Starship design history in light of Discovery
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
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i'm so intrigued by the magee-class and want to see it in action, but i have a feeling the ships of the fleet will be redesigned for season two... just a hunch.
Magee is, well, magee (my native slang for kool). Those "engine nacelles" sure have a lot of portholes to them, making one think all the warp coil stuff is below the centerplane and does not obstruct access from ship centerline to saucer rim in the slightest.
The tops of the warp engine boxes might well be flight bays, with ramplike hatches both forward and aft. A planetary assau... ahem, survey ship, disgorging small craft and assorted cargo from the boxes?
Magee is pretty solid, very TOS-like, and not all that big. Very little in the way of glowing bits and grilles and radiators and the like. Almost like armoring...? Cardenas is flimsier, but unlikely to disappear from our radars in S2 IMHO. It's the less often seen ships that I might assume to go away: Hoover, perhaps, or Malachovski. But even their CGI supposedly isn't "low-res", that is, they are as acceptable or unacceptable as Cardenas in closeup. Why drop them unless there's a cinematic switch to lingering closeups, or a horde of all-new designs that for some reason deserve pole position?
Timo Saloniemi
The tops of the warp engine boxes might well be flight bays, with ramplike hatches both forward and aft. A planetary assau... ahem, survey ship, disgorging small craft and assorted cargo from the boxes?
Magee is pretty solid, very TOS-like, and not all that big. Very little in the way of glowing bits and grilles and radiators and the like. Almost like armoring...? Cardenas is flimsier, but unlikely to disappear from our radars in S2 IMHO. It's the less often seen ships that I might assume to go away: Hoover, perhaps, or Malachovski. But even their CGI supposedly isn't "low-res", that is, they are as acceptable or unacceptable as Cardenas in closeup. Why drop them unless there's a cinematic switch to lingering closeups, or a horde of all-new designs that for some reason deserve pole position?
Timo Saloniemi
What we briefly see of the Hiawatha in the S2 trailer looks a lot more tos-ish than previously used designs
This may be the first time I've ever heard the starships in DSC referred to as "intensely lit." Whether or not one loves the series it has some of the murkiest, most poorly-lit space shots in the entire franchise. Never mind the glaring lack of beauty shots. The lighting outside these starships is just uninspired for the most part.
It just happens the "new" designs we saw were the third of the fleet that got destroyed.
But... space is dark.
Which means an object that is brightly lit should have much more contrast!
The DIS season 1 space scenes look more like pictures of poorely lit objects taken at night on Earth, than they look like actual images from space. (also, poorely rendered)
Brightly lit by what? In planetary orbit just 1 AU from a star, sure, but what about deep interstellar space?
In deep space especially, the illumination of the ship itself, like the windows or navlights should already create a much bigger contrast.
Except that's not how Star Trek has traditionally lighted ships, except in TMP and in Voyager: "Night" (which I thought looked much better than the usual lighting scheme). They've generally faked it by using far more key and fill light to illuminate the hull than there would ever be in deep space.
Hey! Let's not involve physics here
Discovery is a ship that skulks, more than goes boldly. She hides in deep space, in nebulae, in caves inside of planets. She's rarely seen in orbit around an earth-like planet, and one time at the mining colony, she seemed to be on the night side of that world.Which means an object that is brightly lit should have much more contrast!
The DIS season 1 space scenes look more like pictures of poorely lit objects taken at night on Earth, than they look like actual images from space. (also, poorely rendered)
I think they handled the lighting well. The neverending nebulae may be too much, but that's fixable in later seasons.
I agree Trek does not do realistic lighting of scenes. Maybe far less non "space black"backgrounds would help.