What have you always wanted to see in a space battle?
- Thread starter PixelMagic
- Start date
True, like in Star wars, in the prequels like ROT you just saw a lot of ships flying firing at each other around so it wasn't all that interesting. It was just a blur of ships, basically.
Star Trek had a way of blending music and suspense that made what few space battles it showed pretty good.
But with what so many episodes that focused on character growth/drama I think Trek could spare one episode devoted to an hour's worth a pure space battle-if it's done right.
I thought DS9's What you leave behind's battles wasn't as impressive because there was so little of it, and they used too many clips from other battles.
I thought Sacrifice of Angels was impressive because it was all original footage, and one of the first real space battles we saw on Star Trek.
I want to see the Ringworld meteor defense grid in action, I mean some version of it in Trek.
Integrated space-planetary combat. Where ships in space fight against ships in an atmosphere while being shot at by anti-ship missiles on the ground.
Full battle for orbital supremacy with combat taking place in all theaters.
Combat between cloaked ships-tactics hit and run, false sensors and so on.
A full ground battle-like the battle of Geonosis in Star Wars AOTC or Utapau in ROTS.
Battle taking place in intergalactic space-Q for his amusement places a federation and enemy fleet in between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies-the distances are much vaster and communication much poorer.
Time travel going into the future and past to influence outcomes, weaponized transporters and replicators.
Full battle for orbital supremacy with combat taking place in all theaters.
Combat between cloaked ships-tactics hit and run, false sensors and so on.
A full ground battle-like the battle of Geonosis in Star Wars AOTC or Utapau in ROTS.
Battle taking place in intergalactic space-Q for his amusement places a federation and enemy fleet in between the Andromeda and Milky Way galaxies-the distances are much vaster and communication much poorer.
Time travel going into the future and past to influence outcomes, weaponized transporters and replicators.
This, but also, with coordinated fleet torpedo launches, so that torpedoes are launched in sync from multiple ships in order to overcome the enemies countermeasures and point defense.
That was one of the missed opportunities in DS9, they did Planet based combat, AR558 and teased a bit in Rocks and Shoals, but they alluded to so much more, having a scene where a full Klingon Division invades a planet and takes on an entire Garrison of Jem Hadar would have been beyond awesome.
At a certain point endless combat becomes tiresome.
I agree-when handled right it is epic but phaser fight after phaser fight does get rather stale.
Oh I'm well aware, that's why I despise Man of Steel and Batman Vs Superman.
But ultimately endless combat without furthering the plot is a worse crime.
But honestly, just a 3 minute scene of Klingon Soldiers pouring out of landing craft taking fire from Jem Hadar defenders would have been incredible.
If the CGI existed I am sure they would have done so
- Using transporters to rip apart a starship. Close-up on engineering section with multiple transporter beam effects occuring rapidly as parts of the hull disappear before ship loses antimatter containment and explodes.
- Starship raid mission: Akira-class drops out of warp. Launches attack shuttles from forward shuttlebay and then provides cover fire. Shuttles destroy target and then dock in rear shuttlebay. Warp out of there. Entire sequence lasts a couple of minutes.
- Having those big phaser beams from a Galaxy or Sovereign-class slicing ships up, like how the Shadow weapons worked in Babylon 5.
- A really good multiship battle with more than one heroship. They've tried it: Enterprise and Columbia or Enterprise-A and Excelsior but I'm thinking of something really epic like Galactica and Pegasus vs Baseships in BSG.
Last edited:
This is why in TOS, with the clever use of stock footage anyway, we never saw the E and her opponents sharing the screen. They were moving at warp, and hitting each other in strafing runs.
Same argument was used by one of the producers on TWOK. There's no way to have a close-quarters dog fight in Trek, believably because ships move too damn fast.
So Nick Meyer said well, we'll have both ships cripple each other early on so they can't go around at warp speeds.
Yes. Yes. This is one of those things that the series and TOS movies sorta teased at, but we never go to see, and I was honestly hoping when I first saw the VHS box art for TUC, that we were going to see the K'tinga and the Old E go at it. From a thematic stand point it would make sense, since the K'tinga and Constitution are the ultimate symbols of the Federation/Klingon civil war.
Well, that might be part of it, but the other part is that the prevailing wisdom is that space battles have to be kept short for budget, and simple to not confuse the audience. I'd love to see something with the bite of say, Master and Commander, in Star Trek. Use of really good strategy and showing the drama and tension for the crews as the impacts come in, shields buckle, and they have to really deal with the damage. We got some of this between TWOK and TUC, but so often Trek turns it's battles into formulaic fluff.
The Klingons against the Jem Hadar--I would be curious to see that too. The show never showed anything straightforward like that. This the type of thing fans want to see in the first place. It's not a coincidence that Yesterday's Enterprise is a popular episode, as well as SOA.
One reason Revenge of the Sith (Star Wars) was so popular is because fans got to see Yoda vs Darth Sidious (The Emperor) and some other fight scenes. If they cut that out and focused only on the Skywalker/Padme love story, there would have been a lot of angry fans (boring) and possibly a bigger drop in box office.
Sometimes fans or people just want to see certain things.
BTW]----The phaser firing a single beam thing seemed really impractical in AR558, or just downright stupid. why don't they have a rapid fire setting so they mow the Jem Hadar when they stormed the entrance? Because that's what they did--literally just run through the entrance and almost overwhelmed the defenders.
A simple 20th century automatic rifle or grenade launcher would have stopped them in their tracks. It kind of made 24th century ground combat look backwards.
One reason Revenge of the Sith (Star Wars) was so popular is because fans got to see Yoda vs Darth Sidious (The Emperor) and some other fight scenes. If they cut that out and focused only on the Skywalker/Padme love story, there would have been a lot of angry fans (boring) and possibly a bigger drop in box office.
Sometimes fans or people just want to see certain things.
BTW]----The phaser firing a single beam thing seemed really impractical in AR558, or just downright stupid. why don't they have a rapid fire setting so they mow the Jem Hadar when they stormed the entrance? Because that's what they did--literally just run through the entrance and almost overwhelmed the defenders.
A simple 20th century automatic rifle or grenade launcher would have stopped them in their tracks. It kind of made 24th century ground combat look backwards.
The AR-558 thing seemed obvious enough: for the first time in Star Trek history, we see the good guys nervously checking the power packs of their guns. Sweeping would probably be out of the question for wasting too much ammo.
I mean, sure, if you knew this was the critical last hurrah of the enemy, you might risk expending your remaining ammo in a sweep. But the heroes could know nothing of the sort. They had been warding off attacks for months upon months, and indeed had just faced a fake holo-attack intended to make them waste ammo.
As for "a simple 20th century automatic rifle", that one would have been out of ammo for five full months already...
Timo Saloniemi
I mean, sure, if you knew this was the critical last hurrah of the enemy, you might risk expending your remaining ammo in a sweep. But the heroes could know nothing of the sort. They had been warding off attacks for months upon months, and indeed had just faced a fake holo-attack intended to make them waste ammo.
As for "a simple 20th century automatic rifle", that one would have been out of ammo for five full months already...
Timo Saloniemi
We saw several minutes of this kind of thing on Kronos in Star Trek Into Darkness. It was worse than the worst kind of video game I have ever played. Absolutely terrible.
How about a ship attacking another ship with a missile that doesn't blow up, but rather clamps on and bores through the hull? Or a giant buzzsaw slicing ships to ribbons?
Kind of saw my idea in Star Trek beyond, but not by weapons fire. Remember in Enterprise where the Xendi are making the Enterprise swiss cheese? Something like that where a nacelle pylon gets blown off, or sliced off by a phaser. Basically, now that we have CGI.. some Realistic damage. And since we have Good CGI.. how bout a full out Battle! One of my grips about the movies.. no big battles.. always one sided where the enterprise gets gutted, or with the new one, destroyed without putting up a fight!
Similar threads
