The Enterprise

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

I get thst it's an alternate timeline, but I find these movies work better if you take them as a straight up reboot of Star Trek for the big screen. Too many discrepancies. The time travel plot from the 2009 film is a nice explanation, though. Reboot, because time travel. Anyway.

I really love these three movies, but I have one serious problem. Why is the Enterprise so fragile? Shields up! Enemy ship fires weapons, Enterprise is swiss cheese. Only in these reboot movies. The Enterprise can seemingly get anywhere in mere minutes, making space feel small. In Into Darkness, why so many torpedo launchers on the side of the ship? Two up front, one or two in back. Is that not enough? Good movies, but I feel Abrams got the characters mostly, but the Enterprise... not so much.

 

[F. King Daniel]

I get thst it's an alternate timeline, but I find these movies work better if you take them as a straight up reboot of Star Trek for the big screen. Too many discrepancies. The time travel plot from the 2009 film is a nice explanation, though. Reboot, because time travel. Anyway.

I really love these three movies, but I have one serious problem. Why is the Enterprise so fragile? Shields up! Enemy ship fires weapons, Enterprise is swiss cheese. Only in these reboot movies. The Enterprise can seemingly get anywhere in mere minutes, making space feel small. In Into Darkness, why so many torpedo launchers on the side of the ship? Two up front, one or two in back. Is that not enough? Good movies, but I feel Abrams got the characters mostly, but the Enterprise... not so much.

The broadside torpedo launchers were awesome, IMHO. I'd wanted to see that for years.

All the ships get fragile when the budget increases, because they can afford to show the damage happening in detail. 80's tv couldn't do more than show a bubble around the ship while the crew wobbled in their chairs.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

The broadside torpedo launchers were awesome, IMHO. I'd wanted to see that for years.

It makes sense on a sailing ship with canons. It doesn't make sense on a futuristic starship with torpedoes that can fly around toward it's target. The Enterprise is likely chasing or being chases. Makese sense for launchers to be forward and rear, not on the sides.

All the ships get fragile when the budget increases, because they can afford to show the damage happening in detail. 80's tv couldn't do more than show a bubble around the ship while the crew wobbled in their chairs.

Why not get creative? In the 2009 movie, it should have been wreckage hitting the shield bubble instead of scraping the hull. In Into Darkness, I was OK with that mostly. Shot out of warp. Once dropped out of warp, just throw in some dialogue, no shields. In Beyond... omg, the Enterprise was trashed just way too fast. I'd have liked to see the alien ships fight the Enterprise, shields fail, and THEN they impact the hull.

I'm fine with CGI battle damage. I'd just have liked to see the Enterprise shields protect the ship, fail, and then CGI splosions.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It makes sense on a sailing ship with canons. It doesn't make sense on a futuristic starship with torpedoes that can fly around toward it's target. The Enterprise is likely chasing or being chases. Makese sense for launchers to be forward and rear, not on the sides.

If the torpedoes are guided missiles, it doesn't matter where they come from. Front and rear only matters if they're ballistic.

Why not get creative? In the 2009 movie, it should have been wreckage hitting the shield bubble instead of scraping the hull. In Into Darkness, I was OK with that mostly. Shot out of warp. Once dropped out of warp, just throw in some dialogue, no shields. In Beyond... omg, the Enterprise was trashed just way too fast. I'd have liked to see the alien ships fight the Enterprise, shields fail, and THEN they impact the hull.

I'm fine with CGI battle damage. I'd just have liked to see the Enterprise shields protect the ship, fail, and then CGI splosions.

There were interviews with the team in 2009 asking about the way battle damage was depicted, and they liked the idea of shields strengthening the skin of the ship rather than being a bubble surrounding it, since it made the battles more immediate and visceral. I agree with them, but each to their own.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Does the Enterprise really need more than some odd 4 or so torpedo launchers? It's a deep space exploration ship, not a warship.

Skin tight shields, that's fine, but I wish the VFX would have made that clear. For me, it looked like the shields were non existant in all 3 movies.

 

[publiusr]

The broadside torpedo launchers were awesome, IMHO. I'd wanted to see that for years.

Same here. I remember a blueprint book on a refit where the arboretum windows were triangles side by side—inverted next to upright—thinking that those would be great SFB “drone” hatches.

Now, with internet billionaire budgets, I might like to see nested shields.

A stranded ship that is quite advanced is near a Cold War+ era world, where military spending just kept on even above our levels.

Deflectors cause missiles to veer off. But they keep coming. Flashes cause the sphere to be visible, then a volley of naquadah missiles or something collapses that. The skin tight field fails, the ablatives blister, then hull damage,

Right as an UR-500 Czar Bomb is about to hit, warp drive is restored and you “limp” away at only twice lightspeed.

 

[fireproof78]

There were interviews with the team in 2009 asking about the way battle damage was depicted, and they liked the idea of shields strengthening the skin of the ship rather than being a bubble surrounding it, since it made the battles more immediate and visceral. I agree with them, but each to their own.

I agree as well and it makes sense given the technology presented on screen.

 

[Timo]

...It sort of eats into that that a major plot moment in the 2009 movie involves Kirk convincing Pike to raise shields, thus for the first time gaining some cred - and the result is that Sulu still scrapes entire panels off the nacelle in a gentle fender-bender. It's not particularly visceral, it's just plain wimpy, and immediately takes away Kirk's achievement as inconsequential.

Big bad black hat weapons ripping into the white hull of the hero vessel: fine, pretty, glorious, even. Any random bump marring that whiteness: not just silly, but inconsistent with how the ship elbowed her way through the rubble around Altamid and was none the worse for the wear. (And then elbowed her way through a mountain on Altamid, to much the same effect!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[dupersuper]

Yeah: it's like Geoff Jones run on the Green Lantern comic books: their shields got crappy because Johns wanted big body counts to make his space battles look kewl.

 

[valkyrie013]

Energizing the Hull? Uh.. isnt that called.. Oh.. POLARIZING the hull plating??
I liked the movies, but the Enterprise and its battles were just so much Turd..

While nemisis is an okay movie, it does have the best ship vs ship battles in trek movies. parts of the romulan ship just bounced off the shields!

 

[F. King Daniel]

FWIW, on screen technobabble in Star Trek Into Darkness is straight from Lora Johnson's Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise.

 

[fireproof78]

FWIW, on screen technobabble in Star Trek Into Darkness is straight from Lora Johnson's Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise.

I thought I recognized it.