Where Do I Find the Dolphins?

Cetacean Ops is a facility on the Enterprise-D which, although referred to only twice — in the episodes “The Perfect Mate” and “Yesterday’s Enterprise” — has spoken to the imagination of fans since Michael Okuda and Rick Sternbach revealed in their Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual that it was manned by dolphins.

The Technical Manual states that guidance and navigation research is conducted by a cetacean crew of twelve Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus) and Pacific Bottlenose Dolphins (Tursiops truncatus gilli), who are supervised by two Takaya’s Whales (Orcinus orca takayai).

“Takaya’s Whale” is not a real species; the name is a homage to the fictional character Noriko Takaya in the Japanese animated series Aim For The Top! Gunbuster in which “espers and electronic-brained [bottlenose] dolphins” navigate a spaceship.

In his Star Trek: The Next Generation U.S.S. Enterprise NCC-1701-D Blueprints, Sternbach places Cetacean Ops on Decks 13 and 14. The dolphins’ quarters span two (human-sized) decks.

Ed Whitefire, who had prepared a set of blueprints before Sternbach’s which weren’t licensed (they are available at Cygnus-X1.Net), put what was then referred to as “Tursiops” in the same part of the ship. (Okuda, Sternbach and Enterprise-D designer Andrew Probert all provided input on Whitefire’s work.)

Whitefire told Trekplace in 2005 that Tursiops “was the brainchild of Mike Okuda who argued (and correctly, I might add) that aquatic mammals are the most efficient and effective navigators in the world and would therefore one day become the people who steer our ships through space.”

When he told me this, I took it as a direct challenge to add quarters and operating areas for tursiops crew members. My thinking regarding their movement through the ship was that they would be individually fitted with some sort of low-gravity, high-moisture force field unit or suit that would allow them free movement while keeping their skin appropriately hydrated. Although they would be able to traverse the ship, the size of their spaces on Decks 13 and 14 would be used as their quarters and primary work spaces, in which they would have neutral bouyancy (low gravity) and high moisture content, thus negating the need for a huge on-board “pool” for them to swim in. The size of the spaces would also allow for their measurably larger masses to move around more freely.

Sternbach writes in the Technical Manual that the area was never shown on screen, “since the expense would have been prohibitive, but we did convince the writers to have Geordi [La Forge] ask a visiting official if they ever saw the dolphins.”

In late 2005, Probert imagined previously unseen interiors of a Galaxy-class starship for Perpetual Entertainment’s Star Trek Online. They weren’t developed further, but Probert’s design gives us a glimpse of what could have been.