The changes in the Enterprise-D bridge in Generations...

[MarsWeeps]

This thread is YEARS old. The moderators prefer us not to wake the dead but start a new thread. If it's over a year since the last reply, best let it lie.

I started a new thread asking for some clarification about resurrecting old threads:

http://www.trekbbs.com/threads/official-policy-on-resurrecting-old-threads.279368/

 

[Galileo7]

This thread is YEARS old. The moderators prefer us not to wake the dead but start a new thread. If it's over a year since the last reply, best let it lie.

Maybe it should it be closed, like a poll, if it is an expired thread so no further postings can be made. A read only thread.

 

[Lance]

Yeah, necro-threading is a bit of a faux pas.

If there was some automatic forum routine that closed threads after, say, 12 months of inactivity then that'd be cool. But I think it'd be a little hard for the moderators to expect them to go back through every thread on the forum and lock them all on the off-chance that somebody is going to come along in three years time and bump a eight year old thread.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Now there are necro-Likes...I just got a Like for a two-year-old post!

 

[Nebusj]

Now there are necro-Likes...I just got a Like for a two-year-old post!

Darn it! I almost never get people liking anything I write, never mind stuff I wrote two years ago.

(Well, I kind of forgot to be here two years ago. Stuff was happening. Say five years ago instead.)

 

[DaddlerTheDalek]

To be fair, many other boards are like "Why didn't you bother to search if there isn't already a thread about this subject. LOCKED!"
The Jedi Council Forums on Theforce.net is like that. But I get that reviving threads that are inactive since several years is kind of weird.

 

[Shikarnov]

I don't have an issue with old threads being resurrected from time to time. This board has some fantastic discussions worth exploring, re-exploring, and sharing -- especially as it pertains to the prime universe, which has been off the air already more than a decade.

On-topic, I wasn't a fan of the Generations bridge. The side stations were okay, but in combination with the lower lighting, they just drew focus away from the action. I like treknology as much as the next guy, but background sets shouldn't distract from the action. Moreover -- and especially in combination with the raised command area -- they made the set appear really cramped.

Of course, I understand why they made the choices they did -- lack of detail in the original set, a need to fill space horizontally and reduce it vertically, and so on -- but it still just doesn't work for me. But then again, and this is off-topic, very little in this film actually does work for me. I think one of the only positive things I can say is that the model shots of Enterprise-D looked fantastic -- huge and majestic -- on the big screen. Even the stock footage was pretty amazing.

 

[In_Correct]

Even if this thread is old, I just joined the website and this is my first time replying to this thread.

Let me say that I love the Generations bridge. They had dim lighting for seasons 1, 2, The Ensigns Of Command, and part of "Yesterday's Enterprise". Generations returns the look of dimmed lighting. They also often had dim lighting for TOS films and I think it looks more futuristic with dimmed lighting.

It seems that Generations attempted to duplicate the set from Yesterday's Enterprise. They had small consoles on the sides of the main bridge. They also had very dark lighting. I even think that both Yesterday's Enterprise and Generations had a coolant leak in main engineering??

It does not make sense to have an Engineering section to the main bridge, but not any full sized communications station. Yes I understand that the Galaxy Class is better automated compared with the Constitution Class (or at least during the 23rd Century) that it was much more complicated to make it fly herself. But they probably should have a larger Communications station just in case. And they might as well have a Medical station!

There is a small problem, is that the main bridge is now too small. It is too crowded. The intention is that this huge starship has plenty of room to stretch so I do understand that it is supposed to look uncluttered and automatic.

 

[Lance]

Let me say that I love the Generations bridge. They had dim lighting for seasons 1, 2, The Ensigns Of Command, and part of "Yesterday's Enterprise". Generations returns the look of dimmed lighting. They also often had dim lighting for TOS films and I think it looks more futuristic with dimmed lighting.

I've seen it said that in TNG seasons 1 & 2 they shot things a little bit more like a 'noir'.... darker backgrounds, generally, with a brighter focus on the actor's faces.... which is time consuming to set up but has a much more dramatic effect visually. I agree that Generations kind of went back to that lighting scheme from seasons 1 & 2, probably because they had a lot more time to do the lighting set ups on a movie than they do on the strict TV shooting schedule.

It seems that Generations attempted to duplicate the set from Yesterday's Enterprise. They had small consoles on the sides of the main bridge. They also had very dark lighting. I even think that both Yesterday's Enterprise and Generations had a coolant leak in main engineering??

I'm sure both were deliberate 'call-backs'. "Yesterday's Enterprise" and Generations were both helmed by the same director, David Carson.

There is a small problem, is that the main bridge is now too small. It is too crowded. The intention is that this huge starship has plenty of room to stretch so I do understand that it is supposed to look uncluttered and automatic.

The irony is that the TV show bridge set was actually a lot smaller than it looked (it was the same width as the TOS bridge set), but they made it seem larger by using wider angle lenses to shoot scenes on the bridge, as well as there being a lack of background extras milling about which made it seem a lot bigger. Generations lost something of this: it's framed for widescreen, but generally the bridge set has actually got a tighter look than it did on TV, and the place being absolutely packed with crewmembers in some scenes makes it feel ridiculously crowded compared to the clutter-free television version.

 

[FormerLurker]

One more 'call-back being the step up to the center seats. Only one in Generations, while there were three in Yesterday's Enterprise, but still a step.

And I recall reading that the TNG bridge was the same diameter as the TOS bridge, with the different, wider appearance being due to the multiple alcoves for turbolifts and readyrooms front and back pushing the sides out as one looks around.

 

[Tomalak]

I don't have an issue with old threads being resurrected from time to time. This board has some fantastic discussions worth exploring, re-exploring, and sharing -- especially as it pertains to the prime universe, which has been off the air already more than a decade.

Quite, the discussion from a few years ago hasn't dated. What's the point in keeping the thread open and accessible on the forum if we're not allowed to contribute to them? It's a waste of a fantastic resource if we're only supposed to look at threads from the past twelve months, especially since the film we're talking about is over two decades old!

 

[Lance]

I don't have an issue with old threads being resurrected from time to time. This board has some fantastic discussions worth exploring, re-exploring, and sharing -- especially as it pertains to the prime universe, which has been off the air already more than a decade.

Quite, the discussion from a few years ago hasn't dated. What's the point in keeping the thread open and accessible on the forum if we're not allowed to contribute to them? It's a waste of a fantastic resource if we're only supposed to look at threads from the past twelve months, especially since the film we're talking about is over two decades old!

I'd tend to agree with that point of view, but I can also understand the reasoning behind not wanting them bumped.

That having been said, while I wouldn't bump one myself, I've always been pleased to contribute to a thread that's already been bumped from a time before I've been here, as often times I've found the discussions interesting to read!

Ultimately at this point, any discussion we can have about Star Trek is one we've probably already had at some point in the past, so it really comes down to whether we don't mind the older threads being dug up, or whether we'd prefer to see new threads that cover the same old ground we've all been over before.

The two positions aren't really that different, but I can see both sides of the point.

 

[Nebusj]

That having been said, while I wouldn't bump one myself, I've always been pleased to contribute to a thread that's already been bumped from a time before I've been here, as often times I've found the discussions interesting to read!

I just don't understand how people find necrothreads to post to. I mean, if I wanted to start talking about (say) the alarm status panel on the Excelsior's bridge in Search for Spock I might check the subject lines in the most recent and next-most recent pages in the forum before concluding nothing seemed to match and it was fine to go ahead.

But then apparently some people do an advanced search for any kind of mention of it, and they find deep in the archives, in an unlit room, in a locked file cabinet, guarded by a Denebian Laser Boxing Kangaroo, a thread from 2007 that was all about the alarm status panel. ``That!'' they declare. ``I'm going to re-post to that thread instead of starting my own!''

I understand someone who's just been burned for starting a thread too close to one still-active being careful like that, but it's still weird to me.

 

[In_Correct]

I just don't understand how people find necrothreads to post to.

The forums show up in Google search results.

 

[Terok Nor]

It looked to me like the Enterprise was in a transition phase. The crew also seemed to be in the midst of dropping the TNG uniforms and replacing them with the DS9/Voyager ones.

 

[Shikarnov]

It looked to me like the Enterprise was in a transition phase. The crew also seemed to be in the midst of dropping the TNG uniforms and replacing them with the DS9/Voyager ones.

This is off topic, but I always wondered why Voyager went with those uniforms. Although their intended purpose was never explicitly stated, I always understood them to be some kind of "dirty work" uniforms that seemed reasonable on DS9 -- an old ore facility made into a starbase, with ships docking and needing repair constantly, etc. We never saw starship personnel wearing them -- and Sisko transitioned to the more formal TNG uniforms when he was stationed off Deep Space Nine briefly -- which seemed to wax with the specialized usage.

 

[Timo]

Actually, at least one of the visiting starships favored those uniforms as well: when O'Brien competede in darts against a visiting Vulcan in "Shakaar", that visitor wore the VOY fashion. Any number of people seen in that uniform in DS9 could thus be from visiting ships as well.

Might be the colored-shoulders version is the more casual one, and the black-shoulders version the more officious and somewhat less comfortable one - and skippers of big and prominent ships (such as the E-D and the Prometheus and the Lexington) insist on their crew wearing the "Class A" all the time, while smaller ships allow for regular use of "Class B".

ST:GEN would then be a case of Picard mellowing out. Significantly, our heroes are seen changing from "Class A" to "Class B" as they get down to dirty work, or soil the former uniforms in action. Perhaps they would have changed back to "Class A" after the credits rolled?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vger23]

I don't have an issue with old threads being resurrected from time to time. This board has some fantastic discussions worth exploring, re-exploring, and sharing -- especially as it pertains to the prime universe, which has been off the air already more than a decade.

I actually think it's kind of a stupid rule (respectfully).

I have seen examples of discussions here in long-past threads that are really, REALLY good. I mean, most are better than anything on any other Trek board I've been a part of. There's some very thoughtful stuff on this board. And, there's tremendous value to the large number of new people or fans joining the board who may want to read those and build on the discussions, because they aren't really interested in playing idiotic forum games ("Say the Next Line" or "Caption This") or reading a bunch of griping about Star Trek Beyond or about CBS making you pay for Star Trek TV which seems to be the prevalent direction these days.

 

[Terok Nor]

This is off topic, but I always wondered why Voyager went with those uniforms. Although their intended purpose was never explicitly stated, I always understood them to be some kind of "dirty work" uniforms that seemed reasonable on DS9 -- an old ore facility made into a starbase, with ships docking and needing repair constantly, etc. We never saw starship personnel wearing them -- and Sisko transitioned to the more formal TNG uniforms when he was stationed off Deep Space Nine briefly -- which seemed to wax with the specialized usage.

I thought Voyager should have had their own brand of uniforms the way DS9 did when it started. I wonder how many people got confused about which show was DS9 and which one was Voyager because both were on at the same time and both had the same uniforms until DS9 Season 5.

Star Trek Generations was meant to feature a brand new style of uniform which I assume would have gone on to feature on Voyager but they were dropped at the last minute.

 

[Shikarnov]

I wonder how many people got confused about which show was DS9 and which one was Voyager because both were on at the same time and both had the same uniforms until DS9 Season 5.

That's an interesting thought -- one I'm sure the producers had in mind, given their obsession with general audiences.

My surmise is they they probably felt little need to differentiate Voyager from Deep Space Nine. If a few of DS9's more casual audience members saw the same uniforms/brand and tuned in, then so much the better for the fledgling UPN network. If anything, my bet is they saw greater risk in putting the Voyager crew into a different uniform.