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

[publiusr]

True. I liked the Generations bridge. Ent-D at her best.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

True. I liked the Generations bridge. Ent-D at her best.

Yes.

Seems a shame to have wasted it.

 

[Turbo]

I agree; I really liked the Enterprise-D's upgraded bridge. It needed some love for the movies because there was no way to hide the TV-ness, unlike most of the other sets where they used extreme close-ups or draped them in darkness.

I think Engineering and Ten Forward are the only other sets we see in which they didn't do that. The latter worked pretty well (the fact that they could make it so busy helped) but Engineering doesn't really work at all - it's far too cramped and visually uninteresting.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

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.

Absolutely. The least they could've done was flip the shot so it wasn't so bleeding obvious.

If you can spot a reused effects shot on your very first viewing of the film, it's a bad idea to reuse 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.

They were shooting a set built for a TV show for a widescreen theatrical feature. I totally get why they did it.

It was a worse idea to start the film with expensive location shooting on a sailing ship, building a gigantic stellar cartography set for a scene of dull exposition, and then do the saucer crash with super obvious miniatures before ending the film with three middle aged men fighting on a jungle gym. Put your best stuff in your climax.

 

[JonnyQuest037]

...but Engineering doesn't really work at all - it's far too cramped and visually uninteresting.

I can't recall if they utilized any of the second level of the engineering set for some more dynamic shots in GEN, but they should have. The basic frame was first built for TMP, after all.

 

[Turbo]

I can't recall if they utilized any of the second level of the engineering set for some more dynamic shots in GEN, but they should have. The basic frame was first built for TMP, after all.

They did not. They removed the "plugs" that blocked off some of the corridors from engineering to make things look bigger but otherwise the set was the same as the TV series. The second level wasn't opened back up until they rebuilt it for Voyager.

 

[STEPhon IT]

True. I liked the Generations bridge. Ent-D at her best.

It was redesigned simply to have the stunt men leap off of it as many times as the script required, and the bonus having the command ops crash into the main viewer. Yawn!

 

[JonnyQuest037]

They did not. They removed the "plugs" that blocked off some of the corridors from engineering to make things look bigger but otherwise the set was the same as the TV series. The second level wasn't opened back up until they rebuilt it for Voyager.

Dumb. Having the second level would really help give that set more scope and scale. But I guess they were still too stuck in the TV mentality.

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

They just made poor choices. I get that they were under budget constraints but they spent the money they did have on the wrong things.

 

[David cgc]

There was an extremely short turnaround from wrapping AGT and starting filming on GEN (which, come to think of it, might've been because they needed the sets freed up so they could begin refurbishing them for Voyager). It's probably not money so much as time, and they had to pick their battles, especially in terms of refurbishing the existing sets (and never mind the debacle with the new uniforms).

 

[McCoy's Disco Collar]

It's probably not money so much as time, and they had to pick their battles, especially in terms of refurbishing the existing sets (and never mind the debacle with the new uniforms).

Time and money are linked in Hollywood, flip sides of the same coin.

Either way, I think they made the wrong choices with their limited resources.