Anyone Find Generations "Saucer crash" to be poorly done?

Yep, either make it a window or it it makes no sense not to have the bridge somewhere secure.

FWIW, in Trek pilots "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", it seemingly was a window, with a corresponding square on the front of the dome. The change to a big-screen TV seemingly came with the series proper, when the bridge dome on top of the saucer was made smaller, and the exterior window removed.

 

Wouldn't that really depend on how good your eyesight was? An anomaly might be invisible to the naked eye, or a hostile thousands of kilometers away as it opens fire (or even behind the ship).

I don't have a problem with it as a window that has displays and graphics on it, but its main function should be as viewscreen, which shows all to the Bridge staff.

 

Well, in Trek, for better or for worse, our standard depiction of encounters with other ships is that they are really close and large enough to be easily visible to the naked eye, and most anomalies in space give off some sort of easily seen visible indicator. Realistic? Probably not, but it's the way things work in the Trek universe.

Having said that, I don't think anyone is disputing the usefulness of an actual sensor-based viewscreen rather than a simple window. Rather, we're simply arguing that having a window of some sort available on the bridge that is not dependent on sensors could be useful in certain circumstances.

 

When this thread started, I couldn't describe why the saucer crash didn't impress me very much. Now, I've figured it out.

Despite the fact that I think it looked and sounded spectacular, it just didn't have a beg emotional impact for me. It's in the shadow of the Enterprise destruction of TSFS. In that film, although it was the refit Enterprise, it was still essentially the ship that we'd known through 17 years and many adventures. Also, its destruction was part of the theme of loss/death/rebirth in the film. It symbolizes the crew's loss of their past, sacrificed for the future of their friendships.

In Generations, I felt none of that. The saucer destruction was just eye candy. It had no symbolic meaning for me, nor did I have such a long history of knowing that ship.

 

I agree, to a point.

To me, there is a strong emotional connection to the Enterprise-D. It was our "home" for the seven years of TNG, which I look upon very fondly. It feels almost as important to me as the TOS Enterprise. And I never quite warmed up to its replacement in FC and beyond.

However, despite that, the emotion of the destruction doesn't seem to be there in Generations like their is in TSFS. Perhaps that comes from the fact that the crash doesn't seem to proceed organically from the story. It feels like something that was created for a specific purpose -- i.e. axe the ship so we can get a better one for the movies -- and that's about it.

 

It appears to be a viewscreen in at least The Cage, with the "screen on" command from Pike.

 

Thanks. I think you actually agree with me completely; you just worded it better than I did!

 

Sometimes it just peeved me that the crew couldn't seem to act without being able to look out a window, as if their other sensors couldn't do the job any better.

Although perhaps using it as such in TSFS to see the cloaked Bird of Prey was actually the best way to do so.

 

no, i thought it they did a very good jod on the saucer crash.

 

A soft landing after an unplanned abort from orbit would have been ridiculous. I'd say that the film did a credible job of showing it as quite violent and perilous, with a whole lot of momentum to be dissipated. I really thought the ship would stop after hitting that first tree, but, quite reasonably, it went on. And on.