Rebranding a Fan Film: Ship Design
- Thread starter uniderth
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Especially visual storytelling, where you'll see the things that light up when ship go fast, think "engines" and that's that, on to more important stuff.
The Orville has a terrific engine design, and I'm not familiar with anything like it.
That would make sense if there weren't two different types of engines that you have to differentiate between. (And that's not including thrusters.) There's only so many times you can refer to "those other engines" before making the audience wonder why they don't have a name.Or you just call them "engines" like they do in the air force and navy and leave it at that. People overthink the silliest details that matter not one iota to storytelling.
Captain: "Engage the engines whose name shall not be spoken!"
Helm: "Aye, Captain."
Just calling them "Engines" is actually a step down from "FTL Engines", because it describes neither how they function nor what they do.
That'd be fine for a show called "Space Witches", but for an actual sci-fi show, you have to at least give the pretense that it's based on science.Especially visual storytelling, where you'll see the things that light up when ship go fast, think "engines" and that's that, on to more important stuff.
Now that doesn't mean the name itself must be sci-fi technobabble. You could call it a name describing what it does (e.g. "Jump Drive"). Or name it after its fictional creator (e.g. "Ansari Drive"). Or even name it based on the color it emits (e.g. "Blue Drive").
Sorry man, totally disagree. Navy captains don't say, "rev up the diesel engines!" No, they say, "full ahead" or "half speed" or whatever. So you can go, "docking speed" or "space normal speed" or "match their vector" or whatever. The pilot knows not to use afterburners when taxiing, after all.
Again: overthinking something that doesn't matter. You only describe it if it's a story point. Screenwriting 101.
Again: overthinking something that doesn't matter. You only describe it if it's a story point. Screenwriting 101.
Oh, we're talking Naval examples, huh? How about the Red October's magnetohydrodynamic propulsion? That came up in a movie that wasn't even set in space. Why? Because the bloody submarine had two different types of engines, and one of them was a special engine that could do things the other one couldn't.
No one in the Navy or Air Force ever says the word "afterburners"?!? What do they say? "Ahead double-full"?
Oh, yeah, FTL engines are so unimportant to the story, might a well not even have them. How long to get to the nearest star at sublight speed? 1000 years? We'll just cut ahead the the crew's great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great great grandchildren. Now we see that their descendants still aren't there yet.
No, that's not why. The Red October caterpillar drive was worth discussing in dialog, because the premise of the whole goddamned story was that it was the only one of its kind on either side and it would have created a strategic imbalance that could bring about WWIII. That was what motivated Sean Connery to defect with the submarine. It's existence is the Inciting Incident in the story. That's an example that has nothing whatsoever to do with the typical situation in which FTL is being treated as routine.
The rest of your objections are even more pedantic.
Air Force and Navy pilots say "afterburners". They don't say, "turbojets to afterburners." That just made my point.
CorporalCaptain said the rest.
While I see your point with regards to the technology being an inciting incident, it is not the case that FTL is the absolute opposite. In any space adventure, the ability to travel vast distances is essential to the plot, even if it's seen as commonplace and banal within the setting. Furthermore, FTL is not a commonplace or banal technology to the audience, because that technology doesn't currently exist. As such, it would be unusual for there not to be a term for such a technology, even if the use of the term is infrequent.
You could claim that the audience may just accept the FTL technology as "magic", but even in stories that have actual magic there are rules and limitations by which the magic works. Why? Because drama requires tension, and tension comes from not having what you need. In an adventure story, getting where you need to go is a fundamental need. (That's why the characters in Lord of the Rings and The Hobbit don't just ride on the Eagles all the time, even though it would make things so much easier for them.) As such, FTL is a vital ship's system and a logical target in combat, and it's ridiculous to think it will never need to be specifically referenced.
Now, you could make the argument that the science of FTL isn't necessary for storytelling, and that's a fair point, but I don't see how such a narrative is science fiction. Space fantasy is a more appropriate term. And don't get me wrong: people are free to make all the space fantasy films they want, and they might be great. They may be the best movies anyone's ever seen. Just don't pretend the "science" part of "science fiction" has been satisfied.
This comment is neither constructive nor meaningful.
That doesn't make any kind of point. If anything, you just conceded my point. My point was always that the FTL system needs some kind of name, not that we must explicitly mention that name when it's nonsensical to do so in the context of the narrative.
What type of drive do they use in the Alien franchise then? Or in the Riddick trilogy? Or in the Starship Troopers film(s)? Or in The Expanse? Or in… You get the point.
Sort of. Most of those are examples of the use of FTL not being significant to the plot, so much so that they often don't show a ship in FTL at all. Compare and contrast to the TNG episode "Tin Man", Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and Star Trek: Into Darkness (among others). All of these feature various aspects of FTL as critical plot points. Seeing as this topic is about rebranding fan productions that start out as Star Trek fan films, you can't make assumptions about the relevance of FTL to a given production. Think of how many times you've seen starships in Star Trek at warp.
ASIDE: I think you could make the argument that it's difficult to say whether the Alien movies even have FTL. If you're mathematically inclined, you can sort of figure out that they MUST be using FTL because of the vast distances they'd have to cover in a relatively short time, particularly in the movie Aliens, but otherwise you always see them coming out of cryosleep when they arrive anywhere. I think they make a passing reference to "jumps" in Alien Covenant, but even in that movie they make use of cryopods, so one could forgive a member of the audience for thinking it's all sublight.
Expanse doesn't have FTL at all. Perhaps you were thinking of the Epstein Drive, which is mentioned prominently in the series, along with its inventor. Oh look, it's the only drive on the ship and we know its name!
Neither did Firefly. Mal just told Wash to go for a "hard burn," at which point Wash called up the Alliance ship and insulted them for looking like Nazis in space.
Also, slipstream drives have become more popular, as well as dimension drives, due to the fact that that "hyperspace" is conceived as an alternate dimension. David Gerrold's "Star Wolf" series is a great example of exploring how a star drive would work using a singularity.
"Starship Troopers" avoids it all together and simply calls it a Cherenkov drive, and doesn't explain it at all.
Also, slipstream drives have become more popular, as well as dimension drives, due to the fact that that "hyperspace" is conceived as an alternate dimension. David Gerrold's "Star Wolf" series is a great example of exploring how a star drive would work using a singularity.
"Starship Troopers" avoids it all together and simply calls it a Cherenkov drive, and doesn't explain it at all.
And 20-odd "great"s were?
Is this a "two wrongs make a right" argument? Because I used my greats to make a point (however inelegantly you may think it was done), whereas you used the phrase "even more pedantic" to denigrate my comment without further elaboration. The two are not the same, even if one could theoretically justify the other.
No.
My main hope now is simply that the point is clear, of how a lot of technobabble that gets sweated over is actually extraneous. It's a valuable lesson that really isn't that difficult to see. It's even addressed in the TOS Star Trek Writer's Guide.
No, I get it, and if we were talking about the Heisenberg Compensators or Self-Sealing Stem Bolts, it's be right there with you. Warp Engines, however, are a prominent feature of nearly all Star Trek vessels. I just don't understand why this is the metaphorical hill you want to die on.
On the other hand, if you're rebranding a single script for which FTL is a trivial concern, the easiest thing to do might be to simply avoid the topic altogether. CBS/Paramount can't sue you over something whose existence is never even acknowledged in the film. So if you're doing a standalone movie, I can see just not mentioning it at all.
However, I think that's harder to pull off for a series. Being a vital system, it's really low hanging fruit dramatic tension. The bad guys have found us, and we can't warp out. The star is about to go nova, and we can't warp out. The criminals are escaping... You get the idea.
"Engines." My god, even Star Trek just called them that, like, a zillion times.
In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," one of Sulu's lines was simply: "The engines!"
In "Tomorrow Is Yesterday," one of Sulu's lines was simply: "The engines!"
At this point in time, I'm not really certain what the argument is any more. "Warp drive" is really unique to Star Trek, even though there certainly has been movements away from calling it that. I mean, Star Trek didn't coin the term "warp drive" so not sure why the contention now.
You also have the Alcubierre drive, which bends space rather than breaking the light speed barrier. Bending local space seems to be a current way of considering this problem.
There's always jump drives, Hetch drives (from Farscape), hyperdrive or hyperstate drive (Star Wolf), field generator, and on and on.
I think, if the idea is to do a series, then you have one episode where the nature of the drive is described, and that's it. After that, "engines are offline," "core is offline" etc, will suffice for shorthand and avoid technospeak.
