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Enterprise D Deflector Dish Color

BetaHazard

Lieutenant Junior Grade
Red Shirt
What is the general consensus for the color of the Enterprise D's deflector dish color? The rings vary from blue to white, and the dish itself varies from black, brown, to light brown. Which one is it?
 
The dish looks copperish, and doesn't extrude out as far as TOS60s version had. Like the 80s movies, the dish has a baby blue robin's egg blue glow. The best of both worlds, so to speak.

Now why 1701-E has the cheez whiz-colored yellow, it's a new version of deflector technology that wsa never showcased. Placing emphasis on something (or someone) otherwise ordinary then ignoring it just seems a waste of story time.)
 
I always imagine it like this image from Memory Alpha. I always thought the darker parts were red but they're probably more copper and the lighter parts were light blue but they could be white.
latest
 
It's still orange, just ringed with blue. I don't understand the confusion. Are you referring to the shade of orange? It's not bright like the fruit, more a burnt orange.
Yes, the shade. Sometimes it's a really dark brown and sometimes even black.
 
Of course the Playmates toy made the dish all orange. Of course, while it showed the dish on the box lit, it didn’t light on the actual toy.
 
Of course the Playmates toy made the dish all orange. Of course, while it showed the dish on the box lit, it didn’t light on the actual toy.

Oh, I painted the deflector dish blue and red on my Playmates one. Then I painted windows black and light blue, so it looked like the rooms were lit/not lit. I couldn't perfectly match the on/off coloring, since not only were there design errors in the Playmates model, but from the opening cerdits, poster and episodes, apparently different filming models had different windows lit/not lit.

Then I painted on red/green/yellow lights that are seen flashing. Little dots of paint. And other things. Suffice to say I was neither then nor now happy with the Playmates model.
 
The Enterprise-D's nav deflector dish is a slightly weathered dark copper (similar to the TOS 1701). It is comprised of an inner dish and an outer dish, with a semi-transparent ring between them. This dish assembly is mounted inside a flat yellow main deflector housing section that is segmented around the edges. When powered-on, the nav deflector housing behind the dish glows in an outward gradation, from white to blue. This gradated glow makes the flat yellow main deflector housing section surrounding the copper dish look like it's going from blue to a reddish-orange color -- but this is only an optical illusion.
 
What if the color changes depending on what the deflector dish is doing or the surroundings have something to do with it? It's a chameleon.....
 
Well yeah -- that goes without saying. The model-makers on here want to know what the thing looks like in true colors, not in its myriad of different color combinations depending on the pretend enviro the ship is in.
 
Well yeah -- that goes without saying. The model-makers on here want to know what the thing looks like in true colors, not in its myriad of different color combinations depending on the pretend enviro the ship is in.

If this message is directed at me I must say that I didn't know there were model makers asking....
 
Even among us model makers, there are different approaches to color. How the studio models are lit always alters how the thing looks on screen. The film stock or digital camera sensor can alter the color, as can the compositing method. The modeler has the choice of trying to replicate the way it appears on-screen in a given episode (it's often lit differently at different times so appears differently), or to research the colors of the original studio model and replicate that look, or even just to pick their own colors to satisfy their own metal image of what the colors should be.

So a modeler asking about a color doesn't necessarily have One True Correct Answer.

--Alex
 
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