tactical? TACTICAL!!!!!

[RobertScorpio]

One thing that annoyed me about TREK(s), and usually due to budget constraints so I understand, is when, instead of a great space battle, we get a tactical read out...TACTICAL READ OUT???? Can you think of an episode where they fell back on that, and you so wanted to see what NOG, or Dax, or Kim, or Data, or Spock, or whomever were providing play-by-play for...

Rob

 

[Cmdr Sho]

One thing that annoyed me about TREK(s), and usually due to budget constraints so I understand, is when, instead of a great space battle, we get a tactical read out...TACTICAL READ OUT???? Can you think of an episode where they fell back on that, and you so wanted to see what NOG, or Dax, or Kim, or Data, or Spock, or whomever were providing play-by-play for...

Rob

Ther is only one instance were I have seen a "read out" instead of a battle...

Tng- involved cardasians and a nebula class vessel that was attacking cardasian vessels.. Chief O'Brian had served under the CO of that nebula ship...

 

[RobertScorpio]

One thing that annoyed me about TREK(s), and usually due to budget constraints so I understand, is when, instead of a great space battle, we get a tactical read out...TACTICAL READ OUT???? Can you think of an episode where they fell back on that, and you so wanted to see what NOG, or Dax, or Kim, or Data, or Spock, or whomever were providing play-by-play for...

Rob

Ther is only one instance were I have seen a "read out" instead of a battle...

Tng- involved cardasians and a nebula class vessel that was attacking cardasian vessels.. Chief O'Brian had served under the CO of that nebula ship...

Ummm..did you see the great big battle between KOR and the pursuing JEM HADAR...nope...tactical. Or how about the great MAQUIS battle in the episode with Sisko going after his friend...nope...tactical...

Just to mention a few...

Rob

 

[Colonel Midnight]

Cost-saving measures, is what it basically boils down to in the end.

Cheers,
-CM-

 

[Strider]

Ummm..did you see the great big battle between KOR and the pursuing JEM HADAR...nope...tactical.
Rob

In some cases a tactical readout works better dramatically, this being one of those cases. The purpose of this scene was to leave the exact details of the battle a mystery, while showing their astonishment at how many Jem Hadar he took with him. It works better if the characters (and thus the audience) have a certain distance from the event. See "Defiant" for another example of this technique being used.

 

[Mister_Atoz]

I agree, likewise with the battle between Phoenix and the Cardassians, I thought it was much more effective to have blips on a view screen while Picard and his crew watched helpelssly...sometimes less is more...

 

[Navaros]

I find Trek is more often than not about boring talking rather than exciting showing. It is rare that they ever actually show the good stuff rather than simply talking about it. In terms of space battles, but also in terms of all the other interesting action too.

One cop-out that comes to mind similar to the OP is the end of "Once More Unto the Breach".

This cop-out is definitely not a 'techique' IMO. It's lame and unfullfilling every time.

 

[Nerys Ghemor]

I agree, likewise with the battle between Phoenix and the Cardassians, I thought it was much more effective to have blips on a view screen while Picard and his crew watched helpelssly...sometimes less is more...

I think in that particular case, it was very effective--I agree. It also gives you kind of a window into the perspective Maxwell has. As far as he cared, he was playing games with blips on a screen...with numbers, not lives. He never LOOKED at what he did, that we know of, or it might've broken through the rationalizations he'd built up for what he was doing.

There's a phrase used by musician Roger Waters (with whom I disagree on just about EVERYTHING) that is very apt to describe the effect: it's the "bravery of being out of range." People like Maxwell can talk and act a big game when they don't actually SEE the results of what they're doing.

Plus I agree it underscores the helplessness that not just Picard but Macet had to be feeling. Remember, Macet could've ordered his own ships, with the information Picard had given him, to do a hell of a lot more than Picard allowed him to do. Not to mention the part where Picard decides to be all nice-nice with Maxwell, and escort him politely back to base and then BOOM, Maxwell goes rogue AGAIN and Macet must be thinking, YOU IDIOT!!! at Picard. So now he's losing MORE lives because Picard decided to do a stupid, ridiculously over-optimistic (in fact, flat-out delusional) thing. And all he can do is look at that screen.

 

[Nardpuncher]

I grew up on TOS in the 80s and I still remember a buddy from across the street calling me up at 1:00PM on a Saturday screaming about how the Enterprise was taking a beating from the Romulans ( It was Balance of Terror) I quickly turned to CBC ( I was in Winnipeg) and sat in awe of that episode.
My point is that episode doesn't really show much of the battle, but it describes it and shows the bridges of both ships so it just works.

Of course on TNG when Worf would say that he was firing phasers and photon toredoes and that's all we got...pretty weenie.

 

[CoveTom]

If anyone believes that Trek as a whole has not done a good job of showing space battles instead of resorting to talking about them or using tactical dispays as a cop-out, you obviously have not watched DS9. Some of the best space battles I've ever seen were depicted on that show.

TNG was a different animal. It was not a show that focused alot on battles and action. Their whole mission statement was sort of that you talk your way out of things wherever possible. And, of course, they did have some limitations in terms of the technology that was available to them on a TV budget at the time. But we got some good battles none-the-less. I thought the battles in "Best of Both Worlds," for example, were quite satisfyinig.

And as some have pointed out, sometimes tactical displays are a more dramatic way of presenting information. If you had seen a visual of the battle between Maxwell's ship and the Cardassians, it would have left the viewer with the impression that the Enterprise was close to the battle. Doing it as a tactical readout drove home the point that the Enterprise was too far away to intervene, emphasizing how helpless and frustrated Picard felt.

Hell, even TMP and TWOK, which showed us plenty of special effects shots, chose to use tactical readouts when it suited their purpose.

 

[RobertScorpio]

If anyone believes that Trek as a whole has not done a good job of showing space battles instead of resorting to talking about them or using tactical dispays as a cop-out, you obviously have not watched DS9. Some of the best space battles I've ever seen were depicted on that show.

TNG was a different animal. It was not a show that focused alot on battles and action. Their whole mission statement was sort of that you talk your way out of things wherever possible. And, of course, they did have some limitations in terms of the technology that was available to them on a TV budget at the time. But we got some good battles none-the-less. I thought the battles in "Best of Both Worlds," for example, were quite satisfyinig.

And as some have pointed out, sometimes tactical displays are a more dramatic way of presenting information. If you had seen a visual of the battle between Maxwell's ship and the Cardassians, it would have left the viewer with the impression that the Enterprise was close to the battle. Doing it as a tactical readout drove home the point that the Enterprise was too far away to intervene, emphasizing how helpless and frustrated Picard felt.

Hell, even TMP and TWOK, which showed us plenty of special effects shots, chose to use tactical readouts when it suited their purpose.

Well, excuse me, but I have been watching STAR TREK since the start. Do you remember the Gorn battle??? No...of course not..it wasn't there. Or how about that awesome battle at Wolf 359 (TNG), perhaps the most important battle in STAR TREK history...no...it wasn't there.

They have, IMO, taken the easy way out and not shown MANY starship entanglements. And if you think it was because of style? Then YOU have not been watching star trek close enough. Because it was also driven by budgetary restraint, and if you don't believe me, then okay..its your opinion. But not mine...

Rob

 

[Cmdr Sho]

ummm....actulally there was a battle scene of worf 395 in the first episode of ds9... also, true many battles are left unseen, the retake on ds9 was totally fullfilling.... that was a great battle!!!! ds9 had good battle scenes...

 

[DGCatAniSiri]

It wasn't until around late in DS9 season three when they actually could afford to show the battle sequences - the Battle of the Omarian Nebula, I believe, was when they first managed to actually show a real ship-to-ship battle that wasn't essentiay a couple of phaser shots, a torpedeo or two, and over. The 'tactical readout' was their way of including ship battles that would actually happen on their budget. So it's not that they didn't WANT to show the battles, but they needed to decide what was more important - telling the stories or showing the battles.

Before the rise of CGI, they were using physical models - which means they'd also blow up the physical models when they needed them to explode. It's costly and time-consuming to have to replace those models, (and sometimes the explosion wouldn't film the way they wanted, so they'd have to rebuild and blow it up AGAIN) so obviously they avoided it a lot of the time.

Personally, the tactical readouts like in 'Wounded' and 'Defiant' were something I liked - like it's been mentioned above, it meant that our characters were too far away to do anything, and it amplified the feeling of helplessness they had to be feeling. And just showing the aftermath of the Battle of Wolf 359 (with just a snippet included in Emissary) was very visceral - we'd seen the Enterprise survive an engagement with the Borg, and it's just one ship, surely a fleet of forty could survive, right? WRONG, and here are the blasted out hulks of those forty ships, just floating, adrift, dead.

 

[Stewey]

Most of the time it was a budgetry constraint as has been allready said in the thread, but sometimes less can be more which allows you the viewer to use your imagination of the battle.

 

[CoveTom]

Well, excuse me, but I have been watching STAR TREK since the start. Do you remember the Gorn battle??? No...of course not..it wasn't there. Or how about that awesome battle at Wolf 359 (TNG), perhaps the most important battle in STAR TREK history...no...it wasn't there.

They have, IMO, taken the easy way out and not shown MANY starship entanglements. And if you think it was because of style? Then YOU have not been watching star trek close enough. Because it was also driven by budgetary restraint, and if you don't believe me, then okay..its your opinion. But not mine...

Rob

*sigh* I should have known better than to try and engage a debate thread without people taking it personally and getting all irritable... I think I should just stick to my TWOK Line-by-Line thread...

But, as long as we're going down the road of this discussion, I have watched plenty of Star Trek, thank you. I've seen as much of TOS and TNG as there is to see. And I still maintain that while Star Trek may have SOMETIMES taken the easy way out in terms of showing battles, that such is not always the case, nor was it done enough to reflect badly on Star Trek as a whole.

As I said, DS9 did an excellent job of showing battles. So did Voyager. The increasing availability of quality CGI on a television budget. But even before that, I still maintain that TOS and TNG did very good jobs with what they had available. Balance of Terror and The Deadly Years are both examples from TOS I can think of where they depicted battles very well within the confines of the technology and budget. The Best of Both Worlds, Yesterday's Enterprise, and All Good Things... from TNG are similar examples.

But Star Trek is not about huge space battles. It's whenever they've tried to go for the eye candy special effects, like in Nemesis, that things have gone wrong. Star Trek is at its BEST when they are limited in their ability to do flashy effects and have to think outside the box. As Nicholas Meyer is fond of saying, "creativity thrives on restrictions." When you have huge flashy special effects budgets, ala Nemesis or modern Star Wars, the truly important things, like character development and well thought-out plots, seem to go by the wayside.

And, again, I stand by my assertion that some of what you call "cop outs" are actual creative choices. As I said before, I don't think "The Wounded" would have been any better served had we seen a big battle between the Phoenix and the Cardassian fleet. I think it served to emphasize the frustration of Picard and his crew that they weren't there and could only watch helplessly on a tactical display from far away.

And the Gorn battle? What Gorn battle? The whole point was that the Enterprise and the Gorn never were able to do battle because of alien intervention. That's not a cop-out. That's the whole point of the story.