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Memory Alpha
Real world article
(written from a Production point of view)

The "Enterprise" Flight Manual was an internal document of Paramount Pictures intended to instruct the stage effects technicians on wiring up all of the work station's control panel backlits and working switches and indicator lights, and giving the actors basic button-pushing lessons on the various standing sets, most notably the bridge of the refit-USS Enterprise.

Contents (first edition)[]

  • Bridge layout
  • Bridge
    • Communications
    • Environmental Engineering
    • Weapons and Defense
    • Bridge Transporter
    • Damage & Repair
    • Internal Security
    • Engineering
    • Tractor Beam
    • Science Officer
    • Helmsman
    • Navigation
    • Captain's Chair
  • Engine Room
    • Console #1 (Impulse Systems)
    • Console #2 (Warp Systems)
    • Console #3 (In Foyer)
  • Briefing Room
  • Transporter room
  • Kirk's Quarters
  • Ashwin's Quarters
  • Medical lab
  • Examining Room
    • Scan Console
    • Medical Transporter
  • Sick Bay (Bed Monitor)

Background information[]

  • A photocopied document in oblong format, the Manual was distributed only two months after the Star Trek: Phase II project was upgraded to Star Trek: The Motion Picture. There were variations of the first edition, each with slightly differing contents and cover coloring (blue, white, yellow and green covers are known), depending on which department they were distributed to, and authors and illustrators were not mentioned in that edition. The first edition carried photocopied handwritten annotations in the margins from the designers in question. The cover of the first edition featured artwork taken from Franz Joseph's Star Trek Star Fleet Technical Manual, at that time still considered an official, as in canon, work.
  • As the manual was a document intended for internal use, the illustrations contained therein were not commercialized versions, but adapted low-quality reproductions of the actually used production art, such as the bridge set construction blueprints.
  • A second, edited, and supplemented edition was distributed a year later, after the hiring of Rick Sternbach, with an adjusted cover and in which the authors were given credit. Sternbach later, in the 2000s, marketed a commercial, higher print-quality, version, entitled, "U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701 Constitution Class Refit Flight Control Familiarization Manual" through his internet eBay webshop "intrep74656".
  • As Joseph's Manual has as of 2002 been demoted to apocrypha status by the franchise (Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 2, Issue 11, p. 71), the "Enterprise" Flight Manual has, for all intents and purposes, become the first "official" technical manual of its kind.

External links[]

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