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Would you accept a TOS-era spinoff with updated visuals, but otherwise kept established continunity?

My problem with the visuals in ENT has nothing to do with the modern look in itself. My problem is that the NX-01 looked like the Akira only upside down! Right down to the same proportions. That was my biggest beef with the visual. NX-01 did not need to look like an upside down greebloed Akira. I would love to see a Daedalus Class ship interpreted in Kelvin style design elements. I would have loved for that to have been the NX-01. And that ship named Columbia or Discovery or anything other than Enterprise.

Yes, my second biggest beef was that the NX-01 was all greebled up. This was the trend set with the movies and VOY. It typified a mindset or a rut that the creators of Star Trek were in. Blinders. Ships must be named Enterprise. Ships must have saucer and nacelles. Ships must be all greebled up with detail upon minuscule detail. As I've stated many times you can have a modern look without totally disregarding the sleek smoothness of TOS.

Here, see for yourself:
http://www.modelermagic.com/wordpress/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/kg_gabe-k_1701_016.jpg
http://orig10.deviantart.net/e15f/f/2009/318/4/3/my_starship_enterprise_by_gabekoerner.jpg

Overall, I have zero problem with the aesthetic of Kelvinverse Star Trek prior to the Narada's incursion. I was quite happy with that reinterpretation of the Trek design lineage. My problem with the aesthetics of the NuEnterprise is twofold. 1 is yes, the ship appears too new or modern. It looks like a damn shopping mall or Mac store. The technology looks way more sophisticated and advanced than TOS. 2 is that the NuEnterprise pays absolutely no attention to the mathematic details of the TOS Enterprise. It's not just that the Enterprise had a saucer, 2 nacelles and a lower engineering section. There were geometric ratios built into the original design. Matt Jefferies in his wisdom designed the ship to follow several proportional ratios, including the Fibinacci golden ratio.

You can read about this:
https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/abrams-vs-fibonacci-or-why-the-09-enterprise-looks-off.275218/
https://www.goldennumber.net/uss-enterprise-golden-ratio-design/
http://caoimghgin.blogspot.com/2008/11/starship-design-and-golden-ratio.html

NuEnterprise ignores all this. It's a pig of random parts thrown together and designed with no thought in mind. It's not the sleek modern interpretation I hate, it's the ugly imbalanced lack of proportion as well as the sleek, glossy, Mac store interior.

I love the NuTrek uniforms. Hate the brewery engineering section. And the phasers are stupid.

But none of this has anything to do with modern design skills.

It's possible to stay closer to the original design while having a modern updated look. Heck, I'm even happy with this CGI remaster:
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I really don't have a problem with the bridge consoles looking more modern. In fact, I think this minor adjustment alone goes a long way in making TOS feel futuristic once again.

I'm interested in DISC and looking forward to it. My fanboy resistance cherry was popped by NuTrek. I'm fine with whatever they do. TOS and Prime Universe is dead. Long live the Prime Universe!

When it comes to visuals, the Golden Ratio is bologna.

https://www.fastcodesign.com/3044877/the-golden-ratio-designs-biggest-myth

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/s...-a-natural-blueprint-for-beauty-10204354.html

Kor
 

If it's on the Internet, it must be true.

Regardless if designers use it or not, it's clear that Jefferies did. It's also clear that the NuEnterprise does not have the same proportional dimensions as the original. From what I have seen of all the fan artwork since then creating other ships in the universe, most have either consciously or unconsciously used those proportions in their design.

Nice opinion pieces there, thanks for sharing.
 
Fixed that for you;)

No, I think the TMP Klingons fit with the rest of the franchise overall. The big problem is putting ridges on the backs of the head. No Klingon in the core materials of the franchise has those. I can understand wanting to put your own stamp on something, but it's undermining the idea that this's the same world that the other TV shows come from.
 
No, I think the TMP Klingons fit with the rest of the franchise overall.
Now imagine it's 1979 and you're watching the opening of The Motion Picture after 10 years of only ever seeing smooth-headed scheming villainous TOS and TAS Klingons. You'd be reacting exactly the same, maybe even worse.
The big problem is putting ridges on the backs of the head. No Klingon in the core materials of the franchise has those. I can understand wanting to put your own stamp on something, but it's undermining the idea that this's the same world that the other TV shows come from.
Chang from STVI had ridges on the back of his skull, but in a far more subtle way than these re-re-rebooted Discovery Klingons do.
 
Now imagine it's 1979 and you're watching the opening of The Motion Picture after 10 years of only ever seeing smooth-headed scheming villainous TOS and TAS Klingons. You'd be reacting exactly the same, maybe even worse..

Exactly. Back in 1979, "the rest of the franchise" consisted of 79 episodes of TOS and a Saturday morning cartoon, all of which had featured human-looking Klingons wearing greasepaint and mustaches. No ridges, no facial prosthetics, none of that. Then TMP arrives and suddenly the Klingons look like aliens for the first time ever.

It was a surprise, but kinda cool, too. And we all understood that the movie simply had a bigger budget and more resources than the original TV show, and that makeup techniques had improved since 1969, and that was good enough for most us. No in-universe explanation was required, although ENTERPRISE finally got around to providing one twenty-five years later. :)

Same thing here . . . . if those aliens are indeed Klingons. (Let's not forget that the internet has a bad habit of confusing speculation with news.)
 
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Now imagine it's 1979 and you're watching the opening of The Motion Picture after 10 years of only ever seeing smooth-headed scheming villainous TOS and TAS Klingons. You'd be reacting exactly the same, maybe even worse.

I came into the franchise much later, so I can only process it from that perspective. Fair point, but what's the point of bringing back a classic species and then making them look so different that they look like a different species all together?

Chang from STVI had ridges on the back of his skull, but in a far more subtle way than these re-re-rebooted Discovery Klingons do.

Really?

Exactly. Back in 1979, "the rest of the franchise" consisted of 79 episodes of TOS and a Saturday morning cartoon, all of which had featured human-looking Klingons wearing greasepaint and mustaches. No ridges, no facial prosthetics, none of that. Then TMP arrives and suddenly the Klingons look like aliens for the first time ever.

It was a surprise, but kinda cool, too. And we all understood that the movie simply had a bigger budget and more resources than the original TV show, and that makeup techniques had improved since 1969, and that was good enough for most us. No in-universe explanation was required, although ENTERPRISE finally got around to providing one twenty-five years later. :)

Same thing here . . . . if those aliens are indeed Klingons. (Let's not forget that the internet has a bad habit of confusing speculation with news.)

Well, we'll have to see when it comes out. Maybe it'll turn out to be an ethnic subgroup that we never saw before or something. Having classic Klingons (TOS, TNG onwards, or both) mixed with the new ones might help as well.
 
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I came into the franchise much later, so I can only process it from that perspective. Fair point, but what's the point of bringing back a classic species and then making them look so different that they look like a different species all together?

Because, in the real world, it's 2017 and not 1966 or 1979 or 1987, so maybe the Klingons are overdue for another makeover? Continuity issues aside, this is a new show for a new era, so it shouldn't be locked into artistic choices made before a good chunk of today's audience was even born.

Plus, as noted, if us old-school TOS fans managed to adjust to the radically new look of the Klingons back in the day, I like to think that modern-day Trekkies can also take any new-and-improved Klingon makeups in stride.

All it takes is a little suspension of disbelief.
 
Yes, Chang's head ridges went to the back of his head.
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=97&pid=7061#top_display_media

The TMP Klingons' ridges went all the way to the backs of their heads too.
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/displayimage.php?album=603&pid=63189#top_display_media

I think it's a reasonable assumption that all (bumpy) Klingons had this; we just usually don't see it because the majority of them have more hair.

Kor
*insert obligatory "To be or not to be" reference here*

This is one of the reasons the Klingons in ST ID didn't bug me.
 
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Because, in the real world, it's 2017 and not 1966 or 1979 or 1987, so maybe the Klingons are overdue for another makeover?

I don't know, I really do not like this alien makeup design in and of itself, regardless of what characters they're intended for.

Continuity issues aside, this is a new show for a new era, so it shouldn't be locked into artistic choices made before a good chunk of today's audience was even born.

But the shows have continued in reruns extensively in modern times. A lot of today's viewers never saw the shows in original broadcast. How would that affect this specific point, would you say?

Plus, as noted, if us old-school TOS fans managed to adjust to the radically new look of the Klingons back in the day, I like to think that modern-day Trekkies can also take any new-and-improved Klingon makeups in stride.

For what it's worth, I'm not sure if it's that big a deal, but it does seem kind of pointless.

All it takes is a little suspension of disbelief.

Visual consistency tends to help keep the illusion intact.
 
Visual consistency tends to help keep the illusion intact.
Funny, we didn't have "visual consistency" either coming out of TOS into TMP or going on to TNG. Neither one of those transitions hurt the franchise or jeopardized the intactness of the the illusion. People got that we were following the adventures of Starfleet officers in the United Federation of Planets just fine, even if they couldn't tell you what UFP stood for.
 
To get nitty-gritty, there wasn't even visual consistency between TMP and the very next appearance of Klingon characters in TSFS. We never saw the backbone-looking ridges again, or those funky up-swept hairdos.

Kor
 
Funny, we didn't have "visual consistency" either coming out of TOS into TMP or going on to TNG. Neither one of those transitions hurt the franchise or jeopardized the intactness of the the illusion.

A.) I'd argue that the movie designs were close enough to look like variations within the same design, not something completely different. B.) Most of TNG's major differences in set and designs usually looked like natural technological advancement or more variations within the same design guidelines.

People got that we were following the adventures of Starfleet officers in the United Federation of Planets just fine, even if they couldn't tell you what UFP stood for.

Fair enough.
 
Visual consistency tends to help keep the illusion intact.

But, bottom line, it is an illusion. These are theatrical productions, produced over the course of fifty-plus years, not documentaries. It's smoke and mirrors. A certain suspension of disbelief comes with the territory, like when Kirstie Alley magically turns into Robin Curtis. Or the Klingon makeups suddenly look a lot more alien than they did on the original TV series.

(And, seriously, Mark Lenard in TMP looks nothing like John Colicos in "Errand of Mercy." It's not the same design at all.)

Sometimes you just have to roll with it. :)
 
Because, in the real world, it's 2017 and not 1966 or 1979 or 1987, so maybe the Klingons are overdue for another makeover? Continuity issues aside, this is a new show for a new era, so it shouldn't be locked into artistic choices made before a good chunk of today's audience was even born.

Plus, as noted, if us old-school TOS fans managed to adjust to the radically new look of the Klingons back in the day, I like to think that modern-day Trekkies can also take any new-and-improved Klingon makeups in stride.

All it takes is a little suspension of disbelief.

Would you be saying the same thing if it was the Vulcans that received a major makeover? Not just some forehead eyebrow ridge like the Romulans but a drastic makeover? After all, it's 2017 and the Vulcans are overdo for a makeover.
 
Would you be saying the same thing if it was the Vulcans that received a major makeover? Not just some forehead eyebrow ridge like the Romulans but a drastic makeover? After all, it's 2017 and the Vulcans are overdo for a makeover.

If it worked, why not? Probably depends on how good the writing and acting were.
 
But, bottom line, it is an illusion. These are theatrical productions, produced over the course of fifty-plus years, not documentaries. It's smoke and mirrors. A certain suspension of disbelief comes with the territory, like when Kirstie Alley magically turns into Robin Curtis. Or the Klingon makeups suddenly look a lot more alien than they did on the original TV series.

(And, seriously, Mark Lenard in TMP looks nothing like John Colicos in "Errand of Mercy." It's not the same design at all.)

Sometimes you just have to roll with it. :)

And at some point it gets old that they keep changing things for the sake of change. I know, let's have a different design configuration for the Enterprise (same ship, not different class) every other time it appears. Lets have new uniforms every other month. Maybe DISC can have the Andorians with 3 antennae! Or none! After all, we need to change things up from time to time.

Don't get me wrong. I don't care anymore. I'm over it. I give up. I'll still be salty about NuTrek but whatever.

Sure, its art and every artist expresses their art differently. At some point, though, it's a better fan service to make something new instead of redesigning bits and pieces of older art again and again. Like my point above about the Vulcans - I bet there are just some things they won't ever change.
 
The big problem is putting ridges on the backs of the head. No Klingon in the core materials of the franchise has those.
In my mind Klingon ridges always extended over the back of the skull. The TMP Klingon ridges look like spinal cords extending over the head and connecting with the nose.
Chang from STVI had ridges on the back of his skull, but in a far more subtle way than these re-re-rebooted Discovery Klingons do.
Yep.
I think it's a reasonable assumption that all (bumpy) Klingons had this; we just usually don't see it because the majority of them have more hair.
Exactly.
 
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