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

[Lance]

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

Picard himself switches to "Class B" halfway through the movie, but is back in his "Class A" uniform for the final shot of the film, him and Riker scavenging the Enterprise bridge and then leaving. To be fair, Veridian III did muss up his "Class B" uniform pretty badly (I bet he got sand in all sorts of unfortunate places!)

 

[Tomalak]

^ At least we know his quarters survived relatively unscathed, dispensing a pristine uniform!

 

[publiusr]

I liked the sprucing up of the Ent-D's bridge.

 

[Maurice]

I didn't find it a spruce-up. I found it felt like what it was: a bunch of extra stuff jammed into a set that wasn't designed to accomodate it.

 

[BillJ]

I didn't find it a spruce-up. I found it felt like what it was: a bunch of extra stuff jammed into a set that wasn't designed to accomodate it.

It pretty much abandoned the "technology unchained" look that Roddenberry had been promoting. Seems like Star Trek totally ditched that once he passed. Whether for good or ill, is up to individual viewers.

 

[cardinal biggles]

I'll be honest, while I appreciate what GR was going for with the TNG bridge and "technology unchained," it ended up making for a visually dull room. Maybe it's the short attention span brought on by years of Sesame Street, MTV, and YouTube, but there's something to be said for blinking lights and animated displays.

 

[Lance]

I didn't find it a spruce-up. I found it felt like what it was: a bunch of extra stuff jammed into a set that wasn't designed to accomodate it.

Absolutely. If you do a side-by-side comparison of the set between the TV show and the movie, it becomes even more obvious that, in many ways, the 'enhancements' to the bridge, while adding a visual interest that it didn't have on TV, actually take away a lot from the feel it had on the TV show of being a clean and uncluttered workspace. The dozens of extras milling around in the background of scenes also does a lot to make the set feel needlessly crowded compared to the TV version.

1701-D's bridge was designed for 'technology unchained', and the version of it seen in Generations simply feels like it's had all these additions bolted onto it with little thought as to whether they actually work aesthetically or not.

 

[BillJ]

I'll be honest, while I appreciate what GR was going for with the TNG bridge and "technology unchained," it ended up making for a visually dull room. Maybe it's the short attention span brought on by years of Sesame Street, MTV, and YouTube, but there's something to be said for blinking lights and animated displays.

It isn't that I minded a more crowded bridge, I just don't think the additions worked with how the bridge was designed originally. They should have either went with the bridge as it was, or designed a new set. What they did was just half-hearted.

 

[HMS Ark Royal]

Related question to topic - In Generations, Lt Jae is hit by debris which means Troi takes the Conn. She comes back before the saucer section crashes, but does anyone know what Bridge position she assumed at that point?

On topic - I liked the GEN bridge - thought it very nice indeed

 

[cardinal biggles]

It isn't that I minded a more crowded bridge, I just don't think the additions worked with how the bridge was designed originally. They should have either went with the bridge as it was, or designed a new set. What they did was just half-hearted.

The cramped feeling could have been alleviated if it were possible to add the side stations without eating up half the width of the ramps. And speaking from hindsight, since Moore & Braga were hell-bent on their big climatic crash scene, there's no point in designing a new bridge if you're going to introduce a brand-new Enterprise in the next movie.

 

[FormerLurker]

I wonder occasionally if moving those extra stations six inches forward and two or three inches farther out to the side would have made the ramps less cramped and/or made the bridge not seem so full of stuff and people. Then again, they may not have had the room for that.

 

[cardinal biggles]

Six inches forward, and you're cutting into those wall panels with the dedication plaque and the ship illustrations. Going deeper might have been possible on the starboard side, but not port, where you have Picard's ready room right next to the wall. This screencap shows just how little wiggle room there was between the two sets:

http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/generationshd/generationshd2132.jpg

 

[TOMFAN]

The only changes that I didn't like were the additions of the metal hand rails in the Turbolift alcoves:





The metal poles just looked so out of place with the rest of the bridge design, they just seem like a really cheap afterthought!

 

[Tomalak]

Yeah, they were ridiculous. I like the addition of tape to suggest they are futuristic hand rails though.

 

[Nebusj]

Yeah, they were ridiculous. I like the addition of tape to suggest they are futuristic hand rails though.

Hey, those things are indispensable for getting into and out of a wet shower safely.

 

[Locutus of Bored]

You know how you can supposedly test your dog's IQ by taking them out of the room, rearranging all the furniture, and then bringing them back in to see how quickly they return to their favorite spot, if at all? I think the crew were doing this with Riker. Will was being a bad Number One by lifting his leg over all the chairs to mark his territory, letting his facial fur get all scruffy, and humping everything in sight (including holograms).

So one day Picard took Riker into the ready room while the crew rearranged all the furniture and bridge stations, turned off all the lights on the ship, and then brought Riker back on to the bridge to see how quickly he returned to the XO's chair. Unfortunately he didn't do too well, which explains the Klingons kicking their asses when Riker took command later on.

 

[tnpir4002]

I know I'm coming in WAY after the fact here, but I have something useful to add to this discussion so I hope I'm not doing something wrong.

I've created accurate CGI replicas of the GENS bridge and the Voyager bridge, as well as the 1701-A/B bridge from Star Trek VI and VII, respectively. (See most of them here:

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The movie I linked to was framed in 2.35:1, and from the experience I can tell you a couple of things. The TOS movie bridge sets and the Voyager bridge all work in a 2.35 image because there's enough detail to actually fill the entire frame even if you go wide with your camera; the sets were all clearly constructed with a wide aspect ratio in mind, and shots just frame themselves naturally. You can point a camera at pretty much any part of those sets and wind up with a lively image that fills the frame. With the vanilla TNG design, even once you address the issues with shot framing, you still wind up with a set that's hard to shoot in for a movie, because only a couple of angles offer detail throughout the frame.

Forgetting arguments about the lighting for a minute, the GENS bridge works better for the same reason--there's enough visual detail to fill a frame and give a director a good amount of freedom in how they frame shots. Looking at the various shots that actually appear in the movie, it's easy for me to see why they made the modifications. Think about the times when the sides of the set were visible, like both of the panning wide shots we get--first when everybody comes in from the holodeck, and then again when the Armagosa star collapses. The presence of the auxiliary stations added some much-needed detail to the frame. The same goes for when Picard is pacing and he asks Data how soon the ribbon will arrive--in all of those cases, there would've been just a dull blank wall in the background; having the side stations there adds some much-needed life and detail to the proceedings. We can debate the in-universe logic (and you'll get no argument from me that the ramps are too narrow with the side stations), but the redress they did for Generations gives you a set that's a lot more interesting from a visual standpoint than its TV counterpart. When I was working with my virtual replicas, I had a very easy time framing shots with every one of them, except the TNG bridge--until I rebuilt it to resemble the GENS design.

I've also heard the argument that the additional crewmembers working around the bridge made it too cluttered and that it went against the "technology unchained" vision that Gene supposedly had in 1987. I actually thought the additional workstations made it more realistic, not less--think about it, over the course of TNG's run, we saw a wide variety of departments and functions across the ship, and I never really bought into the idea that (for instance) ALL of the functions of the various science divisions could be handled through those two small stations...or that ALL of the engineering functions (of a ship that Picard's log entry in the pilot described awe-inspiring in its size and complexity) could be handled from a single terminal. When we remember that the Enterprise's primary function was exploration, it makes sense that they'd have the ability to do a lot more at once on the bridge.

Naturally this is just my two cents (or maybe four).

 

[TommyR01D]

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 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.

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.

I lurk on some other forums, and I have seen both extremes of this:

On something like The Student Room it's quite common to see near-identical threads (underwear preferences, relationship troubles, A-Level choices, student house antics) posted several times a year - sometimes even in the same week. There are also certain megathreads that I have seen run for over ten years and tens of thousands of posts, eventually closing when the moderators decide that the original information is too out of date and open a new thread to reset the conversation.

On The Straight Dope Message Board - whose threads I normally encounter through search engine results rather than internal navigation - it's fairly normal to see old threads bumped, including this particularly impressive example where the gap is just short of fifteen years. I often find myself reading an interesting discussion that I assume to be recent, then notice certain members getting into a flame war, being infuriated by what they're saying, wishing someone would shut them up, then spotting that they already have BANNED written next to their usernames, then realising I'm reading a thread from 2006.

Of course there is a large difference between the age ranges of TSR and SDMB (I would hazard a guess that Trek BBS lies closer to the latter) and this means that different judgements can be made as to the probable depth of each community's collective memory on a given topic.

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.

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.

As I mentioned in an earlier thread, Voyager was the only series in the franchise not to have a new uniform style designed for it as well as the only series to keep the same uniform style throughout its run. Personally I am glad that this was the case - we had threads about PIC and DIS in which members have noted the absurdity of how many times Starfleet has changed its uniform system. As for differentiation, VOY and DS9 were visually distinct enough as the lighting, architecture and decoration of Terok Nor were rather different to that of the Intrepid-class.

 

[Peach Wookiee]

I know I'm coming in WAY after the fact here, but I have something useful to add to this discussion so I hope I'm not doing something wrong.

I've created accurate CGI replicas of the GENS bridge and the Voyager bridge, as well as the 1701-A/B bridge from Star Trek VI and VII, respectively. (See most of them here:

To view this content we will need your consent to set third party cookies.
For more detailed information, see our cookies page.

Accept third party cookies

)

The movie I linked to was framed in 2.35:1, and from the experience I can tell you a couple of things. The TOS movie bridge sets and the Voyager bridge all work in a 2.35 image because there's enough detail to actually fill the entire frame even if you go wide with your camera; the sets were all clearly constructed with a wide aspect ratio in mind, and shots just frame themselves naturally. You can point a camera at pretty much any part of those sets and wind up with a lively image that fills the frame. With the vanilla TNG design, even once you address the issues with shot framing, you still wind up with a set that's hard to shoot in for a movie, because only a couple of angles offer detail throughout the frame.

Forgetting arguments about the lighting for a minute, the GENS bridge works better for the same reason--there's enough visual detail to fill a frame and give a director a good amount of freedom in how they frame shots. Looking at the various shots that actually appear in the movie, it's easy for me to see why they made the modifications. Think about the times when the sides of the set were visible, like both of the panning wide shots we get--first when everybody comes in from the holodeck, and then again when the Armagosa star collapses. The presence of the auxiliary stations added some much-needed detail to the frame. The same goes for when Picard is pacing and he asks Data how soon the ribbon will arrive--in all of those cases, there would've been just a dull blank wall in the background; having the side stations there adds some much-needed life and detail to the proceedings. We can debate the in-universe logic (and you'll get no argument from me that the ramps are too narrow with the side stations), but the redress they did for Generations gives you a set that's a lot more interesting from a visual standpoint than its TV counterpart. When I was working with my virtual replicas, I had a very easy time framing shots with every one of them, except the TNG bridge--until I rebuilt it to resemble the GENS design.

I've also heard the argument that the additional crewmembers working around the bridge made it too cluttered and that it went against the "technology unchained" vision that Gene supposedly had in 1987. I actually thought the additional workstations made it more realistic, not less--think about it, over the course of TNG's run, we saw a wide variety of departments and functions across the ship, and I never really bought into the idea that (for instance) ALL of the functions of the various science divisions could be handled through those two small stations...or that ALL of the engineering functions (of a ship that Picard's log entry in the pilot described awe-inspiring in its size and complexity) could be handled from a single terminal. When we remember that the Enterprise's primary function was exploration, it makes sense that they'd have the ability to do a lot more at once on the bridge.

Naturally this is just my two cents (or maybe four).

tnpir4002, this is fascinating, but this thread is past the expiration date. If you see that a thread hasn't been active in over a year, please feel free to start a new thread. This one is now closed.