The D7 Klingon Battle Cruiser in "Elaan" Remastered...Yea? Or Nay?
- Thread starter cooleddie74
- Start date
This is something I would have ditched. The whole disruptor/plasma-looking bolts-from-the-nacelles thingy. It didn't look good in the original 1968 opticals and effects and makes less sense now that we know that D7 battle cruisers DON'T have disruptor banks and emitters on or above their warp nacelles.They should have had the cruiser fire orange or red torpedoes from its forward launch tube a'la TMP or STAR TREK VI. Something that fits in with established Klingon weapon usage and the blueprints and designs of this ship.
I love the Remastering team and their work most of the time...but they ARE too damn slavish to the original effects they're replacing, even if they looked stupid and illogical. They should be more original and stretch themselves. Not robotically recreate so many original opticals to the letter.
Klingon D7's don't have disruptors on their warp macelles?
They most certainly DID in the original version (non-remastered); so where the hell does this statement even come from? Personally, I like that th team kept the disruptors firing from WHERE they did in the original; although I wish they had done a better job of animating the 'bolts' themselves; AS the long shot of the bolts coming from the D7 in the original looked MUCH better than what they did. The 1967 SFX team actually did a nice job of animating them in that shot, and I can't believe the mess they turned into under the remastered team.
Sorry, but even in the original and early Paramount-approved B&W blueprints for the D7 cruiser there were no disruptor banks or torpedo launchers in these locations. And we have never seen any other Klingon ships in the history of TREK but Birds-of-Prey with fairly obvious and large disruptor cannons on their wingtips fire weapons from these areas. Just because the original 1968 opticals were more-or-less accepted visual canon for so long doesn't make them something to laud. The blueprints and other printed visual references don't have weapons at this location on a D7. Maybe the cruiser in this episode was retrofitted with new emitters and tubes at these locations as some experiment to try new designs of disruptor banks...a test run if you will that was never seen on any other TOS- or movie-era cruiser.
Noname Given said:
Here we can TOTALLY agree. Maybe you and I clash on where a disruptor bank on a D7 is supposed to or even should be, but you and I are in 100% agreement on the look of the Remastered 'bolts.' Ugh. Stu-pid. They look more like---as someone joked above---ectoplasmic slime from a GHOSTBUSTERS movie than they do fearsome Klingon energy weaponry.
They do look similar in a few respects. I can see why you might think that.
Have you ever seen the Mandel BPs Lincoln Enterprises sold for so long? Disruptors on the warp engines. Practically any other resource for the D7 shows the same: Star Fleet Battles and the follow on PC games, all approved to one degree or another by Paramount, etc. Warp engines tipped with disruptor banks. It's with the K't'inga they move from those locations.
The original effects show disruptors firing from here but they should be ignored because later resources and shows featuring completely different ship classes which don't feature this weapons configuration don't match it?
That argument cannot be taken seriously.
As I said in an earlier post...CG plugin...
Regarding the positioning of D-7 weapons, the engine nacelles are virtually the only place where there's enough surface detail to imply a weapons emplacement!
Granted that the Enterprise lacks detail at the spots where her weapons fire emerges. But at least she has some major features there, namely the lower dome and its detailed rim. The closest thing to that in the Klingon design is the fancy box at the bow of the nacelle...
Timo Saloniemi
Granted that the Enterprise lacks detail at the spots where her weapons fire emerges. But at least she has some major features there, namely the lower dome and its detailed rim. The closest thing to that in the Klingon design is the fancy box at the bow of the nacelle...
Timo Saloniemi
Have you ever seen the Mandel BPs Lincoln Enterprises sold for so long? Disruptors on the warp engines. Practically any other resource for the D7 shows the same: Star Fleet Battles and the follow on PC games, all approved to one degree or another by Paramount, etc. Warp engines tipped with disruptor banks. It's with the K't'inga they move from those locations.
The original effects show disruptors firing from here but they should be ignored because later resources and shows featuring completely different ship classes which don't feature this weapons configuration don't match it?
That argument cannot be taken seriously.
If I forgot that the K't'inga class introduced in 1979 changed things a little, I stand slightly corrected. I stkll think parts of my argument have merit, though, because most of the post-TOS/1969 materials don't show weapons in that location and no ships after TOS and TAS fire weapons from these areas and the negative reactions of so many fans to seeing these weapons fire from these locations in the Remastered episode attest to a widespread belief over the years reflected in how post-TMP Klingon ships are designed that weapons on these vessels are located in different areas and look markedly different when fired. There is still room for debate.
I'm willing to cede that 2268-vintage D7s had small disruptor banks here because---let's face it---no amount of debate is going to change the visual canon most people will buy into. I'll cave in and say this is accepted and canon and move on. But I and a lot of others STILL say the goofy, green, ectoplasmic fire coming from the ship looks dumb. Why not more bolt/beam looking fire like almost all other Klingon weapons?
TOS establishes that the D7's had disruptor banks in the nacelles. It doesn't matter what later Trek in film or other series does. To make such a blatant change is patent retconning and revisionism in contradiction of what's already been established.
I may not like the new cgi disruptor effect, but at least it adheres to what is already firmly established rather than try to mold TOS to be more consistent with later arbitrary changes.
I may not like the new cgi disruptor effect, but at least it adheres to what is already firmly established rather than try to mold TOS to be more consistent with later arbitrary changes.
darkwing_duck1
Vice Admiral
There are a couple of sample pics from TEI up at Trekmovie.com right now, including one showing the belly of the Romulan D-7 complete with Bird of Prey paint job!
Worse, the texture map for the bird stretches unevenly onto the stern of the ship in two black smears. I've got better texture jobs on some of the fan-made models for the Starfleet Command PC games. As for the mesh, it doesn't hold a candle to Vektor's go at the D7.
Good idea; lousy execution.
^
Well, what do you expect. This isn't Lucasfilm and Skywalker Ranch doing the CGI upgrades. It's done on a very strict time schedule and with a limited budget from the studio. Frankly, I wish they were more up to ENTERPRISE or BSG standards in most cases but with so little time and money and the f/x scenes rarely lasting more than a few seconds apiece there's not much wiggle room to come up with boffo, mind-blowing opticals.
Well, what do you expect. This isn't Lucasfilm and Skywalker Ranch doing the CGI upgrades. It's done on a very strict time schedule and with a limited budget from the studio. Frankly, I wish they were more up to ENTERPRISE or BSG standards in most cases but with so little time and money and the f/x scenes rarely lasting more than a few seconds apiece there's not much wiggle room to come up with boffo, mind-blowing opticals.
Amen, brother.
It is rather remarkable how this CGI model lacks even the additional detailing that distinguishes the AMT Klingon D7 from the filming miniatures, e.g. the ram scoops. The pylon lacked any detailing whatsoever -- even the detailing present on Jefferies' rough final drawing of the ship. No vents, no graphics. No nothing, except a little texture.
And yet, they felt free to add a quartet of impulse engines.
My two cents -- I think an interesting direction to go with the D7 would be to closely study the intermediate, more restained detailing done to the early-K't'inga before it was superdetailed for TMP, and follow the same approach for the TOS-R D7. Stick with the original ship's lines, but follow the proto-K't'inga detailing.
I think this might be a photo of the TMP ship early on, to provide a clue to what kind of treatment I mean:
http://www.uah.edu/~jim/tmpklin.jpg
Weird.
First, what plans are you talking about? Matt Jefferies' drawings in Making of Star Trek didn't have ANY weapons callouts. Michael McMaster's (non-official, but sold by Lincoln Enterprises) D-7 had the disruptors right where they are on the show. In the movies we never saw the K'tingas fire anything except photon torpedoes (the first indication that the Klingons had such weapons, btw). Did they ever fire disruptors in a TNG era show that I don't know of? (Not that I care. See my next point.)
Second, this is where the weapons placement came from. Anything afterwards that changed it got it wrong.
^
I already ceded earlier in the thread I was unaware of a couple of sources that matched the Original and Remastered effects. I was wrong, and admitted so. While TOS-era D7s obviously have disruptor banks on the wings near the warp nacelles I think it's a stretch to say later ships "got it wrong." Those creators were free to come up with new designs and ideas unfettered by many past ideas, and since the K't'inga cruiser and Birds-of-Prey came later in TREK lore and they are chronologically later in the timeline they don't have to jibe with TOS ships.
I already ceded earlier in the thread I was unaware of a couple of sources that matched the Original and Remastered effects. I was wrong, and admitted so. While TOS-era D7s obviously have disruptor banks on the wings near the warp nacelles I think it's a stretch to say later ships "got it wrong." Those creators were free to come up with new designs and ideas unfettered by many past ideas, and since the K't'inga cruiser and Birds-of-Prey came later in TREK lore and they are chronologically later in the timeline they don't have to jibe with TOS ships.
I don't expect mind-blowing. I expect ships that don't have huge visible polys faceting their hulls (unless they're Tholians) and properly registered texture maps. That's not asking for the world. If someone in their spare time can do that for a game mod or a hobby project, the CBS-CGI team can do it for arguably the second most important model in the whole project.
Trust me, I understand about budgets and time constraints: That's why the original series effects didn't look like what was possible for feature films in the late 1960's. Still, that hasn't stopped elements of fandom ripping them with the crap "ship-on-a-string" comments for decades and with even more intensity since the Remastering project began. Folks should keep that in mind before they hurl brickbats like "stupid and illogical" at the original work.
Look, some things are going to get dropped, mistakes made. These people aren't setting out to do substandard work. Some of the stuff they've done is great. I loved the inclusion of the cargo drones and Shi'kahr. But the Klingon battlecruiser is almost as much a signature ship for Star Trek as the Enterprise. They've had plenty of time to tweak this model over the last couple of years, doing the initial mesh for "Friday's Child". If this project is intended to make the show presentable for HD viewing then shortcomings like the mesh for the D7 are inexcusable.
Addendum: The latter shows can't be said to have gotten things "wrong" regarding this ship as none of them featured it. K't'ingas, B'rels, and Vorchas all feature different weapons systems. The only place where an arguable mistake was made was with TAS which had torpedoes being fired from the battlecruiser's sensor/deflector, the first indication these ships had those weapons (predating TMP, Tallguy, sorry).
Trust me, I understand about budgets and time constraints: That's why the original series effects didn't look like what was possible for feature films in the late 1960's. Still, that hasn't stopped elements of fandom ripping them with the crap "ship-on-a-string" comments for decades and with even more intensity since the Remastering project began. Folks should keep that in mind before they hurl brickbats like "stupid and illogical" at the original work.
Look, some things are going to get dropped, mistakes made. These people aren't setting out to do substandard work. Some of the stuff they've done is great. I loved the inclusion of the cargo drones and Shi'kahr. But the Klingon battlecruiser is almost as much a signature ship for Star Trek as the Enterprise. They've had plenty of time to tweak this model over the last couple of years, doing the initial mesh for "Friday's Child". If this project is intended to make the show presentable for HD viewing then shortcomings like the mesh for the D7 are inexcusable.
Addendum: The latter shows can't be said to have gotten things "wrong" regarding this ship as none of them featured it. K't'ingas, B'rels, and Vorchas all feature different weapons systems. The only place where an arguable mistake was made was with TAS which had torpedoes being fired from the battlecruiser's sensor/deflector, the first indication these ships had those weapons (predating TMP, Tallguy, sorry).
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