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Star Trek XI Enterprise Engineering set?

Galileo7

Galileo7

Commodore
Commodore
A science-fiction SET disappointed you? (Maybe you read a sci-fi novel and when you saw the movie adaptation they failed to recreate a setting described.) A true failure to capture your imagination and live up to the expectations of a scene(s) that it was featured it. Let us forget about the obvious excuse of budget limitations. For me a Set failure was in STAR TREK 2009 movie. The Enterprise NCC-1701 Main Engineering Set. They did not even try, just redressed an existing Budweiser Brewery/Anheuser-Busch Inc, Van Nuys, Los Angeles, California, USA.
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt0796366/locations
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise/enterprise-brewery.jpg
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise/enterprise-brewery2.jpg
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise_comment.htm
http://memory-alpha.org/wiki/Engineering
http://www.wired.com/images_blogs/underwire/2009/05/trek-engine-room-660.jpg

Please refrain from hotlinking images which are not hosted on web space belonging to you. Refer to TrekBBS policy here. - M']
 
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I thought the brewery (and Kelvin power plant) looked fine. In fact, I'd go as far as to say I liked it, and found it far more visually interesting that a bunch of people standing around in front of a big blue neon tube. Yeah, if you freeze-frame and zoom in you can see a few spigots and air ducts and light switches and one window in the communications' centre, but I never noticed any of it while watching the film normally.

I thought it gave the ships an epic sense of scale, and worked really well, especially when Pike, Kirk and Spock are walking through engineering on their way to the shuttlebay, with the huge vats (that eject the warp cores at the end) looming above, and an endless maze of pipes and conduits all around.
 
I'd have enjoyed a new engineering set that had the size and complexity of the locations they used in the film, but I wouldn't have wanted to sacrifice anything else in the film so that the money could go towards building it.
 
I hope that they do find a way to have money in the budget so we get a new engine room set for the next movie. It did pull me out of the "reality" of how I picture the machinery inside a futuristic Starfleet vessel. The scenes looked "too contemporary" for me. I kept expecting to see the Terminator chasing Sarah and John Conner through the background. Or maybe Jackie Chan might drop in through a skylight while being chased by thugs.

Someone in a post in a earlier thread on this same topic mentioned they would have liked some CG effects that would have created a wall that would have given an indication of the curve of the hull. I think that I may have liked it better if the room did not seem quite so endless. That would have been an improvement, in my opinion.

Perhaps in the next movie they could at least show a smaller, more specialized "control center" section of engineering where it looks like the components were organized/designed/laid out in a way that looks like there was a central, single focus rather than trying to "make" the brewery work by scattering small control panels here and there. Maybe this control center could overlook the "guts" of engineering: think of TOS engine room if the screen at the back of the room looked out over amore complicated "brewery" set (rather than at the two rows of those big magnatomic flux circulation tubes that we saw in TOS). Just an idea...

Maybe they could do this without resorting to having crew members just standing around a big ol' blue neon tube!
 
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I thought it sucked. In it's defense, it was perfect for cliche "action scenes". Maybe in the next movie they can add steam, have them dodging forklifts or moving gears, and have a fully loaded overhead winch ready to drop a pile of heavy-looking industrial props on someone. :lol:
 
^^^ Half way through the final climatic battle, everything will come to a complete halt for a ten minute union mandated break.
 
When we see Kirk's quarters in the next movie it'll look just like a Holiday Inn with a starscape outside the window. Also, for some strange but unexplained reason there will be a statue of a clown with red hair and yellow overalls in the mess.
 
It occurs to me that the engineering set looked more like an actual engine room than anything else we've ever seen in Star Trek. Essentially, you're not comparing the location set to sci-fi expectation, you're comparing it to OTHER TREK SETS.

Yes, engineering didn't look like the Enterprise-D engine room. Didn't look like the Nemesis engine room. Didn't look like the TMP engine room. Didn't even look like the TOS engine room. It looked like a giant industrial facility dedicated to the production of massive amounts of electrical power and the processing of volatile chemicals and/or life support materials.

Actually, it kinda reminded me of a real world fusion reactor or a modern nuclear power plant, which--in the end--is all the engine room on a starship really is, no?

Do you need neon lights and big glowy things before you'll believe you're looking at the ship's main power plant? I for one could use a change of pace. Next time I see a starship's warp core it better look like this:
3029478027_c267c36e27.jpg
 
kkozoriz1 said:
When we see Kirk's quarters in the next movie it'll look just like a Holiday Inn with a starscape outside the window. Also, for some strange but unexplained reason there will be a statue of a clown with red hair and yellow overalls in the mess.
Click to expand...

:lol:

I bet next movie, we'll get a much better engineering set. At least in the movies, it always seem like the Enterprise was constantly being overhauled so once one more time? Hell, Scotty could even comment about how much it looked like a brewery and he ordered a complete redo.

The first time I saw the movie, I thought it looked like a brewery which didn't bother me initially. Then I started watching TOS and the earlier movies, now it really bothers me so here's to hoping they fix that.
 
newtype_alpha said:
Didn't even look like the TOS engine room.
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Really? All the TOS engine room elements are there:

Pipes? Check.
Tanks? Check.
Stairs? Check.
Computers? Check.
Bright colours? Check.
Red mesh fence? Nope.

Well, five out of six ain't bad;)
 
A few weeks ago there was a thread that addressed the simple, clean, colorful design ethic of TOS sets, ships and props and how that characteristic "look" was associated with TOS and how it had influenced (to some degree) much of the Trek that followed.

I guess that I am someone who would have preferred to have a continuation of that philosophy regarding the engine room, especially since they did seem to follow that idea (to a certain extent) with the design of the bridge, corridors, and exterior of the nu1701.

I actually do like the idea that there are some "cluttered", machinery-filled sections of engineering that flow out beyond the "neon tube" that we are so used to seeing in main engineering, but I would also like to see a centralized, organized Trek-feeling control center at the heart of the complex. I would like to see crew members working in all these areas in the next movie, too. What I do hope NOT to see, however, is something that looks again so obviously like a late 20th century brewery. I realize that there were budget considerations here, but the engineering sections just looked too much like a brewery in which Dirty Harry should be dodging bullets.

I hope they can create/add some interesting 23rd century-looking engineering complexity, instead of using what does look like (I most whole-heartedly agree with the observation) a very realistic late-20th century industrial facility. Create a cool possible future reality, not what we would see if we strolled into the Pepsi-Cola plant down the street.

I loved it when Chief Tyrol was shown down in the guts of nuGalactica's engine room and it did look dark, expansive and gritty. But that suits the look and feel of that ship and the show. Look at the complex, incredibly greebled outer hull and the look of the bridge. I felt that there was a consistency here. And even though the Galactica's engine room gave the feeling that it was large, dark & gritty (and machinery filled), it still felt much more "future-real" than STXI's simple brewery redress.


I feel that the Nostromo would have a big, engine room filled with clunky-looking machinery and big pipes. The Alexei Leonov should perhaps have a similar look. Galactica, too. Because to me, this was consistent with the cluttered look of their respective bridges and of their exteriors in "their universe". I don't feel that the engine room of a Federation starship from the Trek universe would look that way, though (at least, at its center).
 
Don't get me wrong, I liked the idea of the Budweiser warp engine, but in execution both from an aesthetic standpoint and in universe "technical" standpoint it failed.

Aesthetically, there was no focal point. Nothing to look at. Nothing to identify as THE most powerful engine you've ever seen. Instead you just got a mismatch of pipes going every which way. Now, yeah, ok, In the real world an engine room is a cramped thing with an engine which probably doesnt look what you'd expect, but this isnt the real world, this is freakin' Star Trek. Its a film set 250 years into the future! I want to see glowing shit illuminating the faces of the characters for the same reason JJ wanted lens flare - it makes it look futuristic.

Secondly, from the "in universe" standpoint - The engine room was more like half the engineering hull. One hull breach and the entire engineering section is fucked. Open plan is great for your living room, not so great when your moving on a ship in the vacuum of space.

I get why it was there and it was a good stopgap solution, but that's all it is.

Now, don't get me started on the bloody spinning phasers.
 
Well I was mainly thinking about the lack of primary colors and the big dumb blinkies on the computer consoles... but now that you mention it, it does seem like that big double-dome thing in the middle of the TOS set wouldn't look all that unusual with a beer tap sticking out of it.
 
My only complaint about the engine room was an apparent lack of a main area/master control console--I dunno, it seemed slightly disorganized to me--but otherwise, I liked the set in general. I actually thought the area where Kirk and McCoy found Uhura could have been been the main area where Scotty could monitor and control everything.
 
newtype_alpha said:
Well I was mainly thinking about the lack of primary colors and the big dumb blinkies on the computer consoles... but now that you mention it, it does seem like that big double-dome thing in the middle of the TOS set wouldn't look all that unusual with a beer tap sticking out of it.
Click to expand...

Ditto those large tanks where Kirk fought his evil twin in "The Enemy Within"
 
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