Mystery ship? Can anyone help?

[gavinwatson]

Hi All,

I have been going crazy trying to find a specific scene from a specific episode of TNG. A friend is telling me it never happened which I just cannot believe.

What I remember is that the Enterprise approached a planet and an immensely superior and futuristic ship appeared with both energy and physical shields, it shot at the Enterprise with energy weapons that Gordie mentions as creating a huge energy surge in the Enterprise. The Enterprise fights back and the ship flys away, the Enterprise chases but the ship matches the Enterprises acceleration perfectly, so they can't catch it. Eventually they give up and Ricker says something like, "The one that got away".. I think Q summoned the ship to try and keep the Enterprise from going to the planet, but can't be sure. Thing is, I've searched every episode with Q and can't find this scene.

Has anyone any idea? I know I've seen this but can't find it.

Thanks guys,

 

[Start Wreck]

It sounds like it's from The Survivors (season 3?). Although it wasn't summoned by Q, it was summoned by a god-like being, and I recall the scene matching your description more or less.

 

[Timo]

Yup... Sounds like it's this baby all right:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x03/thesurvivors106.jpg

Seems this model was later extensively modified to become Kivas Fajo's private ship in "The Most Toys" (the engines at the rear are the telltale), and then redone several times until it became a Bajoran (Cardassian?) ship, the triangular one with triangular nacelles. One of the better reworkings, as the ship is nearly unidentifiable each time she gets a makeover.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[gavinwatson]

That's it!!!! Thank you so much guys!

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I wonder if Husnock would have posed a serious problem to Starfleet. That ship is 5 times the mass of Enterprise, which shows they have a decent industrial capacity, and at 50 billion population they would have had a small empire at least.

 

[Trekker4747]

I wonder if Husnock would have posed a serious problem to Starfleet. That ship is 5 times the mass of Enterprise, which shows they have a decent industrial capacity, and at 50 billion population they would have had a small empire at least.

That's assuming the ship was perfectly modeled after the Husnock and their ship and capability and not just a general ship created by the Dowd as a threat to the Enterprise.

 

[EmperorTiberius]

I wonder if Husnock would have posed a serious problem to Starfleet. That ship is 5 times the mass of Enterprise, which shows they have a decent industrial capacity, and at 50 billion population they would have had a small empire at least.

That's assuming the ship was perfectly modeled after the Husnock and their ship and capability and not just a general ship created by the Dowd as a threat to the Enterprise.

Yeah I guess so. Dowd said that he tried to trick the Husnock in the simlar way. Perphaps he used the same ship or a fake Starfleet ship.

 

[jimbotron]

The Husnock ship was originally made with CG. I'm sure it's gonna look great on Blu-ray.

 

[Mott the barber]

The Husnock ship was originally made with CG. I'm sure it's gonna look great on Blu-ray.

Never heard that before. You sure about that?

Either way it was a cool battle and neat to see the Ent. go up against something superior.

 

[Tosk]

It wasn't CG. The filming model was built by Tony Meininger.

 

[Timo]

In the scene where the model dives towards the planet to destroy the Uxbridge estate, you can see the stern and the telltale shapes of the red-glowing engines and the angled tubular things.

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x03/thesurvivors203.jpg

This rear end will pop up again several times in TNG and DS9... With significant physical modifications and added detail, as the initial Husnock model appears very smooth and lacking in "scale establishers" other than the portholes.

This variant is seen in "The Most Toys" and "Silicon Avatar":

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x22/themosttoys001.jpg

This one is seen in Bajoran and Cardassian hands:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s5/5x03/ensignro230.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mott the barber]

In the scene where the model dives towards the planet to destroy the Uxbridge estate, you can see the stern and the telltale shapes of the red-glowing engines and the angled tubular things.

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x03/thesurvivors203.jpg

This rear end will pop up again several times in TNG and DS9... With significant physical modifications and added detail, as the initial Husnock model appears very smooth and lacking in "scale establishers" other than the portholes.

This variant is seen in "The Most Toys" and "Silicon Avatar":

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x22/themosttoys001.jpg

This one is seen in Bajoran and Cardassian hands:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s5/5x03/ensignro230.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

Nice catches!

 

[jimbotron]

Oh, my mistake. I must be thinking of another ship.

Speaking of CGI, thank goodness this will finally get replaced:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x01/theensignsofcommand191.jpg

 

[Tosk]

Speaking of CGI, thank goodness this will finally get replaced:

http://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s3/3x01/theensignsofcommand191.jpg

Sorry, but there is no CGI in that scene either. That's the two-foot Enterprise and (I think) a redress of the Merchant ship from Star Trek III.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ I think he meant that CGI would allow them to replace all those instances of the same model being used, if they decide to go that route.

Or at least that poor quality shot specifically.

 

[Trekfan76137]

Actually I believe it's fairly well documented that that shot is an experiment with using a cg Enterprise model.

The giveaway had to do with the running lights I believe.

Possibly referenced in Larry Nemecek's TNG Companion book and some other places if I remember correctly.

 

[Tosk]

It's the two-footer. There are no CGI shots of the Enterprise in TNG.

 

[jimbotron]

Actually I believe it's fairly well documented that that shot is an experiment with using a cg Enterprise model.

The giveaway had to do with the running lights I believe.

Possibly referenced in Larry Nemecek's TNG Companion book and some other places if I remember correctly.

I remember reading the same thing. That it was an experiment, and they didn't like the results, so they never tried it again.

This used to be in the article from Memory Alpha, but was removed for not citing a source. I guess that's where I got it from:

This episode contains one of the first instances of computer-generated imagery (CGI) to grace an episode of the Star Trek franchise. As the Sheliak colony vessel approaches the Enterprise (approximately, 33:18), one of the few exterior shots of both vessels together, the distant Enterprise-D is a CGI model rather than a physical entity. The shot is very brief and the CGI replica is often mistaken for the similar two-foot filming model, however still-frame analysis reveals that the computer-generated Enterprise lacks much of the detail found on even the tiny two-foot model. Because of this, a CGI Enterprise would not be seen again until the first TNG feature film, Star Trek Generations, by which time computer technology had progressed significantly.

That being said, it looks very fake and low resolution. Even the worst shot of the 2-foot model looks better than that. I guess we'll find out one way or another when it's remastered.

 

[StewMc]

There doesn't seem to be a confirmed, legitimate source of the "CGI Enterprise-D" claim, a Google search only really reveals the Memory Alpha page and a couple of threads on this BBS where its brought up. It certainly looks less detailed than the 2 footer, infact it reminds me of the CG Enterprise-D that appeared in the cutscenes of the game "A Final Unity". In this thread, even Rick Sternbach doesn't know what model was used.

Did the 2 footer actually appear in new footage much after the second season? I seem to remember most of the new shots being of the 4 footer.

 

[Tosk]

The giveaway had to do with the running lights I believe.

Can't be that, as the running lights can be seen in operation on the 2ft in Pen Pals.

Did the 2 footer actually appear in new footage much after the second season? I seem to remember most of the new shots being of the 4 footer.

The 4ft didn't debut until The Defector, eight episodes after Ensigns. So if they needed a small scale Enterprise, it was all they had until then.


There's another way to know it's not CGI. Just watch the shot in question. Often times with the model work, the hull pass would be cropped ever so slightly differently to one or more of the lighting passes, so at the edge of the frame you would see the lights where there was no hull or vice versa. And that happens on this shot. There is visible space where only the lighting pass is visible and the hull element is cut off.


That said, it still looks like crap and I hope it is replaced in S3. Which is what TrekFan was saying originally.