The Bridge: Unusually for fiction, buried right in the middle of the ship where some smartass can’t shoot it off. Also, very distinctly not the Combat Information Center, the Flight Deck/Conning Tower, any kind of conference or communications room, Damage Control Central, Flight Operations, Astrogation, or any one of the other assorted rooms scattered throughout the ship’s volume where some department or other runs its stuff.
In some designs, may even be entirely virtual.
What is left? The captain’s easy chair?
That, the easy chairs for much but not all of the rest of the Command Conference, a big computer interface and tactical tank duplicating the bigger one down in CIC, and a crapload of repeater displays and internal communication talkers.
Nothing, in short, that’s so vital that a lucky shot (on a military ship), asteroid strike, hijackers taking the bridge, that sort of thing – or happening to various of the other mentioned components – would too greatly impair your ability to command and, if necessary, fight the ship. Distribution and redundancy, and lots of it!
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