Mutara Nebula Battle
- Thread starter JJohnson
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OMG! It's been so long since I watched Voyager that I had forgotten what callous disregard for reality is in even just the opening title sequence!
0:13. Ship flies really close to a star. Okay. Shields in Trek should allow for this if there's a need.
0:24. Actually a compliment, here, great flyby of the Voyager model. As much as I have to complain about regarding this show, I have to admit that Sternbach's design for the ship itself really has grown on me over the years.
0:30 - 0:44. Flying through this nebula. Weeping baby Jesus. Such dense clouds of dust probably would never exist in space, certainly not as a natural formation. And if any such cloud was somehow artificially created, certainly there would never be any swirling like this. In order to swirl, there needs to be some sort of resisting medium, like air or water, to generate turbulence and eddies in. Open space, lacking such a resisting medium, would mean that displaced particles of dust would simply move on a straight vector away from whatever they collided against. So, the dust would simply shoot away from the ship rather than swirl around it like dirt suspended in a river.
1:21. There's really no scenario where the reflection of the ship might be visible in the rings of a gas giant. Well, maybe, provided that the ship is thousands of kilometers long. Again it's a question of scale. Notice the size of the ship compared to the gaps in the rings (the black banding). Such bands are caused by orbiting moons which are embedded within the ring and sweep their orbital path clear of other debris. Freakin' moons! And given the size of the reflection, we can tell the relative altitude of the ship over the planar surface of the rings, and we can see that the ship is much larger than any object that might have cleared out those paths in the ring. You may suggest, maybe it's just really small moons here, but, moons that small would me mere meters across and would not be significant enough to cause those gaps. In fact, no matter the scale, if the ship was close enough to show it's reflection on the ring, then the gravity created by the ship's natural mass would be enough to disrupt the flatness of the ring and we'd be seeing a very messy wave of debris being drawn towards the ship.
1:24. A sun dramatically peeks out from behind a small world (probably a moon of the other seemingly Class M world nearby) and rays of light shine around the ship, casting shadows out ahead of it's flight path. But, what is scattering this light? Atmospheric glows like that are the result of shining light through an atmosphere. And not just any, but one heavily laden with particulates, either dust or moisture. Now, a very large and nearby nebula exists at the end of this shot, and you may guess that the dust we're seeing here is related to that, however, the class M planet would not likely be at a class M state while there is still free dust in the system. Also, for a normal sized nebula to appear that large, even if it's a relatively smaller stellar remnant nebula, rather than the very much larger stellar formation nebulae, it would be probably dozens of light years away. And even so, to get that kind of glow in the air requires Earth atmosphere levels of gas density, as in high humidity, definitely about to rain, kind of atmosphere, certainly not an environment that you would find anywhere in space.
Now, again, given the casual disregard for science in Trek I'm sure that you'd be in good company tarting up the Mutara Nebula battle to match the esthetic we see in Voyager and such post-CGI visual effects Star Trek. I'm just pointing out that it would have no foundation in reality.
To quote someone on some board somewhere who's name I've long since forgotten, it'd be sci-fi that's heavy on the "fi," and real light on the "sci."
Sigh.
--Alex
0:13. Ship flies really close to a star. Okay. Shields in Trek should allow for this if there's a need.
0:24. Actually a compliment, here, great flyby of the Voyager model. As much as I have to complain about regarding this show, I have to admit that Sternbach's design for the ship itself really has grown on me over the years.
0:30 - 0:44. Flying through this nebula. Weeping baby Jesus. Such dense clouds of dust probably would never exist in space, certainly not as a natural formation. And if any such cloud was somehow artificially created, certainly there would never be any swirling like this. In order to swirl, there needs to be some sort of resisting medium, like air or water, to generate turbulence and eddies in. Open space, lacking such a resisting medium, would mean that displaced particles of dust would simply move on a straight vector away from whatever they collided against. So, the dust would simply shoot away from the ship rather than swirl around it like dirt suspended in a river.
1:21. There's really no scenario where the reflection of the ship might be visible in the rings of a gas giant. Well, maybe, provided that the ship is thousands of kilometers long. Again it's a question of scale. Notice the size of the ship compared to the gaps in the rings (the black banding). Such bands are caused by orbiting moons which are embedded within the ring and sweep their orbital path clear of other debris. Freakin' moons! And given the size of the reflection, we can tell the relative altitude of the ship over the planar surface of the rings, and we can see that the ship is much larger than any object that might have cleared out those paths in the ring. You may suggest, maybe it's just really small moons here, but, moons that small would me mere meters across and would not be significant enough to cause those gaps. In fact, no matter the scale, if the ship was close enough to show it's reflection on the ring, then the gravity created by the ship's natural mass would be enough to disrupt the flatness of the ring and we'd be seeing a very messy wave of debris being drawn towards the ship.
1:24. A sun dramatically peeks out from behind a small world (probably a moon of the other seemingly Class M world nearby) and rays of light shine around the ship, casting shadows out ahead of it's flight path. But, what is scattering this light? Atmospheric glows like that are the result of shining light through an atmosphere. And not just any, but one heavily laden with particulates, either dust or moisture. Now, a very large and nearby nebula exists at the end of this shot, and you may guess that the dust we're seeing here is related to that, however, the class M planet would not likely be at a class M state while there is still free dust in the system. Also, for a normal sized nebula to appear that large, even if it's a relatively smaller stellar remnant nebula, rather than the very much larger stellar formation nebulae, it would be probably dozens of light years away. And even so, to get that kind of glow in the air requires Earth atmosphere levels of gas density, as in high humidity, definitely about to rain, kind of atmosphere, certainly not an environment that you would find anywhere in space.
Now, again, given the casual disregard for science in Trek I'm sure that you'd be in good company tarting up the Mutara Nebula battle to match the esthetic we see in Voyager and such post-CGI visual effects Star Trek. I'm just pointing out that it would have no foundation in reality.
To quote someone on some board somewhere who's name I've long since forgotten, it'd be sci-fi that's heavy on the "fi," and real light on the "sci."
Sigh.
--Alex
Damn it, you ruined the entire show for me now.
About 28 seconds in, you'll see it.
If a starship were passing through a region of dense gas, such as a nebula, would it not look somewhat like that?
@Albertese - I agree with your science assessment of Voyager... but, in TWOK the Enterprise and Reliant both ran into the "wall" or outer boundary of the Mutara Nebula and had to push into it. Perhaps in this particular case this "nebula" would fall in the fantastical scenario and it could be treated like an unusually dense energy cloud. VFX-wise, it would've been neat to see the ships emerging between banks of clouds to fire at each other, IMHO.
there's a scene in the 2009 movie with the Enterprise coming out from hiding in some gases, I dont remember it was an atmosphere or Saturn's rings. THAT's dense.
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