posted
Most of the tech stuff is being thought up and kept consistent inside the Art Department, while their own work, expressed mostly as background scenic art and small details on starships, is the least likely to be affected by random forces. So yes, their work tends to be the most believable and technically consistent.
On the other hand, the reason it's the least affected by random forces is that the scenic art and the details of ship designs are the least visible part of Star Trek -- what we tend to see is the work of the VFX crews and the writers, and it is these two that mostly influence a viewer's perception of everything. What the Art Department has done is take this into account and add it to the existing body of knowledge (the Star Trek Encyclopedia + the Manuals) with our help. So ignoring the VFX or the writers doesn't really help, because Mike Okuda wouldn't ignore it either.
The only problem is, how do we treat each component of canon: dialogue, VFX, sets, console art?
Here's the commonsense approach:
CONSOLE ART: Seen in the background most of the time, not a really important part of the story except to provide ambience.
DIALOGUE: In the foreground most of the time, it is what the average viewer notices the most.
VFX/SETS: Very close to the dialogue in importance, except that some things happen in the distance and can be ignored.
If any of these conflict, we iron things out so as to disturb the average viewer the least. These rankings are rather general, as different things are clear at different times.
And now, the documentary approach that makes no distinction between things seen in a closeup and far away, and assumes what we see onscreen is exactly what happened:
CONSOLE ART: It's a combination of reasonable elements and what appear to be confusing figures or layouts intended to deceive onlookers or make it harder for the uninvited to control.
DIALOGUE: The characters can exaggerate, mislead, are in error, but generally, if their statements are correct, they can be trusted over the console art, since the latter is already suspicious for the above reason.
VFX/SETS: The ship models are accurate in general to the detail. The VFX vary for unexplained reasons and are not to be trusted when other evidence is available. The sets are fairly reliable, like models, and generally provide a good source of a ship's interior (for example).
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posted
I submit that none of us subscribe to either approach outlined by Boris in its entirety. As tech nuts, by nature none of us can be simple "John Q Nielsen" types, as it's what's going on behind what this average viewer will see which interests us. Likewise, the practical tech-head will not be completely faithful to the documentary approach, but will have his theories tempered by what's seen on screen.
Case in point: NONE of the standard control consoles in Trek are labeled with anything remotely useful; at best, it's random number and letters which tend to correspond to initials of the production crew. And in the cases of TOS and ENT, virtually no labels at all except where it's supposed to serve a story purpose. The common sense person will not even notice this, while the documentary person must assume that the controls are all operated from memory of the operator, or some such nonsense. WE cannot accept either, and it is each individual's resting point between these two extremes which causes all the debate (and a good share fo the fun).
The same can be applied to the current debate on ship numbers: Most people will be okay with 59650, some will accept 74913, and the rest of us have to reconcile both within the context of the Trek universe. There is obviously no real answer and will not be unless someone involved in the production comes up with an answer, since most fans will equivocate a person's job with Paramount as having some measure of real authority over the matter, which is not always the case.
Mark
PS - for the record, I think it's a case of the ship being started ages ago, put in mothballs somewhere, and then restarted when the technology became practical. I'm of the opinion that the Prommie was sitting in some spacedock somewhere undergoing final integration when she was stolen, and they simply hadn't gotten around to repainting the ship yet, despite the modern look to it.
posted
Maybe they put all sorts of bogus registry numbers all over the ship to confuse those damn "rommies" Damn them damn the all the way to Remus
Buzz
-------------------- "Tom is Canadian. He thereby uses advanced humour tecniques, such as 'irony', 'sarcasm', and werid shit'. If you are not qualified in any of these, it will be risky for you to attempt to decipher what he means. Just smile and carry on." - PsyLiam; 16th June
Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
Or perhaps NX numbers aren't as sequential as NCC numbers in general tend to be?
Oh, I know that back in the TOS days NX numbers eventually became NCC numbers, as we saw with the Excelsior. But that's the only era (and basically the only class) for which we have such evidence. The Defiant steadfastly refused to get an NCC number... Perhaps she'd have become NCC-82357 when abandoning her NX status?
Or who knows, perhaps the three sections of the Prometheus simply all had different registry numbers?
quote:Originally posted by Veers: MMoM--I find it hard to believe that YOU of all people would accept the NX-5xxxx registry. (Unless you were joking, of course)
WTF does this mean?
Registered: Jun 2001
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posted
Well, the USS Galaxy retained its number when it changed from NX to NCC.
The Defiant kept its NX number because it looked cool, tthe production cost of changing every stock shot to a new NCC number wouldn't be worth it, and the DS9 fictional crew state that the Defiant remains as an experimental platform for new technologies for the Defiant-class (like the lower shuttlebay).
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EdipisReks
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posted
i also think that the prometheus was originally designed decades ago and then mothballed when the design wasn't practical. hey, we can use this for lots of things!
question: why does the new looking akira have such low registry numbers?
answer: it had a serious design flaw, and thus the original order of were ships put on hold until the design flaw was fixed. because of this, many akiras have low registries even though they were built in the "modern" (post TNG) period.
question: why do ambassador class ships have low registry numbers when some excelisiors and even mirandas have higher ones?
answer: the ambassador class was originally designed in the 2310's, but there were design flaws/technical limitations that made it impractical (and it was also unneeded at the time due to all the pretty brand new excelsiors). the ship was set aside until the 2330's when tech could make such a large ship practical, but the original order still bore registries from the 2310's.
everything, especially stuff like this, can be explained in a way that keeps all of the "if it's seen clearly on the screen then it is good enough for john q. nielsen" crap without going all the way to the "the enterprise had a huge rubber duckie in case they ever needed to give a bubble bath to a giant" crap.
posted
I think that explains the Defiant length problem... It's still an experimental ship, so Starfleet are always experimenting with different sizes ;o)
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posted
Well, if we were to see an Intrepid next to Galaxies, Constitutions, Nebulas, Mirandas, and other ships of known size, there would be variation likewise because some people don't care about ship scales, only about the "cool" effect. But, since we haven't seen the Intrepid close to any ships of known size, we've seen no variations that could disturb Sternbach's design size. That's one way in which such discussions are biased.
The other bias comes from an assumption that major, well designed ships are shown at their true scale, and that ships-of-the-week are not. However, we have plenty of evidence that the VFX crews really think of say, the BoP as being 360' long. In fact, that's why the Defiant ended up at 560'. Rick Sternbach also mentioned that he'd argued for the Enterprise to appear bigger in TNG than it did, so how do we know that the VFX crew didn't want *that* to be a smaller ship, not the BoPs? After all, they did add all the surface detailing to the four-foot model.
[ February 27, 2002, 10:04: Message edited by: Boris ]
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I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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posted
quote:I think that explains the Defiant length problem... It's still an experimental ship, so Starfleet are always experimenting with different sizes ;o)
This explains the 'tough little ship..' 'little?' line.
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posted
Well, given that the Enterprise-E is the longest ship in the fleet, the Defiant is obviously going to be little from that POV.
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posted
On the topic of how to determine what's "right," I just wanted to reiterate my own method. While I don't "get into character" everytime I watch the show, the idea is basically like this:
Pretend it's the year 4000, after the Second Galactic War of 3875 wiped out pretty much everything in the galaxy. There is an archaeologist from one of the Magellanic Clouds. When it comes to the region once dominated by the Federation, the records are very fragmentary. Meanwhile, a holodrama studio is making a based-on-a-true-story series from whatever he digs up.
Now, you want to learn about these "humans" you've heard of, but the archaeology records are classified for some arcane beauracratic reason. So, you fire up the old holodeck and start watching the dramatization. When contradictions arise, some are the result of simple mistakes on the part of the producers. Some are deliberate changes as the archaeologist uncovered more accurate records. Some, sadly, are pure invention (like Pearl Harbor). The visual effects are all dramatized for impact and understandability, just as current movies based on real events often are. You can't be sure dialogue happened exactly the way you see, though you can be sure it was probably similar.
In other words: treat it like a television show. Recognize that the producers are not infallible. Understand the way television is produced. Make all of this information integral to figuring out what "really" happened. Use Occam's Razor whenever possible. Whatever makes sense to you can be "right," since it's all fiction anyway.
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