Why not just use the pilot design?

[ST-One]

Don't you get it?
We can't defend the film, yet.
We want you to, at least, give it a chance.

The ship's design itself doesn't indeed make any difference - story-wise.
But this is a new movie, with a new design-aesthetic.
Are you so inflexible that you cannot accept or even understand that a film that is made today would also use designs that are modern today?

In 10 years this film and its design-aesthetic will be as dated as the original design-aesthetic was when the time came that TMP was produced.

Of course I get it. I'm not so sure you do, though. I wasn't talking about defending the film - I was considering the double-talk of you who stand your ground about the new design of the ship, doing everything you can to dismiss and chide anyone who questions the decision or the need to change it, while in the same breath saying that the ship design doesn't matter. Obviously, it does - to you, it matters that you get the new design, the same way it matters to others that they get the old one. What you really don't get about me is that no matter how many times I say it, you don't seem to comprehend that it's not about the ship design itself, but the illogic that "updating" it, while keeping it indistinguishable by non-fans from the original, will somehow not signal to these non-fans that this is still the same ol' Star Trek that they don't care about in the first place. As long as the ship looks something like the original, it's a detriment to their stated goals, just as calling it Star Trek is a detriment.

I don't need to give the new design "a chance" because there's no reason to - it's not the problem. It's everything else around the ship - the flash, the pomp, the tired clichés of time travel and resets - that are the problem. I don't have to see the movie to know they're there - the movie's creator has told us so. The new ship is just a symptom, not the disease.

And I hardly think that pointing this out is any more inflexible than the strident insistence that we simply accept everything that's new or we "just don't get it," post after post after post, or the ridiculous notion that it's more creative to throw out good work and reasonable restrictions than to find a way to create a fresh approach within them - it's more creative to achieve the latter, and the results are usually a lot more convincing.

No, it just results in more YOY, ENT and Insurrection and Nemesis
I don't want just a rehash of the same old stuff, not even design-wise.
Even though non-fans will not see much of a difference, they will at least see a modern design and recognize it as such.

Young minds, fresh ideas.
New movie, new design.

 

[Trekker4747]

From what's I've seen, Starfleet doesn't look for a fight, but oh boy, do they get picked on. Since life is very valuable to the Federation, and saving lives is "in universe", the bridge (where the people with the most experience, command codes, orders, valuable info etc. as well as the command hub for all the ship are located, should be protected regardless of the ship's function.

We've seen days of encounters with them and even a small protion of those (excluding DS9's war) were battles out of years and years in space.

Seems to me battles are pretty darn rare.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

Okay Why are so many peolpe arguing over if the ship can be built on the ground or where the bridge should go. This is a thread about if they should have used the pilot design of the ship or not!! Can we please stay with that topic?

If you really want to fight about where they should have or shouldn't have built the damn ship can you please start a thread on that instead of derailing this one.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

This is a thread about if they should have used the pilot design of the ship or not!!

No.

 

[sebialex]

This is a thread about if they should have used the pilot design of the ship or not!!

No.

I second that.

 

[Ptrope]

No, it just results in more YOY, ENT and Insurrection and Nemesis

Lack of creativity and commitment are the causes of those, not the existing continuity. You people think just because TPTB are starved for imagination that everyone is.

I don't want just a rehash of the same old stuff, not even design-wise.
Even though non-fans will not see much of a difference, they will at least see a modern design and recognize it as such.

I doubt it, honestly. They'll see a 40-year-old ship the way they think it looked; the whole point of non-fans is that they don't have the experience to know the difference. The new design is not enough different to really matter to anyone other than someone who is more than passingly familiar with Trek - the audience that Paramount isn't trying to capture with this film, in other words.

Young minds, fresh ideas.

In Hollywood? Right . The same "young minds" who are remaking everything lately because they can't seem to come up with an original idea. I don't know if you've noticed, but young minds in America, at least, aren't demonstrating a whole lot of thought, period; if it can't be TXTed, it's too complicated for them.

 

[Qonos]

I have no problem with scantily-clad women (neither did TOS) nor visualgasms. I like the new ship design okay - the more I see it the more I like it. I won't ever like it as much as I did the original (or the bridge design, for that matter), and it would have been nice to see the old girl mostly unchanged, but the new one is fine.

I just disagree with anyone who thinks that the fundamental design of the old ship is unattractive and couldn't possibly work in a modern movie.

But the fundamental design is STILL there. Sauce section, Connecting Dorsal, Secondary engineering hull, Pylons, and Warp Nacelles. That is the FUNDAMENTAL DESIGN of the Enterprise. Yeah she's got some more details to that Secondary hull. They've made it more streamlined. They actually added something that looks like it could collect Hydrogen particles to the Nacelles. It is the TOS Enterprise in the basics that it needs to be, but people follow so blindly to "What they know" and "How it was" that they seen nothing but red when they look at this new design. I can say I watched in a Mirror Darkly and I wasn't impressed with the Defiant (a constitution class ship) It didn't look like it fit at all in the story, but I let it go because the story was engaging. And Trek should always be about the Story first. ALWAYS...

 

[Captain X]

So do 90% of Federation starships.

 

[JuanBolio]

I have no problem with scantily-clad women (neither did TOS) nor visualgasms. I like the new ship design okay - the more I see it the more I like it. I won't ever like it as much as I did the original (or the bridge design, for that matter), and it would have been nice to see the old girl mostly unchanged, but the new one is fine.

I just disagree with anyone who thinks that the fundamental design of the old ship is unattractive and couldn't possibly work in a modern movie.

But the fundamental design is STILL there. Sauce section, Connecting Dorsal, Secondary engineering hull, Pylons, and Warp Nacelles. That is the FUNDAMENTAL DESIGN of the Enterprise. Yeah she's got some more details to that Secondary hull. They've made it more streamlined. They actually added something that looks like it could collect Hydrogen particles to the Nacelles. It is the TOS Enterprise in the basics that it needs to be, but people follow so blindly to "What they know" and "How it was" that they seen nothing but red when they look at this new design. I can say I watched in a Mirror Darkly and I wasn't impressed with the Defiant (a constitution class ship) It didn't look like it fit at all in the story, but I let it go because the story was engaging. And Trek should always be about the Story first. ALWAYS...

Really? I thought the Defiant looked great!

 

[Qonos]

I do not mean to question anyone's aesthetic sense, but the crowd of today need some eye-candy, hence the scantly clad women and the visualgasms.

Today's crowd are bunch of drooling mouth-breathers who need dazzle and entertainment spoon fed to them with airplane noises.

Trek is better than that.

No it isn't really. Gene Roddenberry was an amazingly mediocre television writer. Yes folks he made his career writing televisions shows. Gene Roddenberry was a writer for TELEVISION, not a movie writer. Not a Serious Science fiction writer. Infact he did MORE Cop Shows and westerns than Sci-fi. Star Trek was sold to Desilu as a Wagon train to the stars. In other words a western in space.

http://www.imdb.com/name/nm0734472/ Gene's IMDB page.

Out of all the shows he worked on he only had Lasting success with Star Trek. Earth: Final Conflict and Andromeda came along based on story outlines he wrote after his death. There are tons of Sci fi writers who've done it better, some of them helped him with TOS and he alienated alot of them later in life, because he realized his real only success in his life was Star Trek.

Star Trek had it's share of Scantily clad women and Visualgasms too. Roddenberry was not below usingn sex to sell the show. In fact the only really strong female characters we got to see where Uhura, Yoman Rand, and Nurse Chapel, most of the other females were one offs or eye candy, how does that elevate Trek to a higher plane? I think most people remember what they want to remember about Star Trek rather than how it truely was. It was a fun, campy, and sometimes intelligent hour of ENTERTAINMENT. Wow there's that word again. It was thought provoking but they tried to make sure it was Entertaining firstly.

Star Trek is always what I've considered light Sci-Fi (wow seems like I was saying this in another thread) It was meant to do many things, but it wasn't meant to be overly weighted down and hard to digest. It wasn't meant to be 1984, it wasn't meant to be War of the worlds. It was meant to be decent, mediocre Television. The show was never invented for a future release to motion picture status. The show looked like it did to take advantage of television technology of it's time. That same technology is now out dated and most of it is no longer in use today. With the advent of digital recording, (one of the reasons for the Remastered Project) and High Definition technology the show will eventually become more and more dated. Yes, DS9 and Ent did good jobs with their Homages to TOS, but the discerning eye can still spot the faults. Now with everything that goes into making a movie a redesign of the ship was warranted. I will never say that this was the ONLY way to go, but it's the way that JJ and crew went, and for all everyone wants to talk about how YOU would do it, most of you lack the credibility or the connections to actually get it done the way you want so that's quite pointless.

Woulda Shoulda coulda? You couldn't you can't and you didn't so chill out.

I hope this movie blows all earlier Trek out of the water, because the fanbase deserves a good kick in the teeth.

 

[RAMA]

Sitting here near my desk is a tiny figurine of the TOS Enterprise it's the Hallmark ornament that was released a couple years ago. It sits on a little stand and if you press a button it lights up (supposed to, but this one is broken) and plays the TOS theme.

I sit here looking at this thing looking at a beautiful, iconic, design that is recognisable to any Joe on the street and is loved by near every Trek fan.

I mean, look at it:

That's a beautiful ship!

Would it have been that bad to simply just use this design (The Cage version, of course) for this movie? Why make any drastic changes to it at all? Why not give fans the awe and wonder of seeing this timeless and classic ship on a 50-foot tall screen in all of its movie-level budget glory?

I don't want to hear "it looks too 60s/cheesy." Such comments are judging the ship on its 1960s level special effects. Anyone who's looked at the ship and seen the filming minature in all her glory in the Smithsonian can tell you this ship is a BEAUTY and would've looked glorious on screen.

Abrahms could've taken "some" liberty with her, sure. Maybe give the hull a bit more texture/"aztecking", made the interiror grills of the engines glow dimly blue, different effect inside the nacelles showing the "energies" inisde.

But to take this timeless and classic design, strip her down to the barest of components and to make a that mess that he made is just a smack in the face to all of us and, frankly, is pandering to the "base" by trying to just make a radical design that'll have people drooling over sleek lines and curves and Jetsonian modernish design rather than respecting a classic.

The talents of many of our 3D artists over in Trek Art time and time again have shown what this ship can look like with some "modern inspiration" and talent and hard work in a 3D program.

Hell, Gabe Koerner's Enterprise would've been a welcome version compared to what we're getting.

But, in the end, I think seeing the *real* Enterprise in all her glory from the Original Series would've been, well...

It would've brought a tear to me eye.

Its a great ship but it belongs in the 60s and for nostalgia episodes.

RAMA

 

[sebialex]

I just disagree with anyone who thinks that the fundamental design of the old ship is unattractive and couldn't possibly work in a modern movie.

And I disagree with anyone who thinks the old ship is attractive. And I totally disagree with anyone who thinks that using the pilot ship in a 2008 movie will work.

TOS to 2008 is like Batman TV series (1960's) to Dark Knight.

 

[Qonos]

And not a reason in the world that they couldn't have used that design, as is.

Other than it was created for a tv screen instead of a movie screen two totally different projection technologies.

One breaks the image down and beams it through the air and reassembles it in a little box on a ionically charges screen. The other passes light through film and shines that light upon a wall.

Do you know why Movie projection hasn't changed much since it's inception? Because it still is one of the highest definition methods you can get today.. Imax is great but the basic tech is still the same.

Do you know why TV has gone from Cathode tubes to LCD and Plasma? To get that big screen look, TV has always been beholden to it's older brother.

 

[Qonos]

True, there is nothing on that ship which couldn't be designed today.
But that ship also doesn't look like anything which would be designed today.

The USAF, USN, Chinese Navy, Chinese Air Guard, Russian Armed Forces, and the European Space Administration would all like to have a word with you.

Pictures Please.

 

[Qonos]

Oh please. You'll be here on opening night giving us excrutiating detail on why the movie sucked...

With due respect. You do not know me. And, if anything, you're steeling my resolve NOT to see this movie at all. To this day I have yet to see Nemesis, I have not watched any but two episodes of Enterprise, and anything much past the second season of Voyager.

This movie looks, right now, like crap to me. Why would I waste my time and money on it, particularly to pander my internet rage to a bunch of fellow geeks, when I can do something ELSE with my time? That makes no sense.

Well then you could stop "Wasting your time right now" and go do "Something Else".. Those arguments always give me a chuckle.

 

[Qonos]

And you all come up with your remarks about how stuff is "kewl" looking, therefore stupid,

When I say that, I'm referencing the fact that a design is fashion over function. That's what "kewl" means.

and that those who support this film, and like some of the changes they seen are some how idiots...

I never said or implied that. I'm a very straightforward person, so I'm being entirely honest that it's a matter of only being concerned with how things look while ignoring everything else.

Its goes both ways. Don't talk down to us.

Says the guy who constantly talks down to fans of the old design. Cry me a fuckin' river, but I have zero sympathy at this point when all you or about a dozen other regulars can say is to bash the old series and its fans by calling them "TOS Fundamentalists" as if you are somehow better than them. I've got news for you then, because according to the "mainstream", you are just as big a nerd as anyone else here for watching Star Trek at all. The sooner you and the others realize that, the better.

And yet it's not seeing as the cowling over the nacelles now actually looks like it could collect Hydrogen particles which is what the front of the Nacelles were supposed to do. Where are the collectors on the TOS version?

 

[M'Sharak]

And not a reason in the world that they couldn't have used that design, as is.

Other than it was created for a tv screen instead of a movie screen two totally different projection technologies.
<snip>

Pictures Please.

Well then you could stop "Wasting your time right now" and go do "Something Else".. Those arguments always give me a chuckle.

And yet it's not seeing as the cowling over the nacelles now...

Qonos, please be sure to make use of the Multi-Quote

button when replying to several posts in a short time. Posting four times in succession as you have here may be considered spamming under the board rules. As a general practice, stick to no more than two in a row.

 

[Qonos]

No, the key words, would be "science fiction". You see, the adjective MODIFIES the noun, to be given added properties, and demands. It's modifier.

A little tower is a tower that is little. Just any tower doesn't fulfill the terms, especially considering most towers are usually tall and big. Only a little tower satisfies the criteria of a little tower.

science fiction full definition

Science fiction (abbreviated SF or sci-fi with varying punctuation and capitalization) is a broad genre of fiction that often involves speculations based on current or future science or technology. Science fiction is found in books, art, television, films, games, theatre, and other media. In organizational or marketing contexts, science fiction can be synonymous with the broader definition of speculative fiction, encompassing creative works incorporating imaginative elements not found in contemporary reality; this includes fantasy, horror, and related genres.[1]
Science fiction differs from fantasy in that, within the context of the story, its imaginary elements are largely possible within scientifically established or scientifically postulated laws of nature (though some elements in a story might still be pure imaginative speculation). Exploring the consequences of such differences is the traditional purpose of science fiction, making it a "literature of ideas".[2] Science fiction is largely based on writing entertainingly and rationally about alternate possibilities[3] in settings that are contrary to known reality.
These may include:

• A setting in the future, in alternative time lines, or in a historical past that contradicts known facts of history or the archeological record
• A setting in outer space, on other worlds, or involving aliens[4]
• Stories that involve technology or scientific principles that contradict known laws of nature[5]
• Stories that involve discovery or application of new scientific principles, such as time travel or psionics, or new technology, such as nanotechnology, faster-than-light travel or robots, or of new and different political or social systems[6]

So the basis of Sci-fi is it is speculative. It's about possibilities. So why so narrowminded? Just something for all to reflect on...

It so hard on these long post cause I think I might only comment once and then I continue reading and comment on something else. It really is an unfair rule but I will try to keep to it.

 

[3D Master]

There really is no evidence in Trek to suggest that the average citizen of Earth (or any other planet) spends much time in space (or doing anything like orbital skydiving).

Of course not, because Kirk went orbital skydiving did in a cut scene from Generation, B'Elanna did it in Voyager, and apparently they're doing it again in this movie.

There massive kilometers long space stations and starbases filled with people.

We see civilians flying about space doing business everywhere. Space bars and the like adjoining it.

But, nope there's no evidence to suggest anything of that is happening.

WE are planning those vacations and tourist attractions NOW. By the 23rd century? Tseh, I'm probably being conservative.

Back to the Navy analogy, humanity has had boats for thousands of years, but the vast majority of people on Earth or in the US do not spend significant time on the water. Sure, some people take a cruise now and then, and others like to scuba dive or snorkel on vacation... but they don't spend months at sea while living on a ship or dive deeply to repair oil rigs. Only specialists do those sorts of things, notably people in the Navy and those who work on big ships and oil rigs.

:sighs:

Space is not water.

I think that, even in Trek's 23rd century, the evidence suggests that the majority of humans live out their lives mostly on Earth or on its colonies.

No, the evidence suggests that us humans and other species are everywhere throughout space.

We only tune in to watch the adventures of those who trek through the stars.

Sadly. The civilian side of things could be just as interesting as another Enterprise saves the day story.

On the other hand, by your reckoning back in the classic era, hardly anyone did any farming. They were all strapping super heroes with divine help and adversities fighting wars and having adventures.

And yet it's not seeing as the cowling over the nacelles now actually looks like it could collect Hydrogen particles which is what the front of the Nacelles were supposed to do. Where are the collectors on the TOS version?

:sighs:

Seriously.

The TOS Enterprise does NOT have Bussard collectors. The TOS Enterprise has a space sink, aka the warp coil that compresses space in front of the ship, then there's the tube where the matter/anti-matter reactions take place, several emitters to generate the subspace bubble around the ship, and finally a space-expander, aka the warp coil that expands space behind the ship.

It's the reason why the TMP Enterprise, and the Excelsior never had any "bussard collectors", it got a row serial warp coils - a fundamental breakthrough in warp drive technology.

And then, for some reason, with the advent of the Enterprise-C generation they created bussard collectors that collected hydrogen - for whatever reason - and looked somewhat like the TOS space sinks.

 

[Qonos]

There really is no evidence in Trek to suggest that the average citizen of Earth (or any other planet) spends much time in space (or doing anything like orbital skydiving).

Of course not, because Kirk went orbital skydiving did in a cut scene from Generation, B'Elanna did it in Voyager, and apparently they're doing it again in this movie.

There massive kilometers long space stations and starbases filled with people.

We see civilians flying about space doing business everywhere. Space bars and the like adjoining it.

But, nope there's no evidence to suggest anything of that is happening.

WE are planning those vacations and tourist attractions NOW. By the 23rd century? Tseh, I'm probably being conservative.

Back to the Navy analogy, humanity has had boats for thousands of years, but the vast majority of people on Earth or in the US do not spend significant time on the water. Sure, some people take a cruise now and then, and others like to scuba dive or snorkel on vacation... but they don't spend months at sea while living on a ship or dive deeply to repair oil rigs. Only specialists do those sorts of things, notably people in the Navy and those who work on big ships and oil rigs.

:sighs:

Space is not water.

[qutoe]I think that, even in Trek's 23rd century, the evidence suggests that the majority of humans live out their lives mostly on Earth or on its colonies.

No, the evidence suggests that us humans and other species are everywhere throughout space.

We only tune in to watch the adventures of those who trek through the stars.

Sadly. The civilian side of things could be just as interesting as another Enterprise saves the day story.

On the other hand, by your reckoning back in the classic era, hardly anyone did any farming. They were all strapping super heroes with divine help and adversities fighting wars and having adventures.

No by his reckoning we only got to see what less than .0514% of the population of the federation was doing. We know there were farmers, miners, prostitutes, criminals and con-men in the future, but the show we tuned into focused on the actions of one captain and his crew upon a vessel that travelled through the most dangerous environ ever... Space.