posted
There has to be something 'big and special' about those 3 klingon ships in 'The Defector'. If they were the size of the ship from TSFS those Birdies would have picked them and most probably the Enterprise clean.
Andrew
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
Amasov Prime
lensfare-induced epileptic shock
Member # 742
posted
quote:Originally posted by Sol System: Frankly, after having just recently watched "Yesterday's Enterprise" again, I'm starting to think that the K'vort class simply doesn't exist in the "real" world. Assuming we write off "The Defector" as a goof, we're left with no mention of the name, nor any more appearences of gigantic birds of prey. At least, none that I can readily recall.
The Runabout display in DS9's "Penumbra" clearly says that Worf's missing Bird of Prey, the Coraga or whatever its name was, was a K'Vort class Bird of Prey.
-------------------- "This is great. Usually it's just cardboard walls in a garage."
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
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I think the Romulans would have been suitably cowed by BoPs that were the same size as the ST:III BoP, had they, by the TNG era, been refit with a Defiant style overpowered weapons systems.. remember, our approximate middle size would be the same size as the Defiant, and i think that a handful of Defiants and a Galaxy would match a few Warbirds.
Registered: Sep 2001
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Let me ask this question: why is a ship's appearance so much more important to us than its size, whereas every VFX person will tell us exactly the opposite? Why is it so easy to ignore the observation that the ships change their sizes, yet so difficult to ignore the other observation -- that their looks remain the same?
VFX people assume the audience won't remember the looks of the models, so they deliberately change their sizes to make them into capital ships or scouts, "to satisfy a story point" in the words of David Stipes. So the real random property isn't the size -- it's the exact look of the model, which most people don't remember.
This is a huge reality gap between our analyses and actual practices. Perhaps it's because we're so much into the appearance of models, drawing of the exact schematics and such that we fail to consider that perhaps what we see onscreen isn't supposed to be analyzed that closely, and would, given a greater budget, look different. It would make the accounting of classes much more complicated, but also more realistic, as Cardassians and Romulans would finally have more than just a few warship classes.
Again, why are the looks of the models so much more important than their size, when the exact reverse was intended by people making the show?
Boris
[ September 12, 2002, 12:35: Message edited by: Boris ]
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
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Because they arent trying hard enough. I mean, a ship is a ship is a ship. If you saw a picture of a Jeep on a plain, you would assume that its a Jeep. What if later, they said, 'no thats a Super-Jeep.. its about four times as long as a regular Jeep and four times as high' and then say that people get into it with ladders that run up the wheel wells.' If someone tried to tell me that, I'd tell them to shove if because they are a fucking moron. Its obviously a Jeep and they are trying to pull one over on me. There's only one Jeep™�
I've learned to disregard sizes in VFX. its one of the biggest example of suspending disbelief, because the visuals are often used with serious artistic license to show events, not exact proportions. The Constellation and its shuttle were the same height as they entered the planet-killer, even though I know they are vastly different sizes. Whenever a Galaxy-class ship tows a Constellation-class ship, the much smaller vessel is shown as the same size. Why? So you can see it, of course. The modelmakers very clearly spelled out the size of the model, with established dimensions, windows, etc. But the VFX distorted it, for the sake of the viewer being able to see it, even in the ships first appearance.
In ST:III the Bounty was shown to be very large next to the Enterprise.. but then in the same movie it changes size to appear smaller to land on Vulcan.. (some estimate an 80m BoP on Vulcan, while a 120m BoP against the Enterprise [the ILM effects chart seems to indicate around 100m])... then in the next movie, the Bounty has to grow bigger to accomodate 2 whales, indicating it to be closer to 150 or 180m, to accomodate the kind of cargo bay that would hold 2 whales. But the exterior sequences against the Golden Gate bridge and the crew on the hull indicate a 50 or 60m BoP. but the ship became freaking huge again for its run-in with the whaling vessel. This isnt a matter of the ship being several vessels of different sizes.. they are all the same ship. It changes sizes because the VFX crew took liberies with how they established its size. Some of it was poor communication.. one was built as a VFX model, one was built as a physical set piece by a different portion of the art team. There's no good explanation why the ship would change size in the middle of its flight. Its just visual license. The ship needed to be seen against the large Enterprise and it needed to look bigger than the whaling ship and it needed to be small to save on lumber for the exterior sets in both movies (landed on Vulcan, or sinking in the Bay).
Basically the VFX is always going to show an object, not at a size it is supposed to be, but at a size that is easily seen on a TV screen. This has been done with shuttles, the BoP model, the Warbird, the Constellation-class, the Defiant, even a few Enterprises. Its for visual clarity, not accurate scaling.
So why then, can we not establish a single size for what has consistently been the same ship? A BoP with a length of 180m would accomodate a huge cargo bay, or in a differently configured version, a crew of more than twelve, such as the 48+ crews seen in later shows. And TNG/DS9/VGR has certainly established that the size of a ship doesnt matter when it comes to weapons ability in combat. The Defiants and Prometheuses and Intrepids certainly are intimidating as much as as the ships that are 2, 3, or 4 times as long as them. We know that BoPs of all configurations have defeated Galaxy-class starships (over and over and over, in fact). So have small ships like the Jem'Hadar Attack Bugs. So why not believe a handful of BoPs could take on a Warbird or two also, especially with a Galaxy on their side?
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We could also keep in mind that the Romulans were not necessarily assured of their destruction, but rather concerned that their overwhelming advantage now became slightly less so, enough to make the whole thing no longer worthwhile.
(Especially since the last time they fought a combined Federation-Klingon force, even though they won, they drove the two together. Imagine what could happen this time. Destroying a sole Starfleet ship inside the Neutral Zone might be something you could smooth out later. Destroying a small multi-national fleet could spark something serious.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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Frankly, I favor shape over size as the defining identification factor because that's what I can use when I play "fleet analyst" and go through background material. For a real "fleet analyst", the background material could very well include size measurements from satellite photos of real ships. But for me, merely playing an analyst, the background material consists of photos of SCALE MODELS, whose size I always HAVE to completely disregard.
OTOH, the changing sizes of the BoPs have not bothered me much, because (thanks to the TOS movies) they are a FEATURE of the design, not a bug. It is a known fact that the ship does change size. While this may be physically somewhat hard to swallow, I'm quite happy with the idea that the ship really is of the smallest possible size to accommodate two midget whales (perhaps 80m or so), and is equipped with a cloaking device that has a "cat in the corner" mode, designed to intimidate the adversaries by exaggerating the size of the ship.
This idea forces me to believe in at least two sizes of BoPs, though, since I do need one that's more than 200m long "for real". I'm happy with that, too, because this is what Paramount also wants us to believe.
If I can somehow pretend that the two "real" sizes of ships are also different in shape, and the TV screen just doesn't show that very well, then all the better... Too bad that the window row thing or the wings-always-up thing don't work as definite separating factors between the sizes.
posted
I was first alarmed when reading about the drill holes. But, as has been speculated before, if all or most of the later BoPs (physical and CGI) had them too, there is no point in this additional detail and it doesn't conflict with my previous considerations about the topic. It is interesting though. Thanks, Dax.
Anyway, I find myself on the side of Mike and Timo concerning the importance of shapes.
From a dramatic viewpoint, Boris is right that the author just needs one ship to be bigger or more threatening than another, or two ships on par, and the VFX people comply by scaling one up or down just as needed. If the budget would have allowed, I agree that we would have seen a new Klingon cruiser for all of TNG, and a huge new Klingon ship for "The Defector". Well, but we have to consider that even ships that must be supposed to have always the same size are treated like this (Defiant vs. Sovereign in FC, Bounty in ST III/IV).
On the other hand, there is the argument that the tendency is to scale ships that they just look good relative to each other (Constellation-Galaxy, Excelsior-Galaxy), or to scale up small vessels so that they would be recognizable at all (shuttle in "The Doomsday Machine"). In many cases it was probably the sizes of the studio models that necessitated the size compromise in ship encounters. In all these cases, the shape is actually the determining factor. These ships must be still supposed to be a certain constant size, but it's been more or less reluctantly decided to ignore that.
We may have to decide from case to case which is prevalent, but generally I tend to pay more attention to the shape.
Finally, I would like to annotate that at least two frequently quoted sizes of the BoP are completely unnecessary in my view. There is no need that Martok's BoP should be any larger than the 110m long model. I doubt that we would ever see the roughly 25% difference on screen, even if the two allegedly different BoPs would fly next to each other. The other one is the D-12 from "Generations" or the prototype from TUC. Why can't it be just another standard BoP, only equipped differently, considering that there was no size comparison possible with the E-D or E-A, respectively? The nomenclature alone does not establish a size difference, just think of D-7 and K't'inga.
-------------------- Bernd Schneider
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Bernd: I was first alarmed when reading about the drill holes. But, as has been speculated before, if all or most of the later BoPs (physical and CGI) had them too, there is no point in this additional detail and it doesn't conflict with my previous considerations about the topic. It is interesting though. Thanks, Dax.
That's the thing -- all the BoP after TNG are of the small variety and don't appear to have the drill holes. ILM must have restored the miniature for TUC.
quote:Anyway, I find myself on the side of Mike and Timo concerning the importance of shapes.
I'm still leaning towards that side too. Currently I'm just presenting the facts as I see/know them. To be honest, when Mitch Jones first contacted me I was reluctant to believe anything he told me. Mostly that was because what he said was unheard of and there was no way I could confirm the information. Now that I/we have the DVDs, it is proven that he was right, and I feel this new evidence is too strong to simply be ignored.
quote:We may have to decide from case to case which is prevalent, but generally I tend to pay more attention to the shape.
Agreed, but if visible external detail has been changed with intent, then it's worth at least consideration.
quote:Finally, I would like to annotate that at least two frequently quoted sizes of the BoP are completely unnecessary in my view. There is no need that Martok's BoP should be any larger than the 110m long model. I doubt that we would ever see the roughly 25% difference on screen, even if the two allegedly different BoPs would fly next to each other. The other one is the D-12 from "Generations" or the prototype from TUC. Why can't it be just another standard BoP, only equipped differently, considering that there was no size comparison possible with the E-D or E-A, respectively? The nomenclature alone does not establish a size difference, just think of D-7 and K't'inga.
posted
I'm not saying that in some cases, the size must be ignored in favor of the shape. However, as Bernd says, this is something that needs to be examined in every case, and as far as the K'Vort BoPs are concerned, a lot of evidence suggests they are different-size ships. Hence, in this case, size over shape would matter more. In the case of the Bounty, we might have to reevaluate the size. I'm just pointing out that we cannot by default ignore the size in favor of the shape.
Capped in Mic makes a good point about being empirical, but to use his Jeep example, why couldn't I say "Well, it's a BIG Jeep, not a SMALL ONE BUT A BIG REGULAR JEEP And I know how to explain it -- remember the time Sisko's runabout was shrunk?" However, I feel there is little evidence to support ships that regularily shrink and grow, and that's why I'm leaning more towards the "blooper" theory.
Timo: What if we find evidence that the ships' size is not merely simulated, but in fact real? If they approach each other but don't overlap, we'd be able to conclude this. Now, I'm not saying this necessarily applies to Doomsday Machine or other episodes. Again, we have to examine each case independently.
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And I know how to explain it -- remember the time Sisko's runabout was shrunk?" However, I feel there is little evidence to support ships that regularily shrink and grow, and that's why I'm leaning more towards the "blooper" theory.
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