Star Trek Watch: Certifiably Ingame’s Starfleet Bridge 101

Certifiably Ingame looks at the typical Starfleet bridge layout.

Star Trek has many ships, with many distinct and different-looking bridges. Now if you’re new to Star Trek, a bridge is the term for the center point for all of the ship’s systems. Navigation, defense, controls, life support, just about everything the ship has to do is found on the bridge. It’s also where the Captain resides most of the time, with a ready room usually just off the bridge. This is where the captain goes during downtime, or to host personal conversations while they’re actively on duty.

The Starfleet bridge is one of the more unique, diverse, and well-done set pieces in all of Star Trek. It’s one of the things fans love the most about the series and the universe. So YouTuber Certifiably Ingame decided to look at the bridge layout and explain just what everything does. Yet, in doing so, he pointed out a really big issue with the design of Federation ships.

The video points out an issue with the bridge’s location in Star Trek

If you’ve watched the video, then you know that one of the biggest issues in the entire Star Trek series is the fact that the bridge of a ship is often a part of the most exposed and easily targeted portion of the ship. The top of it. Unlike other stations like the med-bay or the engine room, which are buried under floors of ship sections, the bridge is often the most exposed.

A design flaw that doesn’t really make sense, mostly due to the fact the view-screen isn’t a periscope like in a submarine, but more akin to a camera and computer screen. Think of it more akin to a Skype call than anything else. You don’t need to be at your front door to see what’s on the other side of the monitor and you don’t need to be at the top of the ship to navigate a Starship.

Considering the number of times a Starfleet ship has lost its shields and lost entire sections of the ship, you’d think the alien combatants would just start shooting at the top of the ship to cripple the entire vessel.

Yet, they don’t.