• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

I don't understand the production design...

The clothes are great because they finally look like something people could wear comfortably. The interfaces look fine too, I love LCARS but it's really chunky (not surprising since it was meant to show up on a small screen) and this trimmer version looks fine, especially since we have no idea if it will carry into shipboard interfaces. The admiral's office suggest Starfleet uses something closer to traditional LCARS. And honestly, Android, Windows, and Apple sometimes can't go six months without changing their UI, are we really supposed to care if Starfleet does after decades?
 
Greg Cox said:
Honestly, I'm not sure why this matters. What I would want in real life, and what I enjoy in entertainment are completely different things. In real life, sure, I'd choose to sit in a comfy easy chair, in front of a fireplace, reading a good book, preferably with a cat on my lap, but that wouldn't make a very exciting TV show. The question is what works theatrically and provides a dramatic setting for engrossing stories.

Would I want to fight the Borg in real life? Of course not. Is "Q Who?" a great episode? Absolutely.
Click to expand...

Why not write comics? They’re far more dynamic and exciting.

Real holds more weight. You can take me anywhere if you earn my suspension of disbelief.

Re marketing vp’s @fireproof78 , I don’t buy that they know what they’re talking about. Honestly, any idiot can tread the same water or appeal to the lowest common denominator. And most entertainment does that, and is decidedly not entertaining.

I’m not arguing for Trek that appeals to narrow audiences, or me exclusively. It’s, again, tedious that that’s where these internet conversations go. I don’t mind that the show is a reimagining of the TNG future. I am a huge nBSG fan, and I enjoyed BSG. I enjoy TOS, TMP, TOS Movies, TNG, DS9, ST09, DSC, Orville, and they’re all different takes on a theme. I liked Mad Max, 1984,
Bladerunner, 2001, Spaceballs, Alien (1, 2, and 3), Contact, Arrival, Alien Cargo, Babylon 5, SeaQuest, Farscape, the Stargates, Earth: Final Conflict, Twilight Zone, The Outer Limits, Black Mirror, and hundreds of diverse others. In space-related sci-if alone. All that to say, it’s about the execution.

And I’m hoping that I’ll love execution for everything else, but it‘s not looking to be for the design aspect.
 
Arpy said:
I don’t buy that they know what they’re talking about.
Click to expand...
No, probably not. But, the flip side is that people don't give any indication of willingness to buy something different either.

So, play it safe is what it ends up being.
 
Alan Roi said:
WNMHGB is about as viscerally and philosophically nihilistic as Star Trek gets. There is sociopathic murder, characters developing godlike powers. Best friends attempting to kill each other, orders to destroy a whole planet to stop a threat of a superpowered man who now looks down on human beings as insects. There is no happy ending here, no moral victory to be enjoyed. Only survival or obliteration. That isn't grimdark?
Click to expand...

Gratuitous sex or violence of a graphic nature? Hero characters performing actions of an immoral nature? OTT levels of these?

No. It is not grimdark.
 
Jaster said:
Are we talking exterior?
Click to expand...

Both tbh, but the exterior does demonstrate it better. Interior of both leans more modernist (because they share sets) with new pieces for TNG all curves, natural tones and sometimes materials. Look at the window frames on the internal windows etc.
 
Agony_Boothb said:
Axanar is about a guy saving the Federation single handedly from klingons during a war and no one bats an eye, put a woman in the same situation and suddenly she's a Mary sue and star trek shouldn't be about war. Oh trekkies *laughs and shakes head*
Click to expand...

Can we dislike both?
 
Change isn't just canon, it's real life. Compare 2020 to 2000 to 1980 to 1960. "Out of place" would be if things looked exactly the same after 20 years. Not the other way around. I also expect 2040 to look different from 2020. I'll be surprised if it doesn't.

One thing I've noticed (and none of this is necessarily my personal opinion but instead it's what I've observed): Nowhere near as many people are complaining about the look of PIC as they did DSC. That alone should tell you something. As much as I like the DSC look, it seems like general consensus is that PIC did a better job of visually bringing TNG/DS9/VOY forward than DSC did of bringing ENT/TOS/TMP-TUC forward. People seem more agreeable about the overall look of Picard.

Even with the look of DSC, I think far less people would've complained about how it looked visually if it were 20 years post-TUC, the same way PIC is 20 years post-NEM. So the argument is less over the look in and of itself, but where they placed it. And the difference in PIC is that they placed it forward in the timeline instead of back.
 
Last edited:
It’s not just a matter of decades passing since the Star Trek production design isn’t as holy as that of Star Wars, to the point where you’d design TFA to look like it’s set thirty years after ROTJ (albeit in a slowly-changing galaxy) and Solo like it was made in the 1960s, but that’s it — there is no room for someone putting their own creative stamp beyond what could be rationalized as a different planetary culture like the Naboo.

Will PIC feature elements that will remain 100% (and I mean 100%) unchanged from TNG/NEM, if the underlying idea is that some things remain the same, or will they be eyeballed rather than recreated perfectly (aside from things like wear and tear)? Will elements be redesigned as realistic successors to what came before, or merely bolted on under a twenty-year handwave?
 
Last edited:
Boris Skrbic said:
It’s not just a matter of decades passing since the Star Trek production design isn’t as holy as that of Star Wars, to the point where you’d design TFA to look like it’s set thirty years after ROTJ (albeit in a slowly-changing galaxy) and Solo like it was made in the 1960s, but that’s it — there is no room for someone putting their own creative stamp beyond what could be rationalized as a different planetary culture like the Naboo.

Will PIC feature elements that will remain 100% (and I mean 100%) unchanged from TNG/NEM, if the underlying idea is that some things remain the same, or will they be eyeballed rather than recreated perfectly (aside from things like wear and tear)? Will elements be redesigned as realistic successors to what came before, or merely bolted on under a twenty-year handwave?
Click to expand...

Golden Gate Bridge and Starfleet Command seems like it's been the same-ish since TMP in 1979. Maybe not 100%, but 99%-ish.
 
Arpy said:
Again, safe would be repeating the TNG esthetic. PIC is a departure from that.
Click to expand...
I disagree, as they are relying far too many familiar elements for PIC, and, to some extent, DSC. Not just in the aesthetic, but characters, plot points and the like. PIC is doing its best to not stray too far from the familiar, with the uniforms and com badge. Now, that execution in the show proper may make that incredibly unimportant details.

Mileage will vary.
 
This is an interesting topic.

Yes, the reason Star Trek looks like what it does reflects the time it was made.

Weirdly I remember thinking at the time Nemesis felt a little dated weirdly, like there needed to be an update.

4 years after Enterprise ended we got a movie that looked like no Trek... had gone before, even though we had 10 movies prior. A big Hollywood action movie with huge landscapes and set pieces. The interiors felt very industrial (engineering, shuttlebay) and absolutely massive. The first thing that struck me about Discovery in the first proper trailer is the production values. There were echoes of JJ/Lim's films, but on a smaller budget.

Interestingly anything from TOS (the Enterprise, uniforms, aliens) was 'modernised' but with echoes of the original. The most faithful element of the JJ films is easily the male uniforms of the first two films.

Now, we have Picard from the same production team. but set over a hundred years later. But after TNG. It does of course feel a more faithful (or natural) aesthetic progression to TNG than DSC was to TOS. The uniforms hark back more to DS9/VOY (the Countdown ones look better than the 2399 ones) but thats fine.
 
Arpy said:
Why not write comics? They’re far more dynamic and exciting.

Real holds more weight. You can take me anywhere if you earn my suspension of disbelief.
Click to expand...

Did I mention my new BATMAN novel? :)

Seriously, my point was simply that "where would you rather be?" is not necessarily something I worry about when it comes to fiction. PLANET OF THE APES is probably my all-time favorite SF movie, but I sure as hell wouldn't want to be a human there in real life. And if we're talking realism, I suspect many of us would prefer a cushy desk job on Risa to risking life and limb out on the Final Frontier, but I'd still rather watch STAR TREK than RISA: NINE TO FIVE any day.

Part of the fun of fiction is experiencing places and experiences that no sane person would ever want to experience in real life.
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.

Similar threads

Qonundrum
Poppin' saucers at Farpoint
Replies
13
Views
2K
somebuddyX
somebuddyX
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top