Thursday, December 4, 2008

How do you get from the Transporter Room to the Bowling Alley?

I love blueprints and cutaway images of fake stuff. The seven-year-old still buried not all that deep inside me loves the opportunity to figure out how to get from, for instance, the Intergalatic Zoo inside Superman's Fortress of Solitude to the room where the Phantom Zone projector is located.
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Hey, you never know when this sort of information might save your life.
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I've got a blueprint of the Fortress of Solitude in the recently-reprinted "Superman Encyclopedia." I've got a blueprint of the Millenium Falcon in the rulebook for an old version of the Star Wars Roleplaying game, so if Han Solo ever needs me to man one of the gun turrets, I'm ready to go.
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I've got blueprints of the submarine Seaview from Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea, so if Captain Crane or Admiral Nelson ever need me to report to the Flying Sub or the missile room or the circuitry room or wherever, I'm there.
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I've got blueprints of a small Klingon spaceship. Some years ago, my nephew (then maybe 7-years-old or so) and I planned out alternate escape routes from the brig to either the shuttle bay or the transporter room. We even figured out how to raid the small arms locker along the way. So if we're ever captured by Klingons, we're ready to deal with it.
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My favorite blueprints, though, are a set I've had since I was a little one--those of the original Star Trek Enterprise. Gee whiz, these are cool. It maps out the entire ship for you (including the bowling alley located on Deck 21) and breaks down the number of crewmen stationed aboard her by rank and specialties. By golly, if I ever need to find my way from the bridge to the sick bay or transporter room or the photon torpedo tubes or the Cosmology lab on Deck 3, then I'll be able to get there. No problem.
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And to this day, I remain convinced that this information will indeed one day save my life.

1 comment:

  1. If you're not already aware of it, you may be interested in "Blueprint for a Battlestar: Serious Scientific Explanations behind Sci-Fi's Greatest Inventions" by Rod Pyle, which I have a copy of.

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