History Main / TheBridge

* Most vehicles in ''Franchise/StarWars'' that are large enough to have one (smaller ships just have airplane-style cockpits usually). [[TheEmpire Imperial]] ships don't follow the usual layout, though -- BridgeBunnies are confined to two sunken pits full of consoles, bisected by a long walkway for Darth Vader to pace up and down menacingly. It's basically galley slaves InSPACE The Walkway serves the same purpose as the raised command chair in TOS that allows Kirk to turn around and see what everyone else is doing, only instead of requiring a full rotation, you just turn your head from side to side. It also has room in the back for a Holographic 3D display, rather than a 2D viewscreen at the front, instead it has a window for similar reasons as the ''Star Trek ''(2009) Bridge does.

** There are several types of bridges depending on the ship. Some ships, notably naval flagships have more then one bridge(one for the ship and one for the fleet). Different crew members are assigned workstations with computers arranged to taste.

** A few episodes of the original series refer to an emergency control center, called "Auxiliary Control" and located deep inside a heavily armored portion of the ship. In ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', Auxiliary Control became a complete secondary control center, called the "Battle Bridge" and located at the top of the connector between the saucer and engineering hulls. The Battle Bridge became the control center for the "Battle Module" (the warp drive and engineering hull) whenever the plot demanded they [[EscapePod separate from the saucer section]].

** On old sailing ships, the officers often commanded the ship from the "Poop Deck"[[note]][[InherentlyFunnyWords "Poop Deck"]] comes from the French word for "Stern", ''la poupe''.[[/note]]. This deck was typically elevated and allowed the officers to see much of the ship and the men at work.
** On paddle-wheel steamships, the large paddlewheels tended to obstruct one's view, so many ships featured a literal bridge (hence the name) built across the middle of the ship, high enough to let the officers see over the entire ship. Once paddlewheels were replaced by screws, the elevated observation post remained for its obvious utility. Many warships will also feature command and control centers deep within the ship to act as a backup in emergencies, compare to the "Battle Bridge" on ''Franchise/StarTrek''.
** One variation used on older warships was for The Captain and his staff to command the ship from an elevated position with the best visibility of the ship and the battlefield, while the helmsman sat in an armored enclosure at deck-level with a handful of other junior officers. They had far less visibility to command and control the ship from, instead being relayed instructions from above, but were also far more likely to survive a shell striking the ship's superstructure, ensuring that ''someone'' would probably be in control of the ship despite the bridge crew suffering a TotalPartyKill. Still not quite the same as the "Battle Bridge" mentioned above as the aforementioned observation deck was often on this compartment's roof.
** On modern aircraft carriers, the bridge is housed in what is termed "the island", the tall but relatively narrow superstructure mounted off to one side. The Queen Elizabeth class have two, the forward one handles ship operations, the aft one is the flight command centre, on other carriers both are housed in one island.

** In a few episodes of the original series, and in several episodes of ''Series/StarTrekTheNextGeneration'', the ships featured, in addition to the bridge located on top of the ship, a secondary "Battle Bridge" located deep inside some heavily armored portion of the ship. It also doubled as the bridge for the main section of the ship whenever the plot demanded they [[EscapePod jettison the saucer section]].

** The first Romulan ship we ever see actually had most of the systems operated by standing crewmen arranged around a central pillar with the captain wandering around the perimeter giving orders. Later Romulan ships had bridges that looked more like later Klingon ships, possibly a result of the Klingon-Romulan treaty.

* The ''Excalibur'' on ''Series/{{Crusade}}'' intentionally departed from this pattern, with a long rectangular bridge more akin to the control rooms on modern-day attack submarines. The Captain's conference room opened up directly behind, making for one long room for the command staff to work in.
* ''Series/BabylonFive'' has a variety of bridge designs for the different races.
** Narn ships are cramped with everyone strapped in because they lack artificial gravity. The White Star's bridge is fairly spacious with the expected central command chair and separate work stations. Earth ships have the central command chair and a more cramped layout (and seatbelts). The eponymous station's Command and Control isn't really a bridge at all, but combines air traffic control, tactical control, and other functions.
** The ''Excalibur'' class destroyers featured in ''A Call To Arms'' and ''Crusade'' feature the central command chair surrounded by workstations ''a la'' Star Trek, with the addition of the commander's conference room opening up directly behind it as an extension of the room.

This has nothing to do with the game of TabletopGame/{{Bridge}}, the cop show known in English as ''Series/{{The Bridge|2011}}'', the Sirius XM Satellite Radio channel known as The Bridge, the PuzzlePlatformer game ''VideoGame/TheBridge2013'', the German movie ''Film/{{The Bridge|1959}}'' (Die Brücke) (or novel of the same name), or the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''[=/=]''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' {{Crossover}} {{Fanfic}} of [[Fanfic/TheBridge the same name]].

This has nothing to do with the game of TabletopGame/{{Bridge}}, the cop show known in English as ''[[Series/BronBroen The Bridge]]'', the Sirius XM Satellite Radio channel known as The Bridge, the PuzzlePlatformer game ''VideoGame/TheBridge2013'', the German movie ''Film/{{The Bridge|1959}}'' (Die Brücke) (or novel of the same name), or the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''[=/=]''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' {{Crossover}} {{Fanfic}} of [[Fanfic/TheBridge the same name]].

This has nothing to do with the game of TabletopGame/{{Bridge}}, the cop show known in English as ''[[Series/BronBroen The Bridge]]'', the Sirius XM Satellite Radio channel known as The Bridge, the PuzzlePlatformer game ''VideoGame/TheBridge'', the German movie ''Film/{{The Bridge|1959}}'' (Die Brücke) (or novel of the same name), or the ''WesternAnimation/MyLittlePonyFriendshipIsMagic''[=/=]''Franchise/{{Godzilla}}'' {{Crossover}} {{Fanfic}} of [[Fanfic/TheBridge the same name]].

* ''Literature/CrestOfTheStars'' ''partially'' goes for the standard aversion, making the bridges of its ships cramped and flight deck like,.. but only for the lighter units. Capital ships feature standard elevated platforms for the captain (with enough room to swing the ceremonial sword), loads of BridgeBunnies, etc. Although both the capital ships and the lighter elements have their bridges in the heart of the ship and not exposed -- this comes as a major plot point in one series when Lamhirh friend and mentor [[spoiler:dies in the doomed destroyer's bridge, when battle damage blocks the way to the shuttle]].

* ''LightNovel/StarshipOperators'' has 3 bridges for Amaterasu, one for command, one for fire control, and one for conning. All the bridges are quite cramped, though, and there are seat belts.

* Let it not be said that ''LightNovel/HaruhiSuzumiya'' doesn't know its tropes, as the ships of all five SOS Brigade members in the episode "[[DeepImmersionGaming The Day of Sagittarius III]]" come equipped with the standard bridge set-ups, complete with themed BridgeBunnies.

* ''LightNovel/CrestOfTheStars'' ''partially'' goes for the standard aversion, making the bridges of its ships cramped and flight deck like,.. but only for the lighter units. Capital ships feature standard elevated platforms for the captain (with enough room to swing the ceremonial sword), loads of BridgeBunnies etc. Although both the capital ships and the lighter elements have their bridges in the heart of the ship and not exposed -- this comes as a major plot point in one series when Lamhirh friend and mentor [[spoiler:dies in the doomed destroyer's bridge, when battle damage blocks the way to the shuttle]].

* Most vehicles in ''Franchise/StarWars'' that are large enough to have one (smaller ships just have airplane-style cockpits usually). [[TheEmpire Imperial]] ships don't follow the usual layout, though -- BridgeBunnies are confined to two sunken pits full of consoles, bisected by a long walkway for Darth Vader to pace up and down menacingly. It's basically galley slaves InSPACE! The Walkway serves the same purpose as the raised command chair in TOS that allows Kirk to turn around and see what everyone else is doing, only instead of requiring a full rotation, you just turn your head from side to side. It also has room in the back for a Holographic 3D display, rather than a 2D viewscreen at the front, instead it has a window for similar reasons as the ''Star Trek ''(2009) Bridge does.

* Sergey Pavlov's HardSF novel ''Moon Rainbow'' just loves to subvert various tropes, starting with both the titular CoolShip and its counterpart later in the novel being not a naval vessels, but an exploration boat and ''freighter'' respectively, so it's not surprising that it does it for this trope as well. Just as in Honorverse example above, bridges there are more of a control rooms, large, but cluttered, with seatbelted crew being generally just representatives of their departments collected there for the Captain's convenience, and rarely, if ever, being BridgeBunnies -- they're just too busy for it. There are also a number of ''other'' control rooms throughout the sip, each controlling is own department, and a couple of sub-bridges for steering, astrogation and managing ships various systems.

* UrExample: the bridge of the ''Enterprise'' on ''Series/StarTrekTheOriginalSeries'' set the pattern for The Bridge on many other SpeculativeFictionSeries. (Note though, that at in least one ''Star Trek'' movie there are in fact seat belts on the bridge, in the form of arm rests that fold down and lock a person in his seat. Also, Kirk had ''male'' BridgeBunnies.)
** On the seat belts note, it's almost as if the entire concept of seat belts is being played with. Think about it, played with in dramatic flair in TMP as described above (Literally. The wormhole scene) since the choreography on the show was comical, discarded as a stupid idea by being shown on the losing ship(s) after being sabotaged (and blown up) in 3, and never appeared again. Then came the reboot. And guess what they brought back?!

** Ancient ships have spherical bridges with the captain [[http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/File:AuroraCommandChair.jpg sitting in a raised chair]] and the others working along the walls. Even larger window. The ''Destiny'' in ''Series/StargateUniverse'' has a [[http://stargate.wikia.com/wiki/File:Destiny_brige.jpg similar design]].

** Averted by the Normandy, which splits the various roles of this trope into three separate rooms, a layout influenced by submarines (which makes sense given it's a small, special-purpose steatlh vessel). When Shepard has to justify the craft to an uptight Rear Admiral they explain that it was an experiment with Turian ship layouts, who co-developed the Normandy, and any distance concerns are easily solved with ubiquitous CommLinks and good ol' DrillSergeantNasty bellowing. For bonus points, all three rooms are located on the same deck, so if internal communications ever went down, critical information can still be relayed as easy as walking from one room to another.

** They actually have ''three'' bridges, but the main one gets almost all of the camera time. The third bridge, as Wiki/TheOtherWiki puts it, "seems to exist largely to be blown off the ship dramatically".

->'''[[Creator/WilliamShatner Cmdr. Buck Murdock]]:''' We'd better get to the tower, Lieutenant.
->'''Lt. Pervis:''' We have no tower, sir.
->'''Cmdr. Buck Murdock:''' No tower?
->'''Lt. Pervis:''' Just a bridge, sir.
->'''Cmdr. Buck Murdock:''' Why the ''hell'' aren't I notified about these things?

* In ''Anime/LegendOfGalacticHeroes'', the warships of the [[TheEmpire Empire]] and the [[TheFederation Alliance]] have different bridge formats. Imperial warships feature the commander sitting in a central command chair with his bridge crew surrounding him, whereas Alliance warships have bridges that resemble RealLife naval warships with multi-tiered decks and the commander (usually standing) occupying the top deck. [[{{Deuteragonist}} Yang Wen-li's]] flagship ''Hyperion'' is worthy of mention: retrofitted from a frontier security squadron battleship, it differs from conventional Alliance flagships by a reduction of tiers in the bridge and an expanded top deck to accommodate a meeting table.

* Averted in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' and the film ''Serenity'', where the spacecraft is flown from a flight-deck clearly modeled on transport aircraft rather than ships. It is much smaller, with just two workstations, actual windows in place of a viewscreen, and nowhere for the captain to sit-Mal will
use the second workstation seat when he does sit. The dining room or cargo hold is a much more common gathering place than the flight deck.

* Averted in ''Series/{{Firefly}}'' and the film ''Serenity'', where the spacecraft is flown from a flight-deck clearly modeled on transport aircraft rather than ships. It is much smaller, with just two workstations, actual windows in place of a viewscreen, and nowhere for the captain to sit. The dining room or cargo hold is a much more common gathering place than the flight deck.

* In ''Fanfic/{{Origins}}'', a ''Franchise/MassEffect''[=/=]''Franchise/StarWars''[[spoiler:[=/=]''[=Borderlands=]''[=/=]''[=Halo=]'']] MassiveMultiplayerCrossover, it's made clear what can happen due to the typical ''StarWars'' bridge design--an enemy attack breaks through the command ship's shields, ''shreds the bridge, and kills the ship's admiral''. It's then {{Lampshaded}} that the Trans-Galactic Republic is fully aware of such dangers and has a "Force Coordination Center" in the heart of the ship--but [[TemptingFate nobody ever managed to defeat the shielding]] on that class of Star Dreadnaught before, so the RuleOfCool reigned supreme.

* In ''Literature/LineOfDelirium'', Kay is pretending to me a small-time merchant. He idly wonders why his cargo ship's tiny bridge has a forward window. Watching stars pass by is boring, and trying to land the ship using just the window is sheer suicide.