new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire (spoilers?)

[cooleddie74]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

There's why the Enterprise design sucks, GL couldn't let Trek upstage his Wars Empire so he instructed his boys at ILM to make sure it was crap.

I wouldn't be suprised if thats what happend!

This just in: Elvis, Jimmy Hoffa's zombie and the ghost of Lee Harvey Oswald design new movie Enterprise at Area 51's cafeteria!

 

[Captain X]

Sounds like a couple of stoners talking:

"Man, when I was a kid, I always like toys to have moving parts, and the original Enterprise never had anything that moved, so I was like, we should totally make the nacelles have these flapping wings, and the deflector should have like a foreskin that could be pulled back for the deflector to do its thing."

"When I was looking at the bottom of the original ship, I noticed it had these weird circles and things there, so I was like, I should totally put something like that on there, it would totally honor the original design to put some random circles on the bottom of our new ship! So if you look really close, you can totally see some circles like on the bottom of the old ship - totally rad, man. Are we creative geniuses or what?"

 

[Praetor]

^

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Sounds like when he was a kid he liked toys with moving parts because they felt more real (stuff like moving gun batteries on naval battleship, or moving rotors on helicopters, for example), and designed the ship with that inspiration. I have my problems with the Abramsprise, but to claim that the ship was designed to look like a child's toy is just disingenuous.

Exactly so - but hey, anything to score a cheap point in an argument, right?

 

[Captain X]

Why not? To be fair there has been stuff like that before, like the IDIC medallion. And with the way all the new toys have been pushed, merchandising the toys really could have went into the design decisions. I mean, look at the phaser, too, which is a lot more obnoxious than pretty much any other phaser they've used. At the very least it kind of shows what target audience they were keeping in mind, much like with the Star Wars prequels, or even Return of the Jedi for that matter.

 

[Maurice]

ILM hated the TMP model. They repainted it for TWOK because the original paint scheme didn't work for their bluescreens. They hated working on the model, they said it had no good angles.

I never noticed a difference between the TMP and TWOK Enterprises...

I believe what ILM did was start by dulling down the existing paint job to take the shine off it so they could pull clean mattes. It looks like they penciled on detail lines (least it looks that way in the closeup as the ship pulls up along Regula I). They did more and more rework on it as the films progressed. Trevanian probably knows the whole skinny.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Sounds like when he was a kid he liked toys with moving parts because they felt more real (stuff like moving gun batteries on naval battleship, or moving rotors on helicopters, for example), and designed the ship with that inspiration. I have my problems with the Abramsprise, but to claim that the ship was designed to look like a child's toy is just disingenuous.

Exactly so - but hey, anything to score a cheap point in an argument, right?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UxXW6tfl2Y0

 

[TheGodBen]

I don't know how familiar you are with all of the terminology of the Enterprise...

I'm reasonably knowledgeable on the subject.

...but there is a main hull, which is the big disk.

You mean the saucer section? The primary hull? Yes, I'm aware of it.

There is a secondary hull, which is a tube...

Indeed.

...and then you have two engines.

Not quite, but an understandable misconception. What you call engines, Roger, are actually nacelles and they have more in common with the wheels of a car than the car's engine. Glad we cleared that up.

And at the front of the bottom sort of cylinder there is this thing called the "collection plate"

Are you talking about the bussard collectors? The ramscoops? But those are on the nacelles, not the secondary hull.

[aka the navigational deflector, in Trek parlance]

The deflector dish? But that does the precise opposite of collecting things.

We made ours move...

Why?

...so it actually sort of comes out...

Why?

...and it grows...

Why?

...and you can move it around.

Why?

We just made the whole thing much more contemporary.

How? Because it moves? That is supposed to make up for the fact that the rest of the ship looks like rejected concepts from a 60s automobile manufacturer? How does a thing moving make it contemporary?


For the record, I am not opposed to this movie and I'm going to judge it by its own merits after I see it, but I hate the design of the new E and articles like this make the whole production come across in a bad light, at least from where I am sitting. The TOS and TMP Enterprises were beautiful ships, changing things in order to be "kewl" may be necessary to make money but it is off-putting to me.

 

[ncc-1017-e]

this ship sucks!

 

[Samurai8472]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

There's why the Enterprise design sucks, GL couldn't let Trek upstage his Wars Empire so he instructed his boys at ILM to make sure it was crap.

George- I want the new Enterprise to silver nacelle caps

ILM employee- what? you can't do that I refuse!

George strikes lightning from his hands

 

[gastrof]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

It certainly doesn't sound like ILM set out to rape anyone's childhood.

That moving deflector dish might be the equipment to do it, though.

Do we know for a fact the original design didn't have a moving deflector dish? We just may never have seen it move. (*grins evilly, runs*)

EDIT: ADDITIONAL

...the rest of the ship looks like rejected concepts from a 60s automobile manufacturer...

LOL!

I just posted a thread a few minutes ago after finally noticing the new E gives you the feel of a 1950s auto with big fins on the back end!!! (Hadn't been in this thread yet, I swear!)

 

[Timo]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

Do we know for a fact the original design didn't have a moving deflector dish?

Actually, we know for a fact that it did.

Just watch basically any TOS episode (not the remastered ones, but the hallowed original original ones) and you can see the dish change size and shape between shots, much like the STXI dish apparently does. At the very least, you can observe the changes between the title sequence dish and the regular shots dish.

Similarly, the original ship had moving parts at the aft end of the engine nacelles: the grey spheres there would retract/dissolve for the duration of the opening credits shot where the ship approaches the red planet.

I'm glad that we will finally see this as such perfectly reasonable technology in action. An adjustable antenna? The most natural thing in the world. Retracting or adjusting covers at the rear end of your engines? Standard feature on all sorts of engine designs, and especially useful on these cigarlike things that have stuff flowing through them from forward to back and at least occasionally burping out from the rear...

I just wonder what our terminology-challenged interviewee meant by the movement of the engine "fins". Do the fins at the top of the nacelles wiggle? Or do the pylons bend, moving the entire engines with them? Supposedly, it's subtle or the trailers would have given it away already. Perhaps the pylons flex enough that on certain flight modes, they are just as straight as on ShatKirk's ship?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Good]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

I just wonder what our terminology-challenged interviewee meant by the movement of the engine "fins". Do the fins at the top of the nacelles wiggle?
Timo Saloniemi

When I read that in the article, I was worried that the doofus was calling the nacelles "fins." Maybe he was.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

this ship sucks!

Kind of ironic, given your screen name.

 

[Devon]

Why?

Why not? No explanation needed.

Why?

Why not? No explanation needed.

Why?

Why not? No explanation needed.

...and you can move it around.

Why?

Why not? No explanation needed.

How? Because it moves? That is supposed to make up for the fact that the rest of the ship looks like rejected concepts from a 60s automobile manufacturer? How does a thing moving make it contemporary?

Yes, I forgot that many of the concept cars from the 1960s looked like the Starship Enterprise.

changing things in order to be "kewl" may be necessary to make money but it is off-putting to me.

I doubt they are equating giving the deflector dish mobility to Paramount "raking it in." It does what it does. The original ship with its pretty 'kewl' rotating christmas lights is of no higher level than things that "move."

 

[Praetor]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

It certainly doesn't sound like ILM set out to rape anyone's childhood.

That moving deflector dish might be the equipment to do it, though.

Do we know for a fact the original design didn't have a moving deflector dish? We just may never have seen it move. (*grins evilly, runs*)

IIRC, didn't the stem that the dish was mounted on have what looked like a compound up-down/side-side 'hinge' in it?

Perhaps the pylons flex enough that on certain flight modes, they are just as straight as on ShatKirk's ship?

I have a feeling that's the case.

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

Re: the deflector dish

Doesn't the term "navigational deflector" come from the movies, specifically TMP? In some of Jefferies' sketches, the dish is labeled as the "main sensor."

 

[Vektor]

The deflector dish on the original Enterprise was, indeed, designed with an articulating hinge. It was just never seen in any position but straight ahead.

 

[Praetor]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

Re: the deflector dish

Doesn't the term "navigational deflector" come from the movies, specifically TMP? In some of Jefferies' sketches, the dish is labeled as the "main sensor."

I believe the description from 'TMoST' (and presumably the writers' guide too) described it as a combination sensor/deflector. I don't recall right off hand if any attempt at saying 'the dish was the sensor, the rings behind the deflector' or anything like that was made.

 

[M'Sharak]

Re: new Enterprise for TrekXI - ILM details scifiwire

Re: the deflector dish

Doesn't the term "navigational deflector" come from the movies, specifically TMP? In some of Jefferies' sketches, the dish is labeled as the "main sensor."

I believe the description from 'TMoST' (and presumably the writers' guide too) described it as a combination sensor/deflector. I don't recall right off hand if any attempt at saying 'the dish was the sensor, the rings behind the deflector' or anything like that was made.

One of the sketches to which middyseafort refers might be among those seen here, but this one (third sketch from the top, with arrow indicating 'sensor') seems to show a dome rather than a dish in the customary location.

I don't recall the term "deflector" being used a great deal during the Original Series in connection with the dish; -- rather, it seemed more often to be associated with the screens, though the deflector was employed in an attempt to divert the approaching asteroid in "The Paradise Syndrome".

It would make sense that the dish, being a directional array, would be capable of being moved.