Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge?

[Christopher]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

Maybe they meant "A motion picture", not "THE motion picture". ST1 has an unfortunate title.

Well, at the time, it was the only one, so the definite article made sense. Remember, this was just a year after the release of Superman: The Movie. These days it's known mainly as just Superman, so people forget that was its full title.

 

[Lance]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

Chalk me up as another one who quite likes the clean look of the Ent-A bridge as seen at the end of TVH. Only a shame we didn't get to see more of it.

 

[Mycroft Maxwell]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

But didn't the movie guys eventually ruin TNG's observation lounge wall? So they're even.

Thats a pretty good point. XD

 

[starburst]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I did forget one thing though. The Helm and NAV console was reused for certain for TFF and TUC. Both Herman Zimmerman and Mike Okuda stated that. The Turbolift alcoves and Helm/nav station were reused from the refit set (the only salvagable parts). They Modified the NAv/Helm console with a light in the center support. Also the TNG production crew are to blame for the ruined TMP set. Which I am thankful for, because I like both the TFF and TUC setups better than the TMP,TWOK,TSFS, TVH bridge.

I prefered the TMP bridge over the others. The TFF bridge was so plain and bleah. TUC improved it a bit.

Between TMP and WOK bridges I prefer TMP mainly because of the chairs before the WOK covers (which were used on the Reliant, Ent-A as well as the Stargazer).

The layout and design from TFF is my favourite, but if I could I would tweak it with the details from TUC just keeping the layout.

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I prefer the TUC of all the bridges in every Trek. The only thing I don't like though is the reverting back to switches and dials after TFF introduced Okudagrams of the 23rd century. Meyer should have just sucked his gut in and not indulge too much on putting 20th century touches.

 

[trevanian]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I prefer the TUC of all the bridges in every Trek. The only thing I don't like though is the reverting back to switches and dials after TFF introduced Okudagrams of the 23rd century. Meyer should have just sucked his gut in and not indulge too much on putting 20th century touches.

So would that make the E-B your ideal bridge?

BTW, your username is very familiar ... python - makeshift python.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I prefer the TUC of all the bridges in every Trek. The only thing I don't like though is the reverting back to switches and dials after TFF introduced Okudagrams of the 23rd century. Meyer should have just sucked his gut in and not indulge too much on putting 20th century touches.

I see Nick Meyer's Trek as something separate from every other vision of Trek. Did pink Klingon blood bother you?

 

[Christopher]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I see Nick Meyer's Trek as something separate from every other vision of Trek. Did pink Klingon blood bother you?

The pink blood wasn't Meyer's vision; it was a compromise he had to make to avoid an R rating. Given how gore-soaked TWOK was, he clearly didn't have a problem with red blood. But the microgravity blood drops floating around in TUC were too shocking for the MPAA, so the only way they'd give it a PG rating was if he changed it to a less bloodlike color.

 

[trevanian]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

^I don't know why you'd be choosing to perpetuate that myth about the ratings, when it has been talked to death so many times here it isn't remotely funny.

The blood color was always a plot point (excised in the theatrical release), pointing up the Khitomer would-be assassin's true nature.

It was never about ratings. The ILM guys even said as much, that they'd have needed Peckinpah-volume gore to get an R-rating, regardless of color.

This rating thing seems to always go back to a Rick Berman COMMUNICATOR quote, and he is hardly the source of authenticity for a film he was only peripherally involved with.

In recent years, there has been a lot of retcon / print the legend revisionism about this (I think Meyer is guilty of it too), but the pink blood to avoid R rating biz is just horseshit, plain and simple.

Why anybody thinks the MPAA would rate something a certain way BASED ON A SHOT DESCRIPTION IN A SCRIPT -- when they rate movies, not screenplays -- also begs explanation.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

^Oh, sorry, I didn't know that.

 

[Mark_Nguyen]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I prefer the TUC of all the bridges in every Trek. The only thing I don't like though is the reverting back to switches and dials after TFF introduced Okudagrams of the 23rd century. Meyer should have just sucked his gut in and not indulge too much on putting 20th century touches.

So would that make the E-B your ideal bridge?

The Excelsior in TUC also had an LCARS-only bridge. I think the distinction is that a) Meyer likes physical switches, and b) the Excelsior was more advanced. Doesn't really explain why they regressed between V and VI, though... The E-A was suffering multiple computer systems failures, so Scotty swapped some of the systems to older versions to take the load off the ol' M-4 computer. Yeah, that's it.

Mark

 

[MakeshiftPython]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I prefer the TUC of all the bridges in every Trek. The only thing I don't like though is the reverting back to switches and dials after TFF introduced Okudagrams of the 23rd century. Meyer should have just sucked his gut in and not indulge too much on putting 20th century touches.

So would that make the E-B your ideal bridge?

The E-B looks more like the Excelsior in TUC, with the master display system in the back and such. I very much prefer the layout of the E-A.

BTW, your username is very familiar ... python - makeshift python.

Correct.

 

[Hober Mallow]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

In recent years, there has been a lot of retcon / print the legend revisionism about this (I think Meyer is guilty of it too), but the pink blood to avoid R rating biz is just horseshit, plain and simple.

Maybe... but I remember reading about it way back in '91 even before the movie came out. Correct or incorrect, it's not revisionism -- it goes all the way back to the beginning -- and I don't think it had anything to do with Rick Berman.

 

[Workbee]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I prefer the TUC of all the bridges in every Trek. The only thing I don't like though is the reverting back to switches and dials after TFF introduced Okudagrams of the 23rd century. Meyer should have just sucked his gut in and not indulge too much on putting 20th century touches.

So would that make the E-B your ideal bridge?

The Excelsior in TUC also had an LCARS-only bridge. I think the distinction is that a) Meyer likes physical switches, and b) the Excelsior was more advanced. Doesn't really explain why they regressed between V and VI, though... The E-A was suffering multiple computer systems failures, so Scotty swapped some of the systems to older versions to take the load off the ol' M-4 computer. Yeah, that's it.

Mark

One problem is that they had to set up a contrast with the "more futuristic TNG". Yes, looking at the movies on their own, it doesn't make much sense for the Helm to regress back to buttons and switches after touchpads. But by then the touchpad LCARS had become sort of a signature element of the 24th century tech, that I understand a desire to differentiate the 23rd century tech from it. If anything, I wish that they had switches all the way though. However it must be noted that the touchpads were first introduced in TVH (except for certain limited applications in prior films).

If anything, the TFF was a misstep forward, taking the aesthetic too close to TNG when we saw various ships from intermediary periods bore no resemblance to either the TFF or TNG interiors.

 

[Christopher]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

^It's worth remembering that, as sleek and futuristic as the Okudagram control surfaces look, their main virtue was that they were really, really easy and inexpensive to make -- you just print up some transparencies and backlight them. So maybe it was a budgetary decision to use them in TFF rather than a purely aesthetic one.

 

[Maurice]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

In recent years, there has been a lot of retcon / print the legend revisionism about this (I think Meyer is guilty of it too), but the pink blood to avoid R rating biz is just horseshit, plain and simple.

Maybe... but I remember reading about it way back in '91 even before the movie came out. Correct or incorrect, it's not revisionism -- it goes all the way back to the beginning -- and I don't think it had anything to do with Rick Berman.

From Meyer's memoir, years after the fact.

"There was a debate over the color of blood, which I wanted to be different than human blood. I wound up choosing a pink shade that seemed suitably weird, only to regret my choice down the road when I realized it reminded me of Pepto Bismol."

--Nicholas Meyer, The View From the Bridge, p.217

 

[trevanian]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

In recent years, there has been a lot of retcon / print the legend revisionism about this (I think Meyer is guilty of it too), but the pink blood to avoid R rating biz is just horseshit, plain and simple.

Maybe... but I remember reading about it way back in '91 even before the movie came out. Correct or incorrect, it's not revisionism -- it goes all the way back to the beginning -- and I don't think it had anything to do with Rick Berman.

I'd be interested in seeing where you saw it back then. It wasn't in my CINEFEX piece or the CINEFANTASTIQUE coverage. Then again, those appeared after the film came out, and I'd imagine anything floating around about klingon blood color that appeared in print BEFORE the film's release would have been sheer speculation, not weighed down by facts or gravity boots.

(an example of the latter was when someone I worked with at a software production facility in Fremont insisted that the Klingons getting killed on Praxis were the result of a reshoot in the south Bay Area, between San Jose and Santa Cruz, a story I heard well before thanksgiving. As far as I know that was always BS, but there were a few folks shot on a big sheet of white material on a beach in Frisco for the establishing shot on the klingon prison planet.)

 

[Maurice]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

You mean this shot?

 

[starburst]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I prefer the TUC of all the bridges in every Trek. The only thing I don't like though is the reverting back to switches and dials after TFF introduced Okudagrams of the 23rd century. Meyer should have just sucked his gut in and not indulge too much on putting 20th century touches.

So would that make the E-B your ideal bridge?

The Excelsior in TUC also had an LCARS-only bridge. I think the distinction is that a) Meyer likes physical switches, and b) the Excelsior was more advanced. Doesn't really explain why they regressed between V and VI, though... The E-A was suffering multiple computer systems failures, so Scotty swapped some of the systems to older versions to take the load off the ol' M-4 computer. Yeah, that's it.

Mark

I may be wrong but I am sure some of the Excelsior consoles also had switches, its been a while since I last saw the film but I think you see the Helm station has buttons etc when they are riding out the shockwave.

 

[BillJ]

Re: Was the Star Trek 4 Ent-A bridge a redress of the Excelsior bridge

I may be wrong but I am sure some of the Excelsior consoles also had switches, its been a while since I last saw the film but I think you see the Helm station has buttons etc when they are riding out the shockwave.

Yeah. I'm thinking you're right.