Yeah. people forget studios have been greatly harmed and in a few cases killed (Heaven's Gate effectively ending UA comes to mind) by movies with out of control budgets and complete freedom for the director. James Cameron gets years and hundreds of millions to do whatever he feels like as his track record and ROI is amazing. But he's an outlier, now.
Titanic almost sank (!) Paramount. The studio was bracing for a $200-million bomb (Who knew it would go on to become a pop culture happening?)
Cameron has always been a high risk, high reward director. Terminator II, Aliens, Titanic, Abyss, etc
I mean, I don't really think the Enterprise-F had to be an Odyssey class. It was from a tie-in video game; it didn't need to be canonized. PIC S3 would have worked just as well if the ship leading the Frontier Day ceremony had been the Enterprise-E under Shelby's command and Seven's ship had been rechristened the Enterprise-F at the end. But I'm biased because I think the Odyssey class is kind of ugly.
Having Frontier Day be the ceremonial decomissioning of the E-E would have been fine, the ship would have been 30 years old at that point and had undoubtedly seen some shit and been nearly totally rebuilt at least twice (Nemesis and Prodigy, if we consider that was indeed the E-E that got messed up)
It also would have felt much less creatively arbitrary than introducing a whole new Enterprise (including giving it some big glamour shot like anyone who doesn't play Star Trek Online even knows what ship this is) and then replacing it the very next episode.
Having it be the Enterprise E being decommissioned at Frontier Day could have also added poignancy since it's a ship which has relevance to both the audience and the TNG cast. And if they absolutely needed the same ship from STO to be the Enterprise F, just introduce that as a new ship at the end of the episode, still with Seven in command and Raffi, Jack and the rest of the Titan's bridge crew serving with her. Hell, they could still use the Titan's bridge set for the Enterprise F, just with lights on as a simple way of making it look different.
Never thought about that it should have been the E instead of the F, but yes. Absolutely. The F we got was both ugly and completely arbitrary.
I stand by my previous statement that the introductions of the Enterprises F and G were extremely convoluted and done quite nonsensically. There was no reason to cater to the 1% of Star Trek fans who play STO, and every reason to cater to the quite large percentage of Trek fans who saw the TNG films and would have liked some closure to the fate of the Ent-E other than some stupid offhand remark. Not to mention that they cared so little about the F that they didn’t even bother to mention what ultimately happened to it after the battle. I don’t think I’ve ever been less enthused about the introduction of a new Enterprise ever, even with two of them. The Enterprise-D was the real star of this show. The Titan Enterprise-G didn’t even come close. I’m sure all the Matalas apologists will disagree with my opinion, but I hardly care.
The need to rename a ship as ENTERPRISE stands out as even more fan service than all of Season 3, and that's saying something. The Name ENTERPRISE is NOT special. It's a ship and the crew makes it special. Having the Enterprise-D there should have filled the ENTERPRISE quotient for the fan check list. That they gave limited information on the E, F, and now have the G stands out painfully so. From a storytelling point of view it simply makes little sense.
Had it been the Stargazer, there would have been a higher chance for that "Star Trek: legacy" show. With the Titan-A, chances are lower, as it's a fucking awkward ship, both in- and outside looking much less futuristic & more cramped as Pike's ship. But no way in hell is Paramount going to produce two shows, with a similar premise, in parallel, both set on a ship called "Enterprise".
I mean..it kind of is. If you look at how the Enterprise has been handled ever since TNG its clear that it is a special name, a special ship and only the best of the best are assigned to "The Enterprise". Example being the fanfair in Generations over the launch of the Enterprise-B.
Titan looks better than the D, E, and F but I definitely prefer the Stargazer as a ship design. Legacy right now is just in Paramount's back pocket. In universe, yes. But in the context of this story? No, it actually undermined the ENTERPRISE-D's return.
I don't really think so, the Enterprise-D got a lot of fanfair scenes and is the ship that had the emotional weight riding on it. They had her safe and sound at the museum at her "final resting place" and then introduced the E-G. I didn't find one took away from the other at all
Mileage will vary, obviously. But, for me, it basically said "The ship isn't special unless it's named Enterprise." That takes a bit away from the crew dynamic, some of the found family themes, and puts the importance in to the name. Yes, ENTERPRISE is treated as special in universe, and obviously carries a lot of weight with fans. But, the contrived steps to the ENTERPRISE-G takes a small piece away and says "Well, I guess you are important enough now to command the Enterprise." It's arbitrary and annoying and detracting in a small way.
And they could have done that better as well. If Matalas was so gung-ho about making the next Enterprise a Constitution III class, he could have just had the ship be brand-new and left the Titan alone. Making the NCC-80102-A into the NCC-1701-G was just convoluted nonsense…just as convoluted as making the 80102-A a ‘refit’ of the 80102, but not really. Another idea that would have worked better would have been for the Titan to have been named the Yorktown instead, have it be a later command of Riker’s, and then have the name be changed to the Enterprise-G, to echo the fan theory that the Enterprise-A was formerly the Yorktown.
It's funny how so many people call rechristening the Titan-A to Enterprise-G was a fanwank, when basically season 3 was a huge fanservice in on itself. And I didnt mind. They set out to do just that. Give us an exciting high speed high risk story, that in the meantime has huge call backs to so many things Star Trek. Berman called TATV a valentine, but this really was. And yes, not all fans will enjoy it. But here's why.... It didn't cater to THEIR specific wishes. They feel they would have done it better. None of you would have created anything better. I mean, there's people here who actually believe that there would be a believable way to have Sisko appear during season 3. He's one of my favorite characters, but no.... It would never work. And still some fans believe they could actually write a scene where it would have. No. Season 3 was deliberately written as one huge homage and calback to everything Star Trek. And yes, it didn't work all the time. But most of the time it did, and it made it one hell of a enjoyable ride with lots of laughs and a lot of tears.
I thought the same thing. Obviously it was because of the end of the season and that reveal. Its also why they changed the look of the Titan as well.
Actually, none of the seasons of PIC catered to my specific wishes. But since I never wished to have a series about Picard’s later years in the first place, that’s kind of a nonsequitor.