Speed of Plot Consternation

[Kamen Rider Blade]

The anime scene reminds me an awful lot of the Andromeda space battles.

Very rarely you'd see the Andromeda straf a Neitzschean fleet but for the most part battles were depicted on radar screens with drones for close combat, point defence turrets picking off missiles fired from long distances, and shots back and forth between individual shots of each ship but they wouldn't be within the same shot on screen

If you wanted to depict a modern real life naval battle, that would be also be the exact same way of how you would film and shoot it.

If you're WVR (Within Visual Range), you probably screwed up as a Captain.

Modern ships aren't designed to fight other ships up close, no modern ship is designed like WW2 ships with super thick armor hulls.

Most modern ships hulls are fairly thin compared to WW2 ships. But that's because the offensive power is so great that CIWS (Close-In Weapons Systems) and Anti-Missile Missile Batteries are used for close range protection.

Best Defense is a good Offense, there's largely no reason to let enemy projectiles get close.

 

[Weyoun 251]

If you wanted to depict a modern real life naval battle, that would be also be the exact same way of how you would film and shoot it.

If you're WVR (Within Visual Range), you probably screwed up as a Captain.

Modern ships aren't designed to fight other ships up close, no modern ship is designed like WW2 ships with super thick armor hulls.

Most modern ships hulls are fairly thin compared to WW2 ships. But that's because the offensive power is so great that CIWS (Close-In Weapons Systems) and Anti-Missile Missile Batteries are used for close range protection.

Best Defense is a good Offense, there's largely no reason to let enemy projectiles get close.

Aye - the E-D in reality is an aircraft carrier or similar in size but on TV would be like a galleon almost where the two captains could almost see the whites of each other's eyes.

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Aye - the E-D in reality is an aircraft carrier or similar in size but on TV would be like a galleon almost where the two captains could almost see the whites of each other's eyes.

Sadly, that's how most of the battles were portrayed in TNG, very rarely was anything BVR, almost everything had it so that your ship was within spitting distance and you can get in a space suit, and throw a baseball at their hull for the sake of it and have a reasonable chance to hit given how close you were.

Just go back and watch how close some of those ships were.

The TNG Technical Manual states that the Phasers for the Galaxy-class had a maximum range of 300,000 km.

If the Borg Cube at the Battle of Wolf 359 was fought on the edge of BVR at ~300,000 km.

Despite how massive the Borg Cube would be, it would be a speck on the screen.

https://sizecalc.com/

Go input the numbers yourself, the size from your naked eye to how large a Borg Cube would be at the maximum firing range would be teeny, there would be no way you can precisely aim for sub-systems (Not like Borg have any).

There was literally no reason for the intercepting fleet for the Battle of Wolf 359 or the Battle of Sector 1 to fight at anywhere close to WVR (Within-Visual Range).

Literally encircle the Borg, and pummel them to death by circle strafing them with an entire fleet.

The Battle of Sector 1 in ST: First Contact, the Earth Defense Fleet was doing well, there was no reason to fight so close.

If you want to show what they look like, have a "Zoom" function and highlight what spec of sky they're on in the view screen and "Zoom In" on them, or send out some probes / drones to get a closer visual look.

 

[Ragitsu]

Are you fellas aware that matter-energy-matter converters are impossible? A more realistic Star Trek wouldn't have transporters or replicators.

 

[Weyoun 251]

Sadly, that's how most of the battles were portrayed in TNG, very rarely was anything BVR, almost everything had it so that your ship was within spitting distance and you can get in a space suit, and throw a baseball at their hull for the sake of it and have a reasonable chance to hit given how close you were.

Just go back and watch how close some of those ships were.

The TNG Technical Manual states that the Phasers for the Galaxy-class had a maximum range of 300,000 km.

If the Borg Cube at the Battle of Wolf 359 was fought on the edge of BVR at ~300,000 km.

Despite how massive the Borg Cube would be, it would be a speck on the screen.

https://sizecalc.com/

Go input the numbers yourself, the size from your naked eye to how large a Borg Cube would be at the maximum firing range would be teeny, there would be no way you can precisely aim for sub-systems (Not like Borg have any).

There was literally no reason for the intercepting fleet for the Battle of Wolf 359 or the Battle of Sector 1 to fight at anywhere close to WVR (Within-Visual Range).

Literally encircle the Borg, and pummel them to death by circle strafing them with an entire fleet.

The Battle of Sector 1 in ST: First Contact, the Earth Defense Fleet was doing well, there was no reason to fight so close.

If you want to show what they look like, have a "Zoom" function and highlight what spec of sky they're on in the view screen and "Zoom In" on them, or send out some probes / drones to get a closer visual look.

To be fair, the Fed fighters, Defiant class, and even a Steamrunner or Akira I could see being viable for close quarters but Galaxy, Excelsior, Odessey etc class ship should, as you say, be extra long distance - not as if the targeting computer would struggle to hit a Borg Cube as I'm pretty sure the love child of Emile Heskey and Stevie Wonder could still hit that barn door

 

[Ragitsu]

It also isn't terribly realistic to have a surfeit of bipedal humanoid oxygen-breathing aliens possessing sex cells compatible with human genetic code.

 

[Weyoun 251]

It also isn't terribly realistic to have a surfeit of bipedal humanoid oxygen-breathing aliens possessing sex cells compatible with human genetic code.

Entirely true and a perfect illustration of the contradiction that is living the Trek life - there are just bits that arbitrarily annoy, or can't be let go of, or just interest us more so won't be let go of.

It's all in good fun though

 

[Ragitsu]

Something a bit more apropos to the current direction of this thread: sound in space. Are the advocates for BVR only (or primarily-BVR) battles in favor of removing all space battle sound effects (i.e., we'd hear dead silence punctuated by an accompanying soundtrack)?

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

Something a bit more apropos to the current direction of this thread: sound in space. Are the advocates for BVR only (or primarily-BVR) battles in favor of removing all space battle sound effects (i.e., we'd hear dead silence punctuated by an accompanying soundtrack)?

Simulated 3D positional Sound generated by the sensors for your listening pleasure, but definitely for the audiences pleasure.

But when shifted to the PoV of somebody in the cockpit or CIC, then you can turn on/off the 3D positional Audio.

The Audience will enjoy whatever SoundTrack the Producer tells the Music Artists to make for the episode, but in-universe, it'd be whatever music the person is listening to.

Shifting PoV would easily let the audience know if you're just watching from the PoV of the Camera, or from "In-Universe PoV".

NASA Has Captured ‘Actual Sound’ in Space and It’s Honestly Terrifying

 

[Christopher]

A ship doesn't look nearly as threatening when it's out of visual range.

Except that often, what you don't see can be more frightening, because it's left to the imagination. It's human nature to be afraid of what we can't see, what we can't understand or control. Alfred Hitchcock understood this and often kept the threats in his movies mostly unseen. The title shark in Jaws was mostly unseen due to Spielberg editing around the poor quality of the mechanical prop, but it's universally agreed that not seeing the shark makes the film far more suspenseful and scary.

And really, I'm getting tired of the tendency in sci-fi to design ships like the Scimitar and the Narada and the Shrike with all these pointy pincery bits that are just gratuitously menacing and serve no practical function. They're trying way too hard to "look scary" rather than earning it through the story.

The anime scene reminds me an awful lot of the Andromeda space battles.

Very rarely you'd see the Andromeda straf a Neitzschean fleet but for the most part battles were depicted on radar screens with drones for close combat, point defence turrets picking off missiles fired from long distances, and shots back and forth between individual shots of each ship but they wouldn't be within the same shot on screen

Yes. Andromeda tried hard (at least in its early seasons before it went to crap) to be a hard science fiction show and depict space combat as plausibly as it could. It was a nice exception to the usual cliches.

Are you fellas aware that matter-energy-matter converters are impossible? A more realistic Star Trek wouldn't have transporters or replicators.

Oh, Trek gave up on the "matter-to-energy" excuse when TNG came along. Rick Sternbach & Michael Okuda reinterpreted transporters as breaking things down into component particles and reassembling them at the destination. And replicators assemble objects from raw molecular stock, much like a 3D printer. After all, by E = mc^2, it would take twice the United States' entire annual power output to create a single sandwich out of pure energy.

Anyway, it's fallacious to argue that if some dramatic liberties are taken, it means that no effort at all should be made at plausibility. If anything, the opposite is true; the fact that some concessions to unreality are necessary makes it important to make everything around them more plausible to compensate. If you want to earn the audience's suspension of disbelief, you have to present the impossible parts in a context that feels believable overall.

Something a bit more apropos to the current direction of this thread: sound in space. Are the advocates for BVR only (or primarily-BVR) battles in favor of removing all space battle sound effects (i.e., we'd hear dead silence punctuated by an accompanying soundtrack)?

Oh, yes. I've seen some shows that presented space scenes without sound effects, such as Firefly, and I think it actually makes them more effective, because they seem more real that way. And not because of the "no sound in space" thing, but because when we see real-life events in news footage, there's often no sound due to the distance from the camera or because it's silent footage. Or when we see distant events in person, either they're too far away to hear or the sound is delayed by distance. So if anything, putting instantaneous sound effects on everything makes a scene feel more artificial and constructed. Taking the sound away can make it feel more genuine and thus more potent.

 

[somebuddyX]

The one that annoyed me most was the Into Darkness trek from Klingon space to Earth, but that's really only because I was annoyed they were going back to Earth again. We'd just been there! I know it's hypocritical when they did the same thing in 09 but eh.

 

[Weyoun 251]

Yes. Andromeda tried hard (at least in its early seasons before it went to crap) to be a hard science fiction show and depict space combat as plausibly as it could. It was a nice exception to the usual cliches.

Some of the religious imagery around Kevin Sorbo, and Dylan Hunt, was a bit ridiculous but I thought the series as a whole was generally a step up from much of what, certainly in the UK, we had available to us.

I do remember though that at one point guest characters of the week seemed to have almost a Gladiators or WWE style vignette when they were introduced into the story - I remember the Neitzschean woman that hooks up with Dylan being shown with some sort of energy whip against a black background almost as if she stepped out on stage at WrestleMania

But yes, on topic, the efforts with drones, gravity wells, drop ships etc all felt very "real world" as if they could easily be the logical progression from the real world

 

[Mudd]

Never them how fast you're going or how long it took to get there.

One reader/viewer in 50,000 will care, and the answer won't make them happy.

 

[Christopher]

The one that annoyed me most was the Into Darkness trek from Klingon space to Earth, but that's really only because I was annoyed they were going back to Earth again. We'd just been there! I know it's hypocritical when they did the same thing in 09 but eh.

Not quite the same thing. In ST '09, the trip to Vulcan is edited to feel continuous, but if you pay attention, there's a subtle time jump just before Chekov's briefing, indicated by McCoy having changed his uniform. So there could've been a gap of hours in there, even though it wasn't edited to feel that way.

But in STID, there's simply no room for a stealth time jump -- it's continuous action from Qo'noS to Earth and it takes only a minute or two.

Some of the religious imagery around Kevin Sorbo, and Dylan Hunt, was a bit ridiculous but I thought the series as a whole was generally a step up from much of what, certainly in the UK, we had available to us.

I don't know what you mean there. I think you're probably thinking of the later seasons, when Sorbo gained more creative control and his ego got out of hand. I'd pretty much given up on the show by then. After Robert Hewitt Wolfe was fired halfway through season 2, the show fell apart. It became essentially a whole different, far dumber show under new showrunner Bob Engels from seasons 3-5, with the only exceptions being the season 3 episodes written by Zack Stentz & Ashley Edward Miller (the future Thor/X-Men: First Class screenwriters), who were still writing the original version of the show (mostly) while the rest of the staff were doing their own separate, sillier things.

But yes, on topic, the efforts with drones, gravity wells, drop ships etc all felt very "real world" as if they could easily be the logical progression from the real world

The one really implausible thing for me was slipstream drive. It was nominally based in string theory, but a pretty loose interpretation thereof, and I hated the idea that only living beings could pilot slipstream because of the quantum observer effect. The observer effect is just a result of the wavefunction decohering when interacting with a large ensemble of particles. It doesn't require a conscious observer; that's just the example physicists focus on because observation is how they learn about it. And even if it did require consciousness, Andromeda AIs are conscious, sentient beings legally recognized as people, so it's inconsistent to say they can't navigate slipstream. I mean, I get that it was dramatically necessary to justify having human pilots and crews on starships in a universe that has sentient AI. But it was a silly justification.

 

[Weyoun 251]

Not quite the same thing. In ST '09, the trip to Vulcan is edited to feel continuous, but if you pay attention, there's a subtle time jump just before Chekov's briefing, indicated by McCoy having changed his uniform. So there could've been a gap of hours in there, even though it wasn't edited to feel that way.

But in STID, there's simply no room for a stealth time jump -- it's continuous action from Qo'noS to Earth and it takes only a minute or two.




I don't know what you mean there. I think you're probably thinking of the later seasons, when Sorbo gained more creative control and his ego got out of hand. I'd pretty much given up on the show by then. After Robert Hewitt Wolfe was fired halfway through season 2, the show fell apart. It became essentially a whole different, far dumber show under new showrunner Bob Engels from seasons 3-5, with the only exceptions being the season 3 episodes written by Zack Stentz & Ashley Edward Miller (the future Thor/X-Men: First Class screenwriters), who were still writing the original version of the show (mostly) while the rest of the staff were doing their own separate, sillier things.




The one really implausible thing for me was slipstream drive. It was nominally based in string theory, but a pretty loose interpretation thereof, and I hated the idea that only living beings could pilot slipstream because of the quantum observer effect. The observer effect is just a result of the wavefunction decohering when interacting with a large ensemble of particles. It doesn't require a conscious observer; that's just the example physicists focus on because observation is how they learn about it. And even if it did require consciousness, Andromeda AIs are conscious, sentient beings legally recognized as people, so it's inconsistent to say they can't navigate slipstream. I mean, I get that it was dramatically necessary to justify having human pilots and crews on starships in a universe that has sentient AI. But it was a silly justification.

It would have been back end of season 4 and focus of season 5 - basically *SPOILERS FOR SHOW FROM 20 YEARS AGO* Trace was the Vedran sun, and some sort of Lucifer style fallen god, the Magog were in league with her sister gods, Dylan was kind of Space Jesus, Maria Hill married Camulus, Drago Museveni travelled forward in time and used Beka's DNA to create the Nietzschean race so she is now their Queen (kind of) - all perfectly normal stuff

I think it was the back end of season 3 where it really did fall apart but I have also seen worse nose dives

 

[somebuddyX]

Not quite the same thing. In ST '09, the trip to Vulcan is edited to feel continuous, but if you pay attention, there's a subtle time jump just before Chekov's briefing, indicated by McCoy having changed his uniform. So there could've been a gap of hours in there, even though it wasn't edited to feel that way.

But in STID, there's simply no room for a stealth time jump -- it's continuous action from Qo'noS to Earth and it takes only a minute or two.

No I get that, that's not the part that annoys me. It's simply the fact they go from Earth to Qo'nos to Earth in the story. I'd rather they have ended up anywhere else. They could've crashed on Deneva or Alpha Centauri or some nowhere planet with nobody on it for all I care. Now in the story it makes sense that they're retreating to Earth. But I don't care.

 

[Christopher]

No I get that, that's not the part that annoys me. It's simply the fact they go from Earth to Qo'nos to Earth in the story. I'd rather they have ended up anywhere else. They could've crashed on Deneva or Alpha Centauri or some nowhere planet with nobody on it for all I care. Now in the story it makes sense that they're retreating to Earth. But I don't care.

Yeah, that's a problem too. There's really no reason to set the climax on Earth, and it would've been much better without the gratuitous urban-destruction CGI porn. It's also just a ridiculous coincidence that when they're knocked out of warp, they're conveniently inside the Moon's orbit and aimed directly at San Francisco, when it's immensely more likely that they'd just be in the middle of deep space somewhere.

 

[BillJ]

I loved in the SNW premiere, how Spock on Vulcan beat Pike on Earth to the Enterprise in Earth orbit.

 

[Farscape One]

A bit off topic, but still in the ballpark.

Speaking of sounds, there was an episode of CAPRICA that depicted a thunderstorm correctly. You'd see the flash of lightning, and then you'd hear the sound of thunder a few seconds after the flash. It's probably the only time I can think of off the top of my head that anyone remembered light is faster than sound.

 

[Farscape One]

The ANDROMEDA battle scenes were pretty unique in scifi in that they really did depict distance fighting.