The Pacing of Space Battles: Old vs. New

[I am not Spock]

I actually liked the Enterprise E vs the Scimitar in NEM. Maybe it was Jerry Goldsmith's (RIP) excellent soaring soundtrack, or perhaps the pretty good SFX. It was certainly the best of the TNG movie era space battles. FC's at the beginning against the Borg cube was all too brief. Nemesis's space battle took up a good final third of the movie!

The space battles in 09 and Into Darkness were similar to FC's. Good FX but just too brief. I don't think the Enterprise even got off one shot in ID. That's a rather one sided battle, isn't it?

In Generations, the ENT D fires exactly one photon torpedo and one phaser blast at the Bird of Prey which is hammering into it with disruptor fire.

 

[austen_pierce]

In TWOK, Spock mentions that Khan thinks in 2D, and Kirk summarily opens a can of woopass simply by dropping the Enterprise on the Z axis.

We don't see much of this again until the Kelvin opening sequence of ST09. Revenge of the Sith's opening sequence did pretty well at showing ships in a multilayered battle formation.

Exploiting 3D against a race used to 2D should be space strategy 101, but it wouldn't make for much of a movie (very one sided, no pun intended).

 

[Hypaspist]

I think that 2D mindset is kind of a lingering flaw in TV/movie Sci Fi. It's also something that none of the star maps ever seem to account for. The only thing that seems to be acknowledged more often than not in Trek is how close they have to be to a major reference point to have much of a chance of finding another ship.

 

[austen_pierce]

Yeah, distance in Trek is laughable. So is scale for that matter, but sticking to distance... you've got weapons (phasers) which in theory move at light speed. Yet Khan waits until Reliant and Enterprise are at broadsides, giving Kirk *almost* enough time to see through the deception.

But my God, what a moment...