Why is everyone more robotic than V'Ger in TMP?
- Thread starter Hey Missy
- Start date
Not to be analbut they go into its mouth and tummy, not the back end. That's something that is unclear because their "conic section flight path" is never explained: the ship arcs around the cloud, ends up behind it and overtakes it, so the flyover goes from the ass-end to the maw-end and that's what they get slurped into.
This is a detail I didn’t pick up on until a few years down the road (and probably only after reading the novelization. Visually, it just looks like the Enterprise slowly flies straight into the cloud and then along the side of V’ger with no apparent sense that either is moving at high velocity. I remember being confused at Sulu’s concern. when Kirk asked him to fly 500 meters over V’ger. If seemed like a relatively trivial risk until you factor that’s both ships are racing though space at warp speed.
While technically the movie provides enough information to reason that Enterprise had to make a parabolic approach and cruise alongside at warp speed, one would have to be paying very close attention and actively thinking to catch on to that. It is at odds with the visuals and tone of the scene. Not that I think they visuals were inaccurate per see - they probably didn’t have the time or ability to really depict the parabolic approach or the enormous velocities not we’re traveling on at that time. But they could have done much more with dialog and acting to convey the idea. This could have been played for drama could they pull off this high-risk, high velocity maneuver? Heck, maybe even have this be a point of contention between Kirk and Decker, who wants to send some unmanned probes in first. This would help show Kirk as more active and justify why he is the right one to lead. I know they essentially did this later after the initial attack but it makes Decker just look reactive to the attacks.
Kind of like the visual they added in the Director's Edition to make it clear that V'Ger's satellites were surrounding Earth.
I could've sworn there was one, showing the ship looping around behind on a curved course, but the actual screen graphic just shows it on a straight-line path toward the cloud.
That is a great point - they already used tactical a couple times in the movie - would have been easy to do one to set up the approach. There’s pros and cons. It could have helped ramp up the tension, but I could see that it would further draw out an already long sequence. Personally I think the trade off would have been worth it, at the expense of some of the cloud footage if necessary but YMMV.
Could you perhaps have been remembering the tactical from the Kobyashi Maru simulation showing the parabolic course to “avoid entering the Neutral Zone” and conflating he Image with TMP?
On a separate note, while I have come to get a good sense of the overall shapes and layouts of V’ger and its outer cloud, the “topography” of it’s inner cloud has continued to baffle me. It seemed pretty straightforward how the outer parts of the cloud were set up, but once they get into the part where the two “hemispheres” start to meet it gets all wonky with weird tunnels and passages that form strangely specific “passages” for a region that’s the space between two symmetrical parallel-ish plates. Not sure if I am explaining this very well so apologies if this doesn’t make much sense.
Could you perhaps have been remembering the tactical from the Kobyashi Maru simulation showing the parabolic course to “avoid entering the Neutral Zone” and conflating he Image with TMP?
On a separate note, while I have come to get a good sense of the overall shapes and layouts of V’ger and its outer cloud, the “topography” of it’s inner cloud has continued to baffle me. It seemed pretty straightforward how the outer parts of the cloud were set up, but once they get into the part where the two “hemispheres” start to meet it gets all wonky with weird tunnels and passages that form strangely specific “passages” for a region that’s the space between two symmetrical parallel-ish plates. Not sure if I am explaining this very well so apologies if this doesn’t make much sense.
That's plausible.
Well, the cloud's supposed to be on the scale of a solar system (or at least the scale of Earth's orbital diameter in the DE). So the scale of the features they passed through in the cloud would be tiny in proportion to the overall shape of the cloud. It's like the difference between the shape of a whale and the shape of its blood vessels. They're on such different scales and levels of structure that there's no reason to expect any visible correspondence.
The impression I got from the matte paintings and tactical displays is that the energy cloud had sort of an "apple core" shape, vaguely similar to a Cylon basestar from the original Battlestar Galactica. I don't get any impression of parallel plates with a space between them. Rather, the cloud is narrowest at the equator, which is where the Enterprise enters it, but there's still a continuous "core" of energy cloud connecting the two halves vertically, with no discontinuity.
They added no such thing. They added one shot of the orbital devices coming up from behind the horizon (and it's completely out of scale with those seen in the other shots) and racing by: that's it. The tacticals were all there since 1979. It was always clear what they were doing.
No, because you replace the second tactical of the cloud with one at a different angle with the parabolic course drawn. That's. It.
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Relevant screencaps from the theatrical version: http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/thumbnails.php?album=599&page=2
Kor
Kor
Maybe a better description would be a couple of serving bowls stacked inverted (bottom to bottom). Or perhaps the inside of a butterfly yo-yo? I guess the old BSG basestar is a pretty good model. In Amy case, I hadn’t been factoring in the enormity of the scale so that helps some.
Wow - that actually explains why there is such a regular mesh-like pattern on the cloud’s “surface”
Looking at screenshots I see it is more complex than I had remembered with different “bulges” around the circumference
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/tmp2/tmphd1454.jpg
I just noticed that the fist tactical display (that could be swapped for a graphic parabolic approach) looks like the bottom chasing light might be a practical element. Notice how the light “blooms” around the white square at the bottom. This doesn’t seem like something that could have been replicated easily with either computer graphics or animation. I wonder if it was actually built into the view screen.
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?pid=63812&fullsize=1
No, from the sharpness of the tactical graphic and the edges of the viewscreen frame, I'd say it was matted into the frame in post-production rather than a practical onstage element. It was probably made with backlit animation cels, not unlike Okudagrams, so getting that light bloom would be pretty easy.
