One thing I never understood was the need to have a seat on the bridge for a counselor. Why? Is she that critical? Also, if you count the most of the time there but sometimes not side seats, there are actually 5 seats.
I think, as far as that era goes, Voyager's bridge is much more suited for the amount of actors they wanted to have on the bridge at any given time. You only had 2 command seats, CO and XO, the two you need. The conn station was a single station at front, with ops and tactical to the rear sides. And, if you wanted to have them manned, there were science and engineering stations off to the side. But, if you didn't, you didn't have to include them in most shots. So, their emptiness wasn't an eyesore. Then the center of the back was that huge MSD. So, that wasn't something you expected to be manned and it looked less empty than a bunch of mostly unused stations. But, Voyager was a different type of ship with a much smaller crew.
It's funny, because when I was younger, I didn't like TMP the best. Sure, I liked it as I did all of the movies, but it wasn't my favorite. In the past several years, it's become my favorite movie from the franchise. It feels the most like a long episode of the series, which is basically what it was as it was originally the 2 hour pilot for Phase II. The movies they started with Harve Bennett afterwards are good, but they just don't have the same kind of vibe to them. Also, who doesn't love those 2001: A Space Odyssey-esque long effects passes on the new Enterprise and V'Ger? (not to mention the Klingon ships and Epsilon IX) So, yeah, I have a lot of love for TMP. Some people think it's boring with its lack of action, but for me Star Trek doesn't need action to be great. Some of my favorite episodes involve Kirk and Picard using their smarts to talk (or bluff) their way out of situations, rather than resorting to violence. That's a quality that makes them great. The Corbomite Maneuver is a great episode for this. Plus, at one point he used corbomite against the Romulans. If I remember correctly, it was in The Deadly Years.
