Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach: The New Enterprise

[trevanian]

I'm curious as to why there are desk lamps from Costco and Giant Eagle self-checkout scanners all over the bridge.

Could they have picked something more uncomfortable for the captain's chair?

I'm still trying to figure out why the Enterprise looks like concept art instead of a starship in that earthbound view ... then again, it hurts my brain to even see it in that position, so maybe I should stop asking questions and just go watch QOS again.

 

[USS Mariner]

All you need to know about the Enterprise being built on the ground:

A wizard did it.

By the way, how was the latest Bond romp?

 

[JoeRalat]

My issues are with the design of the ship and Bridge.

For me the bridge has the feel of a generic scifi bridge. Also something else was bugging me and Its hit me today, too many lights, It looks like that section of Home Depot with all the light..just too bright. I see very few things from TOS Bridge, I am trying to find some stuff, I hope to see a plaque or that Cutaway of the ship next to the lift.

 

[USS Mariner]

I'm still trying to figure out why the Enterprise looks like concept art instead of a starship in that earthbound view ... then again, it hurts my brain to even see it in that position, so maybe I should stop asking questions and just go watch QOS again.

It probably looks fake because of the grand total of four colors used in the scene: HD blue*, HD 'fire'*, black and grey.


*For some reason, when I watch any recent HD cinema, they all have a strange obsession with these two specific colors. Is it just me or have you noticed this also?

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Could they have picked something more uncomfortable for the captain's chair?

Well yeah, they could have gone with Kirk's original one. Which this one resembles in important respects anyway.

 

[USS Mariner]

Could they have picked something more uncomfortable for the captain's chair?

Well yeah, they could have gone with Kirk's original one. Which this one resembles in important respects anyway.

Well, for one, the original chair had cushions. The one looks like it has foam or something.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Rick what do you think of the new bridge?

Too busy, with too many competing shapes and textures. There doesn't seem to be a unifying theme to it all, unless one thinks of shiny metal and glass and plastic to be enough of a style. If the Enterprise-D bridge was a sedate hotel lobby, this one is a way-too-bright nightclub. Or the reception area of an ultra-modern Euro office building. Too much style assaulting the eyes and not enough practical hardware. The corridors are the same way. I watched ST: First Contact with my lunch break, and I'm much more in love with the feature bridges and sets like the later Ent-D and Ent-E, as well as Voyager. A lot more solid and believable.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[trevanian]

All you need to know about the Enterprise being built on the ground:

A wizard did it.

By the way, how was the latest Bond romp?

As close to superb as you could get, given that they were a little too cut-happy, and that Bond is still 100% miscast and they had him on too wimpy of a motorcycle. Other than that, I was more entertained than any Bond since LICENCE TO KILL in 89. I blame Forster, he enhanced it a helluva lot.

 

[USS Mariner]

EDIT: I originally aimed this at Rick, but I'll ask trevanian too.

What do you think of the extensive use of barcode scanners? Maybe the style is techno-supermarket?

 

[trevanian]

I'm still trying to figure out why the Enterprise looks like concept art instead of a starship in that earthbound view ... then again, it hurts my brain to even see it in that position, so maybe I should stop asking questions and just go watch QOS again.

It probably looks fake because of the grand total of four colors used in the scene: HD blue*, HD 'fire'*, black and grey.


*For some reason, when I watch any recent HD cinema, they all have a strange obsession with these two specific colors. Is it just me or have you noticed this also?

I'm color-blind, so I see stuff a little differently, but I do note certain 'dead' colors that don't seem to reflect environment, like they can't apply reflective qualities in a photorealistic way. Plus, movies are geting more monochromatic anyway, with everybody doing this 'shot through sunglasses' bit, so everything looks a little screwy to me.

I like watching Butch Cassidy because there is a BLUE sky in it, something that seems to be getting leached out of modern m ovies.

 

[Captain Robert April]

It's nice to know I'm in good company with regard to thinking this redesign is wrong.

Rick? Andrew? Where do you stand on the concept of building that monster entirely on the ground in Iowa? Please give details, and try to control the hysterical laughter.

 

[JoeRalat]

I can't speak for Rick, Captain Robert April, but I know that in one of the Eps for TNG, you see a shot of the Enterpise-D being built. It was not the whole ship, but parts of the ship. Also the ship was going to land on the planet, but it was not in the budget for TOS, so thats how we got the transporter. Also voyager has been seen on planets. So the idea of a starship on a planet, has been seen in trek.

Now in the TNG Version you see parts of the ship. The reason why I think that is the best thing to do is this, the parts that are ready, you send into space, which makes room for new parts to be built. If you wait for the whole ship to be built, then it would take YEARS! to be able to make one ship and then start another one. I find it hard to believe that you would have tons of ship yards that size all over earth. Also who would want a huge ship yard like that in there backyard?...A ship yard that you can see form miles and miles and miles away!

But for movie...it's a cool shot.... (You see I can be fair about the movie)

 

[Kaziarl]

I think I remember reading a book, so its technically not cannon, where it was stated that the enterprise underwent a refit before Kirk took command. So that could explain the new design, and people would have their trek unity. Just don't ask me which one, I've read so many over the years that I couldn't tell you specifically if my life depended on it.

 

[Timo]

Well, the ship shown in most TOS episodes was slightly different from the ship shown in the first pilot episode, "The Cage". Since it was later decided that "The Cage" described events taking place a decade in the past of TOS, it was a natural idea to assume that the ship had been refitted in between.

Some shots of TOS still showed angles of the "The Cage" ship that looked different from the regular TOS ship. Mainly, the nacelle aft ends looked different in the opening credits (and occasional episode stock footage) shot where the ship approaches the red planet. Some ignore this, some say the ship has variable geometry or something.

So we can either ignore the STXI differences, or say they are another refit, or even claim that there is some variable geometry involved. But it does look that the movie will overlap the "The Cage" and TOS timeframes: there won't be a chance in the new timeline for the ship to look like those flown by Pike in the pilot or Kirk in the TV show.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Python Trek]

Since Pike's Enterprise looked nearly identical to Kirk's Enterprise, then Abrams and Co. should've made Robert April the captain in this film. His Enterprise could've looked quite different before it was refitted for Pike. Since I believe that Pike will be crippled in Trek XI, giving Kirk his chance to command, they sort of "had to" go with Pike instead of April...........

 

[Kaziarl]

or the enterprise was refit after pike took command, but before the events of the cage. Can anyone estimate a time frame here? How old would this end up making the ship? Also, the necelle caps would likely be considered a minor refit, unlike the change from TOS to TMP, where the ship looked alot different.

 

[Kaziarl]

Ok, so I got most of the dates from Memory Alpha. The only actual dates I'm not sure of are the Talos incedent, and the Trek11 to TOS refit. My guess is since she was old when kirk first got command, and he was a little harder, she needed a series of minor refit and repairs, allowing for the extra time between the first major refit in 2255 and the second in 2270.

comissioned in : 2245 under the command of Robert April

Change of command: 2250, now under command of Christopher Pike
Rigel VII Incedent: 2254
Major Rifit: 2254-2255 ST:11 to TOS design
Talos Incedent: 2255
Minor Rifit: Aprox-2260
Change Of Command: 2265, Now under command of James T. Kirk

Minor Rifit: 2265 following encounter with galactic barrier
Major Refit: 2270 TMP

 

[Timo]

Umm, Pike went straight from the Rigel VII incident to the Talos one - that was pretty much a plot point. There were no ports of call in between.

Apart from that, this could work until we see all of STXI. But odds are that STXI will cover many of those years, contradicting the idea that Pike ever flew the ship as seen in "The Cage".

In which case we might backpedal and say that the ship was launched in the configuration we saw in "The Cage", then torn down and rebuilt into the STXI configuration for the events of the movie (which probably extend right to the doorsteps of TOS), and then re-rebuilt to the TOS specs. But that sort of back-and-forth rebuilding would be aesthetically unsatisfactory, when the Pike and TOS configs resemble each other so closely.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Rick Sternbach]

It's nice to know I'm in good company with regard to thinking this redesign is wrong.

Rick? Andrew? Where do you stand on the concept of building that monster entirely on the ground in Iowa? Please give details, and try to control the hysterical laughter.

If they were going to build it on the ground anywhere, it should have been San Francisco, but again, if this turns out to be an alternate/fixable timeline, maybe it doesn't matter.

Building ships on the ground could work, but it probably depends on the amount of time and effort put into assembling large chunks with your fabrication infrastructure close by (actually on the Earth) vs. the amount of time and effort required to loft or beam 100x more small chunks up to an orbital base. There's no reason you couldn't have impulse cargo lifters haul framing parts and plating and everything else up to a big assembly dock and actually gamma-weld it together in orbit. But as we teased with the pieces of a Galaxy class ship on the surface of Mars, big parts could be assembled and tested on the ground and then lifted into orbit for final integration. And the reason that big parts can be lifted all hinges on the fact that impulse engines should be able to produce accelerations of some hundreds of g, so hauling parts out of a 1g field is nothing. By the time of the Galaxy class, I think the impulse system was able to push at nearly 1000g, so dropping back to the TOS era should have seen at least 200g levels.

A flight-capable starship doesn't require every little thing installed before performance testing can begin, so you could have, as mentioned in the TNG tech manual and elsewhere, an essentially empty framework with a working IPS and WPS and fuel supplies (and flight-related systems like inertial dampers and structural integrity) and a bridge. Rooms, corridors, and other systems could be installed later.

This has little to do with what the movie folks may have actually thought about, but some of us do think about it.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Probert]

It's nice to know I'm in good company with regard to thinking this redesign is wrong.

Andrew? Where do you stand on the concept of building that monster entirely on the ground in Iowa?

The idea of building a "STAR-SHIP" on the ground is ludicrous... especially if it is expected to actually lift off under it's own power.

Construction and stress requirements for a gravity structure compared to a non-gravity structure are TOTALLY different... which may be why NASA didn't build the International Space Station on the ground. This is all a bunch of too obvious crap designed to manipulate us beyond any normal expectations and I for one take exception to it. Besides, it's kind of a 'Top-Gun' ripoff where the hero races his motorcycle along the flight-line, in a state of ecstasy, being so close to the thing he loves. And then here, to be able to approach a project (reluctantly suspending disbelief) as large as a STARship construction project close enough to fire an RPG into any number of key elements... I mean, give me a friggin' break. But I don't know,... maybe he already has some sort of clearance by this time, but still.

Even the fact that workers are shown fabricating a STARship with 300 year old methods... 'welding' for instance... geeeeze, that really puts the fiction into this science. I can see it now,... the story session where J.J.A. stands up and proclaims: "... and when that baby lifts off, there won't be a dry eye in the house".

Yeah, right.

I hope I'm wrong about that, because realistically the other side of the coin (as well as Star Trek history) says that huge components of a Starship very well might be fabricated on Earth but technology 300 years from now will not require them to actually be assembled here. Those pre-fabricated pieces will be flown (or beamed) into orbit for final assembly... just as the International Space Station is today.

And everyone familiar with Star Trek knows Kirk is from Iowa but the Starship Enterprise was begun in the Naval Shipyards, San Francisco.

Andrew-