Anyone Find Generations "Saucer crash" to be poorly done?

[SchwEnt]

The evacuation scene was nonsense, just staged for the sake of dramatic urgency. All the kids and families should have been in the saucer anyway. Only thing I can think of was evacuating from the outer saucer sections (near the hull surface) towards the inner saucer core for more protection. It's a really big saucer, I can understand a rush to get to the center from the outer rim.

Otherwise, I didn't much care for the saucer crash. Not storywise in the film, not technically for the effect.

I'm the first one to prefer model work over CGI. Maybe it was trubble with the scaling or the lighting, but I never got a sense of the real supposed size of the saucer. I never bought into it as the real thing, I wasn't convinced. I always saw it as an effect, a model shot. I couldn't buy into it as "real", even if I still can appreciate the work that went into the scene.

The BoP landing on Vulcan in TSFS, that looked real. The Enterprise in drydock in TMP, that looked huge and real. The saucer crashing in GEN? Didn't work for me.

And even if it did, I didn't want to see Ent-D destroyed anyway and I didn't like the stupid reason it happened in the movie, so low marks all around for me.

 

[tighr]

I see no problem with evacuating people from the stardrive to the saucer. The saucer is composed primarily quarters, with a few offices. Most of the people on the Enterprise would presumably have jobs, and those jobs would probably be in the stardrive. As noted above, same with children attending school or class trips to other parts of the ship, which would probably be a common occurrence.

 

[Maurice]

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the reason the sequence looks model model-y than the motion control stuff is that at least some of the saucer crash was shot outdoors with high-speed cameras instead on in a controlled studio environment where the motion control rig can move very slowly and take long exposures to try to cheat the depth of field.

 

[R. Star]

^


2) Yes, really. Those windows are expected to survive weapon blasts, crashes and other such trauma in space. Then they break when there's a crash scene? There's no reason for that but lack of continuity and that someone on the set thought it would be "cool."

No, they aren't expected to by themselves, or phasers and torpodeos wouldn't be able to cut through a whole saucer section in those battles we saw in various Trek episodes and movies.... Of course those windows would break, Did you think the hull of the saucer would just buckle and dent without affecting the windows after impacting the ground especially when it is designed for outer space.

3) Yes, the did have to evacuate the crew. That's not what I was talking about. I was talking about the civilians. There were tons of them being moved in that scene, especially that little dramatic scene of the girl dropping her bear. The whole point of a separable ship is to keep the civilians safe in crisis situations. That means they should all be in the saucer. But evacuating the crew wouldn't be "dramatic" so yeah.

Well, they might have been in a classroom in the neck or something...

It'd explain why there was so many children without a parent present...

The windows are transparent aluminum... this is stated. If the ship supposedly crashed hard enough to shatter metal then why didn't anything else shatter? Why don't they shatter when photon torpedoes strike the ship. Those should be impacting with as much force than any collision. It's just sloppy any way you look at it and the effects people forgot those windows were supposed to not be glass.

And moving the children into the star drive for any reason is just stupid. Worf even jumps on a kid's case when he's caught wondering down there one episode. Again, the whole purpose of the saucer section is to have all the civilians in it when they need to separate on a moment's notice... so they'd have those classrooms there too. There's no other reason for this that doesn't require the main character to be stupid to explain it... the real reason is just artificial drama.

 

[tighr]

Again, the whole purpose of the saucer section is to have all the civilians in it when they need to separate on a moment's notice...

It sure would suck to be out in space on this big ol' spaceship and not be allowed to leave my room.

 

[Tiberius]

The windows are transparent aluminum... this is stated. If the ship supposedly crashed hard enough to shatter metal then why didn't anything else shatter? Why don't they shatter when photon torpedoes strike the ship. Those should be impacting with as much force than any collision. It's just sloppy any way you look at it and the effects people forgot those windows were supposed to not be glass.

Different metals break under different stresses.

And moving the children into the star drive for any reason is just stupid. Worf even jumps on a kid's case when he's caught wondering down there one episode. Again, the whole purpose of the saucer section is to have all the civilians in it when they need to separate on a moment's notice... so they'd have those classrooms there too. There's no other reason for this that doesn't require the main character to be stupid to explain it... the real reason is just artificial drama.

Maybe they were on a school excursion or something. Maybe camping beneath the deuterium tanks.

 

[beamMe]

If I had to hazard a guess, I'd say the reason the sequence looks model model-y than the motion control stuff is that at least some of the saucer crash was shot outdoors with high-speed cameras instead on in a controlled studio environment where the motion control rig can move very slowly and take long exposures to try to cheat the depth of field.

It's basically the same with the scene in Titanic when the ship breaks apart.

 

[R. Star]

The windows are transparent aluminum... this is stated. If the ship supposedly crashed hard enough to shatter metal then why didn't anything else shatter? Why don't they shatter when photon torpedoes strike the ship. Those should be impacting with as much force than any collision. It's just sloppy any way you look at it and the effects people forgot those windows were supposed to not be glass.

Different metals break under different stresses.

And moving the children into the star drive for any reason is just stupid. Worf even jumps on a kid's case when he's caught wondering down there one episode. Again, the whole purpose of the saucer section is to have all the civilians in it when they need to separate on a moment's notice... so they'd have those classrooms there too. There's no other reason for this that doesn't require the main character to be stupid to explain it... the real reason is just artificial drama.

Maybe they were on a school excursion or something. Maybe camping beneath the deuterium tanks.

It's a thin excuse and I suspect you know it about the glass. As for camping trips? That's another excuse and not a good one. If they want to camp they have... holodecks... in the Saucer... there's no reason AT ALL any civilian should have been in the drive section.

 

[Finn]

And moving the children into the star drive for any reason is just stupid. Worf even jumps on a kid's case when he's caught wondering down there one episode. Again, the whole purpose of the saucer section is to have all the civilians in it when they need to separate on a moment's notice... so they'd have those classrooms there too. There's no other reason for this that doesn't require the main character to be stupid to explain it... the real reason is just artificial drama.

That girl with the imaginary friend was right outside Main Engineering when Worf caught her. The classrooms may have been in the neck, far from engineering...

 

[Knight Templar]

Face it. The idea of "children on the Enterprise" was a bad one to begin with and was never well written.

 

[RyanKCR]

The first time I saw Generations I cringed during the saucer crash. It looked so fake to me. It looked like a model crashing into a model train setup. I was surprised years later that the saucer was as large as it was. It felt smaller to me.

 

[Tiberius]

The windows are transparent aluminum... this is stated. If the ship supposedly crashed hard enough to shatter metal then why didn't anything else shatter? Why don't they shatter when photon torpedoes strike the ship. Those should be impacting with as much force than any collision. It's just sloppy any way you look at it and the effects people forgot those windows were supposed to not be glass.

Different metals break under different stresses.

And moving the children into the star drive for any reason is just stupid. Worf even jumps on a kid's case when he's caught wondering down there one episode. Again, the whole purpose of the saucer section is to have all the civilians in it when they need to separate on a moment's notice... so they'd have those classrooms there too. There's no other reason for this that doesn't require the main character to be stupid to explain it... the real reason is just artificial drama.

Maybe they were on a school excursion or something. Maybe camping beneath the deuterium tanks.

It's a thin excuse and I suspect you know it about the glass. As for camping trips? That's another excuse and not a good one. If they want to camp they have... holodecks... in the Saucer... there's no reason AT ALL any civilian should have been in the drive section.

Maybe so, but really, chill out. It's all make believe anyway.

 

[CoveTom]

I think the saucer crash in Generations was fantastically done, and still holds up well today. I think it is a very impressive visual effect sequence even by today's standards, and far surpasses much of what is accomplished through CGI. Even though there might be some limitations in the Generations footage because they were filming outdoors and not using true motion control, I still think the 'physicality' of having a real, physical object being filmed gives sequences such as these a 'weight' that a CGI sequence just does not have.

 

[Utopianvista]

One thing about the evacuation that has always puzzled me: why was Sickbay evacuated?

Sickbay was on deck twelve of the Saucer Section, close to the centre of the deck to afford it as much protection as possible. No medical facility was ever established as being in the Drive Section, though it would make sense when the ship was separated, so as to treat casualties during a combat situation--but why would Beverly be there instead of the main facility?

Arsenal of Freedom puts Sickbay in the Stardrive section.

 

[marksound]

I just watched the crash sequence again. It looks a lot better than I remembered.

It's even better without Riker's inane barking. http://youtu.be/0U8SfW3H6j0

 

[tighr]

Yeah, I've gotta say that since this thread started, I've watched the crash on youtube probably three times, and its still very well done. There is a certain realism with models that just can't be achieved with CGI.

Probably my only complaint would be scale; when the saucer hits the treeline, the leaves are just too big for the ship.

Now that I think about it, a really cool scene would have been from the point of view of people currently in Ten Forward... rushing straight towards all those trees would have been a real trip.

 

[shapeshifter]

The skid along the ground felt a little longer than it needed to be but otherwise I liked it very much.

Behind the scenes of crashing the Enterprise
[yt]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AavTpacSxSs[/yt]

 

[DWF]

I thought the crash was awesome and very cinematic not something they could do on TV at the time. I remember when I saw it at the theater I stopped breathing and didn't realize it until the saucer secton came ot a rest. I hated seeing the ship go but it went out like a fighter.

 

[Jean Luc Picard]

I personally enjoyed watching the Bird Of Prey explode much more but thats just me.

 

[cardinal biggles]

The sequence was done about as well as it could possibly be done for 1994. The only thing that ever bugged me was that they weren't able to make the windows break on the model (which really only becomes an issue in those shots focusing on the leading edge of the saucer as it plows through the valley).