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the cartography room in Star Trek Generations. What did you think of it?

Yes, especially with the big piece of Klingon Bird of Prey obviously bouncing off of the studio floor after the ship blows up. I can kind of understand the shot ending up in TUC if they were limited on budget for that film and couldn't make a whole 'nother ship model to blow up again. But ideally they would have learned from that, and improved when the next movie rolled around with its own budget and its own ship models (instead of reusing footage for something as dynamic as a space battle).

I thought the stellar cartography room was pretty cool, and added to the cinematic feel. But it was kind of extraneous and they could have used the budget elsewhere instead.

Kor
At the very least, they could have mirror imaged it. The Ent-D blast? That’s Grissom’s pyro from ST III.
 
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I liked the addition of the set to try to open up the "world" of the Enterprise-D, but I agree it's a shame that it never got reused on DS9 or Voyager. I can see why not, though, the line producers would've had breakdowns any time the set would be used because of the hit the pattern budget would take on the bluescreen shots.
 
Scattered stuff on Memory Alpha suggests that all of the sailing scenes were indeed shot aboard the ship Lady Washington.
 
in universe I liked it
didn't know about all the budget and other real world aspects so I don't have an opinion there
 
I loved it. Thought it looked (and still does) excellent.

Would I have preferred the money spent on the Enterprise facing off against an actual Klingon Battlecruiser and dropping the re-use of TUC footage though?

I think I would.
Just a couple of those bucks could have gone to creating a new shot of the BoP blowing up. The TUC shot wasn't just another piece of BoP stock footage, it was the battle and emotional climax of the film, a rousing fist-in-the-air moment in that movie. It was a unique shot in the series in that the BoP blew up in stages (it wasn't just an explosion supered over a model) and it was the payoff to the final battle where both Federation starships were getting their asses handed to them. It was also the main villain's exit from the film. It was what Soren's demise was to Generations. All of that made it far too obvious a re-use. Every Trek film after TMP used stock footage to save some shekels, but this one was ill advised.

Just weird where they decided to throw money in that film. Having said that, visually, it was stunning. But the conversation is was backing hardly deserved it.
 
On one hand, the TNG room was underbudgeted and under-extra'ed to really be fully believed.

On the other hand, the movie's set is a big empty room with superimposed imagery, camera angles, and used for 3 minutes for Picard to calm down a newly emotional and suicidal Data before it gets blown up (the room along with the ship, not the newly-whiny android). Utter pointless bling that managed to be even less effective, but it gives us a chance to gawk and marvel when VOY starts using the same idea - just with added consoles dotted around the room, yet nobody operating them in a nonshock twist... they may have well re-used the old set but increase square footage by a bit, make the ball bigger or add a second one so people can then make dumb jokes about the movie having no balls when killing Kirk, and hire some blue-shirts waddling around in the background. There you go. A slightly larger room, with some extras in mallard costumes, and call them "Duck people" the same way Doctor Who had "Fish people" and "Cheetah people"...
 
They could have done exactly the same thing on any display device aboard ship including a PADD.

Yeah, but the big room with iMax-like projector can make anyone go look for a planet then get promptly nauseous! It looks like you're right there but some people do actually get ill, and the size is too big to really focus in on... well, if you're doing anything requiring work requiring focused concentration - the theater's main point was to show, for entertainment and leisure, filmed footage of vistas containing various tasty plants and/or animals and absolutely nothing longer than the opening credits of "The Shining" or else all the theater seats would end up soaked in a gross and ammonia-smelling liquid by the time said movie ended... unless you're diabetic, then it smells sickly sweet... :(

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Seriously. In HD and on a 500' curved/enveloped screen, those credits look effing awesome. Any scene later on, not so much... :eek:
 
Every Trek film after TMP used stock footage to save some shekels, but this one was ill advised.

I'm interested to know - obviously TWOK used a lot of TMP footage and the office model turned upside down, but what footage did TSFS, TVH & TFF use? Outside of the story recap stuff?
 
Well, the I was including some recap for TSFS, but I'm kinda sure the shot of the Enterprise approaching Genesis is a recomposited model shot from TWOK. I could be wrong.

The others reused BoP footage and shots of the Enterprise in spacedock. Nothing crazy just a few bits here and there.
 
Building the Stellar Cartography set didn't bother me so much as re-building the bridge to add all those extra stations and consoles and extras. If you're looking for places to cut the budget, that would have been a better place to start.
 
Well, the I was including some recap for TSFS, but I'm kinda sure the shot of the Enterprise approaching Genesis is a recomposited model shot from TWOK. I could be wrong.

It’s a redone version of the shot. ILM thought it was really cool angle, so they did it again, but you can tell from the lighting and damage on the ship it’s new footage.

They also made a version for the -D, but oddly, while they made a version with the stars moving in sync with the ship, most of the time, they used a version with a static starfield (including in GEN), so it looked like the ship had been angled downward and was leveling out over the course of the shot.
 
Building the Stellar Cartography set didn't bother me so much as re-building the bridge to add all those extra stations and consoles and extras. If you're looking for places to cut the budget, that would have been a better place to start.
The bridge changes were probably cheaper, and definitely had more screentime.
 
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