Suddenly many UI artists feared for their safety
100 AU from Earth
- Thread starter FredH
- Start date
This is sort of fifty-fifty, really. I mean, fifty percent of it is fifty-fifty. The writers obviously wanted Earth to be at some distance from SB1, not right next door. But the VFX folks chose North America as their surface texture, which is what they usually do when they want to make the audience recognize Earth, and creates the uncertainty about intent...
Timo Saloniemi
It's worth pointing out that the big spacedock seen orbiting earth is often referred to as "Starbase One" in ancillary material. It was called that in the script for Star Trek (2009).
I think the easiest explanation is that it was meant to be Earth, and the VFX guys, and presumably those in the approval chain, didn't know how far "100 AU" was - they interpreted it is "somewhere in the visible background", especially given Cornwell's line about her own backyard. So they painted in Earth in the background, causing us to go "huh?"
What's poor is that this wasn't caught before broadcast, but is probably a symptom of the general VFX wobbliness.
I'm sure they'll fix it for the remastered version
What's poor is that this wasn't caught before broadcast, but is probably a symptom of the general VFX wobbliness.
I'm sure they'll fix it for the remastered version
Perhaps so, but nobody was asking that first question. The fact remains that Fateor's comment about Klingons raiding the solar system — to which you replied, prompting my own comment — was very much in the second category. You're basically saying here that your reply was non-responsive.
You brought up canon, and argued that it encompassed continuity, so we said it didn't. That didn't have anything to do with Fateor's comment.
Ah, I see the source of the consternation here. But c'mon... there is no way whatsoever that Star Trek is set in our future, nor ever was. It's plainly a different reality, one that diverged from our own at least in the 1960s, if not far earlier. Even setting aside the basic logic that the events of Star Trek could never occur in a universe where Star Trek had existed as a TV show, it was clear in story terms as far back as "Assignment: Earth," which was set in a 1968 which (very much unlike our own) was launching orbital nuclear weapons platforms. (And there are countless smaller examples.)
So the Eugenics Wars took place in the 1990s. That has always been part of Trek lore, and always will be.
Sad to say, I've read at least one review of the episode — in Entertainment Weekly, not a trivial source — where the writer specifically described the Starbase as orbiting Earth.
C'mon, how the heck does someone work professionally on a space-based science fiction show yet not know what an AU is? (Hell, how does someone finish grade school and not know what an AU is?)
Also this (with apologies for the consecutive posts)...
Way back on page one, Fateor posted,
You replied,
Fateor replied,
You replied,
That's when I weighed in with a reply pointing out that,
Further comments followed, from Christopher and others, eliciting some interesting discussion of the thematic intersections of canon and continuity, but that was the gist of it. I wasn't the poster who brought up canon, you were. The original comment that launched all this was very much about continuity, and the writers' lack of consideration for same. Your reply didn't address that at all.
Sigh. Lemme do a little thread excavation here...
Way back on page one, Fateor posted,
"...nobody from ToS to VoY references the Klingons breaking all the way through to the Sol system and almost wiping out Earth. No, the writers just fucked up."
You replied,
"The[y] have now. It's canon."
Fateor replied,
"Not in the Prime timeline it's not."
You replied,
"Sure it is. I just saw a Star Trek series which establishes that fact."
...with a sarcastic "spoiler" adding."That's how canon works."
...and Awesome Possum weighed in to add,"The fans don't get to decide what's set where. So it's canon now."
That's when I weighed in with a reply pointing out that,
"Saying 'it's part of the canon' doesn't actually help to make sense of it."
Further comments followed, from Christopher and others, eliciting some interesting discussion of the thematic intersections of canon and continuity, but that was the gist of it. I wasn't the poster who brought up canon, you were. The original comment that launched all this was very much about continuity, and the writers' lack of consideration for same. Your reply didn't address that at all.
You're confusing me with @Nerys Myk
I didn't say any of that.
I didn't say any of that.
Funny you mentioned that actually, I mentioned this particular cock up to two friends who watch the show, both have engineering backgrounds so definitely made it out of grade school. Got blank looks. I'm guessing it's not as general knowledge as us Trek nerds think it is.
Okay, granted... personally, I have spent my life as an information sponge, but I recognize that not everyone does that. I teach undergrads, so I am regularly shocked by people's limited awareness of things I think of as "general knowledge." (And I'm not even talking about science here.) But still, when you're working on a science fiction show... I'm just sayin', someone should have caught this before it got on screen.
I completely agree, but as they didn't, I'd say the best explanation is that the VFX team misunderstood the intention of the script, inserted Earth, and for whatever reason nobody caught the error. The VFX being a general weak point, perhaps the supervision of them is generally poor.
I sort of doubt the VFX artists' personal familiarity with the Astronomical Unit would be a major factor here. It's not as if they would use their own (flawed) knowledge to decide what gets shown and what doesn't.
More probably, the script clearly states that there will be an establishing shot with a Starbase, some Wreckage, and then a Planet, and the VFX folks will merely get to decide what each of those elements looks like. That is, unless the script further says the Wreckage must look like Billy Bob's Ship from episode #47 or something. And the script in all likelihood didn't say that there's a Planet that further must be Earth...
That the team would add the Planet on their own account is possible but a bit improbable; that they would decide on their own it's Earth is almost inconceivable. Then again, the previous starbase in the show did have an adjoining planet; perhaps the VFX team would assume such things go hand in hand?
Timo Saloniemi
More probably, the script clearly states that there will be an establishing shot with a Starbase, some Wreckage, and then a Planet, and the VFX folks will merely get to decide what each of those elements looks like. That is, unless the script further says the Wreckage must look like Billy Bob's Ship from episode #47 or something. And the script in all likelihood didn't say that there's a Planet that further must be Earth...
That the team would add the Planet on their own account is possible but a bit improbable; that they would decide on their own it's Earth is almost inconceivable. Then again, the previous starbase in the show did have an adjoining planet; perhaps the VFX team would assume such things go hand in hand?
Timo Saloniemi
The same way Rick Berman & Brannon Braga could do so without knowing that Rigel is a real star, I guess. The thing is, most TV sci-fi writers come from a TV background, not a science background. Just as most doctor-show writers aren't doctors and most courtroom-drama writers aren't lawyers. TV writing is its own specialty.
I think this is an important point. We, as Trek fans, are very quick to point out scientific and procedural errors in Star Trek compared to real life science and military protocol. Yet, there are whole TV shows featuring lawyers and doctors and detectives that are completely contrary to how those professions actually work and they are mega-hits. TV land isn't realistic.
Now, adding a planet to the solar system is a big error, but I can definitely see how it came about in that backdrop.
Not really. I think it's quite likely that we'll discover at least one or two new planets between Neptune's orbit and the Oort cloud within the next 300 years. Our discoveries of the past couple of decades underline how naive we were to think we'd finished discovering the worlds that orbit the Sun. I think that, within a century, we'll come to think of the planets out to Neptune as just the inner part of the Solar System.
However, it's true that whatever planets or dwarf planets we find out there will not look like Earth. That was a pure error.
Even though Stamets lost a mate and is not his previous self, he does know how to navigate. 100 AU for SB1 is fine,as it is not witihin orbital striking distance of Earth. I speculate it is orbiting the PU planet 9 .
