Can a "Realistic" Space Battle be Fun?

[Tallguy]

I've heard complaints about the battles in The Wrath of Khan being "too close" on screen. My complaint is not with TWOK, which is set up to be an exceptional (and exceptionally brutal) circumstance by the story, but rather with subsequent space battles royale which have followed this unusual (but visually exciting) template to a T.

I think the battles in TOS, while more realistic in that you never see two combatants at once, are made that way out of budgetary necessity rather than striving for interstellar realism. When they could show ships swooping at each other (I'm thinking of Doomsday Machine, but there might be others) they did. But in "real life" if you saw such a battle from any distance at all, you wouldn't see anything. If you were close enough to one of the ships you'd see the ship twist and turn, but not really move (because you're tracking with it), fire and take fire, but that's about it (I think). Can that be fun?

Never after TOS (maybe TAS) did we ever see space combat at warp speed. This is probably more "realistic". But one wonders how such a battle would be conducted. Can you really take pot-shots at each other at such ludicrous speeds? FASA posited that they were conducted at warp in the same general direction, with the ships making small relative course changes. But still (one presumes) not close enough to see each other. I'm not a fan (at all) of the TNG "space combat can't happen at warp speed". I'm just not.

I'm reading the O'Brien (not that one) Jack Aubrey books and I am struck (as I was by the film Master and Commander) by how measured these battles are. Battles (or at least chases) can take hours or days. As they did back in TOS. Yeah, I'm a sucker for the nautical metaphor. I think that combatwise, the space battles post-TOS moved from ships to aircraft. (TWOK had a naval flare to it because they were exchanging full-on broadsides, but even that went away after that movie.)

So, chime in all y'all. Can this sort of battle be made to look "cool" and "entertaining"?

 

[kv1at3485]

The problem is that in all of these battles, the characters rarely do anything. Since they sit there like bumps on a log, everything devolves to showing 'filler' (i.e. flashy, but ultimately empty, zooming ships and piddly weapons fire.)

If you could, somehow, get the characters to be more... 'strategical' (and have them engage in interesting talk as a consequence), the 'filler' would be better served by some sort of holotank. There, you could show where all the ships and their movements, and have the excuse that the diagram is not to scale.

And I have no doubt that's just one of plethora of possibilities... if ever the producers roused themselves from their stupor.

 

[Masao]

The question is what is "realistic"?

The particulars of combat are determined in part by the speeds of the ships, sensor capabilities, and the relative speed, accuracy, "smartness," range, and destructiveness of the weapons (beams or projectiles). In the age of sail, weapons were much faster than ships, but you needed to pour in tons of cannon fire at very close range to overpower another ship because of poor range, accuracy, and penetrating ability. During WWII, battleships could accurately hit and sink other ships from miles away, but of course aircraft allow you to hit other ships from hundreds of miles away. However, if sensor capability (ie, visibility) were poor, combat ranges might drop to several hundreds of yards (I'm guessing here).

What about Trek? What should be considered "realistic"? We have to think about the range at which a phaser or photon torpedo is effective against a shielded ship ("effective" meaning that it can reliably cause significant damage). Battles in early Trek (TOS) seem to suggest that weapons are effective at "long range" (perhaps this can be expressed in terms of the time needed to travel this distance at a ship's usual speed) while ships are traveling at warp speed. However, by TNG and DS9, onscreen evidence seems to suggest that shielding is so powerful relative to weapons or that targeting is so crappy that ships have to fight at distances that could be traveled in microseconds at normal warp speeds (and travel at well below light speed). So, what we see on screen might actually be "realistic" or at least can be rationalized if we make certain assumptions.

But if you're assuming that "realistic" Trek combat should be more like modern long-range naval missile combat, then I think it can still be fun or interesting. The Hunt for Red October made slow combat with torpedoes and no visual contact seem exciting.

 

[Shaw]

Masao said:
But if you're assuming that "realistic" Trek combat should be more like modern long-range naval missile combat, then I think it can still be fun or interesting. The Hunt for Red October made slow combat with torpedoes and no visual contact seem exciting.

I would echo this with an additional example of Crimson Tide.

The battles that are excellent examples from the past would be some of the ones that took place in the Atlantic during World War II (like the one that took the Bismarck and the Hood). In those battles the enemy was at the very edge of visual range, and the crews trying to operate skillfully while under constant threat made them interesting.


Sadly, science fiction has suffered from the Star Wars effect. Ships aren't considered realistic or interesting without clutter, and battles have to be dog fights to be compelling. Both of those concepts are erroneous, and show an amazing lack of imagination on the parts of effects people in the last 30 years.

Frankly, compelling stories about people are what made Star Trek great. And it is attempts to play to people with 30 second attention spans that has undercut it's standing in the world today.

My greatest fear is that the next movie will be an attempt to make a roller coaster type of visual spectacle that will leave us all feeling unfulfilled and cheated at the end of the movie. With new actors they had better spend most of their time getting the audience emotionally connected with the characters rather than trying to show off new effects.

 

[Sec31Mike]

I thought Hunt for Red October was awesome. And his portrayal of the drama of ship to ship combat was top notch. I have suggested that Tom Clancy would be a boon to Trek, but have taken flak for the idea.

 

[Jono]

The problem is clutter does make it look good. In DS9 those fleet scenes you really only should have seen a few ships out of the hundreds at one time, sort of like the new scenes in WYLB, though that was probaby due to that lack of money to fill the background up with ships.

But if you make it more realistic the audience can't see the hundreds of ships charging at the DOminion lines or even the Dominion lines properly. You don't get that sense of danger and scale. In FC you shouldn't have seen Starfleet ships sniping around the cube, you should have only seen torps and phaser blasts flashing in from the black...but it doesn't look as cool.

That in the end is really what is important. The scenes have to look cool, have to be engaging and easy for people just to look at and instantly understand that is going on and what they should be feeling. The so called Star Wars style might be unrealistic but it is dramatic and that is why it makes entertaining viewing.

 

[Masao]

Sure, having ships and fighters charging each other is dramatic and cool, but I think it's taking the easy way out. But I guess spectacle that's (more or less) empty has been the stock in trade of filmed entertainment since the silent era. Those of us who really get into the technical aspects of Trek, however, see a missed opportunity to do things in a better way. The same criticisms can often be made about how Trek deals with astronomy, physics, medicine, etc. Yeah, I know it's a TV show and entertainment value comes first, but a bit more effort could make a small number of fans much much happier without boring the others who don't care as much.

 

[Tallguy]

That's funny that you guys mention Hunt for Red October. I remember the old Red Storm Rising sub game felt the most Star Trek of any sim I've ever played. (Sorry Starfleet Command. You were really close. Really.)

I have to admit, it would be tough to convey the "massive fleet of ships" at any real distance. Or the Enterprise Incident's "They've got us surrounded!" moment.

BTW, Trek sized ships tend to disapear at about 50 miles or so. (VERY rough estimate, btw.)

Something I never really pondered - just about anytime you see a ship on the main viewer (especially when they say "maximum magnification) should look very very flat, since they're using such an extreme view. Hrmmm.... (Sure they could have "make it look cooler" software on their screens. But... Why?)

 

[Maurice]

^^^I assume by "flatter" you mean utterly absent perspective; what is what happens when things are so far away.

 

[Jack Bauer]

You could show a realistic space battle by focusing on the characters inside each ship involved in the battle. If it was done realistically with ships miles apart you wouldn't see much. Realistic space battles would work better in a novel probably.

 

[FordSVT]

Tallguy said:
That's funny that you guys mention Hunt for Red October. I remember the old Red Storm Rising sub game felt the most Star Trek of any sim I've ever played. (Sorry Starfleet Command. You were really close. Really.)

I have to admit, it would be tough to convey the "massive fleet of ships" at any real distance. Or the Enterprise Incident's "They've got us surrounded!" moment.

BTW, Trek sized ships tend to disapear at about 50 miles or so. (VERY rough estimate, btw.)

Something I never really pondered - just about anytime you see a ship on the main viewer (especially when they say "maximum magnification) should look very very flat, since they're using such an extreme view. Hrmmm.... (Sure they could have "make it look cooler" software on their screens. But... Why?)

Well, it's probably a composite image generated by the computer from not only visual but various other subspace frequencies, and Trek display screens generate a holographic perspective. I'm not that surprised that they'd have sensors and display screens that could generate an image with perspective and depth.

 

[ancient]

I don't see why not, it would be more focused on the insides of the ships, like in 'Balance of Terror', but it would still be fun.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I, personally PREFER "distant battles." Two reasons:

1) It's technically more accurate, and I'm a stickler for technical stuff,

AND (and probably more importantly)

2) It requires actual GOOD WRITING (as opposed to a script that says "lots of ships zip around, lots of pretty flashy lights, lots of big kewl explosions").

 

[Ronald Held]

It could be done by concentrating on the conflicts between the two ship's crews, and combat which recognizes the inertial and turning abilities of vehicles, as well as the limitations of sensors and weapons.

 

[FredH]

FWIW, I'd like to mention two of the strongest space battle scenes I've ever read, both of which I think would translate well to the screen in a Trek-movie context. Each may be seen as "realistic," but they operate according to different assumptions.

One actually is Trek: the scene in Diane Duane's The Wounded Sky, when the Enterprise is jumped by a Klingon squadron. There is much very fighter-like dogfighting which, while very different from the onscreen TOS paradigm, makes perfect sense if you accept warp drive as a ship tweaking the local spacetime around it to move.

The other is from a non-Trek sf novel by Roger McBride Allen, The Depths of Time, when a patrol ship has to defend a civilian convoy from raiders. There are no "external shots" at all; the entire battle is described from inside the bridge of the patrol ship--and between the tense dialogue and the characters' awareness of what's going on outside (including their reactions when they lose some of the civilian traffic), it's utterly compelling.

Either model, I think, would be quite filmable and involving--but both would diverge from the way Trek space combat has been established to work from TNG onwads.

 

[philbob]

For some pretty intense realistic space battles check out the Mobile Suit Gundam Series either the Universal century with the one year war UC 0079 or Stardust Memories 0083

if you want something a little more modern try Gundam Seed and Seed Destiney

 

[kv1at3485]

^ There are times when I can take comfort knowing that despite how inane Star Trek can be, there are worse.

 

[Tallguy]

Now now. B5 fans can't throw stones. (I KID! I kid cause I care!)

 

[kv1at3485]

No worries. I believe in equitable sniping. You'll find me too in the front of the ranks who decry the idiocy in B5 space combat as well.

 

[Mr. Laser Beam]

^ Explain...