ST II vs ST III Battle Damage

[Allyn Gibson]

After most of the crew were on Excelsior except for Spock who got a Gagarin/Oberth. Bringing back fond memories from my youth!

Maybe?

Tom Sutton could not draw the Surak consistently. One time he draws is as the warp sled from TMP. He also draws it as an Excelsior a few times.

Todd McFarlane (yes, really!) draws it as a Miranda variant!

My deep dive into the Surak: http://www.allyngibson.com/?p=33734.

 

[FredH]

Maybe?

Tom Sutton could not draw the Surak consistently. One time he draws is as the warp sled from TMP. He also draws it as an Excelsior a few times.

Todd McFarlane (yes, really!) draws it as a Miranda variant!

My deep dive into the Surak: http://www.allyngibson.com/?p=33734.

Hey, I know: the Surak was an experimental, unique multi-mode science ship, transforming (Transformer-style) into wildly different configurations for different types of science surveys! Only someone of Spock’s scientific caliber could properly manage it! Yeah, that’s the ticket…

 

[DonIago]

Maybe the Surak was experiencing the same quantum anomalies that the Cerritos experienced in the season finale of Lower Decks.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The real U.S.S. Surak was the friends we made along the way

Spoiler: ummm

...who all die horribly.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

Spoiler: ummm

...who all die horribly.

Spoiler: Yeah

Yeah, that was unfortunate...

 

[Ssosmcin]

The real U.S.S. Surak was the friends we made along the way

Spoiler: ummm

...who all die horribly.

At the time, it was drawn so poorly, it barely registered with me It felt so rushed, like "we have to get to the mindless Spock point." Tom Sutton was a competent artist, but it rarely looked like professional polished art when he did Star Trek with Ricardo Villagran .

Then the movie adaptation stuck to the script and it felt weird.

 

[somebuddyX]

Is the battle damage more noticeable so Rand can glare at it in III?

 

[The Knappos]

It’s plausible that, since there’s plating clearly indicating attempts at repair that there was at least one accident/incident during repair attempts which ended up exacerbating the damage.

 

[Allyn Gibson]

At the time, it was drawn so poorly, it barely registered with me It felt so rushed, like "we have to get to the mindless Spock point." Tom Sutton was a competent artist, but it rarely looked like professional polished art when he did Star Trek with Ricardo Villagran .

There was an article in the old Best of Trek volumes about the Star Trek comics, up through the Star Trek III adaptation, and Villagran's inking got mentioned as being very heavy. Look at the two chapters of Peter David's run late in the first series that Gordon Purcell drew and Villagran inked; Purcell proved himself to be a very good likeness artist, especially with the right inker (like Arne Starr or Terry Pallot), but Villagran just smothers and obliterates Purcell's pencils.

It does make me wonder what Sutton's art would have looked like with someone else inking.

 

[Firebird]

Is the battle damage more noticeable so Rand can glare at it in III?

For a one-off cameo that wasn’t even written in the script? Absolutely not.

 

[somebuddyX]

For a one-off cameo that wasn’t even written in the script? Absolutely not.

What I meant was maybe it had more battle damage so it was visible up close in that space lounge.

 

[publiusr]

Amusingly, if the old DC Comics from that time positing a whole epic range of adventures taking place between II & III could be taken as canon (it isn’t), that’s explained by it being from an entirely different later incident, where a pon farr-maddened Saavik attacked the Enterprise with a small ship.

I seem to remember some other battle that took place between the two films…

 

[Therin of Andor]

For a one-off cameo that wasn’t even written in the script? Absolutely not.

Rand is credited as "Woman in Cafeteria", but Nimoy decided that a cameo as Rand would be perfect for the scene of Enterprise's return. Despite the command rank on her uniform (ie. the scene was filmed at ILM and that was the only jacket that was sent across from Paramount). Having helped her out in Brisbane and Sydney, in 1982, I was luckily to meet up with Grace again in LA in the months just after filming (January 1984) -- and someone else I had caught up with said, "Will you be seeing Grace? It was so great to catch up with her at the [ST III] wrap party."

"Why was Grace at the wrap party?"

"Oh. I did not tell you that she's in the movie."

When I saw Grace, I told her that I had accidentally found out. And she was so glad not to have to pretend. She didn't tell me any plot, of course, but she did intimate that her new rank was much higher than Yeoman/Chief.

When the movie came out, we saw that it was a Commander insignia.

Interestingly, and totally coincidentally, Rand is an extra character in Vonda McInyre's ST II novelization, even though she wasn't in the script nor the movie. Rand does not appear in Vonda McIntyre's ST III novelization, but... there was a reference at the end of Vonda's ST II that the cadets and injured crew were being transferred to the USS Firenze. So obviously Rand accompanied them and arrived home early.


Grace Lee Whitney by Ian McLean, on Flickr

 

[FredH]

I seem to remember some other battle that took place between the two films…

There were tons in the comics, of course; but iirc, Saavik’s attack was very shortly before the STIII adaptation.

 

[Therin of Andor]

There were tons in the comics, of course; but iirc, Saavik’s attack was very shortly before the STIII adaptation.

Yes, and skirmishes with the Mirror Universe.

 

[FredH]

Yes, and skirmishes with the Mirror Universe.

Certainly — it’s just that I remember the Saavik thing as being right before TSFS. (I could be wrong, it’s been 42 years.)

 

[JonnyQuest037]

Forgetful ILM artists not working from accurate continuity polaroids.

Or it was a conscious change because of the new story they were telling.

Not every single continuity "error" is because somebody made a mistake. It's just as likely that somebody said, "Let's make the Enterprise look as damaged as possible because it'll be more effective for this scene." Nobody sitting in the theater watching TSFS for the first time in 1984 was sitting there with stills from TWOK to compare what the Enterprise looked like.

When they were designing the rec deck for TMP, Andrew Probert pointed out that the set they'd designed couldn't fit into the ship. Production designer Harold Michelson rightly pointed out that nobody was going to be sitting in the audience with a slide rule. The same principle applies here.

These are works of fiction and not every detail has to flawlessly match every other detail.

 

[DarrenTR1970]

Has anyone seen We Travel By Night's video assessing the damage done to the Enterprise by Reliant in STII.

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[publiusr]

Certainly — it’s just that I remember the Saavik thing as being right before TSFS. (I could be wrong, it’s been 42 years.)

I think an attack on Enterprise happened outside DC.... written elsewhere

 

[MeltedMetalGlob]

Personally, I blame the Grissom for the additional damage.

Hear me out on this- I read Vonda McIntyre's novelization, and it makes it clear that all the various galactic governments became aware of Genesis after an entire nebula vanished. It isn't much of a stretch to think that they were well aware of two Federation ships taking potshots at each other.

With that in mind, the Federation sent the nearest ship (the Grissom) to investigate. With the Enterprise limping along to home base, ol' Esteban probably figured it was a free-for-all and thought: "Hey, if the great Admiral James T. Kirk thinks he's going to put one over ME, he's in for a big shock! Helm, raise shields and HIT 'EM WITH EVERYTHING WE GOT!"

Luckily, cooler heads prevailed, but not before Grissom got in a few licks.

This would have given us this opening scene in the movie:

In the original script, there would have been an additional line of dialogue when Kirk mentions the Grissom on the way to the Genesis planet: "Will she join us... or fire on us... like last time?"

Real-world explanation: Harve Bennett wanted a recurring joke with Kirk yelling someone's name in every film, but Shatner liked the above dialogue so much that he took it for himself for later in the film. Necessary changes were made, and we ended up with what we got.

Side note: Please do not take this post seriously.