Back in '79, what was your reaction to the design & execution of the Enterprise Refit as opposed to the series E we grew up seeing?
Back in '79, what was your reaction to the design & execution of the Enterprise Refit as opposed to the series E we grew up seeing?
Last edited by Chrisisall; Apr 21, 2012 at 9:25 AM.
Wow...that means I've got to go back to '79, when i was seventeen and watching the movie for the first time at a drive-in! Hmm... let's see...
If I'm remembering right it was pretty drastic to me, almost like it wasn't really the same ship. It seemed, I don't know..."heavier" and more "serious" somehow. Then, right out of the box, two people got killed in a transporter accident. That was pretty new. Then, the engines didn't work right, and that whole wormhole thing then seemed pretty 'out there' and alienating. I was a little confused. This wasn't wasn't I remembered at all. I had no idea most of the time where the characters even were, all the familiar touchstones seemed gone (save for the bridge, anyway). No briefing room, that huge, weird lounge, a transporter room that even looked dangerous, the massive cargo bay which to me looked like mostly wasted space. Overall, I'd just sum it all up as an unfamiliar place, I guess.
Thinking about it a little more, I'd compare it to some kid you might have known in grammar school who'd moved away. Then you get about ten years older, and you run into that grown-up kid again. They've got the same name, and look somewhat the same, but they seem like unfamiliar people, in spite of your common memories of youth. The gap of years seems to have taken something away and leaving unfamiliarity in its place. Does that make any sense?
Last edited by LMFAOSchwarz; Apr 20, 2012 at 11:25 PM.
I thought it was pretty awesome!
18 months of refitting...
I liked the new design, but other than the basic configuration there was hardly anything of the original E left. They should have had a retirement ceremony for the old girl and then introduced us to the new Enterprise.
When I saw the movie I was a bit disappointed... but I drew the damn ship on everything I came across... scrap pieces of wood, paper whatever. Trying (in vain) to get the shapes and proportions right... I was going from memory, and constantly wanting to make the engines bigger like the TOS E. It just looked "stubby" to be otherwise.
I was 12...
Today I still prefer the original E, but have come to really like the Refit as well... maybe on a 51-to 49%now they are both the enterprise to me.
in my modeling history the AMT Refit was the first model that I really took my time to carefully build and it had the distinction of being the first model that I did not introduce a flaw into during construction - just the right amount of glue, decals prefectly placed, no extra plastif accidentally removed while trimming flash... God I was proud of that model...
Jedi Dade
Yes it does, and funny, I was 19 then, you young'un!LMFAOSchwarz said:
My first 'WTF' was NO EXTENDED DISH & ANTENNA????? But I got over it fast. Then, THE NACELLES AREN'T ROUND??????? But during the movie I acclimated. I immediately loved the 'fattness' of the secondary hull, the photon torpedo area on the neck, and the sweep of the pylons.
To this day, I miss the lighted sensor domes above & below on the saucer, and the front of the bussards glowing (though the deflector dish light ameliorates that to a large degree).
[Sidebar: I never liked the cheap way they got rid of Sonak with the transporter malfunction, so I always skip that part]
Bottom line for me is: Ya gotta love the Refit, warps & all.
Last edited by Chrisisall; Apr 21, 2012 at 1:33 AM.
Maybe I am a little young for this list as I was only 9 when TMP came out in theaters. But, the shape of the new ship did leave an impression on me. To me, the TOS E looked kind of boring with what looked like three cylinders and a saucer stuck together with some simple pylons (and a rather terrestrial looking radar dish). It just looked cheap to me. The refit E I loved though as it introduced some wild eye candy. The flatter more squared off nacelles with those grills just kept attracting my eye. The photon bay was a nice way to add detail to the neck and the ditching of the parabolic radar dish for a thing that glowed with energy when activated was really cool. The ship immediately became my favorite as I also tried to sketch it everywhere I went as well. I know I went crazy when I got the South Bend Electric Enterprise refit toy that Christmas (the one you could take apart and reconfigure) as then I could appreciate all the shapes up close and personal. It was kind of like looking at a Starship version of a 57 Chevy as opposed to say a common 1970s sedan (which is what the TOS E at the time looked like to me).
I didn't really begin to warm to the TOS E until after that. It wasn't until TMP and TWOK came out that I started to appreciate TOS more. It wasn't until I got my hands on a set of decent drawing plans for the TOS E (NOT the Franz Joseph blueprints since his were a bit off in spots) that I finally began to really appreciate the subtle touches Matt Jefferies and Richard Datin put into the TOS design with the decks, hatches and lighting placements. But a lot of that small stuff didn't really read too well on the small black and white TVs that were still common in the late 1970s (and early 80s). And of course, without home VCRs, we couldn't record and replay the episodes to look at the stuff on the screen.
By the time TWOK hit theaters a couple years later, I had access to a better television and was able to sit down and watch Trek on a regular basis since a local station was airing it on Saturday nights at 11PM (and I could stay up that late on the weekend). So finally I "got" what Trek meant to so many. And when the episode "Space Seed" aired and I finally figured out the back story in TWOK wasn't just made up for it, well I was hooked.
I don't really remember if I liked or disliked one more, but I do remember thinking WOW, when I saw the refit. I had mixed feelings about it, It is kinda hard to call it a refit though. I mean they did a little bit more than just give her a new paint job. It is like going to sleep with a VW Beetle in your driveway and waking up to see a ferarri sitting there and calling it an upgrade. I do like the sleekness of the new design, the swept-back pylons make her look much more elegant in my opinion and the lighting (levels which were not availible to the TOS design crew) just made it look fantastic. I remember back then watching the movie for the first time... although I was a Star Trek fan through and through (only topped by Star Wars), I have to admit I have never really liked those typical "2001 - A Space Odessy" special effects, its like they were designed by people who are high for viewers who are high. Don't get me wrong, 2001 was a great film too... just didn't like those SpecialFX scenes and that slightly brought the my opinion down as a whole.
Today, I would say I like the refit design better, however the classic E is that... a classic.
I liked the design but thought it absurd that it was supposed to be the same ship so heavily modified.
It would have been better to just say it was an brand new ship since even the inside had no resemblance to the original.
The thing I really hated was the silly pajamas everyone was wearing.
Totally loved the new K'Tinga ships and even the new bone head Klingons though it was a "what the heck" moment.
On the up side I was blown away by the movie that was playing with it as a double feature, ALIEN.
I was really excited to see the Klingon ships in the opening scene and loved them. The Enterprise; no so much. Still to this day I much prefer the original E. I felt like the refit had too much detailing (influenced by the "Star Wars" look) and I didn't (and don't) really like the changes made. I love the simplicity and power of the original. As far as the script goes the main thing that bugs me (other than the story being a rip-off of "The Changling) was . . . I mean really, they can't get the decades old technology of the transporters and warp drive to work? WTH!
Ok, let me get this out of the way first:
warps...and all...Chrisisall said:
...Ya gotta love the Refit, warps & all.And here's one right back atcha!
I's so hard to remember details from so long ago, but I do recall that by the time ST II came out, I had no problems with the E again, so I must've gotten over it pretty quickly!
Those TMP uniforms, though, yeah that bothers me to this day. Relative to the series, it was like having an 8-pack of colorful crayola crayons suddenly replaced with a pack that contained only shades of gray!
I hadn't really thought about it before until division 6 mentioned it, but all things considered they seemed to do a much better job upgrading the Klingon ships.
I was 18 when TMP came out and dispite it's glacial pacing, I still saw it a ton of times in the theatre.
It's an old peeve of mine, but the only thing I disliked about the design of the ship was the lack of "big swirly orange things" at the head of the warp engines. (back before I learned they were called 'bussard collectors') the engines just looked "dead" without them. I was very glad to see this rectified in future Enterprises. Beyond that, I echo the thoughts about the drab uniforms and overall "blah-ness" of the interior colors.
Yeah, the distinct lack of colour seemed a little sterilized.Aztek Dummy said:
Ster-il-ized!
Faul-ty!
I had been keeping up with updates in Starlog magazine since about 1977, so I was pretty familiar with the new ship by the time the actual movie rolled around. I had the model kit and the blueprint pack and trading cards and all. So I guess you could say I kind of liked it.
My only exposure before the movie had been full page ads in comic books, you know the one- Enterprise at a 45 degree angle with pictures of the cast at the bottom. So I was surprised to see it look way more different than even that concept painting.phase pistol said:
The TOS version was okay when I watched the reruns; that said, when I saw the Refit for the first time, I just fell in love with it!! She had a sleekness and beauty that was unparalleled.
I loved that Berkey painting!Chrisisall said:
In some ways it looks even more intriguing than what they finally ended up with... I love the "glass" blisters and windows all over it, gives it a sense of scale. The warp engines are kid of too angular for my taste though.
-he said, before he started a scratch build of it...phase pistol said:
I loved that Berkey painting!
In some ways it looks even more intriguing than what they finally ended up with...
I was 11 when TMP came out. Like Karl, I was an avid reader of Starlog and was well aware what it was going to look like. I loved the look prior to the films release and was blown away by the ships introduction on the movie. I adore that 10min or whatever shuttle pod flyby scene, especially with the Goldsmith score. I bought the AMT model kit as well as the electronic Enterprise toy. Still my favorite starship design of them all.
That Berkey painting is a prime reason why I've got parts from a Phase 2 conversion attempt I tried about a decade ago still sitting in storage. The model is a kitbash of an AMT refit E with an AMT Cutaway TOS E (with engines from a vac Avenger class kit). I'm slowly working up the nerve to go back to it (I've got a decent set of engines for it, but I still need to do the saucer and secondary hull modifications as my first attempts weren't quite so good due to having to fill that "mall floor" tile pattern on my refit parts. I've since acquired a built smoothie refit to have a second go at the conversion of those bits.
You put those quotes around that like it's a bad thing.JMChladek said:
I estimate approximately 4 hrs. of sanding Hell for mine...
I had just joined the USMC and had zero time to go to the theater, so I read the book first. The Enterprise will always be the first thing that comes to mind when I think of a starship, I have loved her in all of her incarnations, from the first day the series aired. The thing that struck me the most from TMP, when I finally made it to the theater, was the music...from the beginning to the end I was hypnotized...
I've been watching Star Trek since the original series first aired in September of 1966; I was five years old. Like most fans I loved everything about it, and grew to appreciate it more and more watching the reruns repeatedly as I grew older. So much for my credentials.
I can't recall the first time I'd read or heard about Star Trek: The Motion Picture, but I recall thinking it was long overdue. I don't like spoilers and I purposely avoided as much promotional material as possible, so the first time I saw the Refit in all her glory was on the big screen. After seeing what they had done with the pajamas...err, I mean the uniforms, I was filled with a feeling of dread. To paraphrase Dr. McCoy, "I know filmmakers; they love to change things."
Fortunately, that feeling of dread was misplaced; it was love at first sight. I think I sat through the entire "fly around" sequence with my jaw in my lap. I thought the redesign was a sensible approach; not necessarily an improvement, but a progression. To this day I can't decide which I like more, the Original or the Refit. Whether or not the Refit is actually the Original...I don't care; with all of the other implausibilities inherent in sci-fi, that's a minor consideration.
I must admit, however, that I still miss that "going to warp" sound effect from the original series.
I was 14, and I too read all the previews in Starlog, so I knew what to expect. The TOS E is a great design and will always be my fave, but the refit looked REAL. Every detail was thought out, and the reflective paint gave it a "futuristic materials" look that just sold it, this was no flat gray battleship in space.
All the designs in this film had this quality. It wasn't about what looks cool, it was what looks believable in a real world sense.
The refit E has always been my favorite starship design. She just exudes elegance. Don't get me wrong, the TOS E is still awesome, but there is something about the refit E that just gets me excited when I see her.
Scott
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