Mystery ship? Can anyone help?

[Trekfan76137]

Actually I believe it's fairly well documented that that shot is an experiment with using a cg Enterprise model.

The giveaway had to do with the running lights I believe.

Possibly referenced in Larry Nemecek's TNG Companion book and some other places if I remember correctly.

[Tosk]

It's the two-footer. There are no CGI shots of the Enterprise in TNG.

[jimbotron]

Trekfan76137 wrote:

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Actually I believe it's fairly well documented that that shot is an experiment with using a cg Enterprise model.

The giveaway had to do with the running lights I believe.

Possibly referenced in Larry Nemecek's TNG Companion book and some other places if I remember correctly.

I remember reading the same thing. That it was an experiment, and they didn't like the results, so they never tried it again.

This used to be in the article from Memory Alpha, but was removed for not citing a source. I guess that's where I got it from:

This episode contains one of the first instances of computer-generated imagery (CGI) to grace an episode of the Star Trek franchise. As the Sheliak colony vessel approaches the Enterprise (approximately, 33:18), one of the few exterior shots of both vessels together, the distant Enterprise-D is a CGI model rather than a physical entity. The shot is very brief and the CGI replica is often mistaken for the similar two-foot filming model, however still-frame analysis reveals that the computer-generated Enterprise lacks much of the detail found on even the tiny two-foot model. Because of this, a CGI Enterprise would not be seen again until the first TNG feature film, Star Trek Generations, by which time computer technology had progressed significantly.

That being said, it looks very fake and low resolution. Even the worst shot of the 2-foot model looks better than that. I guess we'll find out one way or another when it's remastered.

[StewMc]

There doesn't seem to be a confirmed, legitimate source of the "CGI Enterprise-D" claim, a Google search only really reveals the Memory Alpha page and a couple of threads on this BBS where its brought up. It certainly looks less detailed than the 2 footer, infact it reminds me of the CG Enterprise-D that appeared in the cutscenes of the game "A Final Unity". In this thread, even Rick Sternbach doesn't know what model was used.

Did the 2 footer actually appear in new footage much after the second season? I seem to remember most of the new shots being of the 4 footer.

[Tosk]

Trekfan76137 wrote:

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The giveaway had to do with the running lights I believe.

Can't be that, as the running lights can be seen in operation on the 2ft in Pen Pals.

StewMc wrote:

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Did the 2 footer actually appear in new footage much after the second season? I seem to remember most of the new shots being of the 4 footer.

The 4ft didn't debut until The Defector, eight episodes after Ensigns. So if they needed a small scale Enterprise, it was all they had until then.


There's another way to know it's not CGI. Just watch the shot in question. Often times with the model work, the hull pass would be cropped ever so slightly differently to one or more of the lighting passes, so at the edge of the frame you would see the lights where there was no hull or vice versa. And that happens on this shot. There is visible space where only the lighting pass is visible and the hull element is cut off.


That said, it still looks like crap and I hope it is replaced in S3. Which is what TrekFan was saying originally.