On Federation starships and space stations, the master systems display (abbreviated MSD), also known as the master situation monitor, or master situational display, is a large, wall-mounted computer display, sometimes in engineering or the bridge. The display usually featured a large cutaway diagram of the vessel, and was used to provide a detailed overview of the ship's status.
The USS Enterprise-D had its master systems display in engineering, while the starships USS Voyager, USS Defiant, USS Hathaway, USS Equinox, USS Enterprise-B, and USS Enterprise-E all featured their displays on the bridge. MSDs for Template:ShipClass starships could be loaded up from the computer.
(alternate version)
(recreation)
Background
Originally Michael Okuda intended the "Master systems display" and the "Master situation monitor" to be two different objects all together. Both in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual (pages 47-48) and the Star Trek Encyclopedia (3rd. ed., pages 291-292), the "Master systems display" is described as the informations console (affectionately dubbed the "pool table") seen in main engineering on board the USS Enterprise-D and later on the USS Enterprise-E and in the back of the bridge on the Enterprise NX-01. With "Master situation monitor" were meant the wall mounted back-lit (cut-away) graphics of the ships in question. Neither of the two designations were initially seen on-screen in their entirety, though their were "Master situation" bridge work stations on both the USS Excelsior and USS Enterprise in Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (and in Excelsior's case in VOY: "Flashback" as well). None of the wall mounted graphics had a caption "Master systems display", until Doug Drexler updated the cut-away graphic for the Template:ShipClass. Drexler, apparently unaware of the distinction Okuda had made, endowed the updated graphic with the "Master systems display" caption, which is legible in DS9: "Shattered Mirror" and DS9: "One Little Ship", the only graphic actually called as such.
The first MSD was created for the sets of the Enterprise-D. According to the Encyclopedia (3rd. ed., page 291), it included a number of in-jokes, including "the official USS Enterprise duck, the ship's mouse, a Porsche, a DC-3 airplane, the Nomad space probe, and the hamster on a treadmill that was alleged to be the true source of power for the ship's warp engines."
External links
- Cutaways (MSD) at Gilso Star Trek Schematics
- Template:Exastris.