Is the best of Star Trek behind us? (visually)
- Thread starter JesterFace
- Start date
Nostalgia is a powerful thing. Nothing will ever be as good as the first time you experienced it.
But for the next generation of fans, for whom the recent movies, Discovery or Picard is their first slice of Trek, they're feeling all those firsts now.
So as everyone else has said, it's subjective. Trying to declare that the one that made you feel best is the only true good version of Trek and that all else is inferior is gatekeeping, and nobody likes a gatekeeper.
Except a keymaster.
It's all subjective, etc.
But,
To me a big problem of modern media (not just Star Trek) is one of amping up the scale beyond a point of believable realism.
Once, producers had to be 'creative' how they approached big scale.
Now, they have the technology at their hands to literally put whatever they want on screen.
Mass battle fleets with thousands of ships firing billions of phasers and photons everywhere? Piece of cake.
Money and resources used to be a great inhibitor on film and television. Good stories got written, and even great battles shown, thanks to what couldn't be done as much as to what could.
Both wolf 359 (Best of Both Worlds, Emissary) and Battle of S001 (STVIII: First Contact) are big enough to be impressive, but small enough to be believable. The former also had the benefit of being shown in aftermath first before we got to go back and actually see it, giving it a tight tension as an off-screen curb stomp.
Sometimes less is more. Sometimes, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
Classic Trek might all look very 'quaint' to a modern eye. But, it also looks down to Earth and realistic, precisely because it had to keep the bar low. Big scale doesn't necessarily mean better.
But,
To me a big problem of modern media (not just Star Trek) is one of amping up the scale beyond a point of believable realism.
Once, producers had to be 'creative' how they approached big scale.
Now, they have the technology at their hands to literally put whatever they want on screen.
Mass battle fleets with thousands of ships firing billions of phasers and photons everywhere? Piece of cake.
Money and resources used to be a great inhibitor on film and television. Good stories got written, and even great battles shown, thanks to what couldn't be done as much as to what could.
Both wolf 359 (Best of Both Worlds, Emissary) and Battle of S001 (STVIII: First Contact) are big enough to be impressive, but small enough to be believable. The former also had the benefit of being shown in aftermath first before we got to go back and actually see it, giving it a tight tension as an off-screen curb stomp.
Sometimes less is more. Sometimes, just because you can do something, doesn't mean you should.
Classic Trek might all look very 'quaint' to a modern eye. But, it also looks down to Earth and realistic, precisely because it had to keep the bar low. Big scale doesn't necessarily mean better.
I would love if they would rein in the stakes some. Not every story has to be the end of everything as we know it to have a dramatic impact.
Nostalgia, for me, as it were, would be 90s Trek. However, even as an adult, I still think The Motion Picture look still holds up.
However, I think our real-world technology that we use day-to-day has altered my perception of it all now because we seem to have "caught up." For instance, you look at the background computer displays on all the TOS films and it's clear most of what you see, which is usually some odd-looking graphic rotating and changing color, is just the production designer approaching it with, "This looks cool, sci-fi, and futuristic!" when we don't even know what it's function is supposed to be.
The crews walk around with PADDs in their hands doing SOMETHING on them. They appear to be using them in a similar way that we use our smartphones or tablets, but, they look to have less features (which is obvious because the real world devices didn't exist yet). So I find myself asking what they are actually doing?
I was watching TOS's The Deadly Years the other day and there's that scene where Kirk is starting to age and the crew is questioning is orders. The Yeoman requests his signature for her PADD. Later on, Kirk requests to look at her PADD again. You get a good look at the PADD and it just had a shit-ton of signatures on it. There's nothing else there. It's like she went around and got a bunch of autographs from various crewmembers.
However, I think our real-world technology that we use day-to-day has altered my perception of it all now because we seem to have "caught up." For instance, you look at the background computer displays on all the TOS films and it's clear most of what you see, which is usually some odd-looking graphic rotating and changing color, is just the production designer approaching it with, "This looks cool, sci-fi, and futuristic!" when we don't even know what it's function is supposed to be.
The crews walk around with PADDs in their hands doing SOMETHING on them. They appear to be using them in a similar way that we use our smartphones or tablets, but, they look to have less features (which is obvious because the real world devices didn't exist yet). So I find myself asking what they are actually doing?
I was watching TOS's The Deadly Years the other day and there's that scene where Kirk is starting to age and the crew is questioning is orders. The Yeoman requests his signature for her PADD. Later on, Kirk requests to look at her PADD again. You get a good look at the PADD and it just had a shit-ton of signatures on it. There's nothing else there. It's like she went around and got a bunch of autographs from various crewmembers.
As in all things it requires balance.
The thread-ending reply is that we don’t know since we cannot predict the future. Disney could buy Star Trek and hire overseers who’d insist on a different visual approach.
So in Tech there is a saying and please don't anybody take it the wrong way,...If graphics fidelity is very important to you they call you a "graphics whore" Its also expensive as it means always keeping up.
I have tended to like each new generation of visual technology upgrades....I did from Next Gen when looking at the original series and Enterprise when looking at the 90s stuff,. For discovery I have enjoyed the look of stuff..The new Enterprise was beautiful to my eyes. I couldn't stop looking at it. My objections with Discovery have been the writing. I don't know how anybody can look at episode 1 of season 2 and not be impressed with how much they spent on that episode. So i look forward to Picard and beyond to see what they can do next.
I watch episodes now of Next Gen or DS9 and visually? They haven't aged well to my eyes. I would love to see a full blown update to visual effects circa 2020...For DS9 hell I would just settle for HD....
I have tended to like each new generation of visual technology upgrades....I did from Next Gen when looking at the original series and Enterprise when looking at the 90s stuff,. For discovery I have enjoyed the look of stuff..The new Enterprise was beautiful to my eyes. I couldn't stop looking at it. My objections with Discovery have been the writing. I don't know how anybody can look at episode 1 of season 2 and not be impressed with how much they spent on that episode. So i look forward to Picard and beyond to see what they can do next.
I watch episodes now of Next Gen or DS9 and visually? They haven't aged well to my eyes. I would love to see a full blown update to visual effects circa 2020...For DS9 hell I would just settle for HD....
I kind like all the era's visuals, though i think TNG aged the worst. So far. If I'm lucky to be alive in 30 years i may feel Disco hasn't weathered well, esp the very artsy space shots of season 1. I do think Season 2 Discovery visually is as good as it's ever been, Beyond included. So i am hopeful.
And honestly I loved the animation style of Ephraim and Dot. i'd really like to see more of that.
And honestly I loved the animation style of Ephraim and Dot. i'd really like to see more of that.
On the contary, spaceship battles should not show more than one ship at any time - there is no reason for the enterprise to be within 5000 metres of a borg cube when the weapons range is measured in thousands of kilometres.
There's no reason for the defiant to "punch its way through" the blockade in favour the bold/sacrifice of angels - there were about 1,000 dominion ships, even if they were 100,000km away from each other in a rectangle just 1 ship deep that would have a "wall" 3.2 million km wide and high - no wider than 5 seconds at warp 1.
Believable space battles involve the dominion warping a Jem Hadar fighter, or a hijacked yridian frieighter, into earth at warp 9. It's boring from a story point of view.
EVERYTHING WAS BETTER IN THE PAST!!!
Yep.
Or we could go the other way... the good old days weren't always good, and tomorrow isn't as bad as it seems.*
*Apologies to Billy Joel for butchering his lyrics.
