It has been quite some time since I have done any work on my long-running Enterprise-refit project. This was mostly due to my shifting onto another of my hobbies, the old-school fantasy RPG called Hârn, which I have collected since 1983. Earlier this year we decided to move the home office from one room in the house to another. Having move boxes and boxes of printed material collected in numerous 3-ring binders and such, prompted me to begin to digitize it all so I could move all the Hârn material into storage. Needless to say the boxes I opened when moving turned out to be more of a Pandora’s box, in that I began converting it all into a fully interlinked wiki called Hârnica. So I have spent pretty much the last year doing that. I am still only about a 1/3rd of the way through it all and it has evolved into another of my “eternal hobbies”.

That said, I did happen across a couple of things recently which prompted me to shift gears and back onto the Enterprise-refit project.

The first thing was seeing a new build of the Polar Lights model kit being undertaken by model builder and hobby enthusiast Philip Segal which he posted on his YouTube channel SprueVerse. Seeing him working through all the after-market detailing and “accurizing” as he has done so far (he is about 30 hours or so into his kit build) really sparked my interest in digging back into it, and going back to where I had left off on my Enterprise-refit project.

The second was, after seeing his YouTube videos, looking trough some “behind-the-scene” images of the Recreation Deck set taken by Louise Stange-Wahl during the filming of Star Trek: The Motion Picture (ST:TMP) which were posted in one of the TMP Facebook groups I am a part of a while back.

This lead me to looking at the Recreation Deck 3D modeling I had been in the middle of when I veered off into my digitizing the misty isles of Hârn. In going through the last 3D model file(s) I had been working on, I first noticed that the “alcove” graphics were not numbered in the same order that were shown in one of the behind-the-scene photos. While the image quality was pretty poor (the photos were taken 43 years ago with some less than high-quality gear) I could clearly make out that the number schema I had guessed at was wrong.

So I went back and reworked the graphic illustrations to correct the numbering. I also availed myself of the opportunity to come up with two new recreation pictograms. I was motivated to do this because it didn’t sit really well with me to keep recycling the six “canon” graphics that were done by Lee Cole, who was one of the graphic designers on the film, and the two I had come up with previously to expand out the number of recreational activity pictograms. There are two pictogram symbols used per “alcove wall”, and there are six alcoves in total. So having only 8 symbols, was making it seem a a bit “same-y”.

I did a quick look at the Recreation Deck entry on the Memory Alpha wiki, to see if there any clues as to what other sports or recreation actives might have been represented “in-universe” on the TPM era recreation deck.

I went with two new activities, darts, and fencing. The latter was definitely present in Star Trek: The Original Series (TOS) era, specifically Sulu famously chasing crew-members through the corridors in the episode “The Naked Time” so that one seemed a good choice.

The second one, I went with darts. While there were no examples of the Enterprise crew in TOS playing darts, we did see Iotian boss Jojo Krako had his own version of darts in which the dartboard was an image of his rival Bela Okmyx in the episode “A Piece of the Action”, Cards, chess, gymnastics and checkers were the only sport/activities I could recall actually being shown in TOS.

That said, darts did feature in several Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (ST:DS9) episodes. Most notably Miles O’Brien and Dr. Julian Bashir regular playing darts in the series and it figures into one of the plot points of the episode “Shakaar”.

So with darts in DS9 being “canon”, it only makes sense that it would be something the crew of TOS Enterprise (and her refit) would also engage in. After all there is a bowling alley that is “canon” though it has never actually been shown. It does tie-in with bowling since a bowling alley was been mentioned in TOS, again in the episode “The Naked Time” which caused it to turn up in the classic Enterprise blueprints (aka the Book of General Plans) by Franz Joseph, and it is actually one of the actual graphics that Lee Cole did produce for the refit-enterprise for the Rec. Deck set for TPM:

So here are the new pictogram designs I came up with:

I also went back and made some minor changes to the “blueprints” for these, mainly re-working the presentation; making it a 12 sheet set of drawings; re-ordering the pages; updating one of the title block fonts; and the aforementioned re-numbering of the alcove graphics themselves to reflect the correct number ordering on the actual set.

Here is a PDF of the re-worked set of Starfleet-style design drawings:

With that done, I now hope to dig in and finish the two ends of the Rec. Des 3D model. First, building out the large video screen wall, which has the Enterprise display gallery below as well as the two turbolift shaft tubes and balcony surrounds.

Second, building out the “outer wall” side and its balcony/catwalk, as well as re-working the two-deck tall terrarium/planter cases which another behind-the-scene images of some test shots of the set which were also posted by Louise Stange-Wahl if I recall correctly.

Then hopefully I can finish the 3D model in earnest, and subsequently work on converting it into a 3D printing ready set of assets, and finally start testing out my 3D printer I bought a little over three years ago, which I still have not set up.

Anyway, I am once again excited to dig back into the Enterprise stuff, and hope to make more progress, and share more on the blog.