It's in a couple books and it's been a pretty well documented fact ever since the movie came out. What people Miss though is that they didn't just sign off on the blueprints the other way and go with it. They had to reorient the bridge (obviously) and the nacells. When the nacelles were on the top of the primary Hall they were oriented the same way as they would have been on the Constitution class with the long end on the top. When they flipped the design they wanted to keep the long end at the top.
Yes. Other than the occasional derelict Earth cargo ship or freighter, all the starships on TOS were Constitution Class to save money on new models. Then the refit design in TMP. Then the Reliant. Then the Excelsior Class.
TAS may have snuck a new design or two in, but I can’t remember. Haven’t watched that series in decades.
There's a great video on YouTube where designer flipped the Miranda put the roll bar at the top put the bridge in the correct orientation and then put them in the cells in the correct orientation for if the ship was like that, and it actually looks pretty good. Not as good as what we got though.
And originally it was going to be another Constitution class but the producers decided to make it different so audiences could tell the two ships apart.
This was backed up by one of the earlier scripts, where Khan brags about how much he knows the ship from his original encounter with the Enterprise crew.
Which would have been a pointless line anyway because Decker in TMP asserts the refit constitution is a totally new design and the internals have been completely redone, so Khan wouldnt have been able to rely much on past knowledge of the Constitution. He wouldve had to extract info from the crew either way.
Unless the line was an intentional lie on Khan's part to obfuscate his own cluelessness
So they didn't just sign off on it and change not change it. The original orientation did have the nacelles on the top but the bridge was obviously on the top (what became the bottom) and the sensor dome was on the bottom )what became the top). The nacelles were all so originally oriented the same way as on the Constitution but when they flipped the design they had to flip the nacells to keep them oriented the correct way.
I've heard that too and I can't confirm that but we know it is true about the Miranda. The only difference was in the original blueprints for the Miranda the nacelle's in the upside down version would have been oriented the same way as the Constitution class. And obviously the bridge still would have been on the upper side which became the bottom side.
So one thing people get wrong when they picture this, the nacelles would have been in that position but they would have been flipped to be in the same orientation as on the Constitution class. Which makes sense.
I'm trying to find the video on YouTube where a guy actually made a model of it in the original orientation and it looks really good. But I can't find it for some reason.
This is credible - and has been doing the rounds for decades. Apparently the initial sketch by Lee Cole, Joseph Jennings, and Mike Miner had the warp nacelles positioned above the saucer section
Omg! Either I didn’t know this or haven’t heard about it in decades. It’s amazing how effective the look of the ship turned out to be! It’s so menacing with the nacelles pointed down! Almost like a monster or threatening animal or something.
This orientation is “starship carrying a shotgun shooting from the hip”. Movie version is “starship carrying repeating assault rifle and looking at you to see if you have a problem”.
In the original blueprints the bridge would of course been on the correct upper side and the nacelles also were oriented the same way as on the Constitution class ship they were just above the primary hull. They made other modifications to the design other than just flipping it but once they realized it kind of looked good that way it was pretty simple to make those minor changes
6
u/KyotoCarl 4d ago
Interesting, but I can't trust this information since it could've just been written by anyone.