| The genesis of the
Travel Pod was to have a vehicle in which we, the audience, could fly
along and be dramatically introduced to the new Enterprise. Gene
Roddenberry wanted the vehicle to look like one of the offices which
were to be clustered together as part of the
Space Office Complex. That way, he felt, seeing it detach
& fly, when Scotty took
Kirk (and us)
to the new ship, would be a 'fun'
surprise. This idea was a
carryover from the canceled Star Trek Movie of the Week known as Phase
II.
Here, because the
production was pretty well underway,... you see what
the Space Office Complex would
have looked like, along with a view of
their office clusters & Travel Pods, all decahedron
shaped.
|
| An interesting idea,
one with a certain continuity, but it didn't feel practical to me, with
offices on the outside corners and I have no idea what was planed for
those mounting holes on the insides. Adding to the problems,... their ten-sided shapes
didn't quite cluster properly. On the receiving end, the Enterprise, in this case,... was to be a docking port that featured a five-sided niche in a curved surface. These photos of the miniature side section show what that was to look like. |
| Design comments
aside,... what perplexes me is the fact that their decahedron Travel Pod
was to have addressed this docking port on the underside of Enterprise's
engineering hull,... seen here in this construction drawing from the
collection of Aridas Sofia: |
| Not understanding
just how travelers would enter and exit through that docking system,...
it became one of the
first things I addressed,... docking perpendicular to the
centerline, not at an angle to it. And then, as required, the shape
of my Travel Pod had to mimic the shape of the offices, so they were
developed simultaneously. These excerpts from my initial concept sketch (found in the Space Office section) illustrate my first thoughts on the new Travel Pod: |
| I felt that round was
a shape that would be visually more compatible with the Enterprise and
set about the task of seeing how I could group and connect them
together. My thinking was that the mid section would bulge out
all around, allowing room for various controls & equipment and a
"docking ring" for hard-docking with another ship (or structure) would
be in front,... but offset so the operator could see directly ahead. Not realizing it at
the time, I ended up with a shape somewhere between
the Millennium Falcon and the Jupiter II. |
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