Zimmerman Proud Of The NX-01 Bridge

Out of all the Enterprise sets, production designer Herman Zimmerman is most proud of his work on the bridge.

"All the things about the bridge are ideas that we pulled together from years of experience doing these shows," Zimmerman told StarTrek.com. "I think it shows - it's a smaller bridge, more intimate, deeper. It's got more dramatic possibilities because it has all the consoles in the right place, facing the screen, facing the captain."

Several homages to the Original Series were incorporated into the set. "We have Spock's viewer which is now T'Pol's viewer. One of the key elements at the science station is something that was prominent in the TV series and in the motion pictures. We also have Uhura's earpiece that Linda Park is now using. We paid homage to some things that really worked from the classic series and created a bridge where all of the things the actor touches works."

Certainly the bridge is far more tactile than 24th century command centres. "All the buttons light up, all the levers really move and do something. This gives the actors a sense of reality about the place and I think it helps the stories be more consistently in the 22nd century as opposed to the 23rd or 24th centuries."

After working on The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, Zimmerman jumped at the chance to make the set much more hands-on. "It's actually been a lot of fun and a breath of fresh air for the franchise to get things the actors can work with; levers, pulleys and gauges," he said. "It's more hands on and not quite so slick. Things can go wrong, prototypes haven't been tested. These are things that make for good drama that we can build into the sets."

The full interview, in which Zimmerman also described his regular duties on the series, can be found here at StarTrek.com.

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