Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home - Trial view-screen strangeness

Discussion in 'Star Trek Movies I-X' started by Chrono85, Apr 30, 2013.

  1. Chrono85

    Chrono85 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    This is something that has always amused me, and I have never been able to think of any kind of reasonable explanation for it. In Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home, when the Klingon is complaining to the Federation people about the shenanigans with the Enterprise in the previous movie, they are viewing footage of the incident on a screen. Here we see outside shots of the enterprise, and we see it exploding, in shots taken directly from Star Trek III. How did they manage to get such footage? Were there cameras floating around in the space around the ship? Would such devices survive the explosion, and how still, would they record the ships subsequent descent into the atmosphere of the planet?
     
  2. Timo

    Timo Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The imagery could simply be 100% synthetic.

    Moreover, the audience would recognize it as such, and would have full reason to think that it's also 100% contrary to the truth. But that wasn't the point of the visual demonstration - the point was to get an emotional reaction from the audience (in the courtroom as well as beyond the fourth wall), and the Klingons got one all right. Too bad they misjudged the Federation psyche and failed to understand that the audience would gasp at the loss of the beautiful Starfleet starship, not the cruel fates of the Klingon attackers...

    Really, if we saw such visuals today, they'd most probably be 90% fake, and the 10% real material would only be there because of current technological shortcomings, not because of any desire to stick to the truth.

    Timo Saloniemi
     
  3. Tom

    Tom Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Well the interior shots were also saved somehow also, maybe a probe ejects right as the ship was blowing up, or the ship was broadcasting somewhere. As was as the exterior shots they could have come from the BOP and Kirk gave the data to Sarek so he could show the Federation council what happened
     
  4. diankra

    diankra Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    ISTR that Vonda McIntyre's novelisation adds a mention that Matz somehow transmitted the footage that the Klingon ambassador shows back to Klingon High Command from the Bird of Prey, before killing himself. Sp on that explanation, the exterior shots of the Enterprise came from the Bird of Prey's log. How the Klingons got the interior shots...
     
  5. Locutus of Bored

    Locutus of Bored Yo, Dawg! I Heard You Like Avatars... In Memoriam

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    Several years ago I wrote a halfway tongue-in-cheek theory on exactly this subject (and to explain a few other things):

     
  6. Chrono85

    Chrono85 Lieutenant Commander Red Shirt

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    That is a well thought-out explanation Locutus :) Although, I suspect that nothing like that was on the minds of the writers of the time, or it would have been at least explained in a short line of dialogue :) Ir's really just an example of a bit of lazy writing or oversight on their part! Your explanation does seem plausible :)
     
  7. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It's not lazy writing, it's stock footage to fill in anyone who didn't see the previous movie. These things happen.

    That said, the interior shots could be from the E's flight recorder which was ejected before the ship exploded, while the exterior shots could be from the BoP.

    Honestly though, this seems like one of the sillier rounds of speculation we've engaged in (yes, yes, one of -many-).

    A less silly round of speculation would be why the bridge of the BoP looks completely different than it did in the previous film, and I suspect some posters can come up with just as creative explanations. :p
     
  8. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The same thing happened in STIII, the "flight recorder visual" showing the end of STII, complete with all camera angle changes we got in the movie. And the Talosians were kind enough to project images with similar camera angle changes and even the cool intro fly-in shot, in "The Minagerie"

    It's just one of those things. The Into Darkness trailers show something a little more realistic - a kind of rewindable live Google Street View. But such a thing wouldn't have been possible to depict in the 80's.
     
  9. Flake

    Flake Commodore Commodore

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    I reckon the Enterprise launched a probe just before self destruct.. like a black box. So someone can find out WTF occurred and it happened to have a camera on it to capture external events as well.
     
  10. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    This happens all the time in movies, and especially scifi movies. Epsilon 9 get toasted and something is still transmitting an image of the V'ger cloud, fer instance.
     
  11. Lee Enfield

    Lee Enfield Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Likewise we might assume that there are satellites with cameras all around the quadrant or just for special purposes. One TNG episode supports the idea of cameras floating in space, when Cadet Crusher and his friends were convicted by the academy.
     
  12. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    Wait a minute. Surely they just have to send a ship out to a few light-days from where the Enterprise was destroyed and point a camera? They'd catch the lightwave and see it all.

    :cool:
     
  13. marksound

    marksound Fleet Captain Fleet Captain

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    The Klingon ship recorded sensor information of the event. After Kirk captured the ship he transmitted the information to Starfleet with his log.
     
  14. Maurice

    Maurice Snagglepussed Admiral

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    Yeah, but with effectively zero perspective, so it wouldn't look like the shot in the movie where the ship is close to the camera and there's obvious diminishing of features with distance.
     
  15. Therin of Andor

    Therin of Andor Admiral Moderator

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    According to the original edition of Klingon Dictionary and the first two "Genesis Wave" novels, the rumour of Maltz's suicide (in the novelizations) is incorrect.
     
  16. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    So...a non-canon source disagrees with another non-canon source? :p
     
  17. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    My parents teased me about TOS production values when I was a young kid, more vocally than they commented on other shows. Perhaps it was to try to curb my fanatic enthusiasm, but it was always in a generally good-natured way.

    Among their incisive observations was how Flint's spycam zoomed in for "the passion close-up" when Kirk and Rayna kissed.

    I wasn't happy about that being pointed out at the time, but now I find it really funny.
     
  18. DonIago

    DonIago Vice Admiral Admiral

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    It's a little-known industry secret that spycams are built with a romance-detector that will engage autozoom functionality when activated.
     
  19. Ssosmcin

    Ssosmcin Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    This one is simple; Scotty had to do something for 3 months, so he had the Vulcans reconfigure the bridge. It's not like the BoP needed 3 months of repair work to get from Vulcan to Earth. It made it to Vulcan from Genesis just fine.
     
  20. CorporalCaptain

    CorporalCaptain Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    That explains it!

    Ah, so they must have been going to redo all the labels and readouts in Klingon on Tuesday.