Read this over at Starship Modeler's Trek forums and was a bit surprised it hadn't shown up here yet. Greg Tyler was at WonderFest and was able to get an interview with Mr. Probert and it's now up at TrekPlace.com.
Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
Wow. Probert confirms the starship rules. He tells us what several details are supposed to be. He also adds his two cent on various issues where his work wasn't continued the way he would have desired.
But one thing bothers me. How tall is the saucer rim of the Enterprise-D actually? Three decks would be a stretch, but just one deck? Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
It's interesting watching his enthusiasm for TMP segue into his bitterness for TNG.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Tyler: At the time The Motion Picture was in the works, what was your take on photon torpedoes? Did you imagine them as the capsule-shaped things from The Wrath of Khan, or as something else? Probert: I envisioned them as what we saw during the TV era, they were glowing globs of plasma or some sort of energy. They weren't giant capsules. I envision them as big, glowy, dangerous blobs of... scariness.
The best part of the article. It makes so much more sense than us always having to explain sone sort of shield making the torpedos glow.
quote:The cutaway was a lot of fun. It took him a long time to do that. He did all the decks, we planned out the spaces together, and if you look in the botanical garden section, he painted my wife and me walking on one of the paths. We're just little dots of color, but I know it, she knows it, and David knows that those dots are us
I had that poster up in my room for a couple of years as a kid....I'm probably a trek fan today because of that. Anyone know where I can buy one now?
Posted by MrNeutron (Member # 524) on :
quote:Originally posted by Bernd: But one thing bothers me. How tall is the saucer rim of the Enterprise-D actually? Three decks would be a stretch, but just one deck?
It was supposed to be one as designed. The 4 foot model fattened the saucer edge and the placement of ten forward makes it functionally two, even if it's short externally.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Reading it again, I'm not sure if he's saying that the Dustbuster phasers were designed like that because they were suppossed to look like Dustbusters, or if he's just grumbling.
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
I think he was just saying that's what they ended up looking like to some people. He was just making the point that 'everything ends up looking at least vaguely like something else'. I don't think he was grumbling really, unless it was about people being dumb enough to compare his shuttle craft design to a bar of soap.
From what I remember reading, Big R. didn't want the weapons to look like weapons, which is how they ended up with the little cricket phasers. But they ended up being too hard to see on screen.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
Another reason I recall for their season 3 redesign (apart from getting rid of the dustbuster element) was that the cast were having tremendous trouble aiming the bloody things, resulting in SFX shots where the phaser energy seemed to be coming out at a different angle than the weapon was pointing. I think that was also why they redesigned them again during early Voyager to have even more of a curve to the handle. There's a reason why guns are gun shaped, and not remote shaped, silly producers.
![[Confused]](confused.gif)