Of steam pipes and fork lifts.....

[Psion]

Timo, they don't have to recognize the individual facility to see that they're not looking at a visualization of the future. All they need to do is look at the concrete floor. And while I appreciate the original series cut corners frequently, this was a major motion picture trying to tell the audience they weren't looking at a brewery.

Getting back to the Hornet photos, I crudely mocked up a view of a set based on those pictures. Green screens should be obvious where CGI set extension should be employed.

It isn't huge and more of it could be trimmed and replaced with green screen ... the whole lower level, for example.

 

[Timo]

Hmm. Still looks exactly like that brewery to me. Or something like a 90% match. Multiple levels of pipes, grilles, nondescript masses and so forth.

Concrete floors, or floors made of unobtainium but with concrete texture for that all-important traction? Either way, it's much better than carpeting.

Or 1940s aircraft carrier steel floors. If concrete is inadmissible because it's recognizable and not a futuristic technology, then steel must be, too.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Warped9]

Anyone else feel the production team really dropped the ball at a few points? My suspension of disbelief was jarred when i saw the forklifts in that hanger sequence and the use of some generic industrial plant for "engineering". I mean come on, BSG used the "everyday items" conceit due to a lack of budget and as a way to frame the "they're just like us" aspects of the story. Star Trek doesnt have either of these excuses.

Other than that, the ship really comes into it's own seeing it in motion. They did an excellent job of finding her good angles.

I'll leave plot and characterization to other forums......

I was thouroughly disgusted with the production design of this film. Not only did I dislike the new version of the ship, but I hated the cheap think of all the other stuff layered in after it.

 

[dougkeenan]

That looks great, Psion.

 

[Psion]

Hmm. Still looks exactly like that brewery to me. Or something like a 90% match. Multiple levels of pipes, grilles, nondescript masses and so forth.

Then, with all due respect, Timo, you're either being obstinate or have no idea what a brewery looks like. Now admittedly, this little side project still needs a lot of work before it looks like more than a cluttered mess, but with air-tight bulkheads for compartmentalization, the hint of tokamaks in the green-screened spaces, and the careful avoidance of large vessels anchored solely to concrete floors, it will look even less like a collection of pipes and non-descript masses.

What you saw in that one still was the result of less than two hours of effort to roughly sketch out my proposal. Be a sport and use your imagination to meet me halfway, okay?

Concrete floors, or floors made of unobtainium but with concrete texture for that all-important traction? Either way, it's much better than carpeting. [I agree]

Or 1940s aircraft carrier steel floors. If concrete is inadmissible because it's recognizable and not a futuristic technology, then steel must be, too.

Do you honestly think the engineering "set" in the movie looks like it could be a 23rd century engine room for a starship? Honestly, I doubt it looks anything like what a brewery from 250 years in the future will look like. Think about what a brewery looked like 100 years ago ... smaller scale, wooden vats, brass fixtures with iron or copper piping, minimal safety equipment, bad lighting. People used what they knew, what was industrially available, and what was cheap. And all of that changes over time.

Why, for example, aren't pipes square? They're easier to manufacture round, and support higher pressure if they're cylindrical. You can also thread them so it's easier to connect them. But when you ship them, there's wasted space in stacks of pipes. But what happens if you have the ability to assemble pipes molecule by molecule out of materials that are considered exotic by today's standards? Can you make them into shapes that stack better, with less wasted pace between them? Square or hexagonal pipes might become more common then just because it's cheaper and easier to ship more of them. Especially if you have something futuristic tools that make cutting, joining, and bending such pipes as easy or easier than they are today. And if you have square pipes, for example, you could lay them one atop the other so that they might even look like walls. Or floors. Suddenly, the look of "pipes everywhere" which some folks in these parts apparently like and I'm trying to experiment with above, becomes obsolete, because the pipes don't look like pipes any longer.

Intel is working on a concept called "programmable matter" that promises to completely change the way things are put together and used. I have no idea what kind of impact that's going to have on the look of the future, but I'm reasonably sure the end result will look different from today.

That looks great, Psion.

Thank you, sir! There's lots of stuff to clean up on it, and I plan to place the green-screen and extensions on separate layers so I can show what the set looks like, and what it's supposed to look like when effects are added.

But it's a bit of a waste of time for simple discussion and debate, it's nothing I plan to use elsewhere outside of this forum, so who knows if it'll go any farther?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

This is all a bit confusing, because the 1940s engine room photos show a facility that's not all that different from the STXI one. Exposed pipes and naked supports are all the vogue, while control panels are scattered here and there instead of covering all the walls.

It almost seems as if Jeffries completely dropped the ball originally, and later generations had to correct his mistakes...

Granted that vanity covers will probably increase in number and coverage when reliability of the tech beneath improves - eventually giving us something like the TNG engine room. But the trend in control panels is one of diminishing size, because controls become more and more abstract and do not have to be built into the same giant cowling where the machine itself resides.

Also, the exposed brewery looks ergonomically superior to the model where all important machinery is hidden behind panels, and those panels in turn are hidden in really awkward corridors or crawlways. Granted that TNG got exceptionally bad with the all-fours Jeffries tubes - but as the name implies, Matt himself was the first to introduce this idiocy, and in an absurdly tilted configuration to boot.

Timo Saloniemi

The thing with the Hornet's engine room is that we're talking about a STEAM-POWERED SYSTEM.

For those who aren't familiar with how power is generated in modern terms... here's a primer. For those of you who already know this stuff, feel free to skip ahead.

All major power generation today is done by conversion of heat energy into mechanical energy and then conversion of that mechanical energy into electrical energy. In the case of windmills and hydroelectric power, you can take out that first step, and in the case of photoelectric generation or electrochemical generation (in the form of fuel cells), you're doing something totally different. But the overwhelming majority of all power generation follows the pattern I just described.

Basically, the first step is generation of heat. This can be done by burning fuel, or by having a controlled nuclear reaction, but it's really all about heat generation.

This heat then converts a fluid (normally ordinary water) from liquid into gas. The process of going from liquid to gas means that the material expands tremendously in volume. This volumetric expansion is the fundamental element which makes this useful - you expand liquid water into steam, and it "pushes" through a turbine, converting the heat into rotational motion.

This rotation then turns a generator, which is essentially (and dramatically oversimplified, mind you) a magnet turning inside a coil of wire, "pushing" electrons along the wires. This electrical flow is what we see as usable power.

That's everything we do today. Virtually all power generation on the planet, even today, is "steam power." I find it fascinating that so many people think that the "Spiderman II" version of power generation makes sense... somehow using "magic wands" to collect energy directly. As of today, it doesn't work that way, and we have no idea how to do things in any other way.

But... by the 23rd century, if we have matter/antimatter reactions driving faster-than-light starships, I'd sure as hell hope we'll have come up with a better approach than "use the m/am reaction to heat water, converting it to steam and turning a turbine to drive a generator set."

The "plumbing" you see in the Hornet is there because that ship is carrying steam through those pipes. The shut-off valves you see are there to block or open paths for steam to flow through, or for liquid water to flow through, or for lubrication to the turbine and generator bearings.

If you accept a modern model of what an engine room should look like, you're accepting that this ship runs on steam power, at FTL speeds.
I find that... dubious, at best.

But the "Abrams-prise" engine room is worse than that. Because the containers, the "plumbing", all that... in the brewery, it's clearly and unambiguously LOW PRESSURE DESIGN. That's the big difference between, say, the Hornet's engine room and the brewery. The modern naval engine room has extreme-high-pressure pressure-vessels, extremely robust "plumbing" and valving and so forth... and pressure gauges and so forth throughout to ensure that people working in there can tell if there's a problem in the steam system.

In the brewery, you have what are essentially unpressurized systems... only subject to "pressure head" due to gravity (and many orders of magnitude lower than that which you see in a steam-based generation system).

SO...

What we see in the "Abram's Enterprise" engine room is a low-pressure tank system, with no heat generation, no lubrication system, just lots of low-pressure fluid-managment hardware. Just big beer casks and "taps" on those "kegs."

 

[Shaw]

It is funny... both breweries and WWII naval engine rooms would have been summarily dismissed as sources in TOS production as being too familiar and linked with old (20th century) technology. Nuclear power plants were used as sources (which is why much of the exposed hardware was to be isolated from the crew) and the most advance technology in the world (or at least the west coast) back then had just started operation... SLAC. The advisors from the Rand Corporation would have most likely suggested that as a place to get design inspiration from.

And when considering how this type of stuff might have been approached in TOS in my designs, I've been studying images of SLAC back around the time of it's construction.

But then again, I'm sure I'm bias against breweries (as I don't drink), so feel free to ignore me.

 

[Aegis]

My personal favourite was right in the opening of the film where the turbolift speeds down to the hanger level.....but the hanger is ABOVE the rest of the ship. That being said the hanger was amazing, reminded me of Space Battleship Yamato's fighter bay!

The engineering level was confusing (WATER pipes!) and the Communication section I didn't understand at all!

 

[sojourner]

Timo,
The big "no" factor for me on the engine room as depicted is it's size. Whether you are in a sea going vessel trying to keep water out or a space going vessel trying to keep atmosphere in, you are going to use compartmentalization. The ability to seal off a compromised location is key to damage control. The steam pipes would not have bugged me if the room hadn't looked like it was the size of the warehouse from "Raiders of the Lost Ark". Look at the Hornet photos again and you will notice while everything is exposed (which I like from an ergonomic point of view), the room sizes are still relatively small.

 

[largo]

... for the low pressure distribution of exotic, dark matter fluids which interact with subspace to form vortices of negative energy, which in turn distort space surrounding the vessel, etc. i mean, obviously.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

... for the low pressure distribution of exotic, dark matter fluids which interact with subspace to form vortices of negative energy, which in turn distort space surrounding the vessel, etc. i mean, obviously.

Is that what's happening when I have a few pints of that "exotic dark matter fluid?" Space is being distorted around me? Ah, that makes sense now...

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

For the next film, a dedicated set for the engine room should definitley be built. Had I say, I'd use the "Warp cores" from the ejection scene as a basis for that, with catwalks going around and in-between them. Have the curve of the hull and the ejection hatches clearly visible. Lots of exposed equipment - not so many pipes, I'd hope. Add tons of cool singage and warning markings in a unified style. Show isolation doors, saftey equipment, etc. Make it clear it's a seperate compartment and that the engineering hull isn't one big open space. As a tribute to TOS's engine room, base one of the walls off of the wall with the console with the ladder in the middle of it.

Hallways in the engineering section would have the same circular cross-section, but would have a bare-bones look, like a partially-built aircraft fuselage or submarine hull. And lots of exposed wiring and equipment, of course. Essentially, the engineering hull hallways would also be conduits for the ships power and data lines and supply pipes/whatever. There would still be Jefferies Tubes for the more cramped sections, of course.

Have a seperate control room with the clean look of most of the above decks sections. As another tribute to TOS, stick a large, visible diagram of the "power cathedral" on a monitor somewhere.

 

[Praetor]

I wasn't a fan of the Enterprise engineering spaces either, but it didn't really take me oujt of the movie too much, but the big silver vats and the water tubes o' doom were very jarring.

The Kelvin, on the other hand, felt a lot more natural because the look was more consistent with the other sets (corridor, bridge). Personally, I liked the Kelvin sets much more than the Enterprise sets. The bridge had a sorta... cockpit-y feel to it.

And hey - a forklift is a freakin forklift. You don't have to show every single thing shooting antigravity out of its ass in the future. Wheelbarrows still have wheels, don't they? Shovels still shovel the way they have for centuries, don't they? It didn't bother me because it was in the background. If this was a George Lucas movie though, there'd be a freakin CGI forklift dance number. Then I'd complain about the forklifts.

This is basically how I feel too. On the one hand, they clearly wanted a space that said "engine room" to modern audiences without a lot of thought, and so they went for a space that they felt looked enough like an engine room without actually being one for a literally "modern" (as in 21st century) visual metaphor - which I'd say did feel like the inside of a real ship, albeit not a 23rd century one. Not what I'd have done, but in that regard it worked.

And agreed regarding the Kelvin too. I really liked its interiors more and would have preferred if the Enterprise looked more like it - just more brightly lit, and, you know, not so blown up. Generally, I liked that the two Starfleet ship interiors (even in some ways the overly busy Enterprise bridge) felt like real working spaces - things like the curtains between the beds in sickbay.

at the CGI forklift dance number. So true.

Here's a question then: why didn't they just use a real engine room? It isn't like they couldn't have gotten the cooperation of the U.S. Navy, and most people wouldn't have recognised the engine room of a CVN - especially if they dressed it up a little.

If they wanted to go for the "modern" approach, I really think that would have been a better way to go. The "water pipe" scene would have still been absolutely stupid, though.

It is funny... both breweries and WWII naval engine rooms would have been summarily dismissed as sources in TOS production as being too familiar and linked with old (20th century) technology. Nuclear power plants were used as sources (which is why much of the exposed hardware was to be isolated from the crew) and the most advance technology in the world (or at least the west coast) back then had just started operation... SLAC. The advisors from the Rand Corporation would have most likely suggested that as a place to get design inspiration from.

And when considering how this type of stuff might have been approached in TOS in my designs, I've been studying images of SLAC back around the time of it's construction.

But then again, I'm sure I'm bias against breweries (as I don't drink), so feel free to ignore me.

Say, thanks for that link!

(And don't feel bad, I don't drink either.

For the next film, a dedicated set for the engine room should definitley be built. Had I say, I'd use the "Warp cores" from the ejection scene as a basis for that, with catwalks going around and in-between them. Have the curve of the hull and the ejection hatches clearly visible. Lots of exposed equipment - not so many pipes, I'd hope. Add tons of cool singage and warning markings in a unified style. Show isolation doors, saftey equipment, etc. Make it clear it's a seperate compartment and that the engineering hull isn't one big open space. As a tribute to TOS's engine room, base one of the walls off of the wall with the console with the ladder in the middle of it.

Hallways in the engineering section would have the same circular cross-section, but would have a bare-bones look, like a partially-built aircraft fuselage or submarine hull. And lots of exposed wiring and equipment, of course. Essentially, the engineering hull hallways would also be conduits for the ships power and data lines and supply pipes/whatever. There would still be Jefferies Tubes for the more cramped sections, of course.

Have a seperate control room with the clean look of most of the above decks sections. As another tribute to TOS, stick a large, visible diagram of the "power cathedral" on a monitor somewhere.

That works for me.

 

[Chaos Descending]

SNIP

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Interestingly, I noticed on second viewing that the bridge on this ship is on what used to be deck two or deck three of the original design - the whole "bridge dome" is a superstructure, not just the glowly part. There's a shot from outside, in through the window that doubles as a viewscreen.

Wouldn't that make this ship smaller than the TOS ship? But the hangar deck and engineering section are comparatively huge so--

Hey, the freaky looking ship with nonsensical scaling? Just like the old Gold Key comics! Ah, nostalgia...

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Interestingly, I noticed on second viewing that the bridge on this ship is on what used to be deck two or deck three of the original design - the whole "bridge dome" is a superstructure, not just the glowly part. There's a shot from outside, in through the window that doubles as a viewscreen.

Wouldn't that make this ship smaller than the TOS ship? But the hangar deck and engineering section are comparatively huge so--

Hey, the freaky looking ship with nonsensical scaling? Just like the old Gold Key comics! Ah, nostalgia...

Oh my God, it all makes sense now... we've seen the creation of the "Gold-Key-verse."

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Interestingly, I noticed on second viewing that the bridge on this ship is on what used to be deck two or deck three of the original design - the whole "bridge dome" is a superstructure, not just the glowly part. There's a shot from outside, in through the window that doubles as a viewscreen.

Wouldn't that make this ship smaller than the TOS ship? But the hangar deck and engineering section are comparatively huge so--

Hey, the freaky looking ship with nonsensical scaling? Just like the old Gold Key comics! Ah, nostalgia...

Oh my God, it all makes sense now... we've seen the creation of the "Gold-Key-verse."

That's what I've been saying since the Thursday I saw the movie. It's what lets me enjoy it even though it fulfilled every single negative prediction (and added a few that never occured to me) I had when I was naysaying it up in the Trek XI forum. Let's spread the meme.

I've also said it was like watching eight-year-olds play "Star Trek guns" in an abandonned factory. Factory, brewery: close enough.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Sticking radiation warnings on a brewer's vessel does nothing to make the vessel look like a warp core.

Why not? There are no rules about what a warp core should or shouldn't look like. The various shows and movies have already offered too much variety for that sort of a rule.

Exactly. All the "warp core" rules and so forth are lot of hooey. Simply because there's been an attempt to make it reasonably consistent and attractive hooey doesn't make it any less so.

Saw the movie again last evening. The engineering spaces work fine, and now that we know how large the ship is - bigger than the Enterprise-D by more than a bit - the scale of these spaces is no longer even a little bit of a problem.

Which shots could you see the concrete floor in, BTW? I saw what looked like brick flooring in a publicity still, but the only time I noticed the floor last evening it looked like it had the same red vinyl covering that the Bridge floor does.

 

[ncc-1017-e]

Just saw the film again and the use of the brewery just sucks

 

[RoJoHen]

I actually thought it sucked less the second time I saw it.