Are Ferengi Ships upside down? "up" and "down" in space.

[Inactive-Shapeshifter]

It was pretty much creative laziness that all ships that ever ran into each other were oriented the same way.

Not so much that as it is easier to film and easier for the audience to understand.

Now sometimes in sci-fi this gets ridiculous and amusing, like in Star Wars Episode 3, the opening battle is so two dimensional that when General Grievous's flagship is taken out it practically "sinks." Or then there's Stargate, which always had two-dimensional space battles until the Ori showed up and fought three-dimensionally. No one was prepared for this therefore making the Ori unbeatable.

By the way, off-topic, but still... I see you like Stargate so... I'm in season 9 of SG-1, the Colonel left

The episodes after O'neil departed are looking so boring. Vala is nice, but she is so comedy-like, it makes the show appear less serious. Is it just a phase that we'll go trough or does it never reach the level it had before? Or maybe it's i that don't understand things very well?

 

[The Wormhole]

It was pretty much creative laziness that all ships that ever ran into each other were oriented the same way.

Not so much that as it is easier to film and easier for the audience to understand.

Now sometimes in sci-fi this gets ridiculous and amusing, like in Star Wars Episode 3, the opening battle is so two dimensional that when General Grievous's flagship is taken out it practically "sinks." Or then there's Stargate, which always had two-dimensional space battles until the Ori showed up and fought three-dimensionally. No one was prepared for this therefore making the Ori unbeatable.

By the way, off-topic, but still... I see you like Stargate so... I'm in season 9 of SG-1, the Colonel left

The episodes after O'neil departed are looking so boring. Vala is nice, but she is so comedy-like, it makes the show appear less serious. Is it just a phase that we'll go trough or does it never reach the level it had before? Or maybe it's i that don't understand things very well?

SG1's golden era was definitely while O'Neill was there. Seasons 9 and 10 do have their entertainment value though. It's worth it to stick around.

 

[Vandervecken]

Couldn't this be for communication purposes? For the people in different ships, "down" is the direction of artificial gravity. But, unless the cameras used for visual communication digitally re-orient their communications as needed (and I will admit, there's no reason they cannot), two ships that are NOT oriented in the same way (no matter what way that is) will result in both individuals communicating (assume they're humanoids) being at different angles to each other, with different orientations; so, for example, if Tomalak doesn't re-orient his warbird so that his bridge has the same "down" as Picard's, he'll be talking to Picard's feet or kidneys (visually). No?

 

[Timo]

I think ST2:TWoK bears all the sins of the rest of the show quite nicely. It suffices for us to see once that ships orient themselves to match, out of sheer politeness, and at some distance from each other before coming so close that the camera will see both of them in the same shot. We can then assume it happens in all the other cases, too. After all, it should by the ST2 definition happen off camera.

Also, TNG often shows Klingon ships banking like aircraft when rendezvousing with the E-D. This is natural, because those ships have wings and banking looks cool when you have wings. But it is also a good match with what was seen in ST2, only with the Klingons being less polite and delaying their attitude adjustment until they are on-camera.

-When we first saw the ship, it was turning around, extending both it's forward hull hull and raising an upper section to expose weapons. We never did see the ship do that again.

Perhaps that's how the ship opens up when it becomes a floating bazaar? Remember that this happens when the planet below is wreaking havoc with the ship's systems (or perhaps slightly before, but for the sake of argument let's not assume that). No Ferengi ship would do that in combat, and no Ferengi ship would do that when the Daimon is quarreling/bargaining with Picard, so it's just a malfunction when we (almost) see it.

But, unless the cameras used for visual communication digitally re-orient their communications as needed

Why would they need to do that? If a reporter is filmed in Australia, nobody needs to re-orient the image in any way before it is presented in the United Kingdom or Brazil or the Moon. Camera down is always camera down, and automatically becomes TV screen down, too.

It's a slightly bigger mystery how the opposing ship can decode the transmission at all. But increases in computing power might make issues like that trivial in the real world, too: instant CETI might be something you can do with your handheld multi-use device (whatever we call it then) just ten years from now. And it would certainly be trivial to divine the proper orientation of the image if one can perform the general decoding.

A well-working spacesuit might be much more difficult to do than a visiphone system that works with aliens...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Melakon]

Couldn't this be for communication purposes? For the people in different ships, "down" is the direction of artificial gravity. But, unless the cameras used for visual communication digitally re-orient their communications as needed (and I will admit, there's no reason they cannot), two ships that are NOT oriented in the same way (no matter what way that is) will result in both individuals communicating (assume they're humanoids) being at different angles to each other, with different orientations; so, for example, if Tomalak doesn't re-orient his warbird so that his bridge has the same "down" as Picard's, he'll be talking to Picard's feet or kidneys (visually). No?

If the Enterprise's "camera" is on Picard's face, why would Tomalak be receiving the communication signal showing a different part of his body?

 

[Vandervecken]

Couldn't this be for communication purposes? For the people in different ships, "down" is the direction of artificial gravity. But, unless the cameras used for visual communication digitally re-orient their communications as needed (and I will admit, there's no reason they cannot), two ships that are NOT oriented in the same way (no matter what way that is) will result in both individuals communicating (assume they're humanoids) being at different angles to each other, with different orientations; so, for example, if Tomalak doesn't re-orient his warbird so that his bridge has the same "down" as Picard's, he'll be talking to Picard's feet or kidneys (visually). No?

If the Enterprise's "camera" is on Picard's face, why would Tomalak be receiving the communication signal showing a different part of his body?

Ok, right, he'd still see Picard's face (and more)--at an angle to his.