Star Trek Into Darkness (Pre-release)
- Thread starter Dave Porter
- Start date
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
jlee562
Sr Member
Ok.
Well, FWIW, I thought the images you posted on the previous page of the "improved" Enterprise were way uglier than what ended up on screen. The Probert image I find particularly distasteful. Aside from the stunningly idiotic decision to use a brewery as the engine room, I have no qualms with the design of the ship.
If you want to assert that the design is "wrong," I find myself aligning with Darth Saber, there is no right and wrong in art.
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".
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".
They were men of military aviation, both men spent a lot of time in aircraft, Roddenberry as a pilot and Jeffries as crew. They knew what something should look like from practical experience. So there is a lot of B-17 in the Enterprise when you think on it. You can take that next step sure and argue, well it's a fantasy starship, anything goes, but your trying to communicate something plausible too, to take something fantastic and ground it in an aesthetic that is accessible to the mind as plausible with
those subtle cues. Elegence in delivery.
The refit also communicated this elegence.
I think the refit even added a sense of "sails" to the warp pylons and engines being more triangular and sail like. Brilliant!
JJ-Prise is the product of people that didn't understand or failed on these subtle but important ideas.
Just from a pilot perspective why are they dangerous hazards blocking short final in the hanger bay? What were they thinking?
Kelly Johnson a very famous aircraft designer of many legendary aircraft once said aircraft fly like they look. Well the JJ-prize looks so out of balance it would go ass over teakettle.
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.
jlee562
Sr Member
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.
nwjedidave
Sr Member
Well, *I* say that Gabe Koerner's enterprise would have been the perfect fit for JJs new E.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ft7WILemLU
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3Ft7WILemLU
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
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
Mola Rob
Sr Member
I never would have thought you would be disagreeing with anybody. :confused
I meant that the directors cut or Director's Edition doesn't override or erase the existence of the theatrical cut. That version still exists and so therefore is canon. Vulcan's moon exists in TMP.
Angelus Lupus
Sr Member
Some very recognisable shapes in those designs. I see Daedalus and ring-ship designs, and what could easily be early forms of the SS Valiant and the Klingon Battle Cruiser.
jlee562
Sr Member
Which is all well and good, but at the end of the day, you're simply accepting one set of hypothetical details over another. Both are equally arbitrary.
That's it, I'm having popcorn.
opcorn
Pass the salt?
opcornPass the salt?
robn1
Master Member
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
Same with Nu Trek and Delta Vega, it was another planet not a moon. Not that it let's JJ off the hook for using the name :lol
DARTH SABER
Master Member
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.
Yeah, the game is up. They change things all the time.
Doesn't mean that any and every change is acceptable no matter what it is, though.
If you care, Roddenberry said at the time that the Klingons in TMP looked different because in the TV show, they didn't have the budget to do anything interesting with the Klingon makeup. For the movie they did. So that's how the Klingons "always would have looked" if they had had the money to do it in the Sixties.
k
jlee562
Sr Member
That's it, I'm having popcorn.
Pass the salt?
Seriously though, you can justify anything that's hypothetical.
The brewery? Well, that made a good engine room because of all the coolant liquid you would need for the (suddenly multiple) warp cores. What? You don't need coolant for warp cores? Says who? Where's your warp engine?
Oh, a sphere is the strongest shape? That's why we use it in our spacecraft, right?
Ok, ok, so that was kinda snarky, mea culpa.
But the point is, while the original Enterprise may have been thought up with its own internal logic; it's arbitrary to begin with because we're talking about a make believe space ship which does things beyond the capacity of human technological innovation. And if the nacelles are so dangerous and need to be away from the body of the ship, somebody sure messed up on the Reliant.
Secondly, unless you were on the design team, or privy to the details of those meetings, I do think it's a mite insulting to those who did work on the new Enterprise to imply that there was no thought put into it.
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