Is the USS Vengeance more powerful than the Enterprise E?

In the new Trek game, when you're given a mission internal to the ship, the waypoint appears showing how far away you are from the location. And judging from the distance (accurate to 10ths of a meter) across the Enterprise you are, it's consistent with the 725m length.

Also, you get to walk around the new shuttlbay, it's big but you get a better sense of how it's put together, the same with the rest of the ship as you progress through it.

 

No, it won't.

It's not only the shuttlebay. The bridge window, the turbolift plaza behind and down the core of the saucer, the airlock sizes, even the deck spacing and window rows require a ship of 725+ meters in length.

My explanation? "They built them bigger in those days"

 

It is rather impossible to compare the two universes- in the Prime (most of the time) ship design was carefully thought out by teams of people who cared, in the new movies it is all based on what looks cool.
JJA wanted to make a complete break from the original series/movies and give his work a unique look and feel. Comparing the two universes in terms of technology is futile...

 

You're suggesting that Abrams' people don't care about their work?

I'm afraid to tell you, "looking cool" has always come first in Trek. Always. That's why engineering had a blue lava lamp - because someone thought it looked good. That's why they ripped off Star Wars' hyperspace jump in TMP, it's why ships and weapons make noise in the vacuum of space, it's why they had terribly inefficient circular monitors in the old movies, why ships explode in unrealistic fireballs with shockwaves etc etc.

I'm sure you'd be horrified to know, the USS Vengeance was designed by John Eaves, the same guy who designed the Enterprise-E...

 

Like I said, play the game, the missions themselves are rather "meh" compared to other FPS', but the chance to explore the inside of the new Enterprise and see it's layout is pretty good.

It makes more sense when you get to explore it properly, the scale even feels more settled. And it gives the back "wall" of the shuttlebay that lies against the far end of engineering as around 512m from the bridge.

 

I am well aware of John Eaves and his work- I also like the Vengeance over the NuE as a ship design.
My point is that when Probert and company designed the TNP Refit they took concepts from the original series and created a full ship with them= they worked out the internals for all the equipment, gave it realistic features like the maneuvering thrusters, figured out how the ship would actually function. This established the technology followed up on all the different incarnations which followed. The warp effect seen on screen was not the first one chosen, but the first ideas could not be resolved properly (the warp bubble with cascading energy waves between the nacelles). I do like the way they showed the ship going super-luminal and leaving the light behind it.
Sound in space, explosions and such are basically there so the audience, who are not familiar with what actually goes on up there, can relate to. Kubrick's 2001 is (I think) almost the only film to do space as it really is, the sequel had light show with thundering engines so people could see what they expected.
The new films have been entertaining, but they are not made for Star Trek Fans.

 

Indeed they are, which is why the new team has worked so hard to keep so many aspects from many other series, additional media and movies into these ones for no other reason than to give us those little moments.

And the Enterprise does have much of that detail, it's visible on the CGI model and the behind the scenes features/game give a lot more detail on the ship, it's systems, it's operation than the movies have time to.

Even the comics show us many more areas and where they are in the ship, which was worked out some time ago.

 

I do keep meaning to buy and play it at some point.

I'm a Trek fan and I got a LOT out of the new movies, more than I have out of Trek for many many years. From shield status graphics referencing Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise to this fantastic peek into the Federation of 2259, I say it was most definitely made for the fans.

 

That looked NOTHING like the star wars hyperspace jump. And that wasnt even the goal, the goal was meant to show the ship moving faster than the light it was giving off.

YEah I figured it was, I can tell his design style anywhere. Poor guy is getting prematurly senile or something. His designs are hideous anymore.

Also, Star Trek has always has tech advisers on how things could work in the future. JJ Abrams and co. are dipsticks who don't give a damn. Every time someone mentioned them working on either of the star trek movies, they say the same damn thing. They put everything little piece of crap agenda they had on their mind first over star trek, then they butchered the whole freakin franchise to some dumb level. They practically destroyed Star Trek's identity. Damn buncha kids running a fully armed starship makes a lot of people laugh. Makes me facepalm. Its the federations flagship for pete's sake. You don't give it to some stupid reckless kid. No matter what he's done. These 2 movies are the Shumacher films of Star Trek. Now I will say this one last time. THE USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-E WOULD ANNIHILATE THE USS VENGEANCE. I don't care how much you prepare for war, your technology will always be 100 years behind your 130 year future counterparts.

 

^Now now, don't hold back, tell us what you really think

 

While I disagree with Mycroft Maxwell's comment about Mr Eaves going senile - a designer can only really design what the people he's designing for want after all - I must concur with a lot of his commentary, harshly toned as it is.

Watching the extras for TWOK it struck me that there was a gentleman in charge of making sure things "looked like Trek" to a degree, that the technology is consistent. Abrams and co might have a similar individual in place now, but they haven't been and aren't trying to be consistent with what has gone before and apart from lip service design elements like the TMP Saucer or the red/blue/gold (suitably altered and in some cases used at what I would describe as a too-early point) and apart from little fanwank details (again, often incorrectly, missing the pointer including a fanwank detail) they have completely changed the look of the thing (and they have: on many levels, even if superficially one can say "they have saucers so they're Trek ships).

I honestly belive that's because the individuals running it - Abrams primarily, but also alot of others - don't really care aout Star Trek. They were never fans. Sticking to the aesthetic doesn't seem relevant to them because, why should they care? As long as it's good by their own personal standards. And that's fine, they're obviously doing well out of that, more power to them for choosing to do that. It was, I suppose, invitable.

All the same, I find myself looking forward to Abrams' Star Wars infinitely more, as I'm certain in that case he will keep the aesthetic of the universe, he will make the designs consistent with what was before, because he loves that fictional universe. He didn't love Str Trek, and that lack of love is to me very obvious in that work.

Maybe I've been spoiled by Doctor Who, whose return was made possible by those who loved the show and didn't want to tamper with the staples: Daleks still looked like Daleks, the police box remained a police box. It was very faithful, while still updating, but more importantly there was love for the program inherent in the revamped version. I can't say I feel the same love from Abrams Star Trek, but I know I'll feel it from Abrams Star Wars. My hope is that one day someone returns to Star Trek who loves it and that one can feel that love.

I've rambled enough on this point. I reiterate in the case of the original question of the thread, that Abrams has changed the fictional rules of Star Trek too much to be ably comparable, and so accurate decision making would be difficult, but I don't see the 23rd century getting that advanced even with reverse engineered scans. At best, I'd say the Vengeance is the equivalent of throwing a first gen Ambassador (an oversized Ambassador, but that's the maximum tech level I can imagine it being at) at a Sovereign, and that wouldn't turn out well at all.

 

After years of Berman Trek, if that's what happens when someone "loves" Trek (not even sure what the hell that means) then by all means, I'm happy they went with someone with no stubborn sentimental urge to keep everything so bland and run it into the ground.

 

The problem with that is, he didn't run it into the ground because he loved the show, he ran it into the ground because he did it for far too long. See the example of the renewed Doctor Who: the first new production team left after five years because they were burned out, replaced by a different team with enthusiasm.

And come on, you're clearly not an idiot so you know exactly what love means. If you mean how does that translate to the work, it's simple: you can either not love the work, not really care about the consistency with previous stuff, not really care about the intellectual property. This results in work where one can feel that. OTOH, you can have work tht has clearly been loved, where nostalgia combined with skill creates designs and a world that, while not slavish to the original, are faithful, consistent. Look at the Daleks from 2005 - they updated the silhouette but kept it too, kept the general proportions and made them look like Daleks. Not slavish, but loving.

Obviously, that doesn't do the concept justice. I doubt I can convince you, and I doubt you'll convince me, so why don't I stop posting about it and go post somewhere else on the forum.

 

Although it became the standard for movies III-VI and all pre-TNG flashbacks, TWoK's look was a huge departure for Trek at the time. From the colourful pajamas and bright Enterprise of TOS, everyone suddenly wore red military dress uniforms covered in decorations and pins. Photon torpedoes went from being matter/antimatter energy balls (as described in detail in The Making of Star Trek) to physical missiles which needed to be manually loaded by a team of people (compare this with the shower in TMP, which beamed clothing onto it's occupant!). The communicator was bigger and far bulkier than what was used in the original.

Some fans were not happy with those changes. One of the old Best of Trek books ran an article postulating a massive war or even an uprising and change of government between TOS/TMP and WoK to try and explain the changes. Letters in Interstat complained about Executive Producer Harve Bennett's creative choices and insisted he's not the right man to run Trek, that it had become unrecognizable from it's origins. It's only now, looking back over 30 years where the WoK look is the norm for the classic movies that it appears to fit in with the whole of Trek.

Is this any different to what happened between The Original Series and The Motion Picture? Nothing looks the same between he series and first movie. How is that change acceptable and this one not? Going back to The Best of Trek books again, there were fans who refused to believe TMP occurred in the same universe as TOS. Gene Roddenberry himself took the rather extreme measure of dismissing the entirety of TOS as an inaccurate dramatization of the five-year mission in the foreward to his novelization of the first movie.

Fans said the exact same thing about Bennett in '82/'83. See this thread for more.

You think so, considering George Lucas himself made the prequels look so different from the OT?

Wheras I say those fictional rules have been changed time and time again (see the videos in my sig for dozens of examples - the warp speed slowdown between TOS and VOY being the biggest game-breaker, IMO), and this is no different.

 

Thanks for diffusing me. I'm acting like a troll and need to think before I type. Hard to do with a library timer counting down my minutes on a computer. ^_^; I'm sorry.

Thought I was gonna explode. I agree, that was an unfair comment I made toward Eaves. Think I am still angry at him for massing up the Enterprise E design in Nemesis. Those Nacelles looked better where they were accidentally placed on the physical model.

Actually, I've not been that big of a Bennett fan. But at least he watched every single episode before working on the movie. NIck Meyer's decisions are what I believed really improved Star Trek. All the movies he worked on were the best ones. (II,IV,VI).

AND ONCE AGAIN STUPID ME IS OFF TOPIC...Enterprise E...kick Vengence butt with only rear weapons people!! YEah!!! Also, I'd imagine the computer power being 100 years ahead would pwn the Vengence as well. :P

 

Abrams did his research - he watched all the original episodes and classic movies and even read some Trek novels before ST'09. He also has hardcore Trekkie Bob Orci as producer and co-writer.

Perhaps you're probably thinking of Stewart Baird, who supposedly never saw a single TNG episode prior to directing Nemesis?

 

How do you get to decide what's BS or not ?

 

I actually hate that guy more than I do anyone at Bad Robot. I keep wondering what all he cut out of the James Bond films being an editor and all. Watch the Nemesis dvd commentary, and count how many times that guy ways the word "Dark".

Still off topic. Um The Enterprise E has more security personel. Punch a hole in the shields take out the skeleton crew BAM, Ent-E wins.

 

Don't even need to send a security team. Just Worf and Data. Besides, Vengeance is Abramsverse and if one thing has been shown, Abramsverse shields are appalling.

EDIT: That last comment was facetious. Still no way to compare properly.

 

Oh yeah, I forgot about Abramsverse shields never working. Shields didn't really start working til the 24th century anyway. So yeah, Ent-E wins hands down. But probably take a lot of ammo, because it seems that there's nothing volatile enough on the whole damn ship to blow it up. (Seriously guys, 72 photon torpedoes detonating on the inside (INSIDE NO ARMOR) , at the engineering section should have blown that ship straight to Hell. No Warp core? No antimatter pods? No other torpedoes to detonate? )