No real match for Enterprise refit/Ent-A in the TOS movies?

[Captain Nebula]

I was thinking last night that the TOS movies never showed an even-match battle between the Enterprise refit/Ent-A and any other adversary.

TMP - overwhelming adversary
TWOK - Khan sucker punched the Enterprise and probably wouldn't have if they had their shields up.
TSFS - Enterprise was damaged and couldn't compete with a small Bird of Prey
TVH - no battles
TFF - take by surprise by a Bird of Prey at the center of the galaxy
TUC - surrenders to a D-7A, sneak attacked by a cloaked Bird of Prey

Only the D7-A would have been an even match for a heavy cruiser such as the Enterprise. The Enterprise outguns a Bird of Prey 10-to-1 according to Kruge in The Search for Spock.

 

[trevanian]

The movies really missed the mark on space battles. Always expected something like the one in SPOCK MUST DIE! where the E blows through a mini armada of Klingons, and always HOPED to see something like the one in THE WOUNDED SKY.

Real shame we never got to see the ship go to work while the TMP march played through, though I gamed such scenarios out about a zillion times between 1980 and 1995.

 

[Smellmet]

The movies really missed the mark on space battles. Always expected something like the one in SPOCK MUST DIE! where the E blows through a mini armada of Klingons, and always HOPED to see something like the one in THE WOUNDED SKY.

Real shame we never got to see the ship go to work while the TMP march played through, though I gamed such scenarios out about a zillion times between 1980 and 1995.

Totally agree, whilst I love cerebral Trek as much as any fan (TMP is one of my faves) The bottom line is the Enterprise is a heavily armed cruiser and a member of the cast as far as I'm concerned, and I want to see her in action. TWOK had excellent space battles, TSFS battle was rather limp but I understand why, TUC was pretty good but left me wanting more, FC was was good but seemed to be over too quickly, INS was poor, end of, NEM was absolutely superb, all that was missing was the fleet which was hinted at but never appeared, ST09's Kelvin battle was great but thought the end one was 'meh' and STID battle was extremely one sided & disappointing to say the least - they had a budget I thought Trek movies could only dream about and the Enterprise doesn't even get to fire a single shot?

For me the absolute gold standard still to this day is the Return of the Jedi's end space battle - epic in scale and excitement, crazy camera angles, fabulous sound and music, and which is why I'd like to see the fleet engaged against a load of Klingon Battlecruisers as part of the next movie.

 

[SchwEnt]

I don't wanna piss on anyone's parade, but I'm okay with how it all played out in TOS movies. Couple of reasons...

Star Trek isn't about space battles, so we needn't have every movie featuring ships blasting other ships (although that's what we generally get).

Sure, the Enterprise is armed, but combat isn't the main purpose of the vessel, merely one part of a larger mission. Starships are supposed to be about exploring strange new worlds, going where no man has gone before. Kirk's prologue didn't mention defending Federation against any and all attackers. As for me, TMP was really all about what a starship can do... exploring the unknown, saving a planet, new discoveries. That's more "starship" to me rather than how much whoop-ass it dishes out onscreen. TMP showed a starship succeeding in a high-risk mission without firing a shot in anger. That's Star Trek.

The movies weren't about all-out warfighting, so we did not get a grandly matched battle of "our best" versus "their best". The Enterprise fought diverse vessels under varying circumstances as the plot unfolded. Sometimes a commandeered friendly ship, sometimes a lesser enemy combatant, whatever it may be. More interesting that way.

Lest I be misunderstood, I enjoy seeing the Enterprise kick ass, too. But that's the gravy on top, I'm more impressed when I can see the starship Enterprise do other great things, acting in a benevolent manner for all mankind, or other high sounding words.

There are plenty of kick-ass fighting spaceships around. Let the starship Enterprise be something more.

 

[Smellmet]

I agree with everything you've said, but we are talking about the battles in this thread, and I do love to see my favorite ship in action. I do however enjoy seeing Enterprise in just about any given scenario, doesn't have to be in battle - going to warp, for instance (best one is the first one in TWOK for me), and the flyby/launch in TMP are amongst my favorite scenes in the entire franchise. My point is, that the Star Trek universe has painted a number of civilizations that have armadas of hundreds of massive ships - civilizations that sometimes don't get on too great, I don't think it's too much of an ask to see a war kick off big time for once - DS9 Dominion style.

Like I said in my first post I love the cerebral sci-fi side of Trek, but I think in the main that works best on the small screen (Season 7 of DS9 excepted of course), the movies are where I want to see a bigger more exciting 'event' so to speak, as that is what the big screen is for, TMP is a clear exception to that rule however, but for me that's what makes Trek so great in my opinion, the things that different people take from it is so diverse, some people are all about the characters, some the science, the ships, the list goes on...

 

[Maurice]

I was always struck by how unimaginative the space battles were. For instance, they could have done some crazy/scary stuff showing weapons slamming into deflector shields which stop 99.9% of the blast but the tiny fraction that manages to bleed through does serious damage. It would have been visually arresting and made the power such ships would have to possess much more tangible. If their weapons are more powerful than atomics they should bloody well look like it.

 

[C.E. Evans]

I don't wanna piss on anyone's parade, but I'm okay with how it all played out in TOS movies.

Same here.

But I'm also of the opinion that the Constitution-class was never meant to be a dedicated warship (despite what the Klingons would say), but rather a multipurpose vessel that could carry out a wide variety of deep-space missions very well. In that regard, the design was correctly depicted as a powerful ship for its time, but not an invincible one, IMO.

 

[Mage]

I don't wanna piss on anyone's parade, but I'm okay with how it all played out in TOS movies. Couple of reasons...

Star Trek isn't about space battles, so we needn't have every movie featuring ships blasting other ships (although that's what we generally get).

Sure, the Enterprise is armed, but combat isn't the main purpose of the vessel, merely one part of a larger mission. Starships are supposed to be about exploring strange new worlds, going where no man has gone before. Kirk's prologue didn't mention defending Federation against any and all attackers. As for me, TMP was really all about what a starship can do... exploring the unknown, saving a planet, new discoveries. That's more "starship" to me rather than how much whoop-ass it dishes out onscreen. TMP showed a starship succeeding in a high-risk mission without firing a shot in anger. That's Star Trek.

The movies weren't about all-out warfighting, so we did not get a grandly matched battle of "our best" versus "their best". The Enterprise fought diverse vessels under varying circumstances as the plot unfolded. Sometimes a commandeered friendly ship, sometimes a lesser enemy combatant, whatever it may be. More interesting that way.

Lest I be misunderstood, I enjoy seeing the Enterprise kick ass, too. But that's the gravy on top, I'm more impressed when I can see the starship Enterprise do other great things, acting in a benevolent manner for all mankind, or other high sounding words.

There are plenty of kick-ass fighting spaceships around. Let the starship Enterprise be something more.

You and I can shake hands!

Sure, it's fun and all seeing all the big space battles, but when Kirk (or any other captain for that matter) manages to outwit his opponents and save the day without killing, I'm cheering.

 

[Smellmet]

I don't wanna piss on anyone's parade, but I'm okay with how it all played out in TOS movies.

Same here.

But I'm also of the opinion that the Constitution-class was never meant to be a dedicated warship (despite what the Klingons would say), but rather a multipurpose vessel that could carry out a wide variety of deep-space missions very well. In that regard, the design was correctly depicted as a powerful ship for its time, but not an invincible one, IMO.

I think nearly all Federation ships were designed with this philosophy - the Federation is usually portrayed as peaceful explorers and scientists that usually like to have the moral high ground compared to the Klingons for example, my point being is that you can still stab someone with a swiss-army knife...

 

[JarodRussell]

I was always struck by how unimaginative the space battles were. For instance, they could have done some crazy/scary stuff showing weapons slamming into deflector shields which stop 99.9% of the blast but the tiny fraction that manages to bleed through does serious damage. It would have been visually arresting and made the power such ships would have to possess much more tangible. If their weapons are more powerful than atomics they should bloody well look like it.

I'm not sure I can't take comments like that seriously. What more imaginative space battles were there in the 80s? Did you REALLY see it the first time being struck by how unimaginative the space battles were?

 

[Smellmet]

Like I said earlier, Return of the Jedi, name me one better from the 80's. WOK was awesome, but it was also different, more 'cat and mouse'

 

[JarodRussell]

I'm not sure I can't take comments like that seriously. What more imaginative space battles were there in the 80s? Did you REALLY see it the first time being struck by how unimaginative the space battles were?

Like I said earlier, Return of the Jedi, name me one better from the 80's. WOK was awesome, but it was also different, more 'cat and mouse'

Star Wars and Return of the Jedi is WWII aerial combat. TWOK is 17th century naval warfare. Beyond that, I don't think there were any memorable space battles in scifi films at that time.


I think I remember the First Contact space battle being considered the next best thing after Return of the Jedi. Because there are so few.

 

[Maurice]

Like I said earlier, Return of the Jedi, name me one better from the 80's. WOK was awesome, but it was also different, more 'cat and mouse'

I for one am struck by the tendency of some people on this board to pass judgement on other people's personal reactions and taste.

I thought TWOK's space battles were relatively clever, but even during the movie I was struck by how puny the weapons seemed, but I bought it because the ships were damaged. The battles in the subsequent movies were all pretty bland and by the numbers.

 

[trevanian]

Even in TWOK I was bothered by the 'get up alongside for the broadside' aspect, though at least it made sense at the end in the nebula. That's the part working best for me out of all of them, because the phaser going up INSIDE of RELIANT's nacelle just looks so damn cool.

Really wish they'd used phasers more, the torpedoes rarely looked energetic enough.

I actually think SERENITY's space battle trumps JEDI's, but not by much. It lasts as long as it needs to and there is so much going on that you can watch it many times and still find new bits of business.

 

[USS Firefly]

The space battle in Serenity was indeed great, too bad that they never will come a sequel.

 

[Timo]

In the real world, a fight between two equal adversaries would be almost unheard of. Surely both sides would want to engage only from a position of strength?

Out of the Trek films, ST2:TWoK already dealt with the rare scenario where clever commanding settles an even match. ST:TMP and ST4:TVH show how an uneven battle can be won by the underdog, again going for the realistic approach, namely not agreeing to fight. ST:GEN is a fun exercise in how the top dog can lose, and overall enjoyable since heroes seldom are allowed to be defeated. ST3:TSfS shows two masters of bluff playing a merciless game with laughably weak hands, focusing the attention from the hardware to the people involved. That's plenty of nice diversity there...

...Meaning I wouldn't really have minded a rematch with even ships, even though it has already been done. It's true that Kirk has never faced an alien foe that was evenly matched - essentially, a Klingon battle cruiser that doesn't get in a sucker punch or a saboteur or some other dirty trick first - in an open fight, but it shouldn't be too difficult to think of a plot where he's forced to do such a tactically inadvisable thing.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[austen_pierce]

In TWOK, Reliant and Enterprise are evenly matched. They are both weakened viscerally, approximately the same way, and set to claw at each other with limited resources, including the intellects of their respective commanders.

Give me that any day over phasers bouncing off shields.

 

[Kaelef]

As a kid, I made the same list of battles in my mind, and always wished there'd been at least one instance where the Enterprise wasn't severely crippled in one way or another.

Note that in TMP, the Enterprise is newly-refitted and has some issues to work out (e.g. the "warp tunnel" problem). Not that it would have mattered against V'ger.

In TWOK, they had a brand-new, inexperienced crew.

Obviously, all of these issues suffered by our ship were written to add to the drama. It wouldn't have been very exciting if our heroes had stomped on the adversary.

Still, I would've loved some more interesting, engaging battles like those in TWOK, and have been disappointed that the scenes in the new reboot movies have been full of quick edits, twisting camera shots, and extreme close-ups that, IMHO, keep you from really appreciating the visual grandeur of the scenes.

And, yes, Trek is much less about space battles than other sci-fi, and the Federation's focus isn't on warfare, but it's undeniable those sorts of action scenes add a great deal to a movie experience. Especially when we *care* about the Enterprise as we would any other character. We want her to win! It hurts to see her get damaged!

Finally: the battle scenes in Star Wars are amazing, but very different in that they're all about battles between very large numbers of ships. Trek battles have almost always been 1-on-1 or another small number of ships, making it all much more personal.

 

[Galileo7]

I always wanted an extensive long battle between the 1701-Refit/1701-A and the Klingon K'Tinga(s). An extremely longer battle than what was depicted in the Enterprise Class Simulator with Savik in WOK.

 

[Smellmet]

I always wanted an extensive long battle between the 1701-Refit/1701-A and the Klingon K'Tinga(s). An extremely longer battle than what was depicted in the Enterprise Class Simulator with Savik in WOK.

Me too. Such a missed opportunity. Two of my favourite ships in all of Trek.