Visual Proof a Resdesign is a good thing

[ST-One]

No, they don't. All you need to do is look at the picture of the Doctherman model above to understand that one. If you're incapable of grasping just how magnificent a model the original Enterprise is, maybe you should look for a different genre of storytelling.

You may like it. I may like it.
But that is because we are already fans.
Todays audiences want something that looks modern. And despite how much you and I like the original design of the Enterprise, it just doesn't look like something that would be designed for a film in 2008 or 2009.
It does look dated.

Anyone who thinks it doesn't look modern is a fool. We couldn't even come close to constructing something that elegant and functional, even if we wanted to.

I doesn't look modern.
Modern is what the Koerner-prise looks like (for better or worse).
Modern is what the parts of the Enterprise in the teaser look like.
The original design, because of the lack of details and 'simplicity' does look dated. No-one (even Matt Jefferies) would design the Enterprise in the same way again today - even if they used the same general layout. The best example of this is Jefferies refit from Phase II which became the movie-era Enterprise (the version of the Enterprise that still has to be surpassed as a design, IMO).

 

[ST-One]

But these aren't "improvements." They're simply DIFFERENT ARTISTIC STYLE. They don't reflect more advanced filmmaking, or more advanced design.

Indeed, they don't.
The reflect a different approach to the design.

BTW: Usually you points get far better across if your post isn't TLTR.

 

[ST-One]

You're arguing about personal likes and dislikes, and that's all. You can't be right, and you can't be wrong. Ditto for ST-One and everyone else.

Oh, I do like the old design. But to me it still looks dated but not bad.

I don't actually care what the Enterprise looks like in this movie as long as it looks good and the design is intriguing. It's going to have a saucer and an engineering hull and two warp nacelles, which makes it a "Star Trek" ship as opposed to just about anything else.

Couldn't agree more.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

You're arguing about personal likes and dislikes, and that's all. You can't be right, and you can't be wrong. Ditto for ST-One and everyone else.

Oh, I do like the old design. But to me it still looks dated but not bad.

I don't actually care what the Enterprise looks like in this movie as long as it looks good and the design is intriguing. It's going to have a saucer and an engineering hull and two warp nacelles, which makes it a "Star Trek" ship as opposed to just about anything else.

Couldn't agree more.

I agree with Dennis' sentiment there as well. I love seeing new and different starships.

I LOVE seeing new, different ships. I want to see as many new ship designs as possible... especially ones that look "real" and yes, ones that deviate from the "established" style that's become so hackneyed over the years.

My only quibble is that I don't like seeing someone come along and try to "redefine" something that's already done.

Of course, none of us really know what, exactly, the various ships in the film (including, almost certainly, more than one "version" of the 1701...) will really look like. So far, all we have are a few shots from a trailer which has been put out, essentially, an entire year before the movie is to be released.

Maybe that's the ship... and the only version of the ship. Maybe it's an "earlier incarnation" and by the time we're seeing the "approaching TOS" timeframe, the ship will look much more like what we expect it to. Maybe that's an "alternative timeline" version. Maybe it's not the model to be used in the film at all, and was just something thrown together specifically for the trailer, independent of the film's production SFX team (which, honestly, is far more likely than I think anyone has realized thus far!) Maybe the bits and pieces of the model aren't supposed to look like a finished ship but is just intended to "look cool" without being "realistically" arranged (ie, the nacelle positions in the final shot might have been tweaked to make the image more "impactful").

We don't know... though there are now some people who DO know (the guys who are just now getting started on the special effects work)! Thing is, I don't think they're talking, are they?

 

[Sheridan]

From what we've seen of the teaser trailer the Enterprise will probably have a level of changes in-between that of Vector's Enterprise and Gabriel Koerner's Enterprise(the one being used on Star Trek Reborn). It's quite obvious that it's not going to be completely redone so I don't understand why we're are still arguing over whether if they should create a completely new ship design or not.

I would also like to point out that Moore's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica show with all the radical changes he did to the story and characters still kept the original design of the ship. I'm guessing it was updated a bit but overall its basically the same design that they used in 1978.

Also, today's navy ships and air craft carriers are pretty ugly when compared to cruise ships so maybe the same parallel exist in the future in space.

 

[I Grok Spock]

I find the concept of a redesign of a starship that the greatest scientific minds of the world find good enough to hang in a museum of science...

That's not at all the reason the Enterprise is at NASM. The "greatest scientific minds of the world" didn't get a vote or offer any opinions.

Exactly. It's there to get your ass to the gift shop.

 

[Eric Cheung]

...but it's a true statement that the more faithful to the original it is, the more we seem to like it. I've currently got one of Vektor's renderings set up as my wallpaper at work, and people who are not Trek fans at all absolutely LOVE it.

But we're not the target audience. I'd argue that even the people that admire your wallpaper at work aren't the audience. It's people that are younger than most of us. If you're working in an office you're probably a little bit older than the target audience for this movie. This movie is for smart people to be sure, but smart people of a new generation. Every generation's idea of what the future will look like will be different, and as a result there are certain aesthetics that will probably change in futuristic science fiction.

Nicholas Meyer said something wise in one of his commentary tracks, I'm paraphrasing: No matter what time period in which a movie is set, you can usually tell, within about five years, when the film was made.

It's just a fact of art for better or worse.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

I find the concept of a redesign of a starship that the greatest scientific minds of the world find good enough to hang in a museum of science...

That's not at all the reason the Enterprise is at NASM. The "greatest scientific minds of the world" didn't get a vote or offer any opinions.

Exactly. It's there to get your ass to the gift shop.

Where it's slowly falling apart. NASM doesn't treat the Enterprise like the Apollo capsules or the Enola Gay or any of their real-world "science treasures." Money for restoration and preservation is hard to come by. The 1992 repair and refurbishment was contracted out for a good deal less money than a museum restoration would have cost, or it would not have been done at all.

 

[3D Master]

I would also like to point out that Moore's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica show with all the radical changes he did to the story and characters still kept the original design of the ship. I'm guessing it was updated a bit but overall its basically the same design that they used in 1978.

No, he didn't. The Galactica only has a barest resemblance of a similar shape. The two ships are nothing alike.

 

[Sheridan]

I would also like to point out that Moore's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica show with all the radical changes he did to the story and characters still kept the original design of the ship. I'm guessing it was updated a bit but overall its basically the same design that they used in 1978.

No, he didn't. The Galactica only has a barest resemblance of a similar shape. The two ships are nothing alike.

Yeah, I've only seen one episode of the old BSG so I didn't realize just how different they were but they still are more similar to each other than what you portray. My point is he didn't throw out the old design and pick a completely different one. He took the basic design of the old ship and updated it which is what I expect they'll do with the Enterprise.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

I would also like to point out that Moore's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica show with all the radical changes he did to the story and characters still kept the original design of the ship. I'm guessing it was updated a bit but overall its basically the same design that they used in 1978.

No, he didn't. The Galactica only has a barest resemblance of a similar shape. The two ships are nothing alike.

Yeah, I've only seen one episode of the old BSG so I didn't realize just how different they were but they still are more similar to each other than what you portray. My point is he didn't throw out the old design and pick a completely different one. He took the basic design of the old ship and updated it which is what I expect they'll do with the Enterprise.

The dictate by the "powers that be" was that the ship had to look NOTHING like the original design. The people who did the new version snuck in tiny little "homages" to the original (ie, the area between the four aft engine nacelle elements is copied fairly closely from what was the engine array on the original series ship) but the entire point of the design, as INSTRUCTED, was to abandon the original design entirely.

The folks making the show obviously weren't as big on that as the folks in the nosebleed-level offices were... since they did as much as possible to deviate from that later on. But the view which was presented to the "suits"... the side view... is totally and completely unrelated. And the front and rear views are unrelated as well. Only the top view is "slightly similar." That's because they never showed that view to the studio/network guys 'til the "miniseries" had been green-lit and the money committed.

 

[3D Master]

I would also like to point out that Moore's re-imagined Battlestar Galactica show with all the radical changes he did to the story and characters still kept the original design of the ship. I'm guessing it was updated a bit but overall its basically the same design that they used in 1978.

No, he didn't. The Galactica only has a barest resemblance of a similar shape. The two ships are nothing alike.

Yeah, I've only seen one episode of the old BSG so I didn't realize just how different they were but they still are more similar to each other than what you portray. My point is he didn't throw out the old design and pick a completely different one. He took the basic design of the old ship and updated it which is what I expect they'll do with the Enterprise.

They better not, because if it's that much of a departure, I won't be watching, and Star Trek has become officially dead to me.

 

[Eric Cheung]

Even if the teaser isn't an exact version of the ship we see in the movie it was an announcement of the filmmakers' intentions. In other words, they already have taken the basic design of the old ship and updated it.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

The new Galactica maintains the basic design of the old one while being very different in detail. Frankly, it's unlikely that the new "Star Trek" can be as big an improvement over the old as Moore's BSG is over the disco-era original - but if it is, that'll be a very good thing.

Trek's dead now. Abrams can't hurt it.

 

[chardman]

To get the point across to a new generation, changes may need to be made.

No, they don't. All you need to do is look at the picture of the Doctherman model above to understand that one. If you're incapable of grasping just how magnificent a model the original Enterprise is, maybe you should look for a different genre of storytelling.

You may like it. I may like it.
But that is because we are already fans.
Todays audiences want something that looks modern. And despite how much you and I like the original design of the Enterprise, it just doesn't look like something that would be designed for a film in 2008 or 2009.
It does look dated.

The movie-era Enterprise on the other hand...

Bullshit. I defy you to point out any design element that is inherently dated in any way.

That is: Assuming you didn't know it was designed in the 1960s, what specific aspects of the design ethic would clue you in to the notion that it was an older design, rather than something that was designed as recently as last week?

 

[Eric Cheung]

The design is inherently 1960s, at least on an aesthetic level. The lines reek of it. I like it, you like it, most of us do. But just look at design, architecture, and aerospace engineering books of the era and it's pretty obviously mid-20th century modernist (as opposed to the combination of modern and post-modern design we currently see in new buildings on the inside and out). Sure Starfleet could be going through a retro-futurist movement in the 2240s but to a 21st century audience it'll look like old technology. Some of the spy shots seem to indicate that there's a slight 60s look to the clothes and hair, but that's different because it's more believable to a 21st-century audience that those kinds of aesthetics are cyclical. Again, we're not the only audience for this movie.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

The design is inherently 1960s, at least on an aesthetic level. The lines reek of it. I like it, you like it, most of us do. But just look at design, architecture, and aerospace engineering books of the era and it's pretty obviously mid-20th century modernist (as opposed to the combination of modern and post-modern design we currently see in new buildings on the inside and out). Sure Starfleet could be going through a retro-futurist movement in the 2240s but to a 21st century audience it'll look like old technology. Some of the spy shots seem to indicate that there's a slight 60s look to the clothes and hair, but that's different because it's more believable to a 21st-century audience that those kinds of aesthetics are cyclical. Again, we're not the only audience for this movie.

Excuse me?

Other than throwing in the term "modernist" you really haven't said anything there, have you?

Every time that this comes up, I always ask the same question as was asked of you... to define SPECIFIC THINGS which are "dated." And there has never once been a serious attempt to actually answer that.

Simply restating your premise "the design is 60s, the lines reek of it" and so on is meaningless babble, not anything that provides any further information beyond your original claim.

Everything on the 1701 was designed to look like it was something functional. Much of latter-day trek is designed to look "graphics-art cool" (the color scheme of the 1701-E is a particularly egregious example of that, but it's by no means the ONLY example of it).

If by "60s" you mean "looks functional" then by all means, GIVE US THAT GOOD OL' 60'S LOOK!

If, on the other hand, what you mean is "doesn't look like the style of the more recent Trek series" (which is usually what people saying that really mean)... then my answer is "So what? What's so spectacular about the "day-glow-LED-lighting on blobby shapes" design ethos of latter-era Trek ship design?" It's just another artistic style... maybe no WORSE than the original style, but no BETTER either.

SO... give examples, please, of what specific elements of the design you object to, and why.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

what specific aspects of the design ethic would clue you in to the notion that it was an older design, rather than something that was designed as recently as last week?

Cylinders butted up against rectangles butted up against disks with no transitions; exterior lamps fastened to the hull, a great big round dish antenna jutting out the front - the appearance of the TOS ship compares to, say, the TMP or particularly the TNG ship in the same way that a 1954 Chevy sedan compares to a 1996 Ford Taurus. You can argue about which design is "better" or more "classic" but it's not at all difficult to assign a chronology to them based simply on the sophistication of manufacture and finish.

Or, if you prefer:

Now, you know what? I'd rather own the older of those two Mustangs, but that's just me - there's still not any doubt which one dates from the mid-1960s and which is contemporary. You can tell by looking, and you could tell from your general knowledge of cars and design even if you'd never seen a Mustang.

 

[Eric Cheung]

Every time that this comes up, I always ask the same question as was asked of you... to define SPECIFIC THINGS which are "dated." And there has never once been a serious attempt to actually answer that.

Well, by 60s I mean the emphasis on smooth lines, basic shapes, primary colors, a clean uniformity of design. It's often been cited that Forbidden Planet is an influence on the design. I'd agree with that. Both Gene Roddenberry and Matt Jefferies were very familiar with mid-20th century aerospace design. One of the hallmarks of the planes of that era are that the wings were positioned at right-angles from the fuselage, whereas current planes bend them backwards at acute angles. The pylons on the 1701 mimic mid-20th century wings. By no means am I casting judgement on the old designs.

If anything a 1960s aesthetic is something I've always been fond of. Even though I was born in 1981, I grew up watching Get Smart and Beatles movies and Looney Tunes and Star Trek. I fell in love with anything 60s and still love the design of the period whether it's architecture, interior design, clothing (especially Mod and British Invasion stuff), sound design, and music.

But I'm not the audience for the film.

Actually I think the latest wave of Ford Mustangs are a good idea of what we might expect for this film. Besides the fact that the lines are evocative of the old Mustangs, there's an aggressive sense of power there.

As much as I'd like to see a highly detailed replica of the original ship (and it's taken me a while to get used to the idea of a redesign), I think we're in very good hands.

 

[ST-One]

No, they don't. All you need to do is look at the picture of the Doctherman model above to understand that one. If you're incapable of grasping just how magnificent a model the original Enterprise is, maybe you should look for a different genre of storytelling.

You may like it. I may like it.
But that is because we are already fans.
Todays audiences want something that looks modern. And despite how much you and I like the original design of the Enterprise, it just doesn't look like something that would be designed for a film in 2008 or 2009.
It does look dated.

The movie-era Enterprise on the other hand...

Bullshit. I defy you to point out any design element that is inherently dated in any way.

That is: Assuming you didn't know it was designed in the 1960s, what specific aspects of the design ethic would clue you in to the notion that it was an older design, rather than something that was designed as recently as last week?

What Dennis and Eric Cheung said.