Why NOT update the designs?

[ancient]

Can you imagine how stupid and non-functional looking an I-phone would be to someone from 50 years ago? I imagine that whatever the future holds, in reality, the TOS designs will be terribly cluttered looking by comparison.

Now, this is a 2008 movie, and it'll be made to look like an extension of 2008 technology, nothing more. Or they'll go retro 1960's. Does it matter either way? Not really.

 

[igrokbok]

ancient said:
Can you imagine how stupid and non-functional looking an I-phone would be to someone from 50 years ago? I imagine that whatever the future holds, in reality, the TOS designs will be terribly cluttered looking by comparison.

Now, this is a 2008 movie, and it'll be made to look like an extension of 2008 technology, nothing more. Or they'll go retro 1960's. Does it matter either way? Not really.

I'm not so sure. Practicality and functionality will always have a place in the design of instrumentation. In a fictional setting like the bridge of a starship, I would think that the crew MUST be able to do multiple tasks during times of an emergecy without having to rely on looking at the controls. Much like 10 key input or typing.

Try and operate that i-phone with your eyes closed and I think you'll soon realize how useless touch screens would be. I think they would be a part of portable field equipment, due to the multiple tasks a device like the tricprder or communicator is capable of. But when it gets down to business on the bridge, they need buttons.

 

[xortex]

and no clutter.

 

[igrokbok]

Starship Polaris said:

igrokbok said:

Starship Polaris said:
Well, it might look like the future assuming that design and manufacturing technologies regress...

You're right when you say it might. When you can hop into your time machine and bring back a photo that says otherwise, we'll talk.

If that's your best defense of that position, I think we've talked enough.

Vektor said:
Submarines have become more streamlined and less cluttered with extraneous detail because it allows them to move through the water more easily and with less noise. You really can't apply that rationale to a vessel that spends all its time in the vacuum of space.

This is true.

BTW, Jefferies' own account of how he came up with the registry number is interesting:

NC, by international agreement, stood for all United States commercial vehicles. Russia had wound up with four Cs, CC CC. It'd been pretty much a common opinion that any major effort in space would be two expensive for any one country, so I mixed the US and the Russian and came up with NCC.

The one seven zero part - I needed a number that would be instantly identifiable, and three, six, eight and nine are too easily confused. I don't think anyone'll confuse a one and a seven, or the zero. So the one seven stood for the seventeenth basic ship design in the Federation, and the zero one would have been serial number one, the first bird.

Jefferies interview

The only defense to that argument IS that I've been to the future and have seen what it looks like, and you are wrong..it looks just like TOS.

Well, of course I can't go to the future so that's silly. So I stand by my original statement.

Conversely, you or anyone else can't tell me that the future WON'T look like TOS. You simply don't know and CAN'T know, plain and simple. And for those that know everything, I can see how it's a tough pill to swallow. :thumbsup:

 

[Cary L. Brown]

igrokbok said:

ancient said:
Can you imagine how stupid and non-functional looking an I-phone would be to someone from 50 years ago? I imagine that whatever the future holds, in reality, the TOS designs will be terribly cluttered looking by comparison.

Now, this is a 2008 movie, and it'll be made to look like an extension of 2008 technology, nothing more. Or they'll go retro 1960's. Does it matter either way? Not really.

I'm not so sure. Practicality and functionality will always have a place in the design of instrumentation. In a fictional setting like the bridge of a starship, I would think that the crew MUST be able to do multiple tasks during times of an emergecy without having to rely on looking at the controls. Much like 10 key input or typing.

Try and operate that i-phone with your eyes closed and I think you'll soon realize how useless touch screens would be. I think they would be a part of portable field equipment, due to the multiple tasks a device like the tricprder or communicator is capable of. But when it gets down to business on the bridge, they need buttons.

I tend to agree with this. I can touch-type extremely quickly on a tactile keyboard. On the other hand, give me a touch-screen and I'm basically back to "hunt-and-peck, one-finger typing."

The touch screen on my car GPS is wonderful. Why? It lets me touch and drag the map around, AND let's me (crudely) type on there. It's slow going but it works just fine, as long as I don't try to type while manuevering in traffic!

But I'd never accept, for an instant, a flat keyboard. Would you?

Look at the TOS helm console. There are three main sets of controls on both the helm and the navigator sides. The outermost one is a flat panel which LOOK like it's just a display... but which may well be a fully-controllable touch-panel (and which, on Sulu's side, is also the cover for the targetting scope!). But there's also a configurable button-driven panel. AND a hard-wired manual "switch panel."

THAT is what I think should be done. Instead of arguing about which technology is superior, accept that NONE of them are "superior." Each is merely a tool. It's up to the designer of the interface to pick the right tool for the right job.

The reason that so many fanboy trekkies have adopted the "flat panels are better" argument is that this is what was used, almost exclusively, in TNG. And they think that if it was on a later series, it must be better.

But the reason that this was used on TNG was less about it being a superior technology, or about it being easier to control, and much more about it being EASY TO IMPLEMENT ON RELATIVELY INEXPENSIVE SETS!

You do the artwork on your Mac, print it out on transparency material, and slap it between two sheets of plain plexiglass, backlight it, and VOILA! Instant "futuristic control panel."

Cheap and effective. EXACTLY the same philosophy which was behind TOS using quick polyurethane recastings of fairly crude button shapes throughout the bridge.

Now, reality is probably that neither of these would represent "reality" in the 23rd century. Perhaps the "real" version will include a surface that deforms, lights, and colors itself to form real buttons on-demand, giving the tactile interaction that human beings NEED (but which was lacking on TNG) but while also giving the configurability that the TNG solution gave).

It's been stated multiple times, but I'll reiterate and agree... the reason you have flat touchpanels on your microwave or on your laundry equipment is because it's DIRT CHEAP to make, compared to the hard tooling required to make physical buttons. You're basically making your control out of a piece of tape, after all! It's not SUPERIOR (in fact, this sort of panel breaks down rapidly and has a much shorter operational life when compared to a real physical button). But it's cheap to make and impossible to repair, so it's popular with "replaceable commodity' equipment.

Try operating a TV remote control that uses a touch panel, as opposed to one with buttons you can feel with your thumb or finger. There's a reason that they aren't selling very well... you have to look at the control in order to do ANYTHING... meaning you look away from the movie. Not so good. Tactile buttons are still in use there, even though they're significantly more expensive. The push towards the cheaper tape-style touchpanel "stickers" was never accepted by the consumer base, and it never will be. The manufacturers WANTED it, but that doesn't matter... the consumers didn't.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

ancient said:
Now, this is a 2008 movie, and it'll be made to look like an extension of 2008 technology, nothing more. Or they'll go retro 1960's. Does it matter either way? Not really.

This is true. William Ware Theiss once pointed out that designing "futuristic" things - costumes, in his case - was a matter of deciding what lies to tell based on the expectations of the contemporary audience.

 

[xortex]

Just don't pimp my starship because it's in the budget.

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

Well, art directors and designers are hired to design.

 

[trevanian]

1701 was also the street address of the original fx company (Anderson), which is either one helluva coincidence or another possible source for the number.

As for the exterior, you can keep a smoothskin design and still make it look big ... all you have to do is strive to get the impression a visitor to a naval dock gets when alongside a carrier. You need a really impressive ship-size-to-viewing-eye ratio (or -to-taking-lens ratio), and that gives you the chance to do things like the TOS fly-to-cameras where the ship seems too big to be encompassed by the taking lens.

That kind of thing didn't work as well even on later treks, mainly because regardless of lens quality or modelwork, you still had the ship to lens thing being too small (exception being the nacelle in dock shot in TMP where they used a periscope rig to make the thing look incredibly huge, but even using a system like that can fail if your model doesn't look right, as is instanced in THE BLACK HOLE stuff of the same year.)

In theory, you should be able to dial in an appropriate ship to lens ratio when doing the cg thing, but I've seen very little to suggest that has ever been employed with any signficant measure of success. Might be a matter of resolution, or perhaps it is just that the tech isn't as good (flexible?) as many would believe.

A 20 foot hero miniature (not even anywhere as big as the EVENT HORIZON) would be tremendous for selling smoothskin scale and any pyro/damage, and then they could do CG for distant and action shots.

But I imagine they'll nerny up the outside instead.

 

[xortex]

There are plenty of other things to design, uh, let's see, like the rest of the universe and the bad guys.

 

[starburst]

Long as there isnt anything overly 60s space Ill do with the ship in whichever way it comes, be it exactly as it was or changed so only the silouette looks the same.

add hatches that go flush to the hull for weapons, means you will only see the join when you get really close.

One thing I hope they change is the overly lost in space shiny silver space/hazard suits...was watching the latest NV and thats the most dated thing they have put on screen, everything else could work.

Trek fans would buy it, problem is they want new blood to sit in the seats and spend their money so changes are inevitable.

 

[ancient]

igrokbok said:

ancient said:
Can you imagine how stupid and non-functional looking an I-phone would be to someone from 50 years ago? I imagine that whatever the future holds, in reality, the TOS designs will be terribly cluttered looking by comparison.

Now, this is a 2008 movie, and it'll be made to look like an extension of 2008 technology, nothing more. Or they'll go retro 1960's. Does it matter either way? Not really.

I'm not so sure. Practicality and functionality will always have a place in the design of instrumentation. In a fictional setting like the bridge of a starship, I would think that the crew MUST be able to do multiple tasks during times of an emergecy without having to rely on looking at the controls. Much like 10 key input or typing.

Try and operate that i-phone with your eyes closed and I think you'll soon realize how useless touch screens would be. I think they would be a part of portable field equipment, due to the multiple tasks a device like the tricprder or communicator is capable of. But when it gets down to business on the bridge, they need buttons.

Um...I agree with all of that, my point was simply that design ethics are not 100% predictable.

 

[aridas sofia]

On the subject of whether TOS designs accurately reflect the look of the future, I'll point out that their future is to some extent our present. And their communicator, cannily based on ergonomics and simplicity of form, predicted the cell phone with considerable accuracy. (Those that say the phone was meant to look like a communicator misjudge, I think, the power of the TOS example. The form worked, and the fact it was a cool retro design was a happy plus, but no more.)

But what of the ship itself? And the bridge? And uniforms? These designs reflect the time they were made and the demands of the commercial master they were meant to serve, and the artistic desire to suspend disbelief. The artists knew they were broadcasting to people for whom "new" meant "miniskirt", and for whom "future" meant "smooth". But even so, the forms are very well thought out, and conceived with extensive technical and artistic input. The process of designing for TOS wasn't too different from the process of illustrating future possibliites for industry. Such was the rigor exercised in honing what was to be used.

The miniskirts are a bow to fun, but who among you knows enough about warping spacetime to say a smooth hull won't be a necessity? Time and again people reflecting on these designs ask why a ship moving in a vacuum should be smooth. If the ship were only moving through a vacuum that criticism might be fair. But by definition, it warps spacetime. It bends the very fabric of the universe. In the famed allusion of one of the very best Trek science minds, it "surfs" across the skin of the universe, and we all know just how smooth a surfboard needs to be. Gravity exerts an obstructive force, and I think it is not only reasonable, but incredibly prescient, to design a gravity-manipulating ship with the same eye to smoothness as would the designer of a plane that cuts through air, or a submarine that cuts through the water.

Far be it for me to argue such a point with Jesco von Puttkamer.

 

[trevanian]

Ideally I'd want somebody like Ron Cobb to design interiors and exteriors, because the guy admits to having some of the 'engineer wannabe' in him along with a good knowledge of what works on film.

If you've ever seen his unused 'california split-level' design for ALIEN's NOSTROMO bridge, you'll see that he could have worked as well in the TREK universe as the others for which he has designed. It could have been like, okay, trek bridge, then WOW! when the windows on either side of the viewscreen open up.

 

[The Doctor]

Arguing over the suitability of a design for warping space in an impossible manner strikes me as more than a little bit absurd.

The first and foremost consideration is making the old girl look good.

Actually, that's the only consideration. The rest is not at all necessary.

 

[trevanian]

The Stig said:
Arguing over the suitability of a design for warping space in an impossible manner strikes me as more than a little bit absurd.

The first and foremost consideration is making the old girl look good.

Actually, that's the only consideration. The rest is not at all necessary.

You ought to read Larry Niven's piece on how he and Pournelle developed the background for MOTE IN GOD'S EYE (it is in his N-SPACE book, and probably elsewhere.) Artistic aspects and even story aspects can develop and improve a tale by putting some thought into design (as long as the tail doesn't wag the dog, IMO.)

 

[Admiral Buzzkill]

aridas sofia said:
The miniskirts are a bow to fun, but who among you knows enough about warping spacetime to say a smooth hull won't be a necessity?

Fair question, but the practical answer to that is: the requirements for "warping spacetime" in the way that Trek ships do are entirely arbitrary. Warp drive and the properties of "subspace" are a fiction, and as flexible as the designers and writers want them to be.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

starburst said:
Long as there isnt anything overly 60s space Ill do with the ship in whichever way it comes, be it exactly as it was or changed so only the silouette looks the same.

add hatches that go flush to the hull for weapons, means you will only see the join when you get really close.

One thing I hope they change is the overly lost in space shiny silver space/hazard suits...was watching the latest NV and thats the most dated thing they have put on screen, everything else could work.

Trek fans would buy it, problem is they want new blood to sit in the seats and spend their money so changes are inevitable.

Ya know, I never had a problem with metallic surfaces on the exterior of spacesuits. It's reflective (meaning that it protects the wearer from E/M radiation and overheating), opaque to all forms of E/M radiation, opaque to particulate radiation, flexible, and relatively strong.

The problem was that the suits just looked cheap. I wonder, if someone were to do something along the same lines, but with an unlimited budget and with a real scientific/engineering background, I wonder... could you take that TOS suit design and make it into something good without altering the core concepts?

The only REAL issue I have with the TOS spacesuits, honestly (other than the relatively cheap construction) was the absolute lack of peripheral vision. So you'd need to make the sides of the helmets into window areas (possibly with mirrored coatings?)

A good design guy could make a practical space suit from the original design without having to "radically rethink" very much of it.

 

[gastrof]

I just thought of something.

They may very well change how the Enterprise looks for one simple reason.

The same reason I suspect caused Singer to make obvious changes to the costume in SUPERMAN RETURNS.

What is that reason?

To sell movie-related stuff.

Kids (and adults) already had plenty of Superman action figures and such. Ah...but the movie version of the costume was DIFFERENT.

"Gotta collect'm all!"

Same thing with the Enterprise.

They may change it simply to make possible the selling of yet one more model kit and new toys that look like the JJA movie version, as opposed to the TV version.

This seems to me to be a very strong possibility (if not probability)...and I think I'm gonna be ill.

 

[trevanian]

So you think the Enterprise will be a transformer ship and clean up space debris by morphing into MegaMaid from SPACEBALLS?