Blueprint conundrum or not
POSTED BY: ManiacNumberOne
UPDATED: Tuesday, March 13, 2007 20:55
VIEWED: 33904
PAGE 6 of 12
Quote:
Originally posted by LJB064:
Maniac:
On the question of the passenger dorm rooms, I spent a lot of time this weekend looking at eps to try to figure this out. The position and orientation of the bay holding the passenger rooms has been bugging me for a long time. This weekend, I realized that there are actually two bays of passenger rooms, running backward to port and starboard at angles about 30 degress from the centerline.
about this...you are right, there are 2 passenger bays, but I think perhaps only Book's bay is running at the angle you suggest. If the other hallway/bay is at an angle, it is much less than that.
Quote:
The starboard bay (where River and Simon have their rooms) has two ladders midway down (to serve upper berths). This is the one we usually see. I believe it has a total of seven rooms.
... I agree that the ladders serve a set of rooms above Simon and River's rooms, but I don't see where you get the number 7. If I am creative with the actual lengths of rooms, Simon and River can each have about an 8' by 8' room. that could leave room enough on the starboard side of each of there rooms for one more slightly smaller room, and for 1 room above above each of their rooms (as you say accessed by the ladders) Maybe I am a little lost here, but that is only six rooms right?
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Who's winning?
I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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Maniac:
Please don't hold me to the number of degrees of offset, but I'm pretty sure that the starboard bay is angled (i.e., that it does not run directly fore-aft, or directly port-starboard. I'm working from memory, here, but as support, I'd suggest: (i) the scene I mentioned previously where Zoe is called to the bridge in Serenity (just as she mounts the stairs, the camera is angling back into the starboard bay, showing that someone standing in the common area and looking across the ship into the "back right corner" would be looking straight down that bay), (ii) at the beginning of Jaynestown, the shot looking directly out from that bay points into the "front left corner" of the common area (Debchan's site has some nice screen caps from Jaynestown that show this scene clearly), and (iii) there's a great sequence in Bushwhacked, when the "survivor" is in the infirmary - Kaylee and Inara are talking, and the first shot is out through the infrimary window at Kaylee. If you look over her shoulder, you're looking right down the port bay (angling away to port aft) (Debchan has a great screencap of that, too). Then the camera angle shifts to where Inara is, and you're looking, again, from the middle of the common area, past the bottom of the back stairs, and right down the starboard bay, angling back to starboard.
There are also a couple of great pan shots that begin looking through the windows of the infirmary and then pan right, ending in the starboard bay. I believe one is at the end of The Train Job, when Simon is mending Mal's shoulder. They start talking about River and the pan shot brings us to her room, where she is chanting about the blue hand guys.
Incidentally, that shot (and there is another, almost identical, sequence in another ep, but I'm forgeting now which one) shows some kind of a doorway in behind the back stairs. Looks like it enters a room that runs directly to starboard and has two rows of lockers (or electrical boxes) on the left side.
I haven't done anything with scaling, or estimation of interior dimensions vs. exterior, and I know that anything that would dictate a widening internally at that spot (where the exterior is probably tapering toward the tail) is a problem for you, but that's how I see it. I think the bays are arranged symmetrically, relative to the midline of the ship.
Here's how I get seven rooms in the starboard bay: The inboard and outboard walls in that bay are the same. Each has 2 sets of 2 screens/sliders at flat floor level. The ladder goes up between them. Each also has one set of two sliders on a second level, above the first floor sliders that are closest to the open end of the bay. Above the other floor-level sliders, there is a ventilation grid. Also, on both the inboard and outboard walls, there is a fourth set of sliders at a kind of mezzanine level at the closed end of the bay, where the floor slopes up.
We know that River's room is in the outboard wall, accessed by the floor level sliders just behind the ladder. We also know that her room is only as wide as that one set of sliders (see, especially, Bushwhacked). So - her room does not extend behind the other floor-level sliders, or behind the mezzanine sliders, so each of them must be a separate room. Add the lone second level room, and that gives you four rooms in the outboard wall.
The analysis for the inboard wall starts with the same four sets of screens. But we know that Simon's room is bigger - it takes up the space behind both floor-level slider sets on the inboard side. You can see this when Jayne returns Simon's belongings in Safe, and in other spots. However, Simon's room does not extend into the space behind the mezzanine sliders (there's a bulkhead behind Simon's bed). So - I'm positing that there's a small room behind the mezzanine sliders (possibly where Dobson went to get his guns?). Add Simon's room, and the one above, and we have three inboard rooms - for a total of seven in the starboard bay.
While I'm on this, let me say why I think there are five rooms in
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That was like reading a book. I will have to go back and reread that again. As for posting sketches... just put them somewhere, anywhere on the web, then you can link to it here.
Dang, it seems like you've spent as much time on this as I have. Good work LJB.
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Who's winning?
I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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Mal and Wash walk up the stairs from the area *below* the bridge into the bridge at one point (as opposed to walking up the stairs from the coridoor where the crew quarters are)--I can't recall the episode (I just marathonned the whole show over the week-end). And we see those stairs between the two consoles (the left one, which i assume is for a co-pilot, and the right one, which is Wash's) leading downstairs to whatever is below teh bridge clearly in a numebr of shots--such as when Kaylee is working under the console in the beginning of "Train Job" (the "was there a terrible brawl?" scene).
Hope this helps some!
--
Some take the high road. Some take the low road.
And some just go screaming down the highway, dropping flaming bits of wreckage.
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You know I hadn't noticed that cord... very helpful. Thanks LJB064.
...and LJC, if you have any info on the area underneath those stairs leading towards the back of the ship that would be helpful. My ep's aren't super high res so I can't tell, but maybe when Kaylee is laying on her back fixing under the port bridge control panel, you can see through the grating she is on to the level below???
----------------------------------
Who's winning?
I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
----------------------------------
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Thanks for your comment. Sorry for the lengthy post, but I hope it helps. My wife and I have been saying for months how helpful it would be if someone could just draw a good map of Serenity.
Unfortunately, I have to make a couple of corrections to my magnum opus.
First - the screencap of River running from Book's room is on the Two Evil Monks site, not Debchan's. I edited my post to correct that.
Second - and more importantly, I need to revise my description of the outboard wall in the port bay. There aren't two floor-level sets of sliders, but only one. I realized this when I looked back at the screencaps from OiS. The reason I checked was because the way I described it yesterday (with the mezzanine sliders, two sets of floor level sliders and the window) would make that wall longer than the others.
With the mezzanine sliders, just one set of floor-level sliders and the window, the length is the same as the other walls (because the window is just about as wide as a set of sliders) - so I feel better.
The downside of all this is that "Dobson's Room" can't be behind Book's room, as I proposed yesterday. There are just the two mezzanine screens there, so there isn't room for a 4 screen-wide room there.
I've also noticed that the floor level of the mezzanine rooms is too far above the floor-level sliders for there to be any "double" rooms incorporating the space behind a set of mezzanine screens and the space behind the adjacent floor-level set. This helps my conclusion that there are three rooms on the inboard side of the port bay.
The floors of the bays do rise gradually from the front to the back (even before the marked ramp at the back of each bay). So, what I have been referring to as the floor-level sliders are not on exactly the same level. You can see this in Simon's room where the aft half (i.e. the part behind the rearward set of floor-level sliders) is raised above the fore half of the room (the part behind the forward set of floor-level sliders).
So the only double wide rooms are Simon's (behind two sets of sliders) and Books' (behind one set of sliders and his window).
I have a new hypothesis about Dobson's room, but it does not bear on Serenity's layout.
Keep Flyin'
Birdman
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Sorry for the long delays with the finished product everyone. I have been really swamped with my job these days. It's tax time you know. But, I am hoping to get more time to watch ep's and learn more about Serenity's layout. If it's not too premature, I could post what I have so far. Maybe someone can fill in some gaps. Any thoughts on that?
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Who's winning?
I can't really tell, they don't seem to be playing by any civilized rules that I know.
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Good luck!
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I really want someone to post a work-in-progress! That way we silent types can start reviewing it and improving it. right now its just too hard to weigh in!
Ped Xing
ZikZak
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Here you go zikzik. I am posting my work in progress. The link is here:
http://www.magicbishop.com/fungoodies.html
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