...but the functions of the Enterprise are largely hypothetical.
Yep. But the fact that the makers at least gave it some thought, makes Star Trek science fiction rather than fantasy.
In broad strokes, what they did in 1964 (and 1986) was say, "hey, we want to have a show where our people visit a new planet each week and have adventures. We want this to be taken more seriously than children's TV shows like Captain Video and Tom Corbett. What can we draw from science fiction literature, from the wildest thinking of scientists and futurists, that will make our show plausible and entertaining?"
To me, that is the heart of Star Trek, the world-building. The feeling that there's more to it than meets the eye, that there's science behind it (even if there really isn't).
I get none of that from Abrams. And I imagine the average person doesn't give a crap about it either, which is a shame.
k
Very clever, you almost had me. But movie making is not purely art. :lol
Go back and read how Matt Jefferies and Gene Roddenberry struggled to define the design of the original Enterprise. Go back and see how, in the mid-1970s, the Enterprise was re-designed for a possible TV show, and then the movies. Look at how the 1701-D was conceived for Next Generation.
There may not be "right and wrong", but there is intentional vs arbitrary. There is style vs function. There is "it looks like it does something" vs "it just looks cool."
The process should be more than just subjective, at least if you care about more than just the surface appearance of things. And I happen to.
k
Yes I know they fixed that in the Directors Cut but that doesn't count.
I don't like Probert's image either, but I agree with him that the ship in the movie doesn't have a unified design, and that would be the sort of thing you'd have to do to make it all of a piece.
On the other hand I really do like those Ryan Church ideas a lot better. There are any number of ways you could have taken it. There really IS no right and wrong, and of COURSE I'm not saying that the Abrams Enterprise is "wrong".
Just from a pilot perspective why are they dangerous hazards blocking short final in the hanger bay? What were they thinking?
Maybe it's just me, but I don't think the Enterprise has a very unified design to start with. Other than the fact that we've all been reinforced with decades worth of what Starfleet ships are "supposed" to look like from canon, what makes the Enterprise look "real?" Not much to me.
The saucer section is evocative -if not directly, then surely subconsciously - of flying saucers. But then you have the tube shaped body, and what basically equates to upside down space pontoons. It never really made sense to me, for example, why the nacelles would want to be way out there. That seems like an unnecessarily fragile point.
Sorry, but if I have to go with either you or Robert Wise, I'm sticking with the four time oscar winner and legendary film editor/director who actually made the film and with the Director's Edition, actually finished it. There's a sad but not totally hopeless reason why the film is not on BluRay.
The 1964 vintage Enterprise was an attempt to show something nobody had seen before. It couldn't be shaped like a V-2 rocket, or a flying saucer, or an airplane.
In the earliest days, the show format kept changing. At one point the ship was very small, with a crew of about 8. Basically it was just the Bridge flying around. :lol
Eventually Roddeberry decided the ship had to be much bigger, with a crew of about 200. The crew would be housed in a main, spherical pressure hull (a sphere being the strongest shape). The engines would be held away from the hull on outriggers, implying that great and dangerous energies were being generated by them to warp space and propel the ship. In an emergency the engines would be jettisoned.
MANY iterations of ball and disc and cylinder were tried, in an attempt to find a pleasing shape
This is probably my favorite of these. What a piece of crap that would have been. :lol
Anyway, the answer to your question is, they (1) wanted to make it look unique, (2) wanted a crew of 200 (later 400) housed in a main pressurized hull, (3) the twin engine power units would be held away from the main hull.
Later a cylindrical secondary hull was invented to balance off the other elements. The rationale was that the command crew for the engines woud be housed there, along with critical support machinery ("fuel, supply, main repair centers, water and waste reconversion, and interplanetary freight" according to the Making Of.)
k
I saw it as another planet in the system, with a moon orbiting that planet. So Spock can say Vulcan has no moon, and TMP can still be in continuity. From a certain point of view...Vulcan's moon exists in TMP.
Ok...head ridges never appeared on a single Klingon during TOS, and then every Klingon has head ridges in the movies...yeah, that's not a flaw in canon.
That's it, I'm having popcorn.
opcorn
Pass the salt?