Unseen TOS....

[Warped9]

News for some: there ain’t much flat on the Romulan BoP. Just look at the renders of what I’ve modelled. Those triangles on the aft upper and lowers sides of the hull are definitely not flat, but concave. They have to be to end up as they do with the curved in aft section which is a uniform thickness across the end.

That said I’ve never been a Star Wars’ fan. I don’t hate or even dislike Star Wars, but it never grabbed me. I like some of the hardware, but thats it. My overall favourite piece of SW hardware is the Millenium Falcon. I also like the TIE Interceptor and B-Wing fighter.

A big beef I have with SW design and aesthetic has more to do with how everyone wanted to emulate it after the film’s success. In broad strokes it forever coloured the depiction of future tech. SW’s industrial look made far future hardware look accessible and understandable as opposed to mysterious and advanced beyond our current understanding. In Trek it started with the look of TMP hardware and has increased evermore so over the years with each successive production. And look where the look of contemporary Trek is now: it’s greebled, dark, edgy and often ungainly looking. I’m definitely not in the camp that wet themselves over the DSC/SNW 1701 or the new Stargazer in PIC. I find nothing appealing about those designs or that kind of design in general.


Hmm… Thinking about it I wonder what the Millenium Falcon would look like as a TOS design. I should tackle that around the time I eventually model the TMP E with the TOS aesthetic.

 

[caveat_imperator]

Yeah, I'm not a big fan of much of ILM's over-detailed Trek designs either. Some I do like, but most of it just doesn't feel Trek-like to me.

 

[STEPhon IT]

News for some: there ain’t much flat on the Romulan BoP. Just look at the renders of what I’ve modelled. Those triangles on the aft upper and lowers sides of the hull are definitely not flat, but concave. They have to be to end up as they do with the curved in aft section which is a uniform thickness across the end.

That said I’ve never been a Star Wars’ fan. I don’t hate or even dislike Star Wars, but it never grabbed me. I like some of the hardware, but thats it. My overall favourite piece of SW hardware is the Millenium Falcon. I also like the TIE Interceptor.

A big beef I have with SW design and aesthetic has more to do with how everyone wanted to emulate it after the film’s success. In broad strokes it forever coloured the depiction of future tech. SW’s industrial look made far future hardware look accessible and understandable as opposed to mysterious and advanced beyond our current understanding. In Trek it started with the look of TMP hardware and has increased evermore so over the years with each successive production. And look where the look of contemporary Trek is now: it’s greebled, dark, edgy and often ungainly looking. I’m definitely not in the camp that wet themselves over the DSC/SNW 1701 or the new Stargazer in PIC. I find nothing appealing about those designs or that kind of design in general.


Hmm… Thinking about it I wonder what the Millenium Falcon would look like as a TOS design. I should tackle that around the time I eventually model the TMP E with the TOS aesthetic.

It should be smooth and alien looking and very beautiful, Star Trek used to look beautiful and I always get a thrill seeing the model designs from TOS. I have a request, Warped9, as you know I've been a fan of your designs and your creative aesthetics you've included to them, there was a problem I'd seen in some illustration books where the Enterprise was retroactively placed inside of TMP dry dock. It never looked right to me because of the designs I'd seen in TOS space stations and planetary designs; I thought dry dock or some docking bay would look more in the vain of K7 than TMP. Could you give an appropriate TOS dry docking station some thought and execute it, please?

 

[Warped9]

It should be smooth and alien looking and very beautiful, Star Trek used to look beautiful and I always get a thrill seeing the model designs from TOS. I have a request, Warped9, as you know I've been a fan of your designs and your creative aesthetics you've included to them, there was a problem I'd seen in some illustration books where the Enterprise was retroactively placed inside of TMP dry dock. It never looked right to me because of the designs I'd seen in TOS space stations and planetary designs; I thought dry dock or some docking bay would look more in the vain of K7 than TMP. Could you give an appropriate TOS dry docking station some thought and execute it, please?

It’s on my radar. When I get to “Courtmartial” one does wonder whether the Enterprise wouldn’t have been berthed in a drydock for repairs. Maybe her required repairs weren’t that extensive, but one does wonder what that could look like.

Indeed, if I recall correctly, very early in development of the “Courtmartial” story and script there was an idea for a repair dock, but obviously it would have been dropped since it would have required construction of a large miniature to be used with the 11ft. Enterprise and that would have been time consuming and expensive. Ultimately it would have been an avoidable expense that could be written around. Mind you it’s also possible they could have used the 33in. Enterprise and built miniature dock for that, but it would still be an avoidable expense and not as impressive.

Ever since TMP many fans have sought to retroactively layer TMP aesthetics onto TOS elements. Besides the drydiock I have commonly seen people adding hull lighting (where none could possibly exist) and aztec plating to the TOS E. TOS-R did the same thing by adding plating and TMP style details to ships such as the Romulan BoP and Klingon D7. Other designs inserted into the show look like something seen in Berman era Trek rather than TOS—they don’t look like anything Matt Jefferies or Wah Chang would have designed back in the day. It’s all an exercise to make the show look more contemporary rather than seek to enhance what is already there while retaining the original aesthetic. Maybe it’s something few can wrap their head around.

One of the things behind TMP is that it put forth the idea “This is what the Star Trek universe really looks like.” TMP allowed them to add a level of scale and detail not possible in TOS because of limitations in time, money and resources. Consequently fans have sought to add that level of detail retroactively to elements of TOS.

 

[Henoch]

Besides the drydiock I have commonly seen people adding hull lighting (where none could possibly exist) and aztec plating to the TOS E.

I prefer that the TOS Enterprise's hull was self-illuminating and hence why it was lighted at all times even in deep dark space. Same with all other space vessels and space stations. I chalk it up to the deflector screens which not only deflected space debris, but also harmful space radiation. A small amount of visible light leaking out was just a side effect. As for aztec-ing, I see no technical reason for its existence. YMMV .

 

[Warped9]

Besides aesthetics an issue with adding hull lighting to the TOS E is that there is no obvious light source as there is on the TMP E.

 

[drt]

Other designs inserted into the show look like something seen in Berman era Trek rather than TOS—they don’t look like anything Matt Jefferies or Wah Chang would have designed back in the day. It’s all an exercise to make the show look more contemporary rather than seek to enhance what is already there while retaining the original aesthetic. Maybe it’s something few can wrap their head around.

It's probably because the people that did TOS-R were mostly Berman folks. Even if their stated intention was to make it look like the late 60s, they ended up making similar design decisions as they made for their modern productions. (Perhaps unconsciously wanting to make TOS look more like their show so that everything "fit together" better.)

I'm just glad the blurays still have the "original effects" option and that they cleaned up those opticals so they look as nice as possible.

Besides aesthetics an issue with adding hull lighting to the TOS E is that there is no obvious light source as there is on the TMP E.

I suppose some of the round portholes on the front of the teardrop could be repurposed as spotlights to illuminate the name and registry.

 

[Warped9]

It's probably because the people that did TOS-R were mostly Berman folks. Even if their stated intention was to make it look like the late 60s, they ended up making similar design decisions as they made for their modern productions. (Perhaps unconsciously wanting to make TOS look more like their show so that everything "fit together" better.)

Thats quite likely.

 

[STEPhon IT]

It comes down to, "lets fix it to make it look closer to what we had done." doesn't seem that method honored the wonderful work done on TOS. Historically the style of UFO's and spaceships prior to Star Trek was to look and appear fantastical where it didn't appear like nuts and bolts construction. I had a chance to see an Abbott & Costello movie where they journeyed into space and the ship looked more alien than anything I'd ever seen and still its accepted. Star Wars had a major influence on future Trek designs and gotten worse for it.

 

[Warped9]

TMP didn’t really emulate Star Wars. I think the TMP hardware looks more 2001 like, sporting a level of detail that television sci-fi couldn’t afford to indulge in.

The look of film and television sci-fi hardware was already evolving in the 1970s post 2001. But Star Wars certainly had an impact on much of what would follow.

 

[drt]

TMP didn’t really emulate Star Wars. I think the TMP hardware looks more 2001 like, sporting a level of detail that television sci-fi couldn’t afford to indulge in.

Agreed. Everything in TMP, aside from Enterprise herself and the K'tinga, looks like it was a NASA futurism concept, which was pretty popular in the 1970s.

 

[STEPhon IT]

TMP didn’t really emulate Star Wars. I think the TMP hardware looks more 2001 like, sporting a level of detail that television sci-fi couldn’t afford to indulge in.

The look of film and television sci-fi hardware was already evolving in the 1970s post 2001. But Star Wars certainly had an impact on much of what would follow.

Your BOP is looking really nice; will you add a light green and violet hue on the hull?

 

[aridas sofia]

I took a stab at such a drydock. I tried to create something with very much a TOS aesthetic, using TOS details, but that looks like it is at least the same kind of idea Probert was fleshing out in TMP. Mine is built up from giant versions of those moire panels in the Enterprise corridors. I postulated they were power absorption and transfer panels. If it was animated in CG those panels would be slowly moving moires, akin to those on the communicator or tricorder - but much slower, almost like watching lava move.

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/d0/15/da/d015dabdd89ea647794431b15f57d48f.jpg?nii=t

 

[Warped9]

Your BOP is looking really nice; will you add a light green and violet hue on the hull?

That was the Klingon D7. As far as I know the Romulan BoP was silver grey.

 

[publiusr]

I took a stab at such a drydock. I tried to create something with very much a TOS aesthetic, using TOS details.

https://i.pinimg.com/236x/d0/15/da/d015dabdd89ea647794431b15f57d48f.jpg?nii=t

And it also squares with “Dead Stop.”

 

[aridas sofia]

That wasn’t my intent. And in fairness, they could never have built something like this for TOS. The evidence suggests the most Matt Jefferies considered was a star station design and a small, one man, bubble-topped tug. And in truth, maybe that is all that would be needed.

In TMP, it appeared as if workbees did the construction. That really wouldn’t necessitate a framework except as a place to dock the workbees, and they had a space office complex for that. The one similarity I can see that what I came up with has to what was shown in ENT is that my dock actually does the work. There would be bees and other dockyard craft, of course. And in keeping with TOS, people would run the repair dock. But in this case, the garage and mechanic are at least functionally, one and the same.

 

[Warped9]

This is indeed a case where what we saw in TMP and later could be colouring our perceptions of what we could imagine in TOS. Mind you TMP is the only post TOS production I think follows well enough evolutionarily from TOS, so envisioning a TOS style drydock isn’t such a bad idea. It’s even possible such an idea was discussed back in the day, but nothing concrete and no concept sketches committed to paper.

What Franz Joseph came up with in his Technical Manual might be closer to what could work more convincingly in TOS.

Actually thinking back to that era I don’t recall period NASA or sci-fi depictions of space structure construction showing a space dock. Things were just shown being assembled in orbit be they stations or large ships.

 

[STEPhon IT]

Since space station K7 was the example of what designs looked like in TOS, is it possible for a repair dock station to look similar?

 

[fireproof78]

Hmm… Thinking about it I wonder what the Millenium Falcon would look like as a TOS design. I should tackle that around the time I eventually model the TMP E with the TOS aesthetic.

As a fan of both there are designs that I think would benefit from TOS' style designs. The Millenium Falcon is one, and the Y-Wing the other when it comes to Star Wars.

 

[ashleytinger]

As a fan of both there are designs that I think would benefit from TOS' style designs. The Millenium Falcon is one, and the Y-Wing the other when it comes to Star Wars.

The Y-Wing basically has that with the Clone Wars version. They put armor on it that makes it a pretty sleek bomber.