Size Of The New Enterprise (large images)

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I liked the music by The Calling that was used in the Enterprise promos, and wish that and the general editing and tempo of those ads had portended more than turned out be true of the series.

I don't buy jswhitten's explanation because I don't see any structures, military or civilian, doubling suddenly in size and far more than that in volume and tonnage without extraordinary breakthroughs in engineering. I don't believe that in oldTrek these sophisticated vessels were as they were simply because no one thought it was important to make them bigger.

I also think that if the "Kelvin Incident" were so big a deal to Starfleet as to cause it to totally redesign and rethink its vessels and technology, the one guy in this movie who should have been intimately familiar with it - Pike, who did his thesis on it - would have been even less likely to forget all the details of it until a cadet showed up on his bridge to remind him of them. Nah, the internal evidence leans sharply toward the matter having been largely unexamined for 25 years.

That said, I don't care that much. I don't believe in any of this, and haven't since I was a kid. To believe in the possibility of most of what goes on in Star Trek requires willful ignorance - or, as we more gently put it, "willing suspension of disbelief." It's just a game, a way of entertaining ourselves and I'm not going to waste much time on coming up with explanations for how any of it could be taken seriously on an adult level.

 

[Guartho]

I don't buy jswhitten's explanation because I don't see any structures, military or civilian, doubling suddenly in size and far more than that in volume and tonnage without extraordinary breakthroughs in engineering.

I've seen it argued that the 24th century ships should be smaller due to breakthroughs in engineering. For instance, replicators, sonic showers, and magical waste-extraction negate the need for plumbing throughout the ship.

 

[Squiggy]

For a 2378' (725 meter) ship:
The saucer width would be 1039'.
The viewscreen would be ~29 feet wide.
The oblong windows in the saucer would be 13.2' x 4.8'.
The portholes in the saucer would be 4.8' in diameter.
The secondary hull docking port would be 12' in diameter.

This seems to be the closest to being correct.

The problem with the ship being much more than ~300 meters is that the bridge winds up being massively larger than it is. The viewscreen is about 136 inches (11.3 feet) which corresponds to a 301 meter ship since the viewscreen is really a window on the front of the saucer and it's size is easily compared to the width of the saucer. If the ship were 725 meters as ILM says, then the bridge would need to be sixty or seventy feet wide....it ain't. Even if the shuttlebay is larger than a 300 meter ship can carry, the bridge is the primary set for a Star Trek ship...it has to fit the model.

Nowhere is it written that the bridge takes up the entirety of deck one. There could be other things going on up there than what we see. In fact, I seem to recall a corridor directly aft of the bridge in the movie.

 

[Omega_Glory]

For a 2378' (725 meter) ship:
The saucer width would be 1039'.
The viewscreen would be ~29 feet wide.
The oblong windows in the saucer would be 13.2' x 4.8'.
The portholes in the saucer would be 4.8' in diameter.
The secondary hull docking port would be 12' in diameter.

This seems to be the closest to being correct.

Umm....not really. The viewscreen on the bridge is nowhere near thirty feet long. Unless of course your'e using one of them special fisherman's tape measures where 4" is a foot.

The problem with the ship being much more than ~300 meters is that the bridge winds up being massively larger than it is. The viewscreen is about 136 inches (11.3 feet) which corresponds to a 301 meter ship since the viewscreen is really a window on the front of the saucer and it's size is easily compared to the width of the saucer. If the ship were 725 meters as ILM says, then the bridge would need to be sixty or seventy feet wide....it ain't. Even if the shuttlebay is larger than a 300 meter ship can carry, the bridge is the primary set for a Star Trek ship...it has to fit the model.

Nowhere is it written that the bridge takes up the entirety of deck one. There could be other things going on up there than what we see. In fact, I seem to recall a corridor directly aft of the bridge in the movie.

No it probably does not take up deck one. TMP bridge didn't either. If you notice the shot in the new film where the camera pans across the front of the saucer and you can see inside the bridge through the viewscreen/window; you can see about how much of that deck the bridge uses...and its quite a bit. Like I said, for the bridge to fit as shown onscreen, it would need to be much larger than the set if the ship is 725 meters. And the viewer sure as hell isn't thirty feet long.

 

[Gepard]

I liked the music by The Calling that was used in the Enterprise promos, and wish that and the general editing and tempo of those ads had portended more than turned out be true of the series.

As did I; those were the first promos that gave me hope for the series.

Nevertheless, apart from personal feeling on the matter, there seems to be a pattern of 1) promotional material comes out, 2) bashers latch onto element X of the promo to decry concern Y, 3) gushers defend upcoming Trek production by pointing out the ways element X need not reflect the final product, and 4) bashers turn out to have been right anyway.

The better reaction, IMO, would be to say "So if X turns out to be true, who cares?" Yet for some reason, this rarely happens.

 

[miraclefan]

I haven't had time to read ALL the comments, but one reason for the upscaleing of the ENT might be due to an increase in soldiers? maybe the COLD-wars between the feds, Klingons & maybe the Romie's is a little *HOTTER* in this reality then in the old one. Thus they need more space for ''Ground'' troops, possibly fighting off Klingon invaders on Federation run colonies?.

 

[Squiggy]

For a 2378' (725 meter) ship:
The saucer width would be 1039'.
The viewscreen would be ~29 feet wide.
The oblong windows in the saucer would be 13.2' x 4.8'.
The portholes in the saucer would be 4.8' in diameter.
The secondary hull docking port would be 12' in diameter.

This seems to be the closest to being correct.

Umm....not really. The viewscreen on the bridge is nowhere near thirty feet long. Unless of course your'e using one of them special fisherman's tape measures where 4" is a foot.

Not TEH CANON but...

http://gizmodo.com/5241562/just-how-big-is-the-enterprises-viewscreen

The display on new-Kirk's ship looks massive, but only because it's so wide. If you're measuring the screen diagonally in display-talk, it's around 326-inches, which is larger in absolute terms than even Picard's screen. It also has a 3.25:1 display ratio, making it wider than most film ratios. But if you're talking pure width, it measures about 26 feet across. Quite impressive.

Judging by this, it could easily be 8 feet tall...

And this looks like it could be 3 "heights" wide:

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The bridge is an oval, so that front window places it as considerably off the vertical central axis of the saucer - forward, with considerable room behind it.

 

[Gepard]

^For all the complaining that some *coughBerndcough* are doing about the rescaling being poorly thought out, the evidence keeps piling up that it's better implemented than just about any other Trek ship.

 

[Squiggy]

^For all the complaining that some *coughBerndcough* are doing about the rescaling being poorly thought out, the evidence keeps piling up that it's better implemented than just about any other Trek ship.

He fears change.

 

[Trekker4747]

It's still incredibly silly to me that this ship would be nearly as big as a Galaxy or Soverign.

So, how big would THOSE ships be in this altered universe?

I *KNEW* something was off when Pike said 800-some persons were on the Kelvin.

This kind of change reeks of Star Wars-ism of making ships ridiucously huge just for the sake of it.

The old Connie was a nice, petite, size that made sense for it and the "time."

Sigh.

JJ

You make it so hard sometimes.

 

[Squiggy]

It's still incredibly silly to me that this ship would be nearly as big as a Galaxy or Soverign.

Why? They don't exist yet.

 

[borgfan8of5]

I guess as time goes on and our abilities to build large structures/ships continues to grow media must adapt. But nearly a KM, thats crazy and awesome.

 

[Trekker4747]

It's still incredibly silly to me that this ship would be nearly as big as a Galaxy or Soverign.

Why? They don't exist yet.

Yeah, I'm still trying to digest the "rebooted timeline" thing too.

But this, well the entire "reboot" to begin with, stirkes me as a needless change.

 

[Gepard]

And if the Galaxy is allowed to be that big, why not the Constitution? It's not like the laws of physics were different in the 23rd century in a way that precluded building bigger ships.

 

[Trekker4747]

And if the Galaxy is allowed to be that big, why not the Constitution? It's not like the laws of physics were different in the 23rd century in a way that precluded building bigger ships.

It "makes sense" that after 75 years ships got bigger and the Galaxy was supposed to be on 20-year missions out in the furthest reaches of the unexplored space.

It's just a "progression" of things.

In the 23rd it was cramped, small, sparse ships built for heavy duty and abuse, in the 24th it was sapcious, large, ships built for longeivty, decades-long missions, and to be comofrtable, homey, places for families to live.

 

[Squiggy]

It's still incredibly silly to me that this ship would be nearly as big as a Galaxy or Soverign.

Why? They don't exist yet.

Yeah, I'm still trying to digest the "rebooted timeline" thing too.

But this, well the entire "reboot" to begin with, stirkes me as a needless change.

Then Star Trek would've died as a franchise in 2005.

In the 23rd it was cramped, small, sparse ships built for heavy duty and abuse, in the 24th it was sapcious, large, ships built for longeivty, decades-long missions, and to be comofrtable, homey, places for families to live.

You're not thinking fourth dimensionally. There's no reason to assume that the 23rd is cramped going off what we know now.

 

[Trekker4747]

Why? They don't exist yet.

Yeah, I'm still trying to digest the "rebooted timeline" thing too.

But this, well the entire "reboot" to begin with, stirkes me as a needless change.

Then Star Trek would've died as a franchise in 2005.

Don't see why.

There's not a single "reboot"/"change" made in this movie I can see that "Trek needed." It was just all done for the sake of doing it.

Doing a new series of movies with the TOS crew is a very valid, smart, idea. It could've been done without abandoning and erasing 40 years of story telling.

 

[Squiggy]

Yeah, I'm still trying to digest the "rebooted timeline" thing too.

But this, well the entire "reboot" to begin with, stirkes me as a needless change.

Then Star Trek would've died as a franchise in 2005.

Don't see why.

Did you not see the last decade? Whenever you regulate fiction with 40 years of rules and regulation your stifle the freedom. For Trek to live on we needed characters we (both fans and serfs) could connect with. TNG is played out. DS9 has been off the air for too long for anyone to give a fuck about and people didn't connect with VOY or ENT when they first aired. TOS and it's characters had the name recognition for the causal movie goers and the built-in dedication of a fanbase so it had that ability to energize but it was horribly dated and it's actors are literally dying.

So, what do you do? You update. Sets suck. Ship is dated (don't care what you say but a satellite dish is dated...satellite dishes don't even look like that anymore). The look of the late 60s suck. Beehives suck. Space hippies suck. People don't want to shell out 10 bucks and listen to a bunch of people tell us that racism is bad in a roundabout indirect way.

We get it. You're white on the left, you're black on the left. Show us a lizard man fight or some fencing and move on from the allegory.

So, since you're making a movie for people who weren't even alive when the characters first came out. Reboot. Get rid of all the things holding you back. Give us a bridge that looks like an Apple Store - which, I never understood that gripe since Apple sells the hell out of products. They know how to design stuff. Give us a crew that wasn't born in the depression. ENTERTAIN US.

Or, we could've gotten a crew no one cared about, which was pretty much Nemesis when all was said and done.

AND NOTHING HAS BEEN ERASED. This was explained in the movie by the mere presence of Spock. All you have known and seen still happened, or still will happen rather. We just won't be seeing it again because that would be silly.

 

[Trekker4747]

Yeah, I know and I agree. It's just hard to swallow, OK, man.

It's like my mom just died and my dad is here telling me he already found me a new, great, hot sexy young mom who's going to make it all better.

I want to like my new mom, but I still miss my old mom because she was so great.

I loved this new movie, I did, look at/read my review.

Just some of this is having a hard time going down and digesting.



Trekker, forgot mother's day.