USS Antares Question (ATTN: Okuda?)

[Brutal Strudel]

Which has always been Trek's problem: from the start, they sold themselves as this rigorous SF universe where everything was thought-out carefully. Thus we get the Whitman book filled with memo after memo of minutia yet, all too often, it appears they really just winged it. Which is fine, just as it's fine to add a youthful Russian to your cast because you're trying to cash in the Davey Jones-Monkees thing rather than as a high-minded effort to further the cause of global cooperation. It's the bullshit mythology that grates on me.

 

[Basill]

Brutal Strudel said:
Or sprung for a second kit and had 1711? Or 1717?

Heh. I was actually pondering their well known tight budgets earlier, wondering if they were that strapped due to the extra effects this episode demanded.

 

[SeerSGB]

Brutal Strudel said:
Which has always been Trek's problem: from the start, they sold themselves as this rigorous SF universe where everything was thought-out carefully. Thus we get the Whitman book filled with memo after memo of minutia yet, all too often, it appears they really just winged it. Which is fine, just as it's fine to add a youthful Russian to your cast because you're trying to cash in the Davey Jones-Monkees thing rather than as a high-minded effort to further the cause of global cooperation. It's the bullshit mythology that grates on me.

It's the bullshit mythology that grates on me.

A-fucking-men!

Anyone that ascribes anymore to the TOS production team than being TV producers and actors making a paycheck has drunk the Trekkie kool-aid one to many times. Granted we don't have a monopoly on bullshit fan mythology (Ex: George Lucas wrote Episodes I - III back in the 70s etc.)

I love Star Trek, but it's just a TV show, nothing more; not some grand philosophical doctrine.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Basill said:

Brutal Strudel said:
Or sprung for a second kit and had 1711? Or 1717?

Heh. I was actually pondering their well known tight budgets earlier, wondering if they were that strapped due to the extra effects this episode demanded.

Three bucks? Even in 1967, three bucks wasn't much...

 

[abeardall]

Would we have even noticed on our 13-in B/W televisions though?

AFAIC, the folks that put together "The Doomsday Machine" did an extraordinary job on a late 60's budget and late 60's technology. When I watched it 25 years ago it was gripping, tense, and exciting. Taking away from that effort bc of the minutiae of a registry decal seems petty to me. When I first saw the Constellation, I did not jump to "look at the funky registry", instead I thought "Oh crap, what could do this?!"

-Andrew

 

[aridas sofia]

I'd bet they used "1017" instead of "1710" or "1711" because it's more easily distinguished visually from "1701".

 

[number6]

aridas sofia said:
I'd bet they used "1017" instead of "1710" or "1711" because it's more easily distinguished visually from "1701".

IIRC that's exactly why they did that.

 

[SeerSGB]

You know the whole problem could have been avoided if they had just put some of the damage through the hull number obscuring most if not all of it.

 

[Maurice]

The differences between the AMT model Constellation and the Enterprise models are so insignificant to most people that 99.9% of audiences never notice. Seriously, I've had people look at the refit and say "you mean it's not the same as the one on the old show?"

 

[ancient]

DS9Sega said:
The differences between the AMT model Constellation and the Enterprise models are so insignificant to most people that 99.9% of audiences never notice.

Exactly.

In any case, RTOS clearly has a Constitution-Class ship identical to the Enterprise, NCC-1017. If they didn't everyone other than the number-cruncher fans would be bitching, so they made the right choice.

And undoubtedly they chose NCC-501 to be consistant with the TOS movies, TNG, etc, rather than to use a registry system from an old ST manual and confuse even more people.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

aridas sofia said:
I'd bet they used "1017" instead of "1710" or "1711" because it's more easily distinguished visually from "1701".

Wouldn't the damage be enough to clue us as to which was which? Talk about outsmarting yourself...

 

[aridas sofia]

Talk about outsmarting yourself...

I would think they wanted to avoid leaving their audience potentially confused with the possibility the Enterprise herself had been severely damaged.

 

[Noname Given]

Brutal Strudel said:
Which has always been Trek's problem: from the start, they sold themselves as this rigorous SF universe where everything was thought-out carefully. Thus we get the Whitman book filled with memo after memo of minutia yet, all too often, it appears they really just winged it. Which is fine, just as it's fine to add a youthful Russian to your cast because you're trying to cash in the Davey Jones-Monkees thing rather than as a high-minded effort to further the cause of global cooperation. It's the bullshit mythology that grates on me.

Actually, they NEVER implied the universe was all 'thought out' in TOS. In fact if you look at the series bible for Star Trek; it states that the series could be taking place anywhere from 1999 - 2999. What they DID want to do was tell more 'adult' science fiction stories on Television that were more believeable than the stuff that had come before (like 'Captain Video' or 'Tom Corbet: Space Cadet').

B ut GR wantd a very 'open' universe when the show started; to give writers a bib playing field. Of course as the series progressed, many things got better defined (which was a good thing); but that wasn't what was intended from the start.

The premise was: "The U.S.S. Enterprise is an Earth ship patrolling and exploring the galaxy, encountering new life, strange phenomina never seen before, Earth colonies that had lost contact with Earth, hostile aliens, etc."

But (imo) it looked like GR just wanted to give writers a sandbox to play in, and let then develop and flesh it out as the show went along (which is what happened).

If anything, it's always been the hard core fans like you and me who what to go back and try to make the Star Trek universe as 100% bconsistent and 'thought out' as possible; biut its NEVER been that way from day one, and EVERY Star Trek series pretty much illustrates this.

 

[Brutal Strudel]

Actually, I don't want to make the universe so terribly internally consistent--I find TOS was at its most exciting and entertaining when these things were not nailed down and I get a Phildickian thrill oput of the contradictions. And you're right, the bible was rather open-ended. However, as early as the second season and certainly by the early seventies, the myth was being promulgated by GR and his lovely lady lackies (half of whom he seemed to be screwing at any given time--and bully for him!) that the Trek universe was tightly thought out. That's the myth we OCD afflicted fans have taken and run with.

Oh, and it's Whitfield, not Whitman. I knew that. Really, I did.