bad FX shots...

[RobertScorpio]

We love to gloat about the better FX shots in the various Star Trek incarnations. But what are some of the worse, and yes, TOS's FX are eligible, though we must realize they were done back in the stone ages...

One shot I never liked? Q's "Fence" in ENCOUNTER...It just looks like bad animation, and it was. But it really doesn't hold up over the years, IMO.

This one may seem controversal..but oh well. In WAY OF THE WARRIOR when the Vorcha is chasing the Defiant, and they do that scene where they show the two ships looping? The Vorcha and the Defiant are the same size, and it just isn't good..nitpicky, I know...but oh well...

As for a movie effect shot that aint happening? Star Trek V has many, but for me its from Insurrection. The scenes when Data and Picard are singing? The shots of their ships look so cartoony, its laughable.

What are some of your selections? Which FX shots, space ships or others, that just didn't work out?

Rob

 

[22 Stars]

- ST V (the whole movie). Really.
- I agree out the Q barrier, but there are other cringe-worthy effects mostly in the early seasons. Armin Shimmerman's face-in-a-box is a decent 'practical effect' but looks very very corny. Also, anytime they did the cgi 'ball' e.g. the plague ship in Haven I think, it looks lame.

 

[sbk1234]

I don't want to t urn this into a TFF bashing thread, so I'll just mention the worst from that flick, which was Kirk falling off the mountain, and spock catching him. That would have been bad for TOS.

I was giong to also mention the plague ship from Have. it looked like a bad CGI ship, which is what it was.

I think it was from the epidode where they were being attacked by the automatic weapons and Geordie was in command. They take the ship into the upper atmosphere so the cloaked weapon will be visible. Juat looked bad.

 

[Anticitizen]

I feel that the effects in TOS were better than early TNG in terms of realism. Ships were seen as points of light in the distance on the viewscreen - thousands or hundreds of thousands of kilometers away - and when ships exploded, there was a brilliant flash of light, then nothing. Which is what would happen if antimatter went up in space. I rather liked how the light-flash would illuminate the bridge, and everyone would flinch from the brightness. Good dramatic effect.

In TNG, ships fought at distances measured in mere meters, and when ships exploded, there was an awful superimposition of a bag of kerosene being lit laid over the ship model.

 

[RobertScorpio]

I agree Anti..I think TOS's effects are, for them most part, better than TNG's first season effects, and some of season two's.

I also thought the CGI Gorn was awful, and as for TFF? It may have had bad effects, but Nemesis, IMO, was actually worse because they had a far bigger budget. Some people like NEMESIS's effects, but I don't.

And...as usual, I will state here that TFF is a better movie than Nemeis.

Both movies have iffy plots, and iffy effects...the one thing TFF has, IMO, all over Nemesis are good character moments. Plus, Sybok, IMO, is a far more interesting character than Shinzon...

Rob

 

[Anticitizen]

Agree on all points.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Agree on all points.

you and me against the world, eh? Seems like it on this point...

Another bad effect i thought of? Those miniture sets in Encounter, that are fired upon at the end i think, didn't come off so hot. They looked like miniture!!!

Rob

 

[Myasishchev]

I watched "Timescape" yesterday, and holy shit can those guys not stay still.

 

[Nardpuncher]

I watched "Timescape" yesterday, and holy shit can those guys not stay still.

I love the way you put that!

 

[Alidar Jarok]

I agree Anti..I think TOS's effects are, for them most part, better than TNG's first season effects, and some of season two's.

I also thought the CGI Gorn was awful, and as for TFF? It may have had bad effects, but Nemesis, IMO, was actually worse because they had a far bigger budget. Some people like NEMESIS's effects, but I don't.

I think the best thing Nemesis has going for it is its effects. I thought they were well-done compared to everything else. Sure, they're just standard CGI, but I don't think there's anything noticeably flawed.

 

[RobertScorpio]

Yeah, you're not alone in that opinion. But for me they were cartoony, and having come after the Star Wars movies, they just seem flat and 'made for TV'. Phantom Menace, which I think had some great space effects, had been made four years earlier and Nemesis effects just seemed like updated BAB-5 effects....

Rob

 

[shadowedgalaxy]

insurrection, totally. There wasn't much of an effort put into the cgi effects; for example, the Enterprise is all-gray, with only a few other colors here and there

 

[scotpens]

. . . I also thought the CGI Gorn was awful . . .

What CGI Gorn? The only CG effect added to the Gorn in the remastered "Arena" was to make his eyes blink occasionally.

One bad effect in TOS that really stood out was at the end of "Catspaw," when the aliens Sylvia and Korob are revealed in their true forms as little birdlike creatures. They were obviously puppets -- with visible strings! (The strings were digitally erased in the TOS-R version.)

 

[sbk1234]

I think the CGI gorn may be in reference to In a Mirror Darkly.

And RobertScorpio and Anticitizen, I too agree with you on TFF.

 

[ClayHefner]

- TNG "Redemption".
The battle between the Vor'Cha and the BOPs: a strange semi-reuse of the ST3 BOP torpedo shot (except it looked incredibly cheap this time). Everything else was bad as well (Ths could turn into a gem with redone effects!)
Also the beginning of part two of Redemption, which was a shameless reuse of the Bounty from STIV flying towards the sun, but with two hideous CGI BOP's added.
- The reuse of the St3 BOP FX (BOP facing E) copied into the token early TNG starfield, in "A Matter of honor", again looking embarrassingly cheap.
- TNG "The Defector": Uncloaking CGI BOP's
- The Iconian surface in TNG "Contagion"
- any holodeck planetscape in TNG season one
- The shuttle exiting the E and landing at station Darwin in TNG"Unnatural selection"

 

[RobertScorpio]

I think the CGI gorn may be in reference to In a Mirror Darkly.

And RobertScorpio and Anticitizen, I too agree with you on TFF.

Yes..the enterprise CGI gorn...the Gorn from Arena freaked me out then, and freaks my son out now...Arena is a great episode...

Rob

 

[Pat]

Agree on all points.

you and me against the world, eh? Seems like it on this point...

+1 here. TFF is obviously and clearly a far superior film to NEM.

 

[T'Girl]

The episode where the Enterprise D strikes a cosmic string and Deanna is in command (I hope I'm remembering right), Riker removes Data's head and goes to engineering with it, Data's body is busted somehow. Riker would prop the head up and Data would talk. This is out of the 1950's scifi.

. . . I also thought the CGI Gorn was awful . . .

The slow relentless Gorn from "Arena" was scary, the fast one from Enterprise was kind of dopey. Once had a crocodile slowly advance on me across a mud flat, that's fear.

 

[Phily B]

The explosions.

Oh god the explosions.

 

[I am not Spock]

-Stock footage pees me right off. TNG was full of this. They reused the 'Yesterdays Enterprise' space battle footage between the Ent D and the birds of prey in just about every subsequent Klingon/Ent battle in the show!

And the TUC footage of the Duras sisters BOP blowing up in Generations. Very noticeable.

And the final Dominion War battle in DS9. Loads of stock footage.

- The space FX in Insurrection. The Enterprise flying over the solar collector at the end is particularly bad.

-The orbital tether in VOY's 'Rise'. It looks like a B grade 50s sci fi film.