USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

Well, I entered this thread replying to someone who thought modern viewers would be fine with the old bridge because of DS9 and Enterprise.

 

Now THAT was a fun thread.
I even got to post on the last page before it was nuked.

 

It's not just a "door"... Its another turbolift.

 

They are actually Replicas made from molds of the original pieces.


(Fook, I didd it again, sorry for the mulit-posts.)

 

Whomever sent them they're gorgeous. A beautiful touch to help make the Enterprise bridge look and feel more...correct.

 

He got them made for his extremely faithful Bridge Recreation in Ticonderoga NY.
https://www.startrektour.com/
(about two hours north of me)

I'm hoping to finally get a chance to go see it this summer.

 

TrekCore has some more info, some from the startrek.com interview, some from an IGN interview

http://trekcore.com/blog/2019/04/design-secrets-of-star-trek-discovery-new-uss-enterprise-bridge/

The corridor behind the bridge was Kurtzman's idea, doesn't say why he wanted it.

The Bridge is a brand new build, as we already know, they got a new stage and they used it for that.

They originally considered doing most of it as greenscreen.

 

While I can appreciate the POV, it doesn't make it less Star Trek. Largely because we get in to authorial intent.

Now, how much weight you put in to that is up to each person, but I do not find it to be genuine way of interpreting the work if it means ignoring part of the author's process.

 

Aren't the buttons hard?

Also, how come no one wonders why they aren't labeled? Subsequent Trek shows have interfaces where officers generally know what control they're hitting.

 

Some of Spock's buttons and controls were labeled but we rarely if ever got a good look at his console and the tiniest details of his control panel.

 

I think episodic or semi-serialized suits Trek best, but I would still absolutely love a well written serialized Pike show.

 

Scrolling down on this page reveals about as good as it gets and the few that are labeled do not show up with enough resolution to read the labels:

http://www.startrekpropauthority.com/2008/06/mr-spocks-science-station-on-bridge.html

 

If not for its use elsewhere in ST land, it would've been a neat twist if Spock's classic senor display had been an adaptive aid for his dyslexia.

 

This was posted here on 2/19/18 by @Fandango831

Previously on Star Trek: Discovery

 

This looks....roomy.

 

McCoy must be there to treat the neck strain from looking up at those monitors.

 

In real life? Of course not! In our imagination, and in the Star Trek universe as established by those of previous creators? Why not?

I've always found apt this pithy description of the Enterprise's 'role' from Herbert and Yvonne Fern Solow's Star Trek Sketchbook: The Original Series (1997, pg. 6):

More than any other artifact created for the series, the Enterprise represents Star Trek. It is truly as much a character as Mr. Spock. And like its human (or organic) counterparts, it has changed its shape, but never its name; changed its capabilities, but never its mission; changed its crew, but never its character.​

To extend their analogy, we all know Saavik looks different in STIII because Robin Curtis was recast in Kirstie Alley's place. Both of their faces are Saavik's face (or rather neither are). However, this doesn't preclude Saavik the character from "changing her hairstyle" between films, just as we saw and heard explicitly remarked upon once already within TWOK itself. The same can be true for the Enterprise.

We've seen the Enterprise receive an utterly complete makeover onscreen at least once before, and moreover simultaneously had this fact cemented in dialogue as part of the plot, of which the refitting was going to be an element whether she turned out looking like this...




...or this...




It isn't required that such a concept be made directly part of DSC's story (nor even invoked behind the scenes, although it has been by some in this case) for us to imagine that TMP might not have been the first time this happened to the Enterprise. (Quite the contrary, it would be far from the first time someone imagined it wasn't.)

There is a long and rich history in Star Trek lore, both in fandom and behind the scenes, of rationalizing production design and makeup changes without those rationalizations having to be overtly referenced within the narrative as presented onscreen—or even to remotely match up to it without a lot of squinting in many cases! It's an entirely superfluous pursuit to be sure, but I don't get the need to shut it down as invalid.

It's just pretend. The pretense can extend as far, or stop as short, as we each individually please. I find it a fun arena to play around in, so long as it's kept to the edges of the fiction. (Not so much when brought to the forefront, like for a prime example the Klingon Augment story in ENT. Even "no more holographic communications...ever!" is rather pushing it for my tastes, especially because Kirk's Enterprise was always envisioned as having some form of that capability to begin with.)

As mentioned previously, Okuda and Sternbach came up with their "replaceable bridge module" concept in response to Zimmerman's redesigning of the Enterprise-A bridge from this...



...to this...




...to this...




For another instance, the original Star Trek Chronology (1991, pg. 70) summarized of the TMP Klingon change, long before there was even the merest hint of it ever being addressed onscreen:

This film marked the first appearance of the "new and improved" Klingons, using latex makeup appliances to create their distinctive forehead ridges. Makeup artist Fred Phillips created the new designs. Phillips explained that this is what he had always wanted to do for the Klingons, but could never afford on a television budget. Phillips and Roddenberry reportedly joked that the difference was because only "southern" Klingons were seen in the original series, but those seen in the movies were "northern" Klingons.​

It was always a retcon, but those behind it were never above throwing a wry bone to those fans they knew wouldn't be satisfied to simply leave it at that. As reported in Cinefantastique (February 1993, pg. 21) this very same 'wink-wink' duality would later be redeployed with the studio-mandated Trill redesign for DS9, too:

After Paramount executives reviewed the dailies of Farrell in the pilot, they issued one of their few ultimatums. The distinguishing marks on Farrell's forehead, a subtle makeup duplicating the look of the Trill as seen in "The Host," had to go, resulting in two days of reshooting. After the protracted search for a beautiful actress, the studio didn't want Farrell to be defaced by prosthetics. "There are different Klingons and now there are different Trills," joked Farrell. "Maybe I'm from the north of Trill and the other guy was from the south."​

Contemporary production comments regarding the redesign of the BoP bridge from TSFS to TVH similarly reflected this dichotomy (and implicit conflict) between the real answer and the 'real' one, with director of photography Don Peterman saying in American Cinematographer (December 1986):

"It's actually a different kind of ship than was used in III, where they built only a small part of it. They built a new ship and completely redesigned it because you didn’t see enough of it in III to really know what it was like. Jack Collis, the production designer, and I were determined to make it low ceilinged and realistic, like an old freighter type of ship."​

Meanwhile, associate producer Kirk Thatcher told Starlog (October 1986, pg. 40):

"The Bird of Prey bridge changed from Star Trek III, because that original set was so tiny, and not meant to be used for very long. So, we said, 'OK, Scotty has taken this original ship and refitted it with Vulcan parts and Federation bits.' That ship is more fun because it looks like a cross between ALIEN and Star Trek, as if there was some order here, but it all got messed around and rewired, so humans could work on it."​

These things very much can be thought about in both ways (just not too hard or too seriously in either); one doesn't exclude the other, despite them often being in contradiction. At least, I have no trouble taking either tact, or some blend of the two, as I so choose. For me, that's always been part of being a Star Trek fan, and I don't find it diminished by DSC's approach in the slightest. I feel no particular need (nor desire; see again Klingon Augments) for such thinking to be directly indulged (or indulged in) by the writers in order to engage in it myself, and to take pleasure in doing so, all using the same power of imagination that independently allows me to also pretend TOS tech was always capable of more than was shown, that the walls wouldn't 'really' have cracked if a character bumped into them too hard, etc.

I'm perfectly content to let DSC retcon however much of what came before it wants; that's its prerogative, and I've quite enjoyed its depiction thus far. Yet, I don't find anything it has shown to lead me to the conclusion that whatever the Enterprise looks like now is what she must or will look like from here all the way to TMP, in-universe. So long as there remains a gap of two or more years left between the latest depiction and the events of TOS, we can each imagine her prospective configuration(s) to our own liking, be that something closer to or further away from the original, according to our preferences. (Of course, if they were to do an Enterprise-based series that runs all the way through Pike's captaincy and into Kirk's, then we'd likely see that sort of thinking more substantially constrained. But until or unless that comes to pass, it all seems fair game to me.)

-MMoM

 

Totally agree that in-universe fan theories can explain the changes. And if people want to believe they were always the same, they can.

The photos show that Kruge's bridge wasn't the exact same one in Voyage home. But there's still the option if you want to believe they are the same.

If Scotty can reconfigure Kruge's bridge in 3 months on Vulcan by himself, there's no reason to think Starfleet couldn't do the same with the Enterprise bridge during the handover from Pike to Kirk. Aside from the loss of the widescreen viewcreen (the widescreen viewscreen is admittedly a functional advantage), nothing in Kirk's bridge is less functional in any way than Pike's except in fashion factor.

And for all we know Kirk's screen could indeed stretch to widescreen if he commanded it.

A motorola razr may look cooler and more futuristic than a samsung galaxy phone, but we all know which has more functionality.

 

Amen. As far as I'm concerned, DSC decided precisely how retro it was going to be when they were producing the pilot. Suddenly putting in a lot of '60s touches specifically for the Enterprise feels really weird. It makes it seem like earlier Star Trek is being retconned to be an anomaly; going from "In the 23rd century, things were like X" to "On the Enterprise and only the Enterprise, things were like X."

Do I wish that DSC's art style was more '60s-infused? Hell yes! Do I think that ship has sailed, and they should've been more overt with redesigning the Enterprise into their new style, or avoided showing it at all? Absolutely. So do I believe that trying to back-fill a more classic sensibility by putting all their retro touches onto the Enterprise and going from "DSC is a total reinterpretation of TOS" to "DSC is a partial reinterpretation of TOS, with the Enterprise as some kind of freak-ship that has its own uniforms and sound effects and warp nacelles," is the best or most satisfying or most felicitous choice to what DSC has already committed itself to being? Of course not.

 

Finally watched the episode so I’ve seen all the other bits of the Discoprise.

The first thing I thought was...how did JJ Abrams miss on his designs so badly. The fusion between a modern look and the TOS look was right there. This is light years better than what his team came up with.

While I still would have preferred that they used the TOS designs with very minor tweaks. What they did come up with is very good.