No I've seen starry sky from outside of city, but never noticed the disc.
I've read that you can't see the galaxy from space because it's too faint. All the photos that show it are supposed to be enhanced.
The Missing Milkyway
- Thread starter YARN
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No I've seen starry sky from outside of city, but never noticed the disc.
I've read that you can't see the galaxy from space because it's too faint. All the photos that show it are supposed to be enhanced.
YARN
Fleet Captain
No I've seen starry sky from outside of city, but never noticed the disc.
I've read that you can't see the galaxy from space because it's too faint. All the photos that show it are supposed to be enhanced.
You're in the Milky Way. And this is why you never "notice the disk." Rather you see it on edge so it looks more like a bar of light.
And yes, you can see it with the naked eye at night. Photos tend to collect more light, but the Milky Way got its name from ancient observers (i.e., it was named before the creation of telescopes or photography!).
Somebody lives in a city.
No I've seen starry sky from outside of city, but never noticed the disc.
I've read that you can't see the galaxy from space because it's too faint. All the photos that show it are supposed to be enhanced.
You're in the Milky Way. And this is why you never "notice the disk." Rather you see it on edge so it looks more like a bar of light.
And yes, you can see it with the naked eye at night. Photos tend to collect more light, but the Milky Way got its name from ancient observers (i.e., it was named before the creation of telescopes or photography!).
Fair enough. I've never seen the milky trace across the sky personally. I'll try to notice it next time I'm out in nature
EDIT: I know I'm in Milky Way
No, they casually overlook other details.
YARN
Fleet Captain
EDIT: I know I'm in Milky Way
Sorry, I know you knew that.
It's just that reminding yourself that you're "in the disk" gives the proper spacial orientation to remember that we the galaxy on edge (and thus we can never see the circular shape of the disk).
Or if there's a bright white starship in the same picture with the Milky Way!
Really, the bigger fault in Trek starscapes is that the stars are visible at all. Human eye should not be able to cope with the brightness of starships and the dimness of stars at the same time. And certainly the eye should not be able to see colors in nebulae, these being even fainter.
Now, if you get jettisoned from your starship and float all alone in your spacesuit, the battery goes out and you lose your helmet display... Then you could start to see stars. And eventually, you will see the Milky Way as well. And the colors in the nebulae, if you are very lucky.
You can see some of this effect in NASA photographs showing space hardware along with space, although admittedly the cameras and films used there are even poorer performers than the human eye in this respect. Stars just don't mix with starships.
Timo Saloniemi
I think UPN is more to blame than the producers for the lack of continuity in the depiction of the ship's condition and environment. We know the network wanted a show that was like TNG and that was episodic rather than serialized. Producers can only do what the networks allow them to do, which is why the syndicated DS9 was able to push the boundaries so much more than the network-bound VGR and ENT.
Still, the larger problem is that so many makers of space shows don't bother to do the research about space. They figure most of their audience won't know the difference anyway so they can make up whatever they want. But they're missing an opportunity, because science reveals so much awesome stuff about space that could be so much more amazing to see onscreen than the familiar cliches that most screenwriters fall back on when they don't do the research. Like I said, if the show had represented the conditions of the inner disk more accurately once Voyager got there, it would've been visually spectacular, and could've had a major impact on the storytelling, because the star systems would've been much closer together and thus they would've been passing through a far more densely populated region of the galaxy, posing different problems and challenges than they faced in the outer-rim boondocks of the first three seasons.
Still, the larger problem is that so many makers of space shows don't bother to do the research about space. They figure most of their audience won't know the difference anyway so they can make up whatever they want. But they're missing an opportunity, because science reveals so much awesome stuff about space that could be so much more amazing to see onscreen than the familiar cliches that most screenwriters fall back on when they don't do the research. Like I said, if the show had represented the conditions of the inner disk more accurately once Voyager got there, it would've been visually spectacular, and could've had a major impact on the storytelling, because the star systems would've been much closer together and thus they would've been passing through a far more densely populated region of the galaxy, posing different problems and challenges than they faced in the outer-rim boondocks of the first three seasons.
Even in its later seasons, Voyager still relied heavily on stock shots from the first season featuring physical models which would have been very difficult to modify. Even if the new CG shots for the episodes had featured "realistic" depictions of space, it would just clash with the plain star field seen in the stock shots.
Besides, all things considered, not properly depicting what space should look like is a minor error for any Trek series, or sci-fi TV show or movie in general. And when you get down to it, sometimes realism can get in the way of telling a story.
Besides, all things considered, not properly depicting what space should look like is a minor error for any Trek series, or sci-fi TV show or movie in general. And when you get down to it, sometimes realism can get in the way of telling a story.
Not that difficult. After all, the ship shots were matted into the space backgrounds in the first place. It wouldn't have been any harder to matte the same ship footage against a different background -- the same way they routinely matted the same shots of Voyager in orbit against different planet backgrounds. Sure, it was cheaper to recycle the old stock footage than to composite a new stock library, but it was strictly a matter of money, not difficulty.
As I've said three or four times now, it's not just about scientific accuracy. It's about the visual and storytelling opportunities that they missed. In my experience, doing the scientific research does not get in the way of stories -- it inspires new story ideas that one might otherwise never have thought of. I mean, think about it. Current theory suggests (though this wouldn't have been the case at the time VGR was made, so this is just an example for the sake of discussion) that since star formation went faster in the denser inner regions of the galactic disk, the conditions necessary for the evolution of life could've begun to arise there a couple of billion years sooner than they did out here in the sparser portions of the disk. So that part of the galaxy could be home to many more immensely ancient civilizations, far more densely packed than in our part of the galaxy. There's enormous storytelling potential there, potential that would never occur to a writer who didn't know that about the galaxy.
Creativity does not emerge from a vacuum. It's about taking what we know and extrapolating from it, building on it. So greater knowledge enhances creativity rather than limiting it.
Okay, I see you're point. Although, Voyager episodes (and all Trek episodes if we're honest) were primarily action/adventure stories or character pieces more often than they were scientifically based. Space, most of the time is just a setting. Hell, TOS is essentially a US Navy ship in space. Most of the time the storylines we see in the various Trek shows don't require space to look like anything other than a generic star field and that's what we get.
^No, you're still not seeing my point. It's not just about the science. It's about story opportunities. The point is that the science can be a great source of ideas for stories and settings. That's always the most important thing in fiction, serving the story. And drawing ideas from science can be a great means toward that end, because it can give you new and fresh ideas.
The problem with mass-media SF is that it tends to recycle the same tropes and ideas and settings over and over because its creators are mainly just drawing on earlier mass-media SF. So their pool of inspirations is limited to what's come before. But real science has suggested a bunch of new ideas that have never been tried in mass-media fiction, ideas that could expand the storytellers' repertoire and give them new options for telling new and intriguing stories.
Yes, space is a setting, but a setting can create interesting story possibilities. You make the analogy of a Navy ship -- well, an episode about that ship in New York Harbor or Hong Kong would be a very different story from an episode about that ship in a remote South Seas atoll. Setting is not plot-neutral. Varying the setting and environment can give you a lot of diverse storytelling possibilities if you choose to take advantage of them. It's not just about what the visual background looks like. It's about how the environment shapes the situations the characters encounter and creates new and different ideas for stories. Treating every part of the galaxy as identical and interchangeable is as much a wasted story opportunity as treating every country and region on Earth as identical and interchangeable, writing a story in the heart of the city the same way you'd write one in the depths of a mountain wilderness.
The problem with mass-media SF is that it tends to recycle the same tropes and ideas and settings over and over because its creators are mainly just drawing on earlier mass-media SF. So their pool of inspirations is limited to what's come before. But real science has suggested a bunch of new ideas that have never been tried in mass-media fiction, ideas that could expand the storytellers' repertoire and give them new options for telling new and intriguing stories.
Yes, space is a setting, but a setting can create interesting story possibilities. You make the analogy of a Navy ship -- well, an episode about that ship in New York Harbor or Hong Kong would be a very different story from an episode about that ship in a remote South Seas atoll. Setting is not plot-neutral. Varying the setting and environment can give you a lot of diverse storytelling possibilities if you choose to take advantage of them. It's not just about what the visual background looks like. It's about how the environment shapes the situations the characters encounter and creates new and different ideas for stories. Treating every part of the galaxy as identical and interchangeable is as much a wasted story opportunity as treating every country and region on Earth as identical and interchangeable, writing a story in the heart of the city the same way you'd write one in the depths of a mountain wilderness.
One of my favorite shots in all the franchise is the Enterprise-D visiting another galaxy in "Where No One Has Gone Before." The really was a sense of exploration, greatly helped by a graphic that looked unlike anything seen on the show before (or since, in hindsight), with all that nice cosmic traffic and business going on in front of them. Funny thing about Voyager is that it had 10+ years of special fx technology ahead of TNG.
Well, VGR did something similar in "Night," the glorious vista that greeted them when they emerged from the void -- but then by the next week they were right back to the same old boring starscapes.
This is Berman and Braga we're talking about, the guys who didn't want to pony up money for soundtrack music on Enterprise at one point. I'm sure whatever time and cost thats involved in creating accurate starscapes for Voyager they would consider lost on 99% of the fans since 'stars and stars'
No, you can't plug this into a kneejerk "Berman & Braga are evil" narrative, because it's industrywide. As I said, SFTV/film creators in general just don't do the research, with a few very rare exceptions. And that's why screen SF is so limited next to prose SF, where the real imagination is.
Clark Terrell
Lieutenant Commander
Christopher's right. Anyone who's read science fiction literature knows its much more detailed and imaginative than television (and in some cases, film). Blaming Berman and Braga for something that's been an issue for years isn't fair, no matter what Voyager's flaws might be.
Right, I was just bagging on the killer B's because I find fun, but regardless, but a changing starscape to suit the specific area of space for a specific episode or set of episodes is a production cost that would get deleted in almost any show. Cool though it may be.
But it's not a matter of a single episode -- if they'd done it, it would've been for every episode in the last two and a third seasons, because that's how long they spent near the Central Bulge. So you'd only have to make one set of new backgrounds and could use it for 60 or more episodes -- which is longer than many entire television series run! It would be a one-time cost that would be amortized over the rest of the series, and that's hardly prohibitive.
It's far from unusual for a series to add to its library of stock shots in later seasons -- like when TNG switched from the 6-foot Enterprise miniature to the 4-footer, or when DS9 introduced the Defiant, or when VGR phased out the miniature in favor of the CG model. The only difference is that they wouldn't be able to use the existing stock shots, but they could still use the original FX elements of the ships against bluescreen, or the original animation of the digital model; they'd simply have to composite it against a different background, which -- as I already said -- is no more complicated than matting an existing orbit pass against a different planet every week.
Besides, the whole nature of Voyager dictated that they'd have to abandon parts of their stock library as the series went on. For instance, they couldn't use stock shots of Kazon ships after season 2, or Vidiian ships after season 3. So a degree of planned obsolescence was already built into the show's budget and logistics.
So there's no reason they couldn't have made this change if they'd chosen to. The will just wasn't there. Maybe it just didn't occur to them, or maybe they didn't trust the audience to understand a starscape that didn't look just like every other starscape they've seen in screen sci-fi for decades.
I loved the shot of the Enterprise-D emerging near the center of our galaxy in "The Nth Degree", brought there by an "upgraded" Barclay. There were LOTS of stars visible, swirling nebulae, a stunning background to convey that they were somewhere else.
I always thought that was a missed opportunity in Voyager. As they neared the galactic center, they should have headed for the Cytherian homeworld, in hopes of a quick trip home. Heck, when they re-established contact with Earth via the Pathfinder Project, Reg should have thought of it and mentioned it to them. They had the records of their travels in the Delta quadrant to trade to the Cytherians for their passage. The writers dropped the ball ignoring this bit of continuity, even if they didn't want to use that easy ending to the series. Could have at least given some hope and purpose to a story arc as they searched for the Cytherians.
