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My Gripes with STID!

I remember some individuals complaining about the star field backgrounds in Star Wars, claiming that there was no way they would contain so many visible stars as that much solar radiation would make habitable planets an impossibility.

I think that they forgot that Star Wars and Star Trek are both science fiction.
 
Although not at all realistic, the nebula in TWOK was a beautiful representation of space.

The problem with trying to make space "look large" is there needs to be things in the scene that create perspective and scale. Using simply a black background with pin-points of stars and putting a starship in the middle of it isn't going to provide any sense of vastness. That ship could be hanging in front of a shower curtain.

In reality, most of space is dark, empty, and visually boring anyway. Kind of like driving on I-80 through western Iowa at night. ;)
 
Although not at all realistic, the nebula in TWOK was a beautiful representation of space.

The problem with trying to make space "look large" is there needs to be things in the scene that create perspective and scale. Using simply a black background with pin-points of stars and putting a starship in the middle of it isn't going to provide any sense of vastness. That ship could be hanging in front of a shower curtain.

In reality, most of space is dark, empty, and visually boring anyway. Kind of like driving on I-80 through western Iowa at night. ;)

There's a stretch of I-10 in the Florida Panhandle that I always managed to hit around 3am when driving back from my wife's grandparents house. 2 hours of black nothingness.
 
The sexy space shots are to give equal time for the nerds who don't appreciate the sexy Carol Marcus shots.
 
The sexy space shots are to give equal time for the nerds who don't appreciate the sexy Carol Marcus shots.

It seems that many of those "nerds" don't actually like the sexy space shots.

The Carol Marcus "sexy" shot was just gratuitous and silly.
 
The sexy space shots are to give equal time for the nerds who don't appreciate the sexy Carol Marcus shots.

It seems that many of those "nerds" don't actually like the sexy space shots.

The Carol Marcus "sexy" shot was just gratuitous and silly.

Well damn man, we give them sexy ships, then sexy space backdrops, then just sexy women in underwear, and nothing works?

Guess some people just have problems getting their nerdon.
 
The sexy space shots are to give equal time for the nerds who don't appreciate the sexy Carol Marcus shots.

It seems that many of those "nerds" don't actually like the sexy space shots.

The Carol Marcus "sexy" shot was just gratuitous and silly.

Well damn man, we give them sexy ships, then sexy space backdrops, then just sexy women in underwear, and nothing works?

Guess some people just have problems getting their nerdon.

^ Don't worry, it happens to lots of guys.
 
It seems that many of those "nerds" don't actually like the sexy space shots.

The Carol Marcus "sexy" shot was just gratuitous and silly.

Well damn man, we give them sexy ships, then sexy space backdrops, then just sexy women in underwear, and nothing works?

Guess some people just have problems getting their nerdon.

^ Don't worry, it happens to lots of guys.

According to our surveys, if seems to be affecting nearly 25% of the people in this forum, oh dear. ;)
 
Surely "incredible expanse and emptiness" is the very definition of boring?

"Space is boring. Really boring. You won't believe just how boring it is...."

My complaint isn't about colourful backgrounds, more about the grainy, unreal look of the ships, and the annoying composition: flash cutting and wildly swinging camera are the enemy of scale and the opposite of grandness.

Using simply a black background with pin-points of stars and putting a starship in the middle of it isn't going to provide any sense of vastness.

2001 A Space Odyssey.
 
Well, at least the ships looked more real - and certainly much bigger - than in the oldTrek movies.
 
As far as starship size goes, I'm very happy the Abrams' Enterprise is much larger than the TOS one. Indeed, it could've even been larger, and I'd be fine with it. From Day 1 (196-whatever) the Trek starships were way too small. Spending five years in deep space on a ship the size of an aircraft carrier was not very forward-thinking. Even with only 430 crewmembers, the TOS Enterprise has to feel very claustrophobic when the crew considers where they are. (Sitting in their tin can, and so forth.)

The Enterprise in TNG should've been near Narada size, IMO.
 
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That's exactly what they remind me of too. The thing for me is in STID, they seemed to want to fill every space shot with some nebula or something in the background, the Praxis scene just looked flat out dumb, it was just a bit too much for me. I hope they tone that down a little for the next movie, it just looks cheesy and a bit childish and hurts the films credibility. This isn't supposed to be like Frakes' Thunderbirds is it?

You want all the space shots to be generic "here's a few stars in the background"? Why?

I'm talking about something between the two extremes, and this isn't gripe I have, it's just an observation, or a preference. I don't remember watching Apollo 13 or Gravity at the cinema thinking 'this looks boring'
 
That's exactly what they remind me of too. The thing for me is in STID, they seemed to want to fill every space shot with some nebula or something in the background, the Praxis scene just looked flat out dumb, it was just a bit too much for me. I hope they tone that down a little for the next movie, it just looks cheesy and a bit childish and hurts the films credibility. This isn't supposed to be like Frakes' Thunderbirds is it?

You want all the space shots to be generic "here's a few stars in the background"? Why?

I'm talking about something between the two extremes, and this isn't gripe I have, it's just an observation, or a preference. I don't remember watching Apollo 13 or Gravity at the cinema thinking 'this looks boring'

You do have to admit that both those films were demonstrably different than any Trek film, both in setting and in content.
 
Well, at least the ships looked more real - and certainly much bigger - than in the oldTrek movies.

As far as starship size goes, I'm very happy the Abrams' Enterprise is much larger than the TOS one.

The funny thing is, is that two threads in the TOS section pointed out that originally Roddenberry wanted the ship to both be considerably bigger and able to occasionally land on planets.
 
That's exactly what they remind me of too. The thing for me is in STID, they seemed to want to fill every space shot with some nebula or something in the background, the Praxis scene just looked flat out dumb, it was just a bit too much for me. I hope they tone that down a little for the next movie, it just looks cheesy and a bit childish and hurts the films credibility. This isn't supposed to be like Frakes' Thunderbirds is it?

You want all the space shots to be generic "here's a few stars in the background"? Why?

I'm talking about something between the two extremes, and this isn't gripe I have, it's just an observation, or a preference. I don't remember watching Apollo 13 or Gravity at the cinema thinking 'this looks boring'
Who's to say the atoms, gas or matter isn't there and the cameras are not recording more of the full portion of the spectrum than that simply visible to our eyes? NASA does imaging all the time which shifts and compresses, or expands, the actual spectrum to one that is visible to us for study - infrared or the Cosmic Background Radiation, for example.

Assuming the cameras in space are recording exactly to our own visible spectrum is kind of like Khan's two-dimensional thinking. ;)
 
You want all the space shots to be generic "here's a few stars in the background"? Why?

I'm talking about something between the two extremes, and this isn't gripe I have, it's just an observation, or a preference. I don't remember watching Apollo 13 or Gravity at the cinema thinking 'this looks boring'

You do have to admit that both those films were demonstrably different than any Trek film, both in setting and in content.

Absolutely, but they both completely nailed what I imagine outer space to be like. I'd just like a slight sprinkling of that in Trek that's all, I just found the space scenes in STID to be too colourful and comic book like, and I don't level that criticism at ST09. Like I said earlier this is a long way away from being a deal breaker.
 
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