As Ive got older, I've come to realise that the whole show is closer to fantasy than fiction anyway. I don't say it out loud too often, of course.
How big was the Enterprise?
- Thread starter Admiral Jean-Luc Picard
- Start date
Sombra class from SNW that looks very similar to a Constitution:
ETA: the above chart is merely to show that there are two different ships referenced in SNW, and not meant to be reflective of sizes, something that is inconsistent on the best of days.
On the TOS side of things we have never seen the Antares in the original version. In the CGI Remastered version we do see the Antares and it appears considerably smaller and not very practical, IMHO.
Thanks! Perhaps then if all crewmembers are accounted for they are split across some with the whole cabin, others with a 4 person arrangement and some unseen smaller ones or crowded bunk bed style ones for non-officers so it all can still fit in the SNW Enterprise...
When TOS-R was being produced, I was hoping that they would finally show the Antares on screen. Over time, however, my feelings about TOS-R have changed considerably from when it began. In this instance, I now feel like if all they were going to do was reuse a TAS design, then I would rather they didn't show the ship at all, just like before.
A lot of retconning going on in TOS-R that doesn’t reflect what Matt Jefferies might have done if given the chance.
I get your point, but for me it wasn't so much about that as it was about:
1. The overall cheapness and rushed aspect of the production.
2. The idea to make the VFX look more modern to make it look more up-to-date with then-current productions like ENT by the over-reliance of CGI.
3. The overall weird and unnecessary decisions that were made in many instances. (Did the Gorn really need to have blinky eyes? Why design new ships and then show them in so far of a distance that you could barely even make them out? etc.)
Would Matt Jefferies have made a design for the Antares, had he had the chance? Sure. But that wouldn't have mattered for TOS-R, because they would have just replaced it with some more modern-looking CGI thing.
I've seen that there's been some remastering of a few of Sylvester McCoy's Doctor Who episodes. They apparently rebuilt some of the scale models to 100% replicate the originals, just to make updated VFX shots with them using motion control rather than CGI. While I don't understand why this is happening (did the original VFX somehow get degraded?), this is an example of how to remake something correctly and keep the visual continuity the same.
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Given its odd shape I figure its probably meant to tow a bunch of cargo cannisters. its sort of like the Millennium Falcon. We are just seeing the "crew cab"
Inbuilt cargo space with the ability to latch onto a trail of canisters to tow at low warp? It is a rather... ugly duckling design, with the crew compartment feeling like an after thought.
In TOS, Freighters had a top speed of Warp 2 ("Friday's Child") although the Antares in "Charlie X" is described as a Cargo Vessel so it might have a different top speed.
That could work. Crew of 20 seems reasonable for the size in TOS-R. But, ugh, such an odd shape.
Every spec sheet I've prodded at give it a cruising speed of 4.5 with a theoretical 'tear the space frame apart' speed of warp 6. Given the Antares-type seemed to be a multi-purpose with internal configurations for science as well as cargo hauling, and the cargo variant could be fully automated (Animated Series,) I suspect it's a heavy outlayer.
Perhaps fan-based or variants of the Antares have multipurpose possibilities however the Antares we see in "Charlie X" is described as a "Cargo Vessel" and "Transport Ship" so she's just a simple mover of stuff.
From "Charlie X":
Captain's Log, star date 1533.6. Now maneuvering to come alongside cargo vessel Antares. Its Captain and First officer are beaming over to us with an unusual passenger.
...
KIRK: We have a large supply of entertainment tapes, gentlemen.
RAMART: No, we've a tight schedule to make, Captain. Just twenty of us, we're making out fine.
KIRK: This must be a space first. A transport ship that doesn't need anything?
I wonder if the spec sheets you looked at are of ships post-TOS or not directly TOS given that Freighter's have a maximum speed of Warp 2 according to "Friday's Child". Mind you that in TOS, the Warp scale isn't the same as TNG and later and can be significantly faster or slower so Warp 2 to me isn't a bad speed to be a freighter.From "Friday's Child":
SULU: Approaching the freighter's last reported position, sir.
SCOTT: Sensor report, Mister Chekov.
CHEKOV: Negative, sir. No debris, no residual particles, no traces.
SCOTT: Mister Sulu, begin a standard search pattern. All scanners full intensity, Mister Chekov. (to Uhura) No signal at all?
UHURA: Negative, sir.
CHEKOV: It should be on our screens by now.
SULU: At best, a freighter might travel warp two.
SCOTT: I'm well aware of a freighter's maximum speed, Mister Sulu.
It's for the same reason as TOS-R, to provide new "special editions" of the episodes with new effects and deleted/extended scenes for Blu-ray. The originals are also available.
Doctor Who has been doing this for decades for the DVD range, but more recently for Blu-ray they're started using models as well as CGI, with great results. They've also done this with Blake's 7, another seventies BBC sci-fi.
The dream for TOS would be a 4K remaster with new effects made using traditional methods and the 11-foot Enterprise model from the Smithsonian, plus other newly-built models replicating the originals.
Some fans have used 3D modelling to good effect to recreate the model work and lighting of TOS miniatures. It looks like nicely cleaned versions of familiar scenes. Others, like Capt. Pike, have used the Polar Lights 1/350 TOS E to recreate familiar shots with similar results.
Good cgi in the right hands can deliver the results, but you have to care about what you’re doing. The mindset behind TOS-R was not to enhance the original creativity of TOS, but to bring the fx more in line with early 21st century Trek productions while in enough instances not putting even that effort into it.
I think that was the original brief, but there was a lot of ‘mission creep’ as it went on. Something like Balance of Terror, the first episode completed, is a pretty faithful shot-for-shot remake.
By the time we got to some of the third season episodes like The Enterprise Incident, they were replacing one of the battle cruisers with a Bird of Prey and doing much more elaborate space and planet shots. I don’t mind that, but there was a lack of consistency about whether it was about replicating or ‘enhancing’ the original effects.
Except the TOS-R Antares is clearly based on the robot grain ships from TAS and they carried cargo all by their lonesome. (Should it have been based on the Huron instead? I think so.)
You can be unhappy with the results without having to say that the artist didn't CARE.
Petri Blomqvist and Mike Okuda (among others). Money grubbing hacks?
Except those times when she's not:
Captain's Log, star date 1535.8. UESPA headquarters notified of the mysterious loss of science probe vessel Antares.
A lot of the original material either is outright lost, recorded over, and i believe at one point there was a fire that destroyed some of the archives, but a good portion of the original tapes for Dr Who are lost outside of time travel shennanagins.
Plus they did that documentery/dramatization about early Who production. Always good to have classic era Who effects on hand given how often time travel is involved. Never know when recreating old shots will be nessicary.
Bingo. Example. EC Henry's take on the klingon ship from friday's child.
Look at how good that looks.
Also. While he generally does Refit/Lost Era? Check out Resurrected Starships.
The compositing of that shot is really REALLY weird, like they took the two models and pasted one over the other, but didn't account for angling. This is a case of move the camera so you can get a better idea of relative distance between the two. Is the Antares right next to the enterprise's star drive? Are they a dozen kilometers out and it's just a really weird camera effect combined with the lack of air in space making it look like they're hugging?
I have my own thoughts on the Antares-Type but that is fan speculation at absolute best with only conjecture as backing plus my own preferences in multi-role designs.
Thank you.
OK. In spite of my overal annoyance at the 'here I will post the script and bold face everything so your neanderthal brain can see' feel of that post? I got a laugh out of Kirk hanging a lamp shade over how often the Enterrpise has had to answer distress calls.
I both liked and didn't like that they used the TAS designs. I like it because 'hey it's not a terrible idea to draw from existing sources if you're having to make stuff.' i hate it because 'honestly the thing's ugly.'
Same opinion on my end. It felt like they couldn't make up their minds. I kinda hope they kept the 'clean' shots they composited the new effects onto for the sake of a potentially newer remaster down the road. Doubt it'll happen, but a guy can dream.
While I wouldn't ever say they didn't care about the product they were putting out, I am bewildered at how low-poly the TOS-R Klingon Battlecruiser was. You could see the bloody triangles. It looked like it escaped from a PS2 game.
I've never thought that any of the TOS-R ships looked any good. Even the Enterprise looks like crap. They tried to hard to copy the overblown lighting and smooth textures of the 60's.
It was made all the worse when you consider how good the Defiant looked on Enterprise. THAT was the look they should have been going for in a remastered TOS.
It is downright weird how low-poly some of those ships looked. I guess they must have been really rushed. Their Enterprise looks a lot better in my opinion, the second version of it at least, but it's also weirdly metallic in a way that doesn't really sell me on it being 23rd century technology.
Give me something that looks like a cross between Enterprise's Defiant:
and the original miniature:
Give me something that looks like a cross between Enterprise's Defiant:
and the original miniature:
I disagree that they didn't put enough effort into it. But one thing that fan recreations have that the actual production didn't is time. The production had a deadline to deal with, and as such, likely didn't have the time (and maybe also budget) to do it as well as they wanted.
Which reminds me, aside from Jefferies' concept sketches for the Enterprise herself, did he do any concept work on what any other Starfleet ships may have looked like?
