OMFG MASSIVE SPOLIERS: NeoTrek Engine Musings

[Mr. B]

I would attribute the "multiple core ejections" to the effects department not giving a damn. If they moved a little faster they could have just as easily been photon torpedoes.

Bullshit.
Is it so hard to imagine that this core consists of multiple core-units?

...no harder that imagining it consists of a pipe maze and massive tanks I suppose.

 

[trevanian]

I would attribute the "multiple core ejections" to the effects department not giving a damn. If they moved a little faster they could have just as easily been photon torpedoes.

The production designer told me that his art dept came up with key views for all the ships and environments, and ILM basically executed those while adding only modest enhancements/flourishes. If there's something lacking in the scene you mention, it is probably because Abrams' people wanted it to look that way, rather than an ILM failing, especially given that there was no time crunch on this project.

 

[trevanian]

I would attribute the "multiple core ejections" to the effects department not giving a damn. If they moved a little faster they could have just as easily been photon torpedoes.

Bullshit.
Is it so hard to imagine that this core consists of multiple core-units?

...no harder that imagining it consists of a pipe maze and massive tanks I suppose.

Is that the jungle gym of metal pipes I see in ads where the camera looks up at guys walking under what looks like the framework for a swing set? Looks seriously amateur hour.

 

[Closet Trekkie]

But is it? All these bowels might have been found inside the TOS ship - and, if we trust the computer graphics from ENT "In a Mirror, Darkly", the central parts of the engineering hull did indeed consist of massive scaffolding and piping like this.

Multiple cores/reactors is a possibility with the TOS setup, too. And the basic elements seem to be the same: internal power generation facility, external engines in nacelles, separate impulse engines, antimatter involved in the workings, a nondescript role for dilithium...

Timo Saloniemi

Well, it's not so much the scaffolding and piping that feel like the departure. It's that, from the shots inside engineering, there didn't seem to be any familiar underlying design to it all. I didn't see any significant component that I'd recognize as being part of a Trek-univese starship. I didn't see anything that looked like a central reactor or plasma conduit. Sure, there were a lot of pipes and tanks, but they all looked like supporting structure, not the equipment that performs the primary function.

Even if there were multiple cores, the objects being ejected out of the Enterprise looked like they were too small to be individual self-contained reactors. If they are, it's a significant departure from all the Trek tech I've seen before.

The design that's more familiar to me is a large, central reactor. Maybe there's a backup one too, but for the most part, there's a single big "thing" that's significant in size compared to its supporting plant hardware. Now it looks like we have a reactor cluster that, physically, is mostly support hardware. The individual reactors themselves are tiny by comparison. That's a pretty significant difference as far as core/reactor design goes.

The rest of it is familiar Trek design, but I don't remember them mentioning antimatter or dilithium. I really need to see this movie again. I can't wait for it to be out on blu-ray.

 

[Ronald Held]

Single or multiple cores, the true effect would have been the same.

 

[BolianAuthor]

its stupid!

An accurate description, and NOT for the sake of merely hating the way it looked.

It's stupid because there is NO WAY such a massive space could be placed into the ship, in a way that would fit into the "filming miniature", for lack of a better term. This thing would take up the ENTIRE secondary hull, it looked so damn massive.

Not only that, it totally broke from the rest of the ship's look, of spit-and-polish clean and shiny... every time we went from the bridge to the engine room, I was totally pulled out of the illusion of being on the Enterprise... it ruined the illusion, it ruined the continuity of the ship, and it just looked incredibly dumb.

Now, i'm not saying that the engine room cannot be a bit gritty or grimy... not at all... but there is NO reason, to go from what looks like the Apple Store iBridge, to basically the Mobil refinery, within a single ship... that is just too stark a contrast. They could and should have done so much better.

The multiple cores thing was also absolutely stupid and retarded... the warp core IS what makes a Star Trek engine room... it is fucking iconic. I chock it up to the production team not knowing their heads from their asses, but it was a dumb move... the warp core, and the dilithium crystal chamber ARE what the Enterprise's engineering section is all about... for FORTY fucking years, the warp core has been the focal point, and centerpiece of any Trek engine room.

 

[Closet Trekkie]

First of all, I have to say I *did* like the movie. I liked it a lot. I love that the franchise is being rebooted, because I feel like it desperately needed it. I am, however, bothered that they're not paying as much attention to the tech credibility, consistency and canon as TNG/VOY/DS9/ENT did. Some of the stuff is, yes, dumb. The new engine room is the perfect example.

The way I see it, though, is that we're stuck with this movie. As inexplicable as some of the tech might be, it's now part of Trek canon. We have to find a way to integrate it. Luckily, I don't think it was so far out of whack that it can't be explained in somehow.

I only hope the next movie won't introduce more tech inconsistencies.

 

[Falconfire]

An accurate description, and NOT for the sake of merely hating the way it looked.

It's stupid because there is NO WAY such a massive space could be placed into the ship, in a way that would fit into the "filming miniature", for lack of a better term. This thing would take up the ENTIRE secondary hull, it looked so damn massive.

I think that was the point, in this Enterprise the engineering hull IS the engineering hull and not just the location of a room.

Not only that, it totally broke from the rest of the ship's look, of spit-and-polish clean and shiny... every time we went from the bridge to the engine room, I was totally pulled out of the illusion of being on the Enterprise... it ruined the illusion, it ruined the continuity of the ship, and it just looked incredibly dumb.

again the point. Never been on a ship huh? The workspaces look NOTHING like the engineering spaces. Especially on research vessels and the like.

The multiple cores thing was also absolutely stupid and retarded... the warp core IS what makes a Star Trek engine room... it is fucking iconic. I chock it up to the production team not knowing their heads from their asses, but it was a dumb move... the warp core, and the dilithium crystal chamber ARE what the Enterprise's engineering section is all about... for FORTY fucking years, the warp core has been the focal point, and centerpiece of any Trek engine room.

EXCEPT in TOS, where THERE WAS NO WARP CORE and THERE WAS NO DILITHIUM CHAMBER

The idea of a "warp core" has only been around since 79. I chalk that one up to so called fans not knowing jack about TOS and thinking they do... cough....

 

[trevanian]

EXCEPT in TOS, where THERE WAS NO WARP CORE and THERE WAS NO DILITHIUM CHAMBER

The idea of a "warp core" has only been around since 79. I chalk that one up to so called fans not knowing jack about TOS and thinking they do... cough....

Hi, I'm 'jack.' Glad to meetcha.

3rd season had a dilithium chamber in ELAAN OF TROYIUS. Pretty sure they had one in ALTERNATIVE FACTOR as well, but I'll be damned if I try watching two frames of it to check.

TAS had an intermix chamber thingie.

The big forced perspective thing behind the mesh in TOS may not have been CALLED a warp core, but it certainly seemed to serve as a visual reference for (big quote marks around this) THE ENGINE.

 

[trevanian]

I think that was the point, in this Enterprise the engineering hull IS the engineering hull and not just the location of a room.

So if the ship is hulled, you lose the entire cigar section? Is THAT the point?

 

[Plecostomus]

Ok, I specifially asked to keep this thread on the subject of "how it works" and not turn it into a "bash the design ethic" thread. We got enough of those. Those of you on the hate wagon, pack up and find another thread or I'm reporting ya'll to a moderator.


Ahem.

Given we saw little to no evidence of force-fields I could stand a few more bulkheads otherwise one wee hole will cause severe decompression.

 

[NCC-1701-B]

I think it should have been as it was, but with a central warp core in the middle. then it has all of the equipment needed, and still has a warp core.

Using a scene from V, which was filmed in the same brewery, i have made this!

 

[trevanian]

I think it should have been as it was, but with a central warp core in the middle. then it has all of the equipment needed, and still has a warp core.

Using a scene from V, which was filmed in the same brewery, i have made this!

Simon Pegg fattens up into Doohan by 'tapping those kegs,' huh?

 

[Cary L. Brown]

The way I see it, though, is that we're stuck with this movie. As inexplicable as some of the tech might be, it's now part of Trek canon. We have to find a way to integrate it. Luckily, I don't think it was so far out of whack that it can't be explained in somehow.

I only hope the next movie won't introduce more tech inconsistencies.

If you seriously think that, you haven't been watching very long, have you?

The GOOD thing about how this movie was handled is that it is not, in fact, "canon." Not at all. Basically, as far as "canon" is concerned, Nero and Spock disappear in the late 24th or early 25th century, and that's that. None of what you're seeing in this new movie ever happened "in canon."

What you've got here is a totally unrelated universe, which can (and undoubtedly will) deviate in any way which JJ and his guys have a whim to make it deviate. If they decide that "warp drive" allows literally instantaneous travel from one orbit to another, regardless of distance... they can do that and nobody can stop 'em. If they decide that "phasers" actually are squirt-guns firing "phaser-juice" at people... they can do that. If they decide that Kirk and Olson were having a hot-and-heavy-gay-relationship before his death.. they can do that. They can do whatever they want. And, based upon choices like "destroy Vulcan" and "make Spock and Uhura get it on" and so forth... not to mention production-design issues all around... I have no confidence whatsoever that they won't.

SO... your choice is simple. Enjoy these movies for what they are... movies that are NOT CANON, and are effectively unrelated to the Trek we've all known except for recycling of a few style items and a few character names (and only one who's really doing a good recreation of the original character - Urban is great, isn't he?).

Realize that we don't have to make any of this fit with anything... because it's not going to. Abrams has screwed up any chance of that. He COULD have tried to make this feel like it was "Star Trek done better" but he changed waaaay too much for no other reason than "well, I CAN."

But this is freeing at the same time that it's disappointing. This is a new show... three movies, max... in what is, effectively, another "mirror universe" but one further removed from the "real" Trek universe than that one was. So nothing... NOTHING.. that happens in the "AbramsTrek" continuity has any impact whatsoever on the Star Trek continuity. Nothing in AbramsTrek that disagrees, stylistically or technologically, with Star Trek style, technology, history, etc, has any impact whatsoever on the Star Trek continuity. Except, of course, for Nimoy-Spock being in that other universe.

I don't accept the bullshit "many universes is real science" line. Simply because it was mentioned in a TNG episode and because a few people with a science background have fantasies about this... there is ZERO mathematical, zero experimental, and zero observational evidence that this is the case, or could be the casee. I believe that there's one universe... a "dimension" is simply a unit of measure for determining your position within that universe. Not just the three coordinate dimensions we typically think of, but also time (and certainly many more which we don't perceive. Effectively, the entire, start to finish, universe exists... and we're just "sliding down a slope of time." Going to another time is fundamentally no different from going to another X, Y, or Z coordinate. You can interrupt things "downstream" from where you are, of course... but if you did that, well... "you always did it."

SO... from my perspective... with what we saw in this movie... the classic Trek universe has been destroyed and replaced by this "NuTrek" universe. Fortunately, it's fictional, so we can pretend otherwise. Especially since guys who I sincerely doubt passed High School Physics much less have any advanced science background are telling us "that's real science there."

I choose to simply ignore this movie as far as "Real Star Trek Continuity" is concerned. It "never happened." Maybe it's all a hallucination Spock's having as he falls into the black hole...

 

[trevanian]

The way I see it, though, is that we're stuck with this movie. As inexplicable as some of the tech might be, it's now part of Trek canon. We have to find a way to integrate it. Luckily, I don't think it was so far out of whack that it can't be explained in somehow.

I only hope the next movie won't introduce more tech inconsistencies.

If you seriously think that, you haven't been watching very long, have you?

The GOOD thing about how this movie was handled is that it is not, in fact, "canon." Not at all. Basically, as far as "canon" is concerned, Nero and Spock disappear in the late 24th or early 25th century, and that's that. None of what you're seeing in this new movie ever happened "in canon."

What you've got here is a totally unrelated universe, which can (and undoubtedly will) deviate in any way which JJ and his guys have a whim to make it deviate. If they decide that "warp drive" allows literally instantaneous travel from one orbit to another, regardless of distance... they can do that and nobody can stop 'em. If they decide that "phasers" actually are squirt-guns firing "phaser-juice" at people... they can do that. If they decide that Kirk and Olson were having a hot-and-heavy-gay-relationship before his death.. they can do that. They can do whatever they want. And, based upon choices like "destroy Vulcan" and "make Spock and Uhura get it on" and so forth... not to mention production-design issues all around... I have no confidence whatsoever that they won't.

SO... your choice is simple. Enjoy these movies for what they are... movies that are NOT CANON, and are effectively unrelated to the Trek we've all known except for recycling of a few style items and a few character names (and only one who's really doing a good recreation of the original character - Urban is great, isn't he?).

Realize that we don't have to make any of this fit with anything... because it's not going to. Abrams has screwed up any chance of that. He COULD have tried to make this feel like it was "Star Trek done better" but he changed waaaay too much for no other reason than "well, I CAN."

But this is freeing at the same time that it's disappointing. This is a new show... three movies, max... in what is, effectively, another "mirror universe" but one further removed from the "real" Trek universe than that one was. So nothing... NOTHING.. that happens in the "AbramsTrek" continuity has any impact whatsoever on the Star Trek continuity. Nothing in AbramsTrek that disagrees, stylistically or technologically, with Star Trek style, technology, history, etc, has any impact whatsoever on the Star Trek continuity. Except, of course, for Nimoy-Spock being in that other universe.

I don't accept the bullshit "many universes is real science" line. Simply because it was mentioned in a TNG episode and because a few people with a science background have fantasies about this... there is ZERO mathematical, zero experimental, and zero observational evidence that this is the case, or could be the casee. I believe that there's one universe... a "dimension" is simply a unit of measure for determining your position within that universe. Not just the three coordinate dimensions we typically think of, but also time (and certainly many more which we don't perceive. Effectively, the entire, start to finish, universe exists... and we're just "sliding down a slope of time." Going to another time is fundamentally no different from going to another X, Y, or Z coordinate. You can interrupt things "downstream" from where you are, of course... but if you did that, well... "you always did it."

SO... from my perspective... with what we saw in this movie... the classic Trek universe has been destroyed and replaced by this "NuTrek" universe. Fortunately, it's fictional, so we can pretend otherwise. Especially since guys who I sincerely doubt passed High School Physics much less have any advanced science background are telling us "that's real science there."

I choose to simply ignore this movie as far as "Real Star Trek Continuity" is concerned. It "never happened." Maybe it's all a hallucination Spock's having as he falls into the black hole...

I like your take on this better than the guy from BAD ASTRONOMY, that's for damn sure. Seems he think his job to review the film is to make excuses for the bad science, or at least the stuff his colleague advised them on.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

Very interesting input on the technology of the engines, guys.

Is it taboo to post your opinions of Trek XI in the forum for that film? I really don't mind that you don't think highly about it - that's your opinion. I don't see why it should go everywhere but there.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

An accurate description, and NOT for the sake of merely hating the way it looked.

It's stupid because there is NO WAY such a massive space could be placed into the ship, in a way that would fit into the "filming miniature", for lack of a better term. This thing would take up the ENTIRE secondary hull, it looked so damn massive.

I think that was the point, in this Enterprise the engineering hull IS the engineering hull and not just the location of a room.

Nonsense.

There are several problems with what you just said... the first of which is that the only visual cue of where "Engineering" is comes from the location we see the beer-casks ejecting from the neck. I suspect that they are trying to replicate the old Roddenberry conceit that the "main engine room" was located by the impulse engines.

The second is that we see the interior of the "hangar deck" which has a very good establishment of scale during the "space dive" launch sequence. It's HUGE. It easily takes up the majority of the upper half of the "engineering hull." There is NO ROOM for the engine room and the hangar deck to coexist in that region. The engine room must be below the hangar, or above it. And if below... the ejection bit makes no sense.

There are other issues, as well... but ultimately, the main issue is that they shot the damned sequence in a beer brewery with minimal (effectively NO) redressing. A few minor bits dropped in here and there... but the "cores" you see in those sequences are full of beer. Really. The nuEnterprise has Hop Drive!

Not only that, it totally broke from the rest of the ship's look, of spit-and-polish clean and shiny... every time we went from the bridge to the engine room, I was totally pulled out of the illusion of being on the Enterprise... it ruined the illusion, it ruined the continuity of the ship, and it just looked incredibly dumb.

again the point. Never been on a ship huh? The workspaces look NOTHING like the engineering spaces. Especially on research vessels and the like.

Have you spent much time on ships? Just curious...

I ask because, with the possible exception of cruise liners (which I don't consider as counting, by the way!) this statement is utter nonsense. Ships have certain features which are very consistent throughout. They typically have the same paint used throughout the interior, they have steel walls with steel buttresses and frame members which are very consistent throughout, and so on.

They also are COMPARTMENTALIZED. This is absolutely crucial... because if you have a compartment hulled, you need to ensure that the entire ship is not going to flood and sink. You NEVER... NEVER... NEVER... see this sort of huge, open space in a naval vessel. Certainly not in the engine compartments.

Hell, even if you've never been on a boat, surely you've seen a few submarine movies where one guy gets trapped on the other side of a pressure door while his compartment floods...and the guys on the other side know that they can't save him, because opening the hatch would kill everyone. This is just COMMON SENSE.

Okay... no water in space... but space is worse, not better. Because in a ship, you can end up with pockets of air... but in space, no such luck... penetrate the hull and everyone in that entire engineering compartment dies... unless you use a technobabble solution like "Structural compartmentalization forcefield thingamajigies."

The multiple cores thing was also absolutely stupid and retarded... the warp core IS what makes a Star Trek engine room... it is fucking iconic. I chock it up to the production team not knowing their heads from their asses, but it was a dumb move... the warp core, and the dilithium crystal chamber ARE what the Enterprise's engineering section is all about... for FORTY fucking years, the warp core has been the focal point, and centerpiece of any Trek engine room.

EXCEPT in TOS, where THERE WAS NO WARP CORE and THERE WAS NO DILITHIUM CHAMBER

The idea of a "warp core" has only been around since 79. I chalk that one up to so called fans not knowing jack about TOS and thinking they do... cough....

Actually, that's not true... on two levels.

First... they did not invent "dilithium" for TMP, and they did not invent "matter/antimatter reactors" for TMP. Both were fully part of TOS from day one (well, very nearly so... see the "lithium" thread in here).

Second... in 1979, with TMP, they did not ever mention dilithium, and we were never shown a "dilithium crystal chamber." And there was no "warp core," there was a "vertical intermix chamber" and a "horizontal intermix chamber."

However... your point is accurate, if overblown a bit. The claim you're disputing is, in fact, inaccurate as well. We never saw anything remotely like the TNG-era "warp core" and "dilithium chamber" until TNG.

I reject the entire TNG-era conceptualization for TOS, by the way. There was no "warp core" in the TOS Enterprise. And while there was dilithium in several places in the ship, its use had nothing to do with the m/am reaction itself and had everything to do with converting that (otherwise unusable) energy into a useable form. Interestingly, this is also born out in ST-TWOK, where we see Spock working on "the main energizer"... the intent of the scene was that Spock was reseating dilithium crystals inside that podium. The reactor was working (very clearly the case due to visual evidence... the chamber was lit, after all!), but they couldn't use its output without reseating the crystals.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Very interesting input on the technology of the engines, guys.

Is it taboo to post your opinions of Trek XI in the forum for that film? I really don't mind that you don't think highly about it - that's your opinion. I don't see why it should go everywhere but there.

Well, I won't go into that forum because that forum is universally hostile to anyone who doesn't stick to the party line. M'Sharak has closed down (without any "board rules" justification) more threads than anyone else, just because he, personally, doesn't care for the topic. He banned me for discussing ST-XI in the ST-XI forum, in a thread discussing parallels between "Watchmen" and ST-XI, because I was "derailing the thread." Derailing a thread in the ST-XI forum, by talking about ST-XI in that forum. Amazing. The guy is a real prize, a person who enjoys the fact that he has power he can abuse. And those who happen to agree with him even create "go team go" threads to congratulate him for driving away any opinions but his own. It's obscene.

This particular forum, on the other hand, is about "Trek Tech." And in this thread, we discuss Trek Tech. Let's see... "Engine room design?" Yep, that's Trek Tech. "Many Universes" theory... yep, that's Trek Tech. The results of a ship being hulled? Yep, that's Trek Tech. What, specifically, is there in this discussion which has not been "Trek Tech" related?

 

[Closet Trekkie]

If you seriously think that, you haven't been watching very long, have you?

Very perceptive. While I have been a fan for a very long time, I've been away for quite a while. I used to have dozens of lengthy discussions with Timo (et.al.) on rec.arts.startrek.tech on topics as diverse as the sentience of Voyager's EMH or the implemenation of a money-less society. I actually chuckled out loud when I saw Timo's familiar name here after over a decade.

I choose to simply ignore this movie as far as "Real Star Trek Continuity" is concerned. It "never happened." Maybe it's all a hallucination Spock's having as he falls into the black hole...

Heh. I like your take on it. I wish I could adopt your blind bliss, but I really want this reboot to work for me. I'm not a fan of the original timeline like I used to be, and I want to be a Trek fan again.

 

[trevanian]

Very interesting input on the technology of the engines, guys.

Is it taboo to post your opinions of Trek XI in the forum for that film? I really don't mind that you don't think highly about it - that's your opinion. I don't see why it should go everywhere but there.

Well, I won't go into that forum because that forum is universally hostile to anyone who doesn't stick to the party line. M'Sharak has closed down (without any "board rules" justification) more threads than anyone else, just because he, personally, doesn't care for the topic. He banned me for discussing ST-XI in the ST-XI forum, in a thread discussing parallels between "Watchmen" and ST-XI, because I was "derailing the thread." Derailing a thread in the ST-XI forum, by talking about ST-XI in that forum. Amazing. The guy is a real prize, a person who enjoys the fact that he has power he can abuse. And those who happen to agree with him even create "go team go" threads to congratulate him for driving away any opinions but his own. It's obscene.

This particular forum, on the other hand, is about "Trek Tech." And in this thread, we discuss Trek Tech. Let's see... "Engine room design?" Yep, that's Trek Tech. "Many Universes" theory... yep, that's Trek Tech. The results of a ship being hulled? Yep, that's Trek Tech. What, specifically, is there in this discussion which has not been "Trek Tech" related?

Cary and I were both warned and suspended for a time over the same thread ... that in itself isn't news, but the idea that I was warned for trolling is ludicrous. I FLAME (when it is deserved), I do not troll. As long as that mod is there doing what he/she/it does in such a biased fashion, I will not return there. They do not deserve good content as long as the bias is so shameless and continues uncorrected. I will participate in relevant threads outside of that forum, however.