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The potential for amazing starship battles in Trek XI.

Lynn Minmay

Fleet Captain
Fleet Captain
Do you think we will see action that is unlike anything we've seen before?

Or would you rather they stick to the classic engagements as seen in TWOK?
 
Nothing stopping them from including a couple of tactical one on one spacebattles, but why not go all out and wow the audience with a BIG spacebattle.

Gen: exciting and dramatic, but hardly spectacular
FC: fantastic for that whole 1 minute
Ins: Meh
Nem: Terrible and it was pretty much the focus of the last 45 minutes
 
It looks like the fighting is much faster and more dynamic than anything in TWOK or any other "Star Trek" movie.

Which is good, because when we have to hold TWOK up as the zenith of Trek outer space action that's pretty sad.
 
Nothing stopping them from including a couple of tactical one on one spacebattles, but why not go all out and wow the audience with a BIG spacebattle.

Gen: exciting and dramatic, but hardly spectacular
FC: fantastic for that whole 1 minute
Ins: Meh
Nem: Terrible and it was pretty much the focus of the last 45 minutes

Really?? I thought Nemesis' battle was the best since STII. How weird.

RAMA
 
I just hope they decide to show starship weapons as being ultra-powerful instead of pathetic pea-shooters. Photon torpedoes, for example, are supposed to be multi-megaton area-effect weapons, not artillery shells that scorch a few square meters of hull plating. There has been far too much of the latter in most Trek since TMP.
 
*waits for someone to say 'but Trek isn't about space battles, its about...'*
 
Deep Space Nine and Voyager had some great space battles. To tell the truth nothing in the trailer looked any better than stuff from those shows. Special effects IMO have peaked and nothing should be surprisingly spectacular any longer.
 
Which is good, because when we have to hold TWOK up as the zenith of Trek outer space action that's pretty sad.

Don't blame Khan. He thinks in two dimensions. :(

Yet the Enterprise never moves in three-dimensions during the Mutara Nebula battle.
"Z-minus ten thousand meters. Standby photon torpedoes."

Also, just before her last volley on the Reliant, the Enterprise ascends on the Relant's stern. This would be a Z-plus maneuver.
 
Deep Space Nine and Voyager had some great space battles. To tell the truth nothing in the trailer looked any better than stuff from those shows. Special effects IMO have peaked and nothing should be surprisingly spectacular any longer.

I've been rewatching battle clips from DS9 and Voyager simply because they rock and have great pacing to them (and, I admit, I'm a battle junkie)... but comparing them even to just Enterprise shows that DS9 and Voyager's effects have aged quite a bit. And Enterprise itself was a TV show from years ago. I've much more faith in ILM about this movie, especially since they're, y'know, ILM.

-----

Anyway, I've always thought that it would be pretty simple to reconcile the slow battles of TNG with the speed of the battles we've seen in Nemesis (weapons' rate of fire notwithstanding); in that, the camera in TNG was just keeping up with the pace of the ships doing battle, where as Nemesis seemed fast b/c at times, the camera would be at a standstill or travel at a much slower pace.
 
Nothing stopping them from including a couple of tactical one on one spacebattles, but why not go all out and wow the audience with a BIG spacebattle.

Gen: exciting and dramatic, but hardly spectacular
FC: fantastic for that whole 1 minute
Ins: Meh
Nem: Terrible and it was pretty much the focus of the last 45 minutes

I pretty much agree with that. I did like the Generations battle, but as you said it wasn't that spectacular and the crash sequence does look very dated at todays standards. I feel First Contact had the potential for a great space battle, but it was far too short. I liked parts of Nemesis' space battles, but something was missing from it all. This new Trek film does have the potential for the best Star Trek battles ever. I'm very interested in how the battles are percieved from the bridge as they have that window now on the Kelvin and Enterprise, so should see hull damage and stuff from the view point of the bridge window.
 
The Nemesis space battle for me was just boring. There was no drama, no sense of excitement, or interest. The music was shockingly awful, and the visuals were terrible. Every ship was lit very badly and as such looked 'flat' and lifeless. The Enterprise-E looked like a computer game ship and the Scimitar was a black pig ugly mess.

There were a couple of cool bits in the battle, in my opinion firing phasers all the way around looked cool (although could have been demonstrated much better)... but apart from that and a couple of others it was just dull, there were so many torpedo shots everywhere that you lost any sense of excitement.

And to re-iterate... the background music during it (and most of the movie) was appallingly bad in my opinion. The CGI wasn't far behind. Thank god we've got ILM again
 
The only space battle from the first 6 movies that I like is the one at the end of TUC. Even the TWOK battle was kind of boring to me.

But I think we have an awesome potential to see some really cool stuff this time around. We finally have the technology to make those classic (well, sorta) ships go all out and whoop ass.
 
I'm looking forward to the action and battles, but the question for me is; how do they put some morality and messages in it, without annoying the youth of today?

I think the morality will be minimal, but it will be there. Those characters are so moral it would be almost impossible for them not to be.
 
I would add, however, that Abrams is starting to sound slightly p***ed off.

I think we should thank him. He's kept the thing going, and this trailer looks, not just different from every ST film, but different from EVERY film I''ve seen. Even the trailer looks different!

He's kept the thing going. I'm sure there'll be a message there, and future films might have more of one.
 
Which is good, because when we have to hold TWOK up as the zenith of Trek outer space action that's pretty sad.

Don't blame Khan. He thinks in two dimensions. :(

Seconded... I always thought that kirk's order to go z -10000 feet was to wait for the reliant to pass by


------------------> (reliant's flight path)



/|\
.|
.| (Enterprise waiting to watch some object move in a straight path)
 
I just hope they decide to show starship weapons as being ultra-powerful instead of pathetic pea-shooters. Photon torpedoes, for example, are supposed to be multi-megaton area-effect weapons, not artillery shells that scorch a few square meters of hull plating. There has been far too much of the latter in most Trek since TMP.

How would they visualize that though? If one photon torpedo has a multi-megaton explosive blast, than the explosion from one warhead would envelope the entire ship. I just don't think its visually feasible to have weapons in that magnitude, much like Star Wars claims the ships have multi-megaton weapons but onscreen we just see small explosions outside of the Death Star.
 
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