How do those weird FX mistakes happen?

[RoJoHen]

For example, there's an episode where the Ent-D fires phasers out of the torpedo launcher. I think it's the one where that planet's population was destroyed but that one ancient alien kept bringing his wife back to life and defending the planet with the giant alien spacecraft. I'm bad with episode titles.

I mean, I could understand these kinds of things happening in the first season before they had everything established. But I'm pretty sure this was a 4th or 5th season episode. Why would the FX department do this? Shouldn't they know better?

 

[Timo]

That'd be "Darmok". And I can sort of see why they'd do it. First they put the enemy ship menacingly opposite the hero one, and then they have to have the hero ship fire a sucker punch at the enemy's jaw. Trouble is, the hero ship doesn't have any phaser emplacements that could reach the enemy jaw. So the VFX people invent one.

Similarly, in "Best of Both Worlds", they wanted the hero ship to fire an impressive multi-emitter volley, something never seen before, but only one phaser emitter would be facing the enemy from the aesthetically pleasing angle. So they invent new emitters in the pylons, ones that (unlike the real ones there, on the outer surfaces) can add to the forward-firing volley.

There would have been better choices there in both cases, involving changing the orientation of the hero ship. But perhaps the motion-control work was done before the phaser FX was added, so the phaser people were out of options?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Haytil]

That'd be "Darmok".

No, it's "The Survivors," a third season episode.

 

[Timo]

Ah, sorry about the confusion. "The Survivors" is the one with the alien that brings his wife back to life, while "Darmok" is the one with the phaser coming out of the torp tube.

I don't think there was any VFX mistake in "The Survivors": when our heroes fired at the illusory alien ship, it was first with the dorsal saucer phaser strip, then with the ventral strip plus torpedoes, and finally with a single aft torpedo. All properly portrayed.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[RoJoHen]

Okay, fine, they're both episodes where the Ent is orbiting a planet firing phasers at a ridiculously powerful ship. I mixed them up.

 

[RAMA]

Okay, fine, they're both episodes where the Ent is orbiting a planet firing phasers at a ridiculously powerful ship. I mixed them up.

I think what Timo meant is that the episode refered to was "Darmok" though the one described was "Survivors".

RAMA

 

[RoJoHen]

I know. And the episode I described was the wrong one.

 

[erastus25]

I always figured it was just an oversight. No big deal either way.

 

[Jack Bauer]

Perhaps they were up against a deadline and someone screwed up and no one caught it in time.

 

[Dayton3]

There are some elements of dialogue in "Darmok" that indicate that the phasers were being specially modified in order to knock down the Tamaran scattering field in a single volley.

I heard that originally, there were more lines in the script that indicates these were not the regular phasers being used, and that the fx team going by that decided to reposition the phasers in order to make it clear that those were "specially modified phasers".

 

[GalaxyX]

^^^ Who cares, the Ent-D was still getting the snot kicked out of it. It was almost sad to watch.

 

[Forbin]

I'd read that it just a mistake by the effects dept. One big oops.

 

[Dayton3]

I'd read that it just a mistake by the effects dept. One big oops.

I've had trouble believing that.

These people had worked with the Enterprise-D model for years.

I'm sure they knew where phasers were supposed to be.

Although a mistake was made in "The Best of Both Worlds I" when they had phaser beams emerge from just inside the nacelle support pylons on the upper surfaces.

 

[FalTorPan]

I'd read that it just a mistake by the effects dept. One big oops.

I've had trouble believing that.

These people had worked with the Enterprise-D model for years.

I'm sure they knew where phasers were supposed to be.

Although a mistake was made in "The Best of Both Worlds I" when they had phaser beams emerge from just inside the nacelle support pylons on the upper surfaces.

It's possible that an earlier draft of the "Darmok" script actually referenced photon torpedos, and by the time the script had been changed, the footage of the Enterprise-D's "neck" had already been shot.

It's possible.

 

[RAMA]

Sometimes if a mistake is made they just don't have time to change it. TV crunch!