A
Is JJ obsessed with Tubes, Piping and Warehouses? (SPOILERS BABY)
- Thread starter Brent
- Start date
A
Amaris
Guest
Well Engineering should look different than the bridge. Something that always troubled me about Engineering in TNG and VOY, was that everything had to be accessed, moved, changed around. When things are breaking, smoking, exploding and just outright non-functioning, you don't have time to remove panels and crawl through Jefferies tubes. What makes more sense? Keeping the control switches and gauges where they can be checked often, or putting them way in the bowels of the ship and relying on something going wrong throughout the ship to alert you?
I doubt very highly we will have eliminated the need for tubing by the 2300's. Engineering is where it all happens. If the Bridge is the brain, Engineering's the heart, and I expect it to look practical, not like a laboratory with sleek face panels where circuits, pipes and switches should be.
Here, my good man, courtesy of TrekCore:
So if you guys have a problem with silly, useless pipes, vats and tubes, talk to Gene Roddenberry and the set designers for the Original Series.
J.
I don't think anyone is arguing with your point, just with the on-screen execution.
A
Amaris
Guest
Like I said in the other thread, though, the Enterprise is a huge ship. Surely you don't think what you see of Engineering in TOS is the entirety of Engineering. It would be huge to manufacture that much power.
J.
A
Amaris
Guest
Our modern cars look sleek, aesthetically pleasing, advanced, very futuristic on the inside, where people sit and operate the machine, but open the hood and we're still using an internal combustion engine that needs oil, grease, water, power steering fluid and anti-freeze to function, and you do get your hands dirty. Surely, in the 21st century, we should be well beyond this, yet we aren't. It is still the dominant system of motivation. Why do we have these 21st century vehicles with 19th century internal workings? Yet, with all of that, we take them as they are.
J.
I could certainly buy that if true!
However, the movie suggests that the Enterprise was fully completed by this time.
Maybe some stuff will get hidden in the refit, heh
A
Amaris
Guest
Well that's because they were the same sets. Things had to be interchangeable. I know that's not an in universe answer, but it's true. So J.J., who had a much, much larger budget, decided to flesh everything out. This is along the lines of why some people don't like the new Enterprise, it's not "uniform" like the original. Then again, that's because the model designers had to be able to quickly repair and replace parts that looked the same. J.J. shouldn't have had to carry their budgetary concerns into a movie with a massive amount of money.
J.
Abrams blew it with the Engineering designs. All the tanks, pipes and high ceilings simply didn't convey a sense of 23rd or 24th Century technology. The other Enterprise sets (bridge, sickbay, hallways) looked futuristic and had a certain aesthetic consistency that was totally lost in Engineering.
As someone who actually WORKS in a real engineering section I dissagree.
Trek has blown it since day one. JJ finally got it right.
Even on a modern 21st century aircraft carrier, it looks like the steampunk era in its engineering sections and a engineering officer would KILL you if you tried to change that.
We know where everything is, and would would rather NOT pull panels and the like off the wall. I would even go further to say that even the upper decks where TOO neat, and not easy access.
Wow, I feel like I'm really in the minority here with liking engineering. Yes, the Scotty in the pipe scene was dumb because obviously you knew he was going to get out in a minute and the whole thing was kind of pointless but sheesh, it's not a big deal. I mean, it was a way to show the beaming going wrong without it killing someone...which you think would happen all the time, let alone in that extreme beaming situation there.
That would be fine for a steam-powered starship. Personally, I don't think Trek tech should have much to do with such conventional notions (i.e. what is real in aircraft carriers). I got enough of the low-tech, retro design aesthetic in Battlestar Galactica.
Plecostomus
Commodore
Thank you.
Also, we're dealing with high-energy nuclear reactions here you are going to be circulating fluids around for heat transfer, slurry for injection into the reactor and carrying away waste for packaging and disposal.
If you can come up with a way to do that without pipes show me.
Manual valves. Come on now how many god damn times has the computer flupped out or control gone offline? At least with this design you can actually run over and crank a valve to cut off fuel flow rather than wailing that the reactor won't shut down and OMG EJECT THE CORE.
All I know is whatever they ejected there at the end... reactor cores, dilithium assemblies, tanks of Bud Light... whatever it was that black hole sure did not like it one bit. One hell of a cosmic "divide by zero" reaction there.
That is not a f_cking refinery it is a built set for gods sake!
Well Engineering should look different than the bridge. Something that always troubled me about Engineering in TNG and VOY, was that everything had to be accessed, moved, changed around. When things are breaking, smoking, exploding and just outright non-functioning, you don't have time to remove panels and crawl through Jefferies tubes. What makes more sense? Keeping the control switches and gauges where they can be checked often, or putting them way in the bowels of the ship and relying on something going wrong throughout the ship to alert you?
I doubt very highly we will have eliminated the need for tubing by the 2300's. Engineering is where it all happens. If the Bridge is the brain, Engineering's the heart, and I expect it to look practical, not like a laboratory with sleek face panels where circuits, pipes and switches should be.
Here, my good man, courtesy of TrekCore:
So if you guys have a problem with silly, useless pipes, vats and tubes, talk to Gene Roddenberry and the set designers for the Original Series.
J.
There is a difference between a modern ship's engineering section and a water treatment plant. Had we seen the former in Star Trek I think it would have been fine, but we saw the latter. Again, I don't think anyone is saying that pipes and valves and the like don't have a place in the engineering section of the USS Kelvin and Enterprise, we are just saying that it was poorly executed. The space was too large, too open, too wasteful. I don't think anyone would confuse a modern day water treatment plant or brewery for a modern day aircraft carrier engine room, as such we just don't think that using a modern day treatment plant or brewery for a futuristic starship engine room is any better.
Similar threads
