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I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
the radio chatter from FC was well done, but didnt do a lot for me.. Nemesis's (and 'Balance of Terror's) radio chatter from the phaser room and gravity control really add to the atmosphere..
as for bridge lighting, i have never supported dark bridges (TWOK bothered me a lot in that respect).. the DS9/VGR era turns off the lights whenever an alert is called, and is quite annoying, IMO.. however, it really gets the point across if the ship is severely damaged when the power fails and the bridge goes dark.
Registered: Sep 2001
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posted
Pity that gravity also dropped down to point eight in "The Corbomite Manouver", and pretty much every other episode where they ever got hit.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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-------------------- "This is why you people think I'm so unknowable. You don't listen!" - God, "God, the Devil and Bob"
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Futurama Guy: I thought the radio chatter of the battle with the Borg in "First Contact" over the Enterprise PA was pretty well orchistrated with all the funny camera angles on the Enterprise crew reaction to the rest of the fleet getting plastered while they sat there on the RNZ.
ooooh yes! the camera angles - the were a very nice touch. that WAS a good movie.
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Its funny that in all the battles we never saw the gravity fail on the ships (minus the time in TUC). That certainly would have given a whole new feel to the show, considering they are in space, afterall, and not an Earth-bound vessel.
In "Nemesis", the Enterprise gets its ass plastered, and loses just about every system yet gravity stays online. Amazing they couldnt reinforce all the other systems the way they do the gravity generator...the ship can shake and shutter and frizzle every-which-way but in a space battles, with shields failing and warp core breaches you'd think gravity would fail on you once or twice.
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Registered: Jan 2003
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posted
Diane Carey put it well in one of her books (I forget which): gravity is the most important form of life support in Trek. You can live without oxygen for a couple of minutes, or without heat and pressure for something like 30 seconds to a minute. Without gravity control, the first jolt the ship makes (be it a weapons hit or an impulse acceleration) will create the infamous "chunky salsa effect". Or at least fling heavy and/or squishy objects this way and that.
That is assuming that IDFs are tied to the general artificial gravity network. And that could very well be a safe assumption. In all likelihood, the loss of artificial gravity is followed 0.47 seconds later by a gigantic fireball VFX. Unless the ship is at standstill to begin with, like Kronos One supposedly was. (If the ship was under acceleration, there's no way the Enterprise or the BoP pretending to be the Enterprise could have launched torpedoes from that angle!)
I'm too lazy to go up and check my TNG:TM at the moment, but isn't the gravity system actually integrated into thousands (millions?) of tiny generators in the floor? That would make it a very distributed system that wouldn't go offline very easily at all.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
Registered: Nov 2000
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Cartman
just made by the Presbyterian Church
Member # 256
posted
Without gravity control, the first jolt the ship makes (be it a weapons hit or an impulse acceleration) will create the infamous "chunky salsa effect".
Seatbelts. So simple, so elegant...
(Of course, artifical gravity never fails, as per Dramatic Convention 47, but still)
-------------------- ".mirrorS arE morE fuN thaN televisioN" - TEH PNIK FLAMIGNO
Registered: Nov 1999
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posted
Seatbelts are good up to 50 gee or so. Heck, *seats* are good up to 50 gee. In terms of keeping the acceleration-killed lifeless carcass from flapping around too much, usually.
But a Galaxy is supposed to accelerate at a thousand gee when ordered to "full impulse", according to TNG TM anyway. The last thing going through the mind of the Ensign who presses "IDF Off" while at impulse deceleration will be the warp core.
Dunno. All those ah so fatal "coolant leaks" and "hull breaches" sound like minor problems in comparison with the things that can happen to a starship in a fraction of a second when a key system hiccups. But it is only natural that we don't hear of those hiccups over the PA system. Instead, we hear the big "boom" sound that shouldn't be there in the vacuum of space.
posted
Rick's explanation for the artificial gravity is that the superconducting rotors in the generators are spinning in vacuum, so that even when power is cut they take a long-ass time to spin down, and the whole time they're spinning, they're generating gravity.
We can assume that for the first season, before she put in for refitting the Enterprise had faulty generators on whichever deck it was hat was always falling to .8... Maybe they had cracked casings and spun down more quickly.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
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posted
It wasn't just the first season. Gravity dropped to .8 for pretty much the entire run. Which explains why Kirk got so fat.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
hmmmm I feel the battle chatter in "Yesterday's Enterprise" was pretty good. Picard felt like a real military officer, barking out crucial maneuvers...I don't think anyone later on ordered course corrections as well as how those lines were delivered. There was real sense of urgency and graveness that was conveyed.
Speaking of conveying, the battle on the Odyssey bridge during her last hours was also done well. The all over shaking, the smoke, the fire...it projected that panic, shock and terror feeling nicely.
Registered: Mar 2001
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quote:Originally posted by TheF0rce: hmmmm I feel the battle chatter in "Yesterday's Enterprise" was pretty good. Picard felt like a real military officer, barking out crucial maneuvers...I don't think anyone later on ordered course corrections as well as how those lines were delivered. There was real sense of urgency and graveness that was conveyed.
Of course, they still stood there and let the BOPs hit them several billion times while they only fired back once.
Apart from that one shot, where the ship is manourvering while phasers fire all over the place. But they only do that once. And, obviously, they forget the 10 other phaser strips the ship has.
-------------------- Yes, you're despicable, and... and picable... and... and you're definitely, definitely despicable. How a person can get so despicable in one lifetime is beyond me. It isn't as though I haven't met a lot of people. Goodness knows it isn't that. It isn't just that... it isn't... it's... it's despicable.
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I think it's safe to assume that they were firing during the times they were offscreen - when we saw the E-C inching towards the rift, or when Geordi was bawling about his wee bairns.
On the whole though, I think that Picard was playing a diversionary battle from the get-go, trying to maneuver so he can get into the most effective firing position - or at least to make it appear as though he were. As I recall, the shots we saw in order were:
1) A quint burst of torpedoes, all hitting one BoP;
2) A pair of phaser blasts on one BoP that was going towards the E-C - not likely the same one hit before;
3) The "continual fire" thing, hitting two targets, destroying one;
4) A single phaser blast towards the end, as the bridge was burning up.
These could hardly be the ONLY shots fired; Picard did lots of maneuvering in the meantime, probably lining up for better torpedo shots. It's also possible that he fought such that the Klingons wouldn't realize that he WAS fighting to divert them... Had the Klingons realized that the E-C wasn't firing or was trying to save itself for some reason, they could have gone exclusively after her, at which point the E-C wouldn't have had a chance.
So Picard may have deliberately fought conservatively to avoid this, baring his ship's teeth once to make sure they were doing what he wanted them to do. After all, he KNEW that success meant that none of this would have mattered, and that any casualties on his part would not make a difference in the grand scheme. It may not have succeeded the way that he wanted, but the job got done...
The chatter in this episode ranks among the better examples IMO, with people being relatively constant in what they were reporting - Wesley was on tactical, reporting on where the ships were and piloting the E-D, Riker kept on top of ship damage control and reporting in addition to fire control, and Data was reporting damage on the enemy ships and filling in on tactical and damage reports. Picard did the proper commanding stuff too, giving orders to those critica; positions, and letting Geordi do his work downstairs. Commendable, I say.
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