Those same audiences that line up in their millions to see the new Star Wars films and their retro and proud of it designs?
USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?
- Thread starter EJD1984
- Start date
How many times does that need to be explained?
Star Wars holds up because it isn't our future. It also was made in the 70s on a movie budget. The designs are a lot more detailed, and not flat colours with no detail.
The TOS movie designs/asthetics still hold up, but not the original TV series.
'Star Wars is not future, blaah blaah.' Do you really think casual viewers care about that? They might be vaguely aware of it, but they're not going to care about it. They care about whether the stuff looks cool to them, and retro stuff can look cool. And as for that tired Star Trek Continues strawman, no I'm no talking about slavishly recreating TOS stuff, merely following that design aesthetic.
Star Wars designs are no where near as dated as the TOS Enterprise. The X-wings are a bit dated but have been updated for the new films, the Tie Fighers are not at all, and the Millenium Falcon for the most part is not.
Star Wars also has the advantage of being loved by EVERYONE, whereas Star Trek in general, and in particular TOS, does not.
Nothing about the OT X-Wing is dated. It holds up fine, it looked great in Rogue One.
Change 1987 to 1973 (when TAS first premiered); and you'll have an accurate statement.
Yeah, it's not bad at all, I just thik it would be a bit more sleek if designed for the first time now.
I don't know, the T-70 doesn't seem much sleeker and that was designed 'now'.
The EU had a sleeker X-Wing, kind of
I believe what is implied is that the "fin" on USS Defiant is the starboard side nacelle pylon root, not the pylon itself. The part the is on the secondary hull before the pylon itself starts.
You were talking about TMP Enterprise about some point. And if you don't think SW is retro, you're out of your mind. It was retro when it was made, it evokes a lot of WWII stuff in many of its visual element.
And sure, overall TOS doesn't look as good as SW. It is because it was done with so much smaller budget. But I'm not talking about the quality of the effects, I'm talking about the design aesthetics.
Last edited:
It indeed does. Which is a good thing. But some people are whining about it not looking contemporary enough.
I can see the criticism about the retro elements not fitting the DIS look. But the problem actually is that Discovery has incoherent art direction, it really doesn't have a look. It has some stuff that tries to look contemporary, props (and now this Connie) that are callbacks to TOS look and the sixties, uniforms that seem to be inspired by 50's scifi, and Klingons... well, who the fuck knows whats going on there.
I think they should have just embraced the TOS style if not the details. Have the designers to familiarise themselves with Mid-Century Modern style and other factor's that led to the TOS look. Then design new stuff fitting that ethos, but with modern techniques materials and understanding of technology (The phasers and tricorders are perfect example of this approach in practice.) I think it would create much stronger, unique and cohesive look than the mishmash the show currently has.
Last edited:
I'm quite familiar with the concept of retcons, of course. And it was clear from the start that DSC was going to involve big-time retconning (just like ENT did), as that's the nature of any prequel: retroactively inserting previously unknown events and information into the past of the established continuity.
But (as I've been discussing in other threads) there are two ways to go about this sort of thing. The first way simply adds elements that shed new light on what the audience already knew ("hey, the DS9 crew was behind the scenes on Station K-7 when Kirk was dealing with the tribbles? Cool!"). The second way adds elements that force the audience to change what they thought they knew (as DSC has done left, right, and center). The second way is harder to wrap one's head around as an audience member, and a lot trickier to pull off skillfully. And it's a matter of degree... a little goes a long way, and if you do too much of it what you've got on your hands looks more like a reboot than just a retcon.
So the producers of TNG and DS9 and ENT were "stupid" about how they presented the classic ship when they revisited it?
With all due respect, I'm well aware that Trek has influenced, and been influenced by, other media properties (and real-world trends). (And I do actually have a little background in graphic design, although I never pursued a career in it.) But saying those influences exist is not the same as saying there is no visual style that's particular to Trek. Trek has always had an aesthetic of its own that's distinctive and immediately recognizable, and to the extent that designers are blurring the distinctions between the look of Trek and other properties, that's a bad thing.
(And never mind Trek's "fictional history"; that brings in other aspects of continuity, and it's a whole different discussion.)
Look, consider two other properties as (contrasting) examples. On the one hand, we've got nuBSG from 2003-forward. The show very clearly redesigned the ships from the original BSG (even though they were already from the post-2001:ASO, post-Star Wars period of "modern" starship design you're talking about). The new designs were homages, and also improvements (at least arguably; I know I liked them better). And since the show was explicitly a reboot, no one had cause to complain.
On the other hand, we've got the new wave of Star Wars sequels and prequels: TFA, TLJ, Rogue One, and others to come. Some of these involve retcons, but they are explicitly not rebooting anything. Accordingly, they have stuck scrupulously close to the original Star Wars design aesthetic (even when it practically screams 1970s), and when previously established ships appear, they look exactly like they did back in the day. (Hell, they've even taken the trouble to duplicate the look of characters played by dead actors... CGI Peter Cushing, anyone?) The production values and special effects are much more advanced, of course, but the basic look is 100% Star Wars. And it works, because that's what audiences wanted and expected... redesigning things would have been uncalled for.
Both cases involve artists and designers influenced by the intervening decades of history, obviously. But the context of the projects they're working on makes all the difference.
In the context of DSC, what a lot of us are saying, in a nutshell, is that we would've preferred something more like the Star Wars approach.
If the producers were determined not to give us that, then they should have knocked our socks off with something that actually improved on the original, as with nuBSG... but DSC has pretty much failed at that as well. Its design sensibility is, frankly, mostly ugly and incoherent.
As no actual human being has a degree in Starship Engineering, I guess none of our opinions are worth a damn.
But seriously... it's weird to see you talking about watching the show with a bunch of people who were geeking out about building ship models, and then pivoting in the very next sentence to commenting derisively about "hardcore fandom." Glass houses much?
And still, this comes down to the point I just made above: fitting in with "the Discovery aesthetic... the visual style of the show in which it appears" doesn't really count for much of anything, because the visual style of DSC has been, to be diplomatic, undistinguished so far. (To be less diplomatic, it's been a dog's breakfast.) What it should be doing is fitting in with the previously established visual style of Star Trek.
Can we please stop rehashing this particular line of argument? Nobody knows what "2018 audiences expect." Trying to play to audience expectations is a mug's game. Unless you can show us some market research from test audiences and focus groups, it's all just assumptions and speculation and projection.
And as I've remarked above, what audiences actually expect is going to be heavily influenced by the context of what they're watching. If I were to speculate myself, for instance, I'd say that people watching a Star Trek series in which the Enterprise appears would mostly expect it to look the same as it has every other time they've ever seen it in the entire history of Star Trek.
The "explanation" doesn't hold water. One, Star Trek isn't "our future" either; both properties are simply fictional realities. Two, it looks like the 1970s at least as much as Trek looks like the '60s. And three, TOS design never involved "flat colors with no detail"; that's a complete straw man.
What? You've gotta be kidding, right?
Last edited:
What does this matter? Why everything should look like it is designed now? It will not like it is designed now in ten years anyway.
I think the Star Wars designers have generally been very good at understanding what is the style of the franchise, and when adding new stuff they make it look like it could actually been designed back when the original trilogy was made. It takes quite considerable grasp of aesthetics to do so, and I greatly appreciate them for that.
Trek constantly trying to reinvent itself and being ashamed of its past will never have such strong and uniform look.
Last edited:
The Star Wars designs aren't "retro" though. To begin with, most of them are coming from this side of the "Space Odyssey" paradigm that set the standard for the entire genre going forward. In Star Wars case that influence is sometimes hilariously obvious:
More importantly, most of the designs from the last few Star Wars films are only a handful of years old. But even if we're just talking 1970s, the only things in Star Trek even CLOSE to being that age are the Reliant and the TMP Enterprise, and both of those designs are actually good enough that they wouldn't look out of place on Discovery with no alterations at all.
I'm sure you realise that pleasing you, Serveaux, isn't top on the list of CBS' priorities. They seek to please their audience in general, which this has seemed to do. Ergo, it worked.
I know what you meant, but the wireframe is obviously very cheap and quickly put together, so I wouldn't put too much stock in how large it appears. Plus, it looks larger in part because you see it more in profile, and it matches the location it should be on the nacelle. Your speculation assumes that the people who put the shot together are idiots, because you spotted a feature that your eye interprets in a certain way.
Why would they be idiots? Surely doing a cheap rushjob with the poor perspective you describe (which I'm not sure is actually possible with 3D CG graphics) speaks more poorly of them?
You know, I absolutely appreciate to hear so many insights from someone working in the industry, and I usually love reading your opinions!
But, alas, you seem to inhabit a lot of the traits of the modern CGI vfx-industry I'm deeply sceptic against, and that IMO are going to age badly. The need to overdesign everything, and an aversion to clear and concise shapes for one thing is what leads to our modern "Transformers"-age of design language.
A lot of things you seem to want to change about the Enterprise (and some the producers actually did change) have the same problem:
They don't make the ship look more modern.
They make it look more contemporary.
The classic Enterprise is an iconic design, which basic shapes have endured for more than fifty years. The new DIS-Enterprise is SO friggin contemporary - like the need to make Superman's trousers disappear, or make all the colors look washed out, or cluster every friggin surface with so many details no basic shape is visible anymore - it's emblematic of an entire contemporary design language of an industry, that is going to age as badly as the all-leather and sun-glasses look combined with techno-music of the Matrix and all it's copycats from the early 2000's.
Last edited:
Similar threads
