Are there too many "convenient" planets or scenarios to beam down to ?

[MacLeod]

^Don't think so, but thats irrelevant. Even in places with a high rain fall, it doesn't always rain every single day.

Well as pointed out we did see snow.

[Grant]

Mr_Homn wrote:

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Not that I can think of, off hand. Los Angeles is generally a dry region.

I just thought of one---sort of--the street is clearly wet in the final exterior scene of All Our Yesterdays as Kirk goes back to the portal access.
It was filmed on backlot and in real world it could have been a case of studio people just hosing the location off.
But in the context of the episode it had to be evidence of it having rained.

McCoy mentions 'rainy day' in 'Devil in..'and sandoval mentions, 'moderate rainfall' in This side..'


that's as close as we get I suppose.

[plynch]

Even of the air were breathable, think of all the different germs you'd be breathing in and/or letting in through cracks in your skin. Even travelling to a different part of this planet people have to adjust to different pollen and can be sick from that.

It was 1966 tv, a vehicle with which to tell stories about people. It's ok.

[The Grim Ghost]

Jimi_James wrote:

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For that image? What's up with the moon and why is it so close? Is it inhabited and indeed, does its proximity effect the planet in some way beyond simple tidal forces? What's with the low cloud cover? Is the atmosphere unusually thin? Are those lakes of water, or so sort other liquid? If it's not water, is it dangerous to go swimming? Is it even liquid, it could be frozen from the looks of it. Why do things looks sort of hazy? What's up with those blue/purple bushes? If that is the local star to the left of the moon, is it flashing or pulsing for some reason and if so why? Why is the sky that color? Why is there no vegetation, other than those blue bushes and what appears to be grass? There are no trees or any other kind of plants anywhere. Are there any animals in the vicinity? Spock, have we been here before? This matte painting looks like the planet we visited a few weeks ago.


I'm kidding, sort of. More specifically though, I was referring to the previously comment about stumbling upon a planet that appeared to have no moons and orbit no star. Sure, they can get away with not explaining why the planet appears to exist on it's own, but some comment about other planetary bodies in the system and the star they're orbiting isn't too much to ask for.

It only takes a moment to include a throwaway line about the rest of the star system. And my point was that if you're going to go to the trouble of doing something, than why not go just a bit further and get the details right. Or at the very least include some details that sound right, even if you make them up. The existence of the Tech Manual suggest there are plenty of people who care about such details, even if they never make it into the show or add any great depth to the story.

I'm not really sure why you assume these planets are "just there".

Many times we join the ship when it is already orbiting a planet. Other times we might see a planet gradually growing larger on the viewscreen. The ship's sensors are centered around showing their destination, the planet itself.

You can easily imagine Spock's science station picking up all of the other relevant astronomical details and forwarding them to anybody else who needs to know if you like.

Honestly I think you are in the minority in wanting more of those types of details...which is fine! We all like different aspects of the show, but for most viewers I really don't think it would add much, and might even be dull or annoying to others. It simply wasn't the focus of the show to delve into such minutiae.

[Jimi_James]

BillJ wrote:

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But none of that is really important to the scene at hand and would feel unnatural.

You forgot to quote the part right after that paragraph where I said I was kidding. Of course I don't expect them to get into all of that, unless the story specifically called for it. I was pointing any question I could think of, into response to Timo's post about what more the the matte painting could possibly cover.

Sure, it does a great job setting the scene, but to say the landscape doesn't raise any questions, is off the mark. So to simply point out that questions could be asked, I rattled off a list of things that came to mind...and to be honest I wasn't even sure what episode that was from, and how it might have fit into the narrative of a specific story didn't even come to mind. I was just pointing out questions for the sake of pointing them out.

[Jimi_James]

The Grim Ghost wrote:

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I'm not really sure why you assume these planets are "just there".

Many times we join the ship when it is already orbiting a planet. Other times we might see a planet gradually growing larger on the viewscreen. The ship's sensors are centered around showing their destination, the planet itself.

You can easily imagine Spock's science station picking up all of the other relevant astronomical details and forwarding them to anybody else who needs to know if you like.

Honestly I think you are in the minority in wanting more of those types of details...which is fine! We all like different aspects of the show, but for most viewers I really don't think it would add much, and might even be dull or annoying to others. It simply wasn't the focus of the show to delve into such minutiae.

I'm not assuming they're just there. That was someone else, as I mentioned in my post. I was commenting on the general need to at the very least give the appearance that you care about including some level of detail beyond simply warping up to a planet and beaming down to see what the locals are up to.
It doesn't matter what the details ever are, if they're towards a planet, a type of weapon being used, or the type of power flowing through your engines...which Star Trek is known for getting into. We even had to invent a word to define the level of technical detail Trek gets into, even though most of it is made up...technobable is all about details. Think of it as the difference between saying, "they're shooting at us," and "we're taking enemy disruptor fire."

The same mentality should be applied across the board, so rather than saying hey, there's a planet let's check it out....you instead get, we're approaching an M-class world, with a pre-warp civilization approaching one billion inhabitants." The latter is usually the standard of what we get and that's fine...And before that's again construed as an plea for vastly more detail to be included, let me say clearly that I feel Trek gets into plenty of detail as it is, and could stand with a little less detail, particularly in the case of technobabble. Too much detail can be dull an annoying and it has to be done carefully.

Anyway, to get back to the original topic, I think it's really amazing now that we're finding so many actual planets beyond our solar system and that some of them may very well be possible of supporting some sort of life.

In the past, it did seem strange that Trek came across so many habitable planets, but it seems sort of fitting in a way to find out now that Trek may have actually had it right after all. There are tons of planets out there and many of them will likely support life, not only life as we might expect to find it, but possibly life beyond anything we might image. It's a great time to be a science fiction fan...seeing what we thought was fiction, actually becoming science fact.

[The Grim Ghost]

Jimi_James wrote:

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I'm not assuming they're just there. That was someone else, as I mentioned in my post. I was commenting on the general need to at the very least give the appearance that you care about including some level of detail beyond simply warping up to a planet and beaming down to see what the locals are up to.
It doesn't matter what the details ever are, if they're towards a planet, a type of weapon being used, or the type of power flowing through your engines...which Star Trek is known for getting into. We even had to invent a word to define the level of technical detail Trek gets into, even though most of it is made up...technobable is all about details. Think of it as the difference between saying, "they're shooting at us," and "we're taking enemy disruptor fire."

The same mentality should be applied across the board, so rather than saying hey, there's a planet let's check it out....you instead get, we're approaching an M-class world, with a pre-warp civilization approaching one billion inhabitants." The latter is usually the standard of what we get and that's fine...And before that's again construed as an plea for vastly more detail to be included, let me say clearly that I feel Trek gets into plenty of detail as it is, and could stand with a little less detail, particularly in the case of technobabble. Too much detail can be dull an annoying and it has to be done carefully.

Anyway, to get back to the original topic, I think it's really amazing now that we're finding so many actual planets beyond our solar system and that some of them may very well be possible of supporting some sort of life.

In the past, it did seem strange that Trek came across so many habitable planets, but it seems sort of fitting in a way to find out now that Trek may have actually had it right after all. There are tons of planets out there and many of them will likely support life, not only life as we might expect to find it, but possibly life beyond anything we might image. It's a great time to be a science fiction fan...seeing what we thought was fiction, actually becoming science fact.

Sorry, didn't mean to put somebody else's words in your mouth, it's late here.. I get what you're saying and mostly agree.

I think we can assume that the Enterprise probably investigated many other sorts of worlds off camera and that we are only shown the most interesting ones. Also I imagine that more emphasis is put on checking out the more earthlike planets, or inhabited planets in general for obvious reasons.

To your last point...yes I agree that is quite as awesome thing isn't it?! Very exciting.

[scotpens]

Timewalker wrote:

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The thing that always irritated me about the planets that the crew stumbled across mostly seem to just be there. They're rarely mentioned as having their own Sun, or being part of a solar system, or even having any moons.

Well, it goes without saying that any planet is going to be orbiting some star or other. And the nomenclature was often quite specific. For example, the planet in "This Side of Paradise" is Omicron Ceti Three, meaning it's the third planet orbiting the fifteenth brightest star (omicron being the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet) in the constellation Cetus (the whale).

[kythe]

scotpens wrote:

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Well, it goes without saying that any planet is going to be orbiting some star or other. And the nomenclature was often quite specific. For example, the planet in "This Side of Paradise" is Omicron Ceti Three, meaning it's the third planet orbiting the fifteenth brightest star (omicron being the 15th letter of the Greek alphabet) in the constellation Cetus (the whale).

Not always. In "Enterprise" episode "Rogue Planet" they found a planet with no sun that somehow managed to support a complete ecosystem. There was no explanation for what the planet's source of heat was, and I don't think there is anything redeeming that episode scientifically.

[scotpens]

SchwEnt wrote:

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I don't think it was ever confirmed onscreen, but in-universe Kirk had orders to explore and investigate Class M Earth-approximate planets.

So maybe not just convenient that we always saw the Enterprise stumbling across Class M planets. It seems those were the ones the ship was sent to explore. Or something.

From Gene Roddenberry's original series outline, as quoted in TMOST:

(Excerpted from orders to Captain Robert T. April)

. . . VI. Consistent with the limitations of your vessel and equipment, you will confine your landings and contacts to class "M" planets approximating Earth-Mars conditions.

So . . . yeah. It was part of the concept from the beginning that the Enterprise would be mostly limited to exploring Earthlike planets, obviously for budgetary reasons.

[Jimi_James]

The Grim Ghost wrote:

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Sorry, didn't mean to put somebody else's words in your mouth, it's late here.. I get what you're saying and mostly agree.

I think we can assume that the Enterprise probably investigated many other sorts of worlds off camera and that we are only shown the most interesting ones. Also I imagine that more emphasis is put on checking out the more earthlike planets, or inhabited planets in general for obvious reasons.

To your last point...yes I agree that is quite as awesome thing isn't it?! Very exciting.

No worries. And it's very exciting indeed.

[Nerys Myk]

kythe wrote:

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Not always. In "Enterprise" episode "Rogue Planet" they found a planet with no sun that somehow managed to support a complete ecosystem. There was no explanation for what the planet's source of heat was, and I don't think there is anything redeeming that episode scientifically.

From Memory Alpha

Rogue Planet Summery wrote:

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When the Enterprise discovers a "rogue": a planet that has broken out of its orbit. They decide to lay in a course to take a closer look. Scanning it, T'Pol points out that this planet supports a diverse animal population despite being a rogue, because of hot gases venting from its interior, forming oases where most lifeforms are concentrated.

[T'Girl]

" ... to seek out new life, and new civilizations ..."

Kind of hard to do on a lifeless moon, or a poisonous planet the temperature of Venus, or a gas giant.

[Xhiandra]

Jimi_James wrote:

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For that image? What's up with the moon and why is it so close? Is it inhabited and indeed, does its proximity effect the planet in some way beyond simple tidal forces? What's with the low cloud cover? Is the atmosphere unusually thin? Are those lakes of water, or so sort other liquid? If it's not water, is it dangerous to go swimming? Is it even liquid, it could be frozen from the looks of it. Why do things looks sort of hazy? What's up with those blue/purple bushes? If that is the local star to the left of the moon, is it flashing or pulsing for some reason and if so why? Why is the sky that color?

Wouldn't it break your suspension of disbelief if they wondered about such things all the time? With the possible exception of Enterprise (where they did have some such scenes early on), it would break mine: remember that spacial exploration has been a cultural reality for centuries by the time of the TNG/DS9/VOY era, so it's only natural that they wouldn't question why a particular planet has bigger/smaller satellites or a purple sky: they're used to visiting vastly different worlds by then.

It would also be poor writing, to be honest. Such expository details belong squarely in the "show, don't tell" category.

[plynch]

TMOST line from GR: Earth-Mars conditions?? That's a pretty wide range of temps and atmospheres (or lack thereof)!