Class J Starship

Main Bridge Design

This is my design for the bridge of the Class J Starship, mentioned in the first-season TOS episode "The Menagerie". As Commodore Mendez described the vessel as "old", I've used the original TOS pilot ("The Cage"), as a reference for the colour scheme and console design.

I took a two-pronged approach to the design of the bridge: I intended to create a design that was functional, but one which also fit into the established design principles of Federation vessels.

Class J Starship -- Bridge Schematic

The most obvious place to start was in the placement of the consoles. In every series, and the movies, the navigation console(s) have been placed in front of the command chair, which seemed a reasonable location, so I retained that placement.

The other consoles, however, showed a marked change over time; in the original series, there were five full consoles and two half-consoles encircling the bridge, with the majority of them forward of the captain's chair. In the movies, the forward consoles began disappearing, some retreating into alcoves at the sides of the bridge. By the time of The Next Generation, every remaining console (except for con and ops) had been moved behind the captain's chair. The trend was continued in Voyager, where the ops console has also moved to the aft wall of the bridge.

Since the general trend over time was to move the consoles backwards, the logical choice for a design regression was to move them forwards from the positions in the original series.

Fortunately, this also fit into the "functional design" goal. In the latter incarnations of Federation vessels, the captain's chair is fixed into a forward-facing position, and the rearward line of sight is blocked by a tall railing -- not terribly convenient should the captain wish to have an extended conversation with anyone save the helmsman or first officer! At least in the original series, the captain's chair was swivel-mounted, and afforded an unobstructed view of all stations.

Moving the captain's chair backwards, and moving the circumferential consoles slightly forwards, therefore made it easier for the captain to observe the operation of his vessel and address his bridge officers.

Merging the two half-consoles into a single full console, and removing the 36-degree offset of the TOS bridge set, resulted in a symmetrical arrangement; this, in combination with an increase in the the height of the split levels, reminded me of the quarter deck of 18th-century sailing vessels (an aftward deck, elevated above the main deck, usually inhabited by the captain, his first lieutenant, and the helmsman). I reinforced the "quarter deck" theme by installing a pair of steps to either side (analogous to the quarter-deck ladders next to the gunwales). Overall, these details seemed to make the layout look like an older design than the TOS arrangement.

Things which may look wrong, but were intentional:

1. The chairs lack the black seat and back cushions. In "The Cage" (and "Where No Man Has Gone Before"), they used unmodified swivel chairs from the now-defunct Burke of Dallas furniture manufacturer; when the series was picked up, they used the same chairs but dressed them up quite a bit. (They also used a model with armrests!)
   
   
2. The pair of quadrilateral lights above each console, and the grilles on the knee panels, were not present in "The Cage", so I have not included them in the Class J starship's bridge.
   
   
3. The faceted appearance of the "rings" in the ceiling and floor. No, I didn't lathe them with the density set too low; the floor and ceiling were constructed out of "wedges" each covering 18 degrees of arc, to match the appearance of the TOS Enterprise bridge.