They never showed the ceiling in the Original Series. I think the closest thing would be an episode of the Animated Series where they showed a phaser security system that telescoped down from the roof, so at least by that point there was no skylight.
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There’s at least a few shots showing just enough to indicate that the ceiling dome is opaque:
Of course the FX to show space up above would have been a real nightmare/outright impossible, so even if it had a window in the designs, they’d not show it. But they never make any references to there being a window there, nor does it show up in the sequels/remakes, where the FX would be possible (the 2009 Star Trek I think has a window/view screen combo), and all exterior shots of the ship show an opaque bridge dome.
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Oof, yeah, the animated series. So we’ve got whatever the intended design was for the pilot, the design for the actual show and the design for the animated show…
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In The Next Generation there was a transparent skylight, so probably somebody somewhere thought it was a literal window the whole time
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Ah, I forgot about that - it’s such a small element in the ceiling it didn’t get shown much. But it was also a quite different design, too.
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If I remember correctly, there actually is a door to a bathroom in Star Trek TNG… like, an actual one on the set that you can maybe see in some shots. There’s the door to the turbolift, the one to the ready room, the one to Picard’s office, and… the other one. The one nobody ever uses.
As for the Original Series… they… beamed it out of people I guess? Maybe that’s why nobody uses the one in TNG. It’s only for emergency use in case the transporters are down, a necessity Starfleet in the Original Series had to learn the hard way.
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the bubble glows white when seen from the outside, the implication being - i think - that there’s light from the interior shining out
the bubble also appears in tng sometimes, and i think they were carrying through that aspect of the design
though the motion picture nixes it entirely
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If we’re so technologically advanced, why don’t we have a ceiling?
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Breaking the 4th wall and the 5th wall at the same time!
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As per the image my comment above, they did show interior shots of the (opaque) bridge dome a few times in the original series. If there was supposed to be a transparent section, it would have been a quite small section of the very top of the dome, which doesn’t look any different in the exterior views. On Next Generation, on the other hand, they actually show the various windows in the bridge bubble - they’re distinct elements:
So a transparent dome might have been an idea in the original, pilot design, but if so, it seems like they gave up on it for the original show and only revisited it for the Next Generation. Or it was actually a new design element for the Next Generation…
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That 2x speed button on Youtube videos is a grand thing indeed.
(…Except lately it’s starting to seem like my connection can’t keep up, even if I lower the video quality considerably. Might need to upgrade.)
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im not convinced because that’s still a fairly wide area above.
i should have though added a nod to your comment on fx budget:
almost all the windows of things in tos were glowing white opaque. even buildings on the ground. ( or matte paintings thereof 
) and even tng had to have awkward shots sometimes to avoid windows to keep the costs down.
so, im just explaining to me it reads as a bubble window up there. and there’s nothing - that ive ever seen - which explicitly contradicts it, nor i suppose that explicitly confirms it
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Who is to say that one-way-frosted windows aren’t a standard privacy feature in the 23rd Century? It would be awkward if any passing Romulan could watch you changing in your crew quarters.
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I’m afraid that it’s a misconception that the original Enterprise’s bridge doesn’t face forward. It does face forward. It’s the bridge’s turbolift that is off on the port side of the ship.
There is on-screen evidence for this in the series. Take “Arena”, for example. When the Enterprise decelerates from warp 8 to a dead stop in about ten seconds, the bridge crew are thrown towards the main viewscreen. If the bridge were pointing off towards port then they would have been thrown towards the right-hand side of the viewscreen.
There are other examples of this in the series. The Enterprise being brought to a stop by the “hand” in “Who Mourns for Adonais?” is another example. The production crew on the series were well aware that the bridge faced forward and that the turbolift was off to port.
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Yes, my theory is that the models are simply incorrect, or that that little nub sticking up is not actually the elevator.
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Nonsense. The bridge is crooked, and to compensate they just flew the whole ship at an angle. There’s image evidence up-thread!
(/s or in good fun or whatever)
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The argument that the bridge is crooked is based on the nub on the hull being presumed to be the turbo lift shaft. I don’t know that it necessarily is, but if you assume that, the bridge has to be crooked. Whether you believe that evidence is more or less compelling than the direction they fall in response to impact is an exercise for the viewer.
All this assumes the show is internally consistent with the design of the ship, and it just isn’t. All answers are right and wrong here, depending on what details you believe are more important. It’s a TV show, and they took dramatic license all over the place. And that’s fine. It’s all fine. Everyone is fine.
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“…How are you?”
No wait, that’s from Star Wars.
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