. That’s what that was intended for.” Furthermore, in the underside of the ship were huge windows, specifically designed for large entertainment areas: cocktail lounges, restaurants, shopping malls, etc. Also in the leading edge of the bridge superstructure, Probert provided large windows, assuming that there might be a huge officers’ lounge forward.

Ten Forward

For Season Two, a lounge would finally be built. By then, Andrew Probert had left the series—Rick Sternbach took over as senior illustrator, however it was Production Designer Herman Zimmerman who supervised the construction of the Ten Forward set.

Ten Forward was erected on Stage 8, across the officers’ quarters. It was the last set designed by Zimmerman, who went on to work on Star Trek V: The Final Frontier, and he remembers it as his favorite. “Gene [Roddenberry] wanted a place where the crew could socialize with each other without having to do it in a very intimate setting in their living quarters, or in a very formal setting in the observation lounge or on the bridge.” So Ten Forward became the place where ordinary crew and the officers could co-mingle, and where aliens who were not allowed on the bridge could interact with other crew members. “It was a very important set for the telling of stories,” according to Zimmerman. The conception of Ten Forward coincided with Whoopi Goldberg joining the cast of The Next Generation. As a place of socializing, Ten Forward would need a bartender, though not in every episode, and Goldberg, who was not available for every episode, was a perfect choice for the role.

A large fiber-optic mural was placed behind the bar of Ten Forward, designed by Rick Sternbach to represent the Milky Way Galaxy as seen from an oblique angle. The doors of Ten Forward were originally seen as part of Starfleet Command in the episode, “Conspiracy”. The set was redressed to serve as a concert hall in the episode, “Sarek” and as a theater in the episodes, “The Nth Degree” and “Frame of Mind”. It was also heavily redressed to represent the office of the Federation President in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country.

After filming on Star Trek: Generations was completed, the set was refurbished to become the mess hall on Star Trek: Voyager. Its windows were flipped upside down and used in both that series’ ready room and briefing room. A corner portion of the set was rebuilt for a brief scene during the Star Trek: Enterprise episode, “These Are the Voyages...”, integrated via computer with a clip of the rest of the set from the The Next Generation episode, “Ménage à Troi”.

Andrew Probert greatly disliked the set, “because it destroyed the scale of the ship.” He had designed the rim of the saucer to be no more than twelve to fourteen feet in height, fitting but a single deck. “Besides, I specifically designed large window clusters all over the ship,” he says, to serve as “large lounge spaces. Still, if they had insisted on yet another lounge in that saucer-nose position, it would have worked to leave the windows the way they were—at the scale they were—or they could have been modified without alluding to the space behind half of the saucer rim’s height.”

 

N. Ottens
18 June 2007
Last updated: 24 October 2008

Sources for this article include:
• Probert, A., Probert Designs
• Reeves-Stevens, J. & G., Star Trek: The Next Generation—The Continuing Mission (1998)
• Taylor, G., “An Exclusive Interview with Andrew Probert,” Trekplace (2005)
• “Ten Forward,” Memory Alpha
• Star Trek Stages History