Intrepid class starship USS Bellerophon

PAGE CONTENTS:
Background	Janet's note re messhall/captain's private dining room
Interior and exterior screenshots of USS Bellerophon	Behind-the-scenes: episode name, the sets costumes

• In [#1 and #2 Caretaker], whose events occur before [#5 Phage], the area is already being used as a crew messhall. It is in the messhall that we see several crewmembers eating, Paris tries to obtain tomato soup from the replicator (which, incidentally, is a different style to the ones seen later in the show) and is snubbed by certain crewmembers but befriended by Kim.
• In [#5 Phage] when Janeway enters the door to what she expects to be her private dining room, she walks into the galley not the messhall.
• If on Voyager what was to become the crew messhall from [#5 Phage] onwards had until then been the captain's private dining room why did it have two replicators, one on the port side and one on the starboard side? Maybe provision was made for the captain to entertain possibly a large number of people, but it seems an unnecessarily large area for the use of one person (the captain) for most of the time.
• TOSTFF has been known to make factual errors before (so have I, of course), and not just minor ones. It is not impossible, therefore, that TOSTFF is incorrect on this point.

However, there is no reason why USS Bellerophon should not retain such a large area on deck 2 as the captain's private dining room. It depends on the ship's primary function, and of course replicator rationing is not required as happened on Voyager as a result of being stranded in the Delta Quadrant. TOSTFF specifically says that it is the captain's private dining room, and also specifically denotes the equivalent of Voyager's briefing room as "the meeting room" (they are more or less the same thing). In addition TOSTFF is a canon source, authorised by Paramount/Viacom, despite TOSTFF's reputation for frequent factual errors.

 

Screenshots of USS Bellerophon, Intrepid class:

The captain's private dining room is used to host a drinks party. Note the different appearance of the area equivalent of the galley on Voyager. [DS9: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges]	The captain's private dining room. Note the different furnishings compared to the equivalent area on Voyager. The drink being poured is Romulan ale. [DS9: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges]
The door from the meeting room to the bridge. [DS9: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges]	[DS9: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges]
Above: The meeting room (on Voyager called the briefing room, or occasionally the conference lounge).
The meeting room. [DS9: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges]	USS Bellerophon, exterior view. The registry number, partly visible on the primary hull, reads NCC-74705. [DS9: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges]

Writer Ronald D. Moore got the episode's Latin title from seeing it in a blurb on a book by William Rehnquist, a book about 'habeus corpus' in American law and how Abraham Lincoln suspended the right of 'habeus corpus' and certain other civil rights during the American Civil War. Ira Behr chuckled: "I think Ron was trying to get even with Hans Beimler and me for the title of the episode called [DS9: Wrongs Darker Than Death or Night]."

The title is Latin for "for in time of war, laws fall silent". The ancient Roman dictum was actually "inter arma silent leges", originally spoken by Cicero ("enim" means "for"). Because Admiral Ross speaks the Latin dictum at the end of the episode, it received a special notation in the script's pronunciation guide (a regular component of all Star Trek scripts). The pronunciation given was EN-ter ARM-ah EYE-nim SEE-lent LEH-ges.
Worldwide there is great variety in Latin pronunciation, as indeed there was throughout the ancient Roman world and pronunciation differed over time just as Chaucerian English (rather melodic) was different from 21st century English. It would be pronounced differently in the UK (e.g. IN-ter; A-nim with A as in day for "enim") and differently again in France. Moore chose the order of the Latin words, saying that he settled on what "looked and read best to me". I suggest that consulting experts would have been wise e.g. in the USA alone there are, to name but two, the American Philological Association or the Harvard School of Classical Philology. They are internationally distinguished bodies whose members between them have the highest academic Classics qualifications. Word order in Latin is flexible but not totally, and in this case I believe that if he did not know what it should be he should have stuck to the dictum as it is usually quoted. Strictly speaking, "enim" should go at the start of the sentence. Apart from certain known sounds, in fact there is no definitive pronunciation (which anyway varied throughout the periods of Latin) because not enough information is extant. Pronunciation is secondary to meaning (depending on which language as intonation is vital in some), and it is also academic as Latin is no longer a living spoken language (the official language of the Vatican derives from Late Latin and also incorporates concocted Latin for modern age vocabulary), although it is disappointing that Star Trek, which normally has high research standards, did not get the word order correct as it is bound to be noticed by anyone who has done much Latin. (In case you wonder if I am qualified to speak on this, I think I am fairly qualified to do so as my first university degree attained was a Bachelor of Arts First Class Honours in Classics; it was a long time ago, however. I often think I'd've done better to study Klingon!) Personally I don't think pronunciation or spelling to be particularly important, but I notice this kind of thing because at school, in my day, teachers could whack a ruler across your knuckles or slap your leg if you got anything like that "wrong".)

Ronald Moore also inserted something from ancient Greek mythology by naming the Intrepid-class ship Bellerophon: "The Bellerophon was a ship on which Lord Nelson sailed. That's where I plucked the name from." The mythic character of Bellerophon rode the winged horse Pegasus, a name that was also used for a starship, in [TNG: Pegasus]. Moore says: "Yeah, someone pointed that out to me after the fact but I wasn't trying to draw a connection between the two." Nor, he adds, was he trying to draw a connection between Pegasus' master and the Chimera, the legendary beast slain by Bellerophon. "Chimera" was the name of the previous [DS9] episode! Moore says he did not know the myth of Bellerophon and the Chimera.

Book 'The DS9 Companion':
The Intrepid-class Bellerophon is, of course, the same class of vessel as Voyager, which allowed the producers to utilize a very convenient look-alike on a neighboring soundstage for some of their sets.

"When we started structuring the show," says Moore, " I called Rick Berman and [Voyager, Executive Producer] Brannon Braga and [Voyager, Supervising Producer] Merri Howard and said: 'I'd really like to use the Voyager sets on this.' We could have reused the Defiant sets once again [as in the episode [DS9: Valiant]], saying the Bellerophon was a Defiant-class ship, but I didn't want to. I thought that using a bigger starship with a different look would make the mission seem bigger and more important. And we could save a lot of money if we went over and used their existing stuff rather than building a new ship."

"We wound up using their conference room and their messhall," says Livingston i.e. director David Livingston, who has also directed episodes of [Star Trek: Voyager]. "We scheduled it for a day when the Voyager crew was working on a different soundstage."

[Star Trek: Insurrection]

Book 'The DS9 Companion': The [DS9] crew made use of some items from the most recent Star Trek film [Star Trek: Insurrection] - specifically, the new dress uniforms created for that movie by Bob Blackman. As they had with the new duty uniforms created for [Star Trek: First Contact], the producers had adhered to an unofficial embargo on debutting the costume on [DS9] until after [Star Trek: Insurrection] was in theaters, and held them until this episode. More pictures of these uniforms at FEDERATION & STARFLEET: Starfleet Uniforms.

[DS9: Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges]