More hidden details about Star Trek's greatest starship.
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00:00Hello everyone, it's me, Adam Cleary, etc. I don't know why I did that.
00:04Back, TreadCulture, we've got some videos that need to be done because remember the thing
00:09where we do the thing about the ships and you're all like, oh, you really like it, and then we kind of did them all well?
00:15There's still some milk in that teat, apparently.
00:18Right, yes, if you're new here, basically we like to do these really nice breakdowns of the ships,
00:22not just with random Google-able facts, with stuff we've actually found out for ourselves by doing actual research,
00:26and by we, I, of course, mean Paul. Say hello to Paul.
00:29Now, one of my absolute favourites in these series, and indeed one of the most critically well-received,
00:33was the Enterprise D, I think one of the first ones we did.
00:36This is where we discovered Cetacean Ops, this is where my whole dolphin, they say fetish, obsession came from originally,
00:42and it turns out there is yet more space dust on that boot, because we found ten more things.
00:48And again, by we, I mean Paul.
00:50Where's all this information coming from, Adam?
00:52Well, I'll tell you by reading it out.
00:54Rick Sternbach and Michael Akuda's extensive Star Trek The Next Generation technical manual,
00:59both the book and the CD-ROM, as well as Rick's exhaustive, deck-by-deck,
01:03USS Enterprise NCC-1701D blueprints.
01:07We've got it all from, I need this, but we've got it all from there.
01:10So with that in mind, my name is Adam Cleary, yes, I am well out of presenting practice,
01:14in case you couldn't tell, and these are ten more things about the Enterprise D you need to know.
01:19Number ten, we did see the main shuttle bay.
01:22All right, so I'm going to open this by throwing my old hands up and saying I might have got this one wrong.
01:28Number seven, you never actually saw the main shuttle bay.
01:32Yeah, I'm going to open this by holding my hands up and saying we got this one slightly wrong.
01:37I did say in the previous version of this video that you never actually got to see the Enterprise D's
01:42main shuttle bay in all of its glory, because it was just designed too big and too grand
01:46and too interesting for them to ever realise on screen.
01:49Instead, we got the much smaller, much easier to visualise, much cheaper to produce shuttle bays.
01:54Never got to see the massive, enormous, two-storey, parking lot-style shuttle bay
01:59they had right at the back of the saucer section.
02:01Except we did, sort of. It was in the episode Cause and Effect,
02:05the USS Boze when you have a repeating one where they keep playing the same card game
02:09and doing all the same stuff over and over because of the time loop or something like that.
02:13The ship Fraser comes out of the thing and he crashes into them and they all die.
02:17Apparently, the idea they had to fix it in the end, the data has, is to decompress the main shuttle bay.
02:22They go, and that is the main shuttle bay.
02:25That one prop shot of the outside of the doors opening, that is the main shuttle bay.
02:30So technically, you did see it, just not very well.
02:34Number nine, Sickbay was actually massive.
02:37Given how much time they spent in Sickbay and how much mortal peril the cast and crew were often in,
02:43you don't think it was weird that a ship with over a thousand people on board
02:46had a Sickbay with five beds?
02:50Like, intergalactic plagues, diseases, people getting the flu, all sorts.
02:53Five people could ever be staying in that Sickbay at once.
02:56That not seem weird?
02:58Well, that's because it wasn't.
03:00It was absolutely massive according to the technical blueprints
03:03and the part we saw was just one part of a much bigger Sickbay facility.
03:07Like a hospital, you might call it.
03:08And if we could just bring up the blueprints here,
03:10it was actually this big specifically,
03:12which is, compared to what we saw on screen,
03:14ginormous.
03:15In fact, just going through the dialogue of the show alone,
03:18it tells you that there were three Sickbay wards,
03:20surgical suites, medical labs, private hospital rooms,
03:23a rehabilitation centre, and a morgue,
03:25which, the really scary thing, happens that time,
03:28as well as also a Null-G ward,
03:30which is like a medical treatment facility,
03:33but with zero gravity, because for some reason,
03:36that can help you.
03:38Just saves you putting your feet up if you sprain your ankle, I guess,
03:41but other than that.
03:42Number eight, the Arboretum.
03:44Alright, so one last thing I'm adding to the big, long list of things
03:46that would have been very cool for them to have the budget to show us,
03:48yes, along with the giant computer core,
03:50and of course Cetacean Ops, and I guess the Sickbay,
03:53is the Arboretum.
03:54Now, you did see this, but we only saw a small, tiny fraction of it.
03:58It was absolutely massive.
04:01In fact, if you just take a look at the very back of the Enterprise-D model,
04:04you see those two large, blue square things?
04:07That is actually the Arboretum,
04:09meaning it's at least two decks tall,
04:11it's really, really wide,
04:12and so much bigger than they ever actually used in the set of the show.
04:16I would love to have seen that,
04:19even if they just knocked it up
04:20in a very weird sort of background painting kind of way.
04:23That would have been interesting to me.
04:25A man with no garden.
04:26Wait, is that what an Arboretum is?
04:27Plants, just plants, isn't it?
04:28It is just plants.
04:29I live in a flat in a building.
04:31I can't go outside.
04:32Number seven, idiots broke into the ship.
04:34No, we're not talking about those Ferengi mercenaries.
04:37Ah-huck, ah-huck, ah-huck, ah-huck.
04:39See, Paul, that's how good your jokes are.
04:41We're talking about some actual criminals.
04:43According to the Daily Dot,
04:44who were the ones who actually labelled them idiots,
04:46in 1988, some people actually broke into the set of the ship,
04:49had a lot of fun and games there,
04:51and even videoed themselves doing it.
04:53Hence, when the tape was recovered,
04:55they had all the evidence they needed to say it was a...
04:58Hence, idiots, basically.
04:59Don't video yourself doing a crime.
05:02It's pretty much...
05:03If I was doing a crime,
05:05pretty much job number one would be
05:07don't actively create evidence of yourself doing it where possible.
05:11I'm just...
05:12I'm going to read this out because it's genuinely hilarious.
05:14The videos of the break-in appeared on YouTube in 2007.
05:17They have since, obviously, been taken down.
05:19Called Stage Nine Interlopers,
05:21two men dressed in homemade Stonefleet uniforms.
05:25Where was Sean that night?
05:26I would like an alibi.
05:27Toured the deck, empty sets of the Enterprise.
05:29They played with the consoles.
05:32They got into the bio beds for some reason.
05:35Then they talked about stealing props.
05:36Before the video ends and the description,
05:38it was like, oh, we got caught,
05:39and we got chased out by Paramount Security.
05:41Again, if I'm doing a crime,
05:44I'm not going to make videos of me doing the crime.
05:49Of course, the interesting thing about this is
05:50if you cast your mind back to the first video,
05:52we did tell you that the set was actually covered in...
05:55Because of how many cats used to break in there.
05:58So I wonder if that was a consideration.
06:01Wouldn't have stood in any of it.
06:03Number six, 10 Forward doesn't fit.
06:05Now, as you've probably seen in these videos,
06:07or just used your own common sense brain to work out,
06:10a lot of the sets in Star Trek are redresses.
06:12They're supposed to be adaptable.
06:13They change from episode to episode,
06:15from show to show, from series to series.
06:17They've got to be used for many different things
06:19because they've only got so much space.
06:21But not 10 Forward.
06:23That was supposed to tell so many deeply personal stories
06:26and be such a focal part of that show
06:29that they made a permanent set that never changed
06:32and looked really, really cool.
06:34And it did look really, really cool.
06:35The only problem with it was they had a very clear idea
06:37of how they wanted 10 Forward to look
06:40and that idea came after they had designed the Enterprise D.
06:44So they knew where they wanted it to be.
06:45They knew how they wanted it to fit in with the ship.
06:47They knew what they wanted it to look like on screen.
06:50But the problem is none of those things actually line up
06:53with the outside design of the Enterprise D.
06:56What you see on screen does not fit on that model.
07:00In fact, much to the annoyance of the ship's designer,
07:02Andrew Probert, who literally sat them down and said,
07:04well, you can do what you want if you're designing a bar,
07:06cafe thing, but it's got to fit within these parameters.
07:09The producers just went, nope.
07:11But then so popular was 10 Forward
07:13that when they redesigned the model
07:15to be slightly better filmed on television,
07:16they tweaked the design of the saucer section
07:18so that you could fit it in.
07:20But the problem with that was they had so much footage
07:22of the old model, which only varied ever so slightly
07:24that people wouldn't even notice when watching it on television
07:27because they couldn't predict that we'd all have HD,
07:29pausable, Blu-ray copies of it in future
07:32to pour over for our personal entertainment YouTube channels,
07:35that they used these interchangeably.
07:37So there's lots of shots in the episodes
07:40with 10 Forward not fitting into the saucer section
07:42and then shots where it does fit into the saucer section.
07:44It's what's known as, in French, le inconsistency.
07:48Number five, the models were very different.
07:51Okay, so this one is just astoundingly short-sighted.
07:55So when they made the next generation,
07:57they secured the services of ILM, Industrial Light & Magic.
08:00Yes, the really famous ones who do all the things for everything.
08:02And they got them to produce loads and loads of shots
08:05of the Enterprise-D.
08:07They got them to build it, they got them to film it,
08:08they got them to make it so it was very easy to repurpose.
08:11In fact, most of the shots you ever see of the Enterprise-D
08:15were done in that original window.
08:17And you know exactly the ones flying by the screen,
08:19the close-ups when they're doing the captain's log at the star,
08:21going into orbit, coming out of orbit,
08:23all the ones you saw over and over again,
08:25ILM made them and they just adapted them throughout the show.
08:27But the problem with doing a show that runs on for five,
08:29for six, for seven, for however many seasons,
08:31is that you need more than that.
08:33You need variety.
08:35You are writing new things to happen to your characters
08:37and those new things happen to your ships,
08:39and you must be able to visualise that
08:41and not just use the same stock images over and over again.
08:45So they needed, midway through production,
08:48to have new footage.
08:50But the problem was they couldn't get ILM anymore,
08:52either budgetary or whatever.
08:54They had to go to other studios,
08:56and other studios found the ILM model very difficult to work with,
08:58because obviously they had their own filming practices.
09:00They would prefer to make their own models.
09:02So by season three, they decided that's what they were going to do.
09:05And that new model debuted in the episode The Defector,
09:08which is one of the first episodes where there's just all of a sudden
09:10brand new clips of the Enterprise.
09:12But the problem was, it wasn't exactly like the other one.
09:15They'd made it stockier.
09:17It was only four foot, so it was much easier to film.
09:19They'd exaggerated some of the panelling.
09:21They'd done little things like including ten forward
09:23in the actual layout of it.
09:25And it was, to most people,
09:27exactly the same.
09:29But to nerds, like me,
09:31like you,
09:33it's quite different.
09:35And of course things only got worse when they went to make Star Trek Generations,
09:37because they got ILM back.
09:39And ILM were like, ooh, movie budget,
09:41let's make a brand new six foot model, check.
09:43And a really cool CGI version, check.
09:45And all four of these different versions of the Enterprise
09:47would be ever so slightly different,
09:49with little raised bits here and little pronounced bits there.
09:51And just, it's all,
09:53it's all a mess.
09:55I mean, to most people, to normal people, you can't tell.
09:57But again, we ain't normal.
09:59Number four, she was almost CGI.
10:01So here's a slightly weird, fun fact.
10:03Star Trek The Next Generation went into pre-production
10:05around the same time as The Search for Spock was being made.
10:07And there was a lot of talk
10:09that they should just go and use the refit model
10:11of the original Enterprise.
10:13The refit model of the original Enterprise
10:15for this series.
10:17I mean, it seems ridiculous now,
10:19but at the time, you can understand that.
10:21Do we need, it's still Star Trek,
10:23we want things to be connected,
10:25why do we need a new ship?
10:27And the plan was, they were going to use the visual technology they had at the time
10:29to just do a CGI version of it,
10:31so it would be much cheaper, cheaper, cheaper, cheaper
10:33to produce for television.
10:35But they didn't do that.
10:37In the end, they decided it didn't look quite as good as they wanted it to,
10:39it didn't look anywhere near as good as models did,
10:41so if they were going to have to build a model for television,
10:43because they couldn't use that one that had been in the film,
10:45they might as well just design it from scratch.
10:47And then, just a mere seven years later,
10:49they finally actually did make a CGI version
10:51of the Enterprise D for Star Trek The Next Generation,
10:53so it's just, it's a funny old game,
10:55funny how life works.
10:57Number three, she was blue.
10:59Right, so, lighting is, I don't look like this,
11:01the version you're seeing me on,
11:03I don't really look like this,
11:05my skin tone is very different,
11:07it's the lighting, okay?
11:09The front is being lit from the front,
11:11the back is being lit as well,
11:13this is not how you would see me on the street.
11:15And the same is true of models they use
11:17to recreate starships in television shows.
11:19They are a produce, a produce?
11:21They're the result of lighting.
11:23Which is why, if I asked you to tell me
11:25what colour the Enterprise D was,
11:27indeed what colour are most of the ships in Starfleet,
11:29you'd probably say it's like a grey-silver,
11:31like a very neutral grey or silver, wouldn't you?
11:33You'd be wrong.
11:35They are actually duck-egg blue.
11:37And the reason for this,
11:39and this is going to blow your mind slightly
11:41if you're not like 50 or 60,
11:43is because the way the original Enterprise
11:45used to come across on old televisions
11:47when it was originally broadcast
11:49was duck-egg blue.
11:51Even though that was designed to be silver-slash-grey,
11:53it actually came across as slightly blue
11:55on television.
11:57But they had the same thing when they were doing
11:59the set for Strange New Worlds, didn't they?
12:01They've got everything orange,
12:03even though we sort of think of it as red,
12:05on television.
12:07So the old Enterprise on the 60s TV show
12:09used to look blue, so they designed the Enterprise D
12:11to look blue.
12:13And yet, of course, irony upon irony upon irony,
12:15even though it was designed blue
12:17to look like the colour that the Enterprise was not
12:19in the 1960s,
12:21when they started putting that under studio lighting,
12:23it looked silver-grey,
12:25the colour the Enterprise actually was
12:27under studio lighting, which is mad.
12:29And if you still don't believe me,
12:31go watch the end of Star Trek Generations
12:33where the Enterprise crashes into the planet
12:35and is lit for the first time, not by space lights
12:37or anything like that,
12:39but by a natural, neutral sun.
12:41It is blue.
12:43It is unmistakably blue.
12:45Unmistakably a word?
12:47Unmistakably blue. It is blue.
12:49Number two, they destroyed the bridge for real.
12:51Alright, so people kind of noticed that they upgraded
12:53the bridge for Generations. They added extra consoles
12:55on the side, they raised the seating up in the middle.
12:57The idea was you were supposed to not notice it had changed,
12:59and because you were seeing it on a big screen,
13:01you'd think, oh wow, is that what that really looked like?
13:03All this time, but of course,
13:05people aren't stupid, and instead they sat there and went,
13:07oh, they've changed it.
13:09And while it was a slightly controversial change,
13:11because yes, you're not going to believe it, people saw something had changed
13:13on something they liked, and they got really annoyed about it
13:15and started doing stuff, it's just that the internet
13:17wasn't as terrible as it is now,
13:19so it kind of gets forgotten about.
13:21The plan, of course, was to destroy that bridge,
13:23because they were going to destroy the ship.
13:25And they actually did need to completely clear it out,
13:27because the space that was being used for the Enterprise D bridge
13:29had to be cleared out to be set for Voyager's bridge
13:31on the Paramount lot, so rather than just
13:33making effects appear to destroy the place,
13:35they decided, well,
13:37let's actually trash it.
13:39So the fires, explosions,
13:41everything burning, everything collapsing on top of itself,
13:43none of that is practical work or effects
13:45or designed to be put away. They just started
13:47knocking stuff over and setting fire
13:49to it and kicking it around,
13:51and that's why it looks so good. Some of it was saved, though,
13:53in case I've upset you by saying that.
13:55It's in the Hollywood Entertainment Thingy Museum.
13:57It's been there since, like, 2007.
13:59If you want to go see it and be like, oh, thank God,
14:01you're safe, horseshoe console, then it's there.
14:03Number one, feature Enterprise
14:05had a naughty bumper sticker.
14:07So, really quick one to end on this,
14:09quite fun, you all saw All Good Things,
14:11one of my all-time favourite Star Trek Next Generation episodes,
14:13one of my all-time favourite Star Trek episodes,
14:15full stop, in fact.
14:17The Enterprise refit,
14:19the Galaxy X class, I think it's called.
14:21You know, it's got the third,
14:23incredibly phallic warp nacelle on the back,
14:25loads of shooty phases, it's got
14:27old man Riker behind the wheel.
14:29You remember it, it peers briefly,
14:31blows up some Klingons, and then goes to warp 13,
14:33and we just never address that.
14:35Again, you remember it, right? It had a funny bumper sticker.
14:37Now, this information comes exclusive to you,
14:39thanks to our good pal Doug Drexler,
14:41who you can either see in a forthcoming video
14:43that we've just done, or that's already gone out.
14:45I don't know when you're going to see this one,
14:47but we've done some fun stuff with him, is my point.
14:49He told us there was a bumper sticker on the physical model
14:51of that. They took one of the old
14:53models of the Enterprise-D and they added stuff to it
14:55because it was the last episode, you can get away with stuff like that.
14:57They put a bumper sticker on it as well.
14:59Any guesses? Anyone? Anyone? What did the bumper sticker say?
15:01Anyone? Anyone?
15:03I heart Uranus. Wait, no, it's even funnier.
15:05We heart Uranus.
15:07Ho, ho, ho. I actually caught this.
15:09The master display system on that also contained loads
15:11of funny Easter eggs. They had a biplane, a mouse,
15:13and a rubber ducky, all just based
15:15in the ship's schematics, because it was the last episode!
15:17It was the last day of school for everyone who worked on the next
15:19generation, so they started having some fun.
15:21Hey, fun story, on my last
15:23day of school, I broke in overnight
15:25and I painted
15:27an enormous 40-foot
15:29pink penis on the school field.
15:31Have I ever told anybody about that before?
15:33If you're watching this, Mr. O'Dwyer
15:35or Miss Clewan, that was me. Sorry.
15:37Anyway, there you go, 10 more things you did not
15:39know about the Enterprise-D, which now you do,
15:41which brings that to 20 things you now know about
15:43the Enterprise-D, along with the 10 things you know about
15:45Keeper Space 9, about
15:47Voyager, about the Romulan warbird,
15:49about the Defiant. Lots
15:51of information going on in there. Hope you don't soon forget
15:53where you live, that would be terrible. So let us know what you made of it all
15:55in the comments below. Of course, don't forget to like, share, and subscribe.
15:57Yes, I know, I'm sorry, I don't present much anymore
15:59as this is all over the place and terrible.
16:01Well, it's just not really my job at the
16:03minute, so standards will slip, unfortunately.
16:05But if you did like what you see, you can get me on Twitter
16:07at Adam Cleary, C-L-E-R-Y, the entire
16:09TrekCulture family, at TrekCulture. But in the meantime,
16:11thank you all so much for watching. Thanks
16:13enormously to Paul for pulling all this
16:15information together, and to Chris, probably,
16:17for the edit. But I, Adam,
16:19just me, will see you soon. Goodbye!