Spoilers ST Lower Decks - Starships and Technology Season Three Discussion

Lower Decks Season 3 drops on August 25! And there's a lot we can surely mine as this show is a whirlwind of Easter eggs and inside jokes even on an off week. What should we look forward to this season?



- Is yet ANOTHER refit of the Cerritos coming? They jettisoned everything that wasn't bolted down last episode and the trailer suggests that she starts out at around the same condition. Will they take the opportunity to refine things again like they did between seasons 1 and 2?

- There's at least one Federation space station seen in the trailer, plus the spacedock. The former looks to be in a "Regula 1" configuration with all the lower / not upper tanks intact. We've seen the model used with and without tanks before, both as a starbase and as a Federation-adjacent facility, all of which looked different in size.

- Spacedock! Not seen in timeline since "Nemesis", and not to be seen again until the UP attack in "Picard" which largely re-used model assets from Discovery. Where will this version lie? As it stands this is the first time we've seen the INTERIOR of a spacedock facility since the launch of the Enterprise-B, not counting the Yorktown shot at the end of "Beyond".

- More uniforms? There's a pretty clear call back to the events of VOY "Drive", with the Delta Flyer and racing uniforms. I always thought they uniforms the Voyager crew pulled out were some sort of standard uniform for racing purposes (!) they just HAD in the database.

- Speaking of porpoises, more cetacean ops! It'd be great if we saw those guys on a mission, and what that would look like.

What are you guys looking forward to?

Mark

 

I know this show is all about TNG worship, but I really wish they would stop using things like Regula One and Spacedock as generic space stations. TNG did that because of their budgetary concerns; LDS has no such issue.

 

I don't mind the "standardization" approach to ship and station design. At least not for the 22nd-25th Centuries' Starfleet assets.

 

To the degree that most big city airports looked about the same from the 50s to the 80s with one long rectangle with gates sticking out of one long side, and most modern airports share the same design cue of terminal buildings jutting out and gates on three sides, I'd surmise that lots of starbases and spacedocks have found a "sweet spot" in basic shapes that aren't worth straying from for the sorts of ships they are built to service or missions they are made to do. In short, if it ain't broke...

Mark

 

I think what annoyed me the most was the blatant upscaling they did. As it stands, the original Regula One space station was actually smaller than the TMP Enterprise. Then all of a sudden it's huge, dwarfing even the Enterprise-D. The worst offender was DS9's Starbase 375, which at one point showed a tiny Jem'Hadar fighter docked in its bay, but then in all other shots the station was gigantic. They also had to upscale the starbase that was originally stock footage of Spacedock, to accommodate the much larger Enterprise-D through its doors.

And of course, one of the worst cases of TNG upscaling was in "The Defector" with Romulan Warbird-sized Klingon BoPs. I suppose I can give them a pass on that one though, as that episode debuted three brand-new filming models (the 4-foot Enterprise-D, the Romulan scout ship and the 2nd Romulan warbird), so they didn't have the budget for a new large Klingon ship for that scene. But if they were going to upscale a Klingon ship, they could at least have used the K'T'inga model rather than the smaller BoP.

 

Now that we're in the world of Digital Models almost exclusively, we should have far fewer scaling issues hopefully and more consistent sizing.

 

Yes and no - LDS still uses hand-drawn ships for certain ships and shots. For example, the Nova-class ship that carts off our Captain was 2-D animation, as was the USS Quito, assorted background ships, and the first Pakled warships we saw. I'm pretty sure the big starbase from last year is hand-drawn as well... The Regula station in this trailer would likely be in that vein., so there's plenty of room for error there as such.

But to be fair, the LDS crew seems to have learned that scale matters to us plebian nerds, and even modified the Cerritos model to account for some of it between seasons. We know they're trying!

Mark

 

I thought they just applied a 2D Hand Drawn filter over the 3D model.

They still hand draw them?

 

It's still possible to do that. When I went to animation school, we were hand-drawing the "cels" on paper, scanning them into the Amigas with Framegrabber, and then going to work in DeluxePaint III...

*waits for everyone over age 30 who knows what I'm talking about to check again for their own additional grey hairs*

 

Loved the Amiga creative software! Sculpt-Animate 4D is still my favorite modeling program even though it has been many years I still miss it.

 

In enterprise it was realitivly good at scaling, but since then it's been rubbish. Movies, kurtzman era., all digital but all over the map on scaling and consistancy. LD seems to be better but there MSD and ship visuals are off. Consistency is a dart throw.

 

On the issue of recycled starbases, I hated it when we saw it happen in TNG & DS9. Doing the same thing in Lower Decks actuality works,well with me- it adds to the continuity and firmly puts this show in the same universe as the other shows...

 

I would like to see the Star Trek Online starbase models get used - in particular the Starbase 39-Sierra model.

https://memory-beta.fandom.com/wiki/Starbase_39-Sierra?file=Starbase39.jpg

 

I would love to see the starbase that Drexler designed:

https://www.pinterest.com/pin/1196337391304301/

 

I really like that design!

 

Things will always be scaled bigger or smaller to fit the scene or the needs of the director better.

Star Wars Episode 3 for example used a ton of CGI, but scales were still cheated where it fit the scene better.

Or you know, the Kelvin Films.

 

That is perfect.

 

I can't pick just one thing to look forward to!

Earth! Martok! DS9! A D'Deridex!
Peanut Hamper! Orbital Skydiving!
Cochrane Hats! 1923's Sun-Maid!

It even looks like Masaka is waking again! Go back to sleep, Masaka!

 

Will that episode be titled "The Masaka Massacre"?