posted
Thing is that historically, a design like the NX-01 Enterprise would've been nothing but a ship of the week in a tight-budget show that had to reuse CG models or kitbash physical models. If ever such a ship were to play a major role (Reliant, Stargazer), the artists would've ensured that the reused components have a consistent scale and are from a similar time period. The weird kitbashes such as the Yeager and the Wolf 359 ships were never seen up close. To their credit, the producers mostly dispensed with these on Voyager, where even a ship of the week would get a full treatment by Sternbach.
The NX-01 design process is embarrasingly short and atypical when compared to even that of an unimportant ship of the week on Voyager. Not to mention DS9, Voyager, or the Ent-E, which took weeks and weeks of development and refinement. I don't know what's wrong with the show. They had so many ships of the week in Voyager, but now they can't even design a Klingon ship of the week for an older era.
Something is different in the real world. My interpretation is that Braga wants this to be a "reimagination" of the Star Trek universe, and so he allowed some of the familiar designs to appear in a different era. Of course, he'll use other designs when necessary. Maybe they simply spent too much money on the new sets. Then again, maybe they simply can't replace Rick Sternbach.
posted
I fart in the general direction of this argument.
Anyway, if I may stick my head in, the NX-01 model was scratch-built, not a modification of the Akira mesh. at least according to a VFX industry mag article that I read online not so long ago. Said article went on to say how it's also the CGI model with the highest polygon count in the history of TV.
-------------------- "I was surprised by the matter-of-factness of Kafka's narration, and the subtle humor present as a result." (Sizer 2005)
quote:And then other people insist that the NX-Class isn't in any way whatsoever a copy of the Akira-Class,
In the same way that the Excelsior-, Galaxy- and Ambassador-Class designs are copies of the Constitution-Class. But you don't see anyone bitching about that now do you?
posted
None of these ships copy details from each other yet assign them a different purpose, which people say the NX-01 does. Only kitbash ships would do that, and such ships belong in the background.
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posted
flame: Any idiot who can't see the difference between copying details like ENT/AKR and copying general design structures Con/Exl/Amb/GCS shouldn't be commenting. I apologize for being so blunt, but to be able to comment on the designs you need to be able to see them. /flame The only two that even compare to the ENT/AKR debate is the Con/Amb--- but the details on the Re-Con and Amb are so different that the arguement isn't valid. Exact details --- EXACT --- exist both on the Ent and the Akr, undeniable fact. No rocket science necessary to understand those two facts. Con & Amb have no details in common, only general structures. Ent and Akr have details in common and the same general structure.
The difference between similarity and copying explained--- case closed.
[ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: J ]
-------------------- Later, J _ _ _ _ _ ___ _ _ _ _ _ The Last Person to post in the late Voyager Forum. Bashing both Voyager, Enterprise, and "The Bun" in one glorious post.
posted
Oh, whatever. They've all got the same basic design shape. The only reason people bitch about Enterprise is because they prejudged the series to begin with. It's got nothing to do with "this does this on the Akira, but it does this on the Enterprise."
If you'd ever listen to the arguements, it's all "they were so lazy in designing the ship." Mark Nguyen called the design a "ripoff." TSN said Enterprise was "obviously made to resemble that ship [Akira] very closely in many respects." And so on. I think Bernd has been much more blunt about his feelings.
And it doesn't boil down to different functions by the same things as you claim. What it boils down to is, some folk think Enterprise's designers are lazy for basing the design on the Akira-Class. However, they don't think the designers of the Excelsior-, Ambassador, or Galaxy- Class starships are lazy for basing the design off the Constitution.
It's just mindless bashing which lets people feel superior, while in reality making them "Comic Book Guy" from The Simpsons.
So, answer me this: the Excelsior, Ambassador, and Galaxy-Class clearly were based on the Constitution design. The NX-class is clearly based on the Akira design. What's the difference in calling the Enterprise designer lazy when you don't call the designers of the others lazy?
J -- you posted when I was typing, naughty boy. So, you mean all the anger about the "Enterprise" design is about a few insignificant details that very few people notice? So if they'd done a dual-hull design and copied those features, you'd be just as bad? C'mon, clearly the anger is at the catamaran style that Enterprise borrowed from the Akira-Class (even though, if you look at the two, you can see they're just "features" the two have in common -- much the way the Const/Amb/Exc/Gal all have similar features).
[ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: Malnurtured Snay ]
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posted
I'm not saying the NX is a bad design . I think its working allright for the show (not perfectly, but allright, just like a lot of things about the show)
Just like the first time i saw the Nebula.. i said to myself 'Hey, they took a Galaxy model and rearraged it to make a new ship!' I said that because it was the only conclusion that was possible. I dont think the Nebula is a bad design, nor do i feel that it was creative laziness (budgetary maybe..). Its a good ship design that was recognizably arrived at by using an existing ship design. But if someone in vehement defense of the Nebula said that it was designed entirely new, they would be lying.
As to the article that says that NX-01 was new built, i can only suppose its because they had to add more detail to the existing Akira mesh so they 'traced over it' so to speak. My first major 3d model i built about six years ago when i was in high school, a 1701. I was making it into a TOS style Reliant when the file kinda got loopy, with stray vertices and all sorts of wierd problems cropping up with the symmetry because of the complex subtractions and melds i was doing. I basically took the same model and made new uncorrupted shapes over it, but it still had my orignial dimensions and shapes, but i did have to delete the orginal. But the new 'scratch built' one took a fraction of the time it would have taken me to model a completely new saucer and still maintained all of my (incorrect!) proportions and details on the original.
[ November 25, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
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posted
But why would the Akira design disappear for two hundred years, then reappear again with some of the very same details? It's a lineage problem as Bernd indicates. I'm not saying that a ship should be different from what came before, but that it should rather be similar to ships of its era. The designers of the Excelsior, Ambassador and the Galaxy researched past designs to determine what would fit and what wouldn't. They even reused phaser emitters and saucer sensor arrays. Even if we don't know what the Ent-era looked like, we do know what the era after looks like, and there are no Akira-style ships there. The other thing is lazyness, yes. They just ended a show in which every ship of the week got an independent treatment by Rick Sternbach -- suddenly, they're starting to copy designs and reuse ships such as the K't'inga. What happened to their budget? Must have been all those sets that are supposedly inferior to the TOS sets...
quote:we do know what the era after looks like, and there are no Akira-style ships there.
No we don't. Compared to the amount of episodes (and therefore, the knowledge) we have set in the 24th century, information on ship designs of the 23rd century is very sparse. So no, we *don't* know that.
posted
Maybe Lilly Sloane managed to access a computer panel and checked out some starship designs from the future and told them to Cochrane etc. Was there any mention of Lilly helping Zephram and ??Archer's Father?? in the design of the Pre-E?
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
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posted
Hmm.. ships that fall, designwise inbetween the NX-01 and Akira??
There are a lot of TOS era ships we didnt see.. considering that every ship except for about 6 of them (Constitution, DY, Aurora, Klingon D7, Romulan BOP & Tholians) were represented by a) an animated blur or b) a lame invisibility field or c) simply not shown
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posted
Ah the famous 'between you and me' conversation.
where Drexler admitted that TPTB had decided that the Akira was the most popular design (possibly based on the 'favorite ship poll' from STContinuum?), so an Akira must NX-01 be. Basically, we are lucky that we got a ship that makes any sense given that the suits just wanted something that would make the fanboys drool liek the ship that got the most votes
-------------------- "Are you worried that your thoughts are not quite.. clear?"
quote:Because it was. The designer himself has explicitly said as much.
Yes, I'm aware TSN. Did you bother reading my arguement? How does that make him any lazier then the guy who designed the Excelsior-, Ambassador-, or Galaxy, HMMM?! Could you be bothered to answer the question?
[ November 26, 2001: Message edited by: Malnurtured Snay ]
posted
Those designers didn't assign a different purpose to the details they copied. As I said, that is only done for kitbashed background ships. As for the lineage, there is such a thing as statistical probability. You can't tell me that it's a coincidence we haven't seen all these other ship classes you talk about. If there were Akira-style ships in the movie era, we should've seen them in TNG, as we did the Mirandas and the Excelsiors. When someone does 600 episodes about the streets of New York, the viewers expect to see 90% of the currently used car types out there, not only a small cross-section. Else, the show wouldn't be believable.
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