Redesigning the Enterprise for STXII?
- Thread starter F. King Daniel
- Start date
You're essentially implying that we currently have warp technology. We don't. Not to turn this into a Treknology thread, but warp drive is obviously not your basic thrust-based propulsion like impulse drive. Faster than light travel requires bypassing normal laws of physics.
Impulse drive is a simple rocket that operates on the age-old Newton's Third Law. Warp drive bends the fabric of the universe. Call me crazy, but I expect its construction to consist of something more than water pipes.
You have already been given the answer to that. Cyke, I, and several others had the immediate reaction of "this doesn't belong", and no amount of rationalization after the fact will change the fact that that reaction occurred.
No, I'm implying that the technology we have NOW would undoubtedly by applied towards technology we will have in the future. I'm saying this because we already have nuclear fission power plants, and because fusion power plants are being designed along similar lines as their fission counterparts.
ST:First Contact suggests that warp drive will be invented fifty years from now using technology that is CURRENTLY available. Those things that are NOT currently available may not necessarily LOOK any different from something mundane. After all, there's no specific reason why a warp core should have glowing neon tubes and semi-transparent chambers with flowing swirling plasma; the same device, designed by REAL engineers, would look like a giant metal chamber covered with thermal/radiation insulation and electrical wires connected to sensors and actuators.
In other words, something like this.
Which has WHAT to do with what the powerplant looks like?
It's not rationalization, it's a scene from the movie that fits EXACTLY the requirements you just gave for an "establishing shot" or "transitional scene" between one part of the ship or the other.
But I agree, no amount of rationalization after the fact will explain why you don't like the too-real looking engineering room. You just don't, and you'll continue to hate it until they give you glowy bits and things that drop into other things and then go somewhere else.
Here's the thing, though. This is what a nuclear reactor looks like in science fiction,
And this is what it looks like in reality.
Which one you prefer is entirely a matter of opinion. But I would be less surprised to see the latter on a starship than the former.
Here's the thing, though.
This is what a ship corridor looks like in Star Trek:
And this is what a ship corridor looks like in reality:
You're completely missing the point. This has nothing to do with our personal preference or opinion of what a futuristic ship should look like.
As Cyke pointed out, "no modern day command section looks like the bridge of the JJprise".
The problem is consistency.
If they had made the bridge, corridors, transporter room, exterior, etc. follow this same "realistic", modern-day aesthetic approach, it wouldn't have been jarring. But they didn't, so it was. It's not that complicated, really.
^^^
So did Abrams.
So did Abrams.
The irony is that none of the brewery "defenders" would have complained had the ship featured a nicely designed, futuristic, clean & tidy engine room to begin with. But now we have all these silly arguments about how the brewery is so much better, when (I'd say: in fact) you wouldn't care if it looked like this instead: http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/m...00px-USS_Enterprise_engineering_concept_2.jpg
^The brewery is much more visually interesting than that. That would have been a boring TMP rehash. The other two concept pics, without obvious warp cores, were much, much better.
The funny thing is, the TOS engine room was pipes, tanks and a catwalk. The STXI engineering complex is pipes, tanks and catwalks on a much bigger scale.
The funny thing is, the TOS engine room was pipes, tanks and a catwalk. The STXI engineering complex is pipes, tanks and catwalks on a much bigger scale.
Yeah, you are saying that now. What do you think would you have said had that concept been realized instead?
"It's a TMP rehash"? I've never been a fan of glowing blue tubes in in the middle of empty rooms.
Besides, how would the water pipe sequence have worked in that engine room? I don't think Scotty would have survived a swim in that pipe.
Besides, how would the water pipe sequence have worked in that engine room? I don't think Scotty would have survived a swim in that pipe.
Scotty's pipe trip was not in the engine room. It was in the water reclamation room (okay, possibly a section of engineering but not main engineering area)
SPOCK: Security, seal the engineering deck. We have intruders in turbine section three. Set phasers to stun.
They're not going to redesign anything really. They'll add new sets as required as per scene requirements. They'll tweak some things here and there. Just normal movie changes.
*hands up in surrender* Or... perhaps a green screen? The brewery/chemical lab/Fermilab could still be used as a filming location, but use a green screen behind portions of the factory -- say, behind the vats or so -- to add that tweak without having to build new sets. After all, contemporary shows like Law & Order and the Office use it to make outdoor scenes look busier, more populated, or to look like a completely different section of the city. The green screen was used to *great* effect on the Narada and the drilling dish.
One thing about Trek engineering sections is that (with the exception of Enterprise, I think), they've always generally had something simple that showed a connection to the rest of the ship: the main door to a familiar corridor, the jeffries tubes that look identical no matter where they go. The creative powers that be have every right to use what they want and they have every right to have Engineering look the way they want, but they're asking for people to stick with them too. All I'm saying is, there's got to be a better way to incorporate that design into the ship. After all, there must be *some* reason why people were taken out of the movie by that room.
I think back to the TNG engineering section, and compared to some of the others, it seemed far too clean and (not busy enough) to be engineering. But I think back to Voyager, which seemed to be a darker, and the Defiant, which was more cramped. I suppose the colors have something to do with it (for me), and the E-D engineering and bridge are almost *too* similar in design and color.
I appreciated the hustle-and-bustle of the NX-01 engineering section though, and that's perhaps the section closest to the JJPrise engineering design.
That may be but the issue is one of style and appearance. Lots of things might be "visually interesting" but still not belong on a starship. If you look at photos of 19th century factories, they have a very different look and feel to them compared with 21st century factories irrespective, in most cases, of the activity undertaken. I.e. It would be very easy to pick factories from each time period, in almost all, cases no matter what they were making. That's the problem with the brewery. The TOS engineroom might have had similar basic components but they were presented in a futuristic style, as was the NX-01 engineroom (per Cyke101's post) though, in the latter case, with more grittiness and detail.
However, having said that, all parts of the brewery were not equally bad. In my opinion, and somewhat ironically, the best area was the watertube section. A few too many valves with hand wheels for my taste but passable because you would have to look for things like that (by the time you get to and open valves in a starship engineroom its probably blown up!).
Next was the gangway chase, though it did rub your nose in the feeling you weren't really on a starship (unless it was a starship built last week).
Worst was the decision to dump a few computer terminals in a passageway between (what I assume are) fermentation vats or something. When watching the movie originally, I thought they looked like something I had seen in a dairy plant when I was a kid. "Mood lighting" couldn't disguise that, it really stood out as
! 
Compared to the level of apparent technology in the rest of the movie I can't imagine anyone thinking the brewery overall looked right.
In summary I am all for a busy realistic looking engineroom (or any other area) but it should appear to be from the future. If you are picky it should also look like it would fit into a ship, where space (no pun intended) is at a premium.
That may be but the issue is one of style and appearance. Lots of things might be "visually interesting" but still not belong on a starship. If you look at photos of 19th century factories, they have a very different look and feel to them compared with 21st century factories irrespective, in most cases, of the activity undertaken. I.e. It would be very easy to pick factories from each time period, in almost all, cases no matter what they were making. That's the problem with the brewery. The TOS engineroom might have had similar basic components but they were presented in a futuristic style, as was the NX-01 engineroom (per Cyke101's post) though, in the latter case, with more grittiness and detail.
However, having said that, all parts of the brewery were not equally bad. In my opinion, and somewhat ironically, the best area was the watertube section. A few too many valves with hand wheels for my taste but passable because you would have to look for things like that (by the time you get to and open valves in a starship engineroom its probably blown up!).
Next was the gangway chase, though it did rub your nose in the feeling you weren't really on a starship (unless it was a starship built last week).
Worst was the decision to dump a few computer terminals in a passageway between (what I assume are) fermentation vats or something. When watching the movie originally, I thought they looked like something I had seen in a dairy plant when I was a kid. "Mood lighting" couldn't disguise that, it really stood out as
Compared to the level of apparent technology in the rest of the movie I can't imagine anyone thinking the brewery overall looked right.
In summary I am all for a busy realistic looking engineroom (or any other area) but it should appear to be from the future. If you are picky it should also look like it would fit into a ship, where space (no pun intended) is at a premium.
Nothing to add really I just wanted to say your post was like you read my mind.
I seem to recall they did EXACTLY this in the first scene on the Enterprise, the one where Spock is walking through the shuttlebay section of the ship, steps into a turbolift, and three seconds later steps out of it again onto the bridge. Abrams and crew actually projected the interior of the "factory space" on a green screen so that the turbolift could appear to move from one part of the ship to another in one continuous shot (something that has never been done before in any other Star Trek movie).
If they could just get permission to put up some greenscreens at the Large Hadron Collider, I would be a happy man.
I agree to a certain extent, except that it has alot to do with the pacing and timing of the movie and them simply not having the time to do a lot of really artful establishing shots like in, say, the opening scenes of Encounter at Farpoint. I thought they did extremely well under the circumstances, much better than PAST Treks have done actually.
As for people being "taken out of the movie," I'm forced to interpret that as simple snobbery. Again, it's a phenomenon that appears to be unique to TrekBBS and the internet fandom community which has more than its fair share of elitist strains; to this day I have never heard anyone make that comment IN PERSON.
Personally the only thing that took ME out of the movie was the willful ignorance of orbital mechanics and the fact that Enterprise and Narada twice appear to be "in orbit" but still stationary with respect to the ground.
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