At this point I think it's a need to rationalize away why instead of being OK with not liking a new Trek show.
Production Quality Of Picard
- Thread starter TRON JA307020
- Start date
I mean, it's Pubert, so even if he believes what he says, a good rule of thumb is that if Pubert says something, the opposite is what's actually right.
I’m only saying is the bridge designs of the Romulans and Starfleet looked too identical. It’s not about reusing sets and redressing. The technology was too close for my taste.
Mileage will vary for sure on this one, since reuse of assets is a Trek staple.
I thought the design sense was carefully chosen, and it was more laid back and subtle than DSC, which is movie epic quality. To me it looked rich and expensive.
My sources tell me the show went $14 million over budget (in total), so yeah, they spent a lot on it.
RAMA
My sources tell me the show went $14 million over budget (in total), so yeah, they spent a lot on it.
RAMA
Modern day shows (e.g. 1977-present) seem to feel a need for having the screen littered with as many ships that can be shoved in, since bigger is like better - right? Not unless there's substance; give me the setup and dogfights for TWOK and TUC instead. Or half of TOS's despite having less to work with in f/x creation.
I will opine this - CGI rendering takes a ton of time to accomplish. For something 1080i (TV) or 1080P (movies), the server farms pumping out 24fps images of this detail - even if they had 20 ships instead of 400 - it takes a ton of time. If you think a 1800P render of a couple dozen frames in Terragen for a one-second flyby of a generic mountain landscape takes time on a single computer that adds $50 to your electric bill is costly, that's nothing by comparison.
As much as I'd seen YT videos showing a 24th/25th century armada of typical Starfleet variance in ship design, it still often looks dorky - more is not always better, it often comes across like a cartoon.
The TNG costumes hid their zippers better I suppose but the seams are still there... The PIC ones weren't too bad; the only real gripe is how Stewart was griping in his list of demands in returning to the show that he not wear one (but wears one and looks all so happy anyway). Didn't stop him from going in front of a huge crowd and telling them how great it is to be back (despite being done with the role and saying so plenty of times? He hated the role early on but he can't hate it all that much in the end...)
The TOS 1701 bridge had 1960s chairs with vinyl bits added on top... but the 1960s were said to be cheap.
The TNG movie INS took sets from TNG and DS9 and did partial redresses of them... TOS reused props all the time. Nowhere near the level of "Lost in Space" (where even the filming ship model became a set prop in one episode...), but still... it can and does happen.
Riker's bridge looked decent. Having Frakes there selling the scene helped immensely. Hell, he downplayed and even made "bunnicorns" come across far better than what it should be, that's how damn good he is. And even in the photoshop thread I was quick to spew my disdain for that word and how it's a diminutive of "cute bunny rabbit" and "magical unicorn" upon finding out "bunnicorn" is an actual word used on shirts for toddlers. The scriptwriters are definitely fascinating for sure.
Quite a juxtaposition of ideas going on, that's for sure.DS9 floored me at the time with how cool it looked. It holds up and still looks authentic. Is that level of detail always necessary? But back then, TNG was established and solid. DSC and PIC by comparison were not. Had DSC done well and without 30 executive producers, PIC may not even have been considered.
And after the huge cost of DSC episodes, and now sharing budgets, PIC was being frugal. The fact they're in more log cabins and studio 54 reject sites (and in appropriate costumes) than spaceships and playing "Grumpy Old Men - In Space" is funnier than anything else... this isn't Blake's 7, y'all...
(and that B7 episode where they went to the dirty side of the town where they all wore silly carnival costumes was a pretty naff one too... can't believe Robert Holmes of all scriptwriters wrote it and it's easily and by far the worst thing he's ever put out, but I digress.)The holographic ship controls and viewscreens, just like the screens in Orville and other sci-fi shows today, seem impracticable if you're trying to see or read what's on it but you have that busy background. Maybe that's why the sets are sparse; to show plain gray backgrounds to make those silly fake controls look easier to deal with - though if a ship is under attack, acting like how a cat bats at a piece of string and missing and missing the phony controls in a crucial moment -- again, the word for today is "impracticable". Looks cool, though.
What's even more 21st century are the use of diminutives and colloquialisms. In a franchise that up until DSC was a lot more precise (despite occasional slip-ups) with formal use of language. Now it's all slang. "I watched on teh holo' last night and bought teh merch in the commercial too; it's a Hiya Kitty EZ Bake Oven with free bunnicorn sauce mix." Yes, old geezer trying to look hipster cool - all to appease teens that stereotypically tend to rebel against any authority figures (unless they're 30 year old rock musicians and thus proceed to look and act just like them) that they're not going to give a damn about anyway.
All that aside, whatever nitpicks anyone has for the show's content, the acting was of universally high and good caliber. (IMHO, PIC doesn't deserve them but one could say the same for early TNG. With luck PIC season 2 will improve. It's also a mixed bag but not for the same reasons.)
The only 1960s aesthetic in TOS's bridge might be the lighting scheme used as means to sell more those newfangled color TV sets.
(show them today's ubiquitous grading style of "muted drab teal/orange puke" and they'll wonder why anyone bothered with RGB if all people did was go back to something monotonous or virtually so... in part to blend in gobs of CGI with but that's not the sole reason by far... but even VOY had more vibrant greens and yellows for the Borg sets, so if nothing else it was more vibrant puke than drab desaturated puke...)TOS (and TNG) is also a bit more iconic than a show behind a paywall.
And, yeah, fashion changes - just chucking in current day clothing... I can handle modern day hairdos, which the 60s and 80s/90s did incessantly. TOS did inspire bellbottoms almost a decade early... but they did use miniskirts, but folded them into uniforms. The "scant" for all sexes would follow (then dumped) in TNG. Still, TNG and TOS did everything from scratch. PIC has off-the-shelf garb, thus perfectly illustrating your point regarding time travel. Nobody can predict the future with accuracy but the creativity is in the attempt.
Then again, we've had the business suit for over a century now... one down, two to go.
Yeah, that's pretty much my view of the future. it simply isn't going to change as much as we expect it too. This isn't Star Wars were we expect the fantastical. This is Star Trek, obliquely about our humanity.
That is a bizarre definition of "modern-day shows." I mean, the Soviet Union still existed in 1977. Television visual effects today are totally and completely different from television visual effects in 1979. They're so fundamentally different that it's a non-functional comparison -- 1977 TV is at least two generations separated from modern TV.
Realistically, the modern age of television began circa 2000. That's around the time when shows began using HD cameras, when shows began using more cinematic forms of lighting and cinematography, and when shows began really embracing CGI visual effects. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005) was the first ST show to use all-CGI for visual effects and eschew the use of models to represent ships, for instance.
Really, I would say there are three basic generations of TV production within the 1977-present timeframe, in terms of visual effects like representations of ships:
- Early post-Star Wars early, extending from around 1977 to the mid-1990s. This era would be characterized by adapting the techniques of big-budget visual effects used in films like Star Wars or Return of the Jedi, to a television budget and production timeframe. Star Trek: The Next Generation would be part of this era.
- The early CG era, extending from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, when shows began using computer-generated images to supplement their visual effects. Babylon 5 would be the early groundbreaker on this, since its use of all-CGI effects served as "proof of concept" to bigger-budget shows that they could use CGI in conjunction with models and practical effects. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager would be part of this era, though their later seasons would bleed over into;
- The CGI era, when visual effects are almost exclusively the province of digital artists. As noted above, Star Trek: Enterprise was the first series to embrace all-CGI VFX. Subsequent shows like Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard are also broadly part of this era of TV production as well.
The guy just didn't want to have to wear an uncomfortable uniform all day during shooting. Nothin' wrong with that. He was still okay with doing some scenes with them; he just didn't want that as his default costume anymore. The guy's in his 80s -- let him wear comfortable clothes!
I'm doing a DS9 rewatch with my girlfriend, and it's mostly pretty good in terms of production design. But every now and then, we see a Cardassian computer readout, and I am completely distracted by the fact that the screen is obviously an early-90s Macintosh computer with the same font I used to see in elementary school.
Yeah. As common as they are in sci-fi shows today, I don't like holo-controls.
The use of diminutives and colloquialism is not a 21st Century thing, it is a universal human practice. There is not and has never been and will never be a language where the speakers only ever use prescriptivist grammar. Diminutives and colloquialisms are a universal human practice, and it's appropriate to use them in fiction. Yes, you have to be careful and thoughtful about how you use them lest it make your work appear dated, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do something to paint a picture of a more complex society than you get with mere prescriptivism.
Besides, only using prescriptivist grammar is inherently classist, and far too often actively lends itself to white supremacy in real life (since it denies the legitimacy of other dialects of English such as African-American Vernacular English).
That is a bizarre definition of "modern-day shows." I mean, the Soviet Union still existed in 1977. Television visual effects today are totally and completely different from television visual effects in 1979. They're so fundamentally different that it's a non-functional comparison -- 1977 TV is at least two generations separated from modern TV.
Realistically, the modern age of television began circa 2000. That's around the time when shows began using HD cameras, when shows began using more cinematic forms of lighting and cinematography, and when shows began really embracing CGI visual effects. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005) was the first ST show to use all-CGI for visual effects and eschew the use of models to represent ships, for instance.
Really, I would say there are three basic generations of TV production within the 1977-present timeframe, in terms of visual effects like representations of ships:
- Early post-Star Wars early, extending from around 1977 to the mid-1990s. This era would be characterized by adapting the techniques of big-budget visual effects used in films like Star Wars or Return of the Jedi, to a television budget and production timeframe. Star Trek: The Next Generation would be part of this era.
- The early CG era, extending from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, when shows began using computer-generated images to supplement their visual effects. Babylon 5 would be the early groundbreaker on this, since its use of all-CGI effects served as "proof of concept" to bigger-budget shows that they could use CGI in conjunction with models and practical effects. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager would be part of this era, though their later seasons would bleed over into;
- The CGI era, when visual effects are almost exclusively the province of digital artists. As noted above, Star Trek: Enterprise was the first series to embrace all-CGI VFX. Subsequent shows like Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard are also broadly part of this era of TV production as well.
The guy just didn't want to have to wear an uncomfortable uniform all day during shooting. Nothin' wrong with that. He was still okay with doing some scenes with them; he just didn't want that as his default costume anymore. The guy's in his 80s -- let him wear comfortable clothes!
I'm doing a DS9 rewatch with my girlfriend, and it's mostly pretty good in terms of production design. But every now and then, we see a Cardassian computer readout, and I am completely distracted by the fact that the screen is obviously an early-90s Macintosh computer with the same font I used to see in elementary school.
Yeah. As common as they are in sci-fi shows today, I don't like holo-controls.
The use of diminutives and colloquialism is not a 21st Century thing, it is a universal human practice. There is not and has never been and will never be a language where the speakers only ever use prescriptivist grammar. Diminutives and colloquialisms are a universal human practice, and it's appropriate to use them in fiction. Yes, you have to be careful and thoughtful about how you use them lest it make your work appear dated, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do something to paint a picture of a more complex society than you get with mere prescriptivism.
Besides, only using prescriptivist grammar is inherently classist, and far too often actively lends itself to white supremacy in real life (since it denies the legitimacy of other dialects of English such as African-American Vernacular English).
The problem with holo controls is every movie and show uses them. It is also impractical. Movie production teams think they look cool and advanced so they shove a time in. The problem is everything from iron man to Star Trek used then now. Star Wars was smart and they kept their tech reasonably the same and haven called for holo graphic controls. Can’t stand that look. It’s cheap and lazy.
Well, in "The Vistor" (DS9), they said they had holo-controls in the 25th Century. So they came up with it during the Berman Era. 2399 is close enough to the 25th Century.
Dialogue from "The Vistor" (link):
Nog: Take us out of warp.
Dax: I think I remember how to do that.
Bashir: I haven't worked a two-dimensional control panel in a long time. How did we manage?
Dax: We always seemed to muddle through somehow.
Give me the LCARS consoles from TNG, DS9 and VOY over floating holographic controls any day of the week.
Looks so cheesy.
Looks so cheesy.
That sounds about right. Of course it depends upon the show, but 2000 is a good ballpark average cut-off.
For Star Trek, I'd say the last two seasons of DS9 is where the writing and story structure began to feel "modern" with heavier serialization. Unfortunately, the writing for VOY and the first half of ENT stayed firmly rooted in the 20th Century.
From a technical standpoint, late-DS9 and the most of VOY are "almost there, but not quite". You've got the CGI but it's still 4:3 and SD. ENT corrects this by being 16:9 and HD. The directing and set design is stale most of the time, but sometimes it shines through.
I'd say DSC is the first time Star Trek on TV felt 100% modern. Modern from a writing and structural standpoint, modern from a technical standpoint, and modern from a directorial standpoint. Plus the production values for DSC and PIC dwarf ENT's by quite a bit, which looks very much of the Bush Era.
Well, this is an early 21st-century view of the future, and though more sophisticated than 30 years ago, the reality is an exponential future in 2400 will be one we barely recognize. That doesn't make for good contemporary viewing.
RAMA
RAMA
they were talking about a flat panel vs raised control buttons not holographic controls buttons.
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I'd say the CGI era didn't begin in earnest till 1992-93. It was only then that Jurassic Park made people see it could be used for almost anything, and on TV the success of Trek inspired a whole host of "first wave" shows that took advantage of the "cheap" new process...I'm thinking of shows like Space Rangers and B5, et al.
RAMA
RAMA
That is a bizarre definition of "modern-day shows." I mean, the Soviet Union still existed in 1977. Television visual effects today are totally and completely different from television visual effects in 1979. They're so fundamentally different that it's a non-functional comparison -- 1977 TV is at least two generations separated from modern TV.
Realistically, the modern age of television began circa 2000. That's around the time when shows began using HD cameras, when shows began using more cinematic forms of lighting and cinematography, and when shows began really embracing CGI visual effects. Star Trek: Enterprise (2001-2005) was the first ST show to use all-CGI for visual effects and eschew the use of models to represent ships, for instance.
Really, I would say there are three basic generations of TV production within the 1977-present timeframe, in terms of visual effects like representations of ships:
- Early post-Star Wars early, extending from around 1977 to the mid-1990s. This era would be characterized by adapting the techniques of big-budget visual effects used in films like Star Wars or Return of the Jedi, to a television budget and production timeframe. Star Trek: The Next Generation would be part of this era.
- The early CG era, extending from the late 1980s to the late 1990s, when shows began using computer-generated images to supplement their visual effects. Babylon 5 would be the early groundbreaker on this, since its use of all-CGI effects served as "proof of concept" to bigger-budget shows that they could use CGI in conjunction with models and practical effects. Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Star Trek: Voyager would be part of this era, though their later seasons would bleed over into;
- The CGI era, when visual effects are almost exclusively the province of digital artists. As noted above, Star Trek: Enterprise was the first series to embrace all-CGI VFX. Subsequent shows like Firefly, Battlestar Galactica, The Expanse, Star Trek: Discovery, and Star Trek: Picard are also broadly part of this era of TV production as well.
The guy just didn't want to have to wear an uncomfortable uniform all day during shooting. Nothin' wrong with that. He was still okay with doing some scenes with them; he just didn't want that as his default costume anymore. The guy's in his 80s -- let him wear comfortable clothes!
I'm doing a DS9 rewatch with my girlfriend, and it's mostly pretty good in terms of production design. But every now and then, we see a Cardassian computer readout, and I am completely distracted by the fact that the screen is obviously an early-90s Macintosh computer with the same font I used to see in elementary school.
Yeah. As common as they are in sci-fi shows today, I don't like holo-controls.
The use of diminutives and colloquialism is not a 21st Century thing, it is a universal human practice. There is not and has never been and will never be a language where the speakers only ever use prescriptivist grammar. Diminutives and colloquialisms are a universal human practice, and it's appropriate to use them in fiction. Yes, you have to be careful and thoughtful about how you use them lest it make your work appear dated, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't do something to paint a picture of a more complex society than you get with mere prescriptivism.
Besides, only using prescriptivist grammar is inherently classist, and far too often actively lends itself to white supremacy in real life (since it denies the legitimacy of other dialects of English such as African-American Vernacular English).
No way of knowing that based on the information.
That aside "raised control buttons" would be a backward step into TOS bridge consoles and 20th century computer keyboards surely?
Doesn't sound like the next step on from 2370s panels to me...
Uh yes we do. They never used holographic buttons on that show only the flat panel. That’s what they were talking about. They mention this in voyager. Tom Paris wanted tactile button controls on the delta flyer because he was getting tired of the flat panels. I think this is the show you are thinking of.
Not quite. Regarding Dax and Bashir discussing the Defiant's old-style controls in the future timeline featured in The Visitor you said this:
'They were talking about a flat panel vs raised control buttons not holographic controls buttons.'
I've asserted (correctly) that this isn't adequate information for you to decide what they were/weren't talking about since they don't go into detail about what form the controls in that future timeline take.
They could well be holographic controls floating in front of the operator. To say Dax and Bashir weren't talking about holographic controls is your opinion, but you stated it as if it was a fact.
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