New Details On Star Trek VFX – Ship Sizes Revealed June 9, 2009
by TrekMovie.com Staff , Filed under: Star Trek (2009 film) , trackback
There is another one of those industry trade articles on the making of Star Trek, this time focusing on the digital effects created by Industrial Light & Magic and Digital Domain. Although focusing on technical issues, the article has interesting information (including the sizes of a number of ships), plus there are some nice images not previously released.
The full article is at Society of Digital Artists (cgsociety.org), here are some interesting bits:
- ILM did 800 visual effects shots in six months
- Digital Domain did additional 150 shots in four months
- no traditional models or miniatures used
- Dimensions:
- shuttle: 30 feet long ( handled by ILM)
- Enterprise: 2,357 feet long (ILM)
- Narada 5 miles long + drill cable also 5 miles (ILM)
- Vulcan jump sequence used 250 shots, (ILM)
- Digital Domain’s work included the engineer bay sequence with pipes
- DD also worked on ‘robocop’ making him more ‘threatening’ and added Keenser’s metallic eyes
Some of the images in the article:
Some of the images at CG Society
To see the images in larger sizes and read more details, go to cgsociety.org.
The CG Society article is actually a couple weeks old, but slipped past our notice until a reader sent in a tip (thanks Carl). If you have seen an interesting article covering the making of Trek we haven’t pointed to, please send in the tip.
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Comments»
beautiful image of the Enterprise
2,357 feet? That’s, like, 714 meters. Holy huge! That’s bigger than the Enterprise-D!
718 meters, rather. Even bigger. :-P
I remain unconvinced of the size of the Enterprise. The visual evidence is inconsistent, but I have a tough time buying the idea that the sensor readings of the Narada allowed Starfleet to progress a century in ship design- bigger than TOS? Sure. Too many external features from Ryan Church’s original design argue against anything over 400 meters in my opinion.
Of course, I’m a Trekkie, not an engineer…
I REALLY, really want the beauty shot of Big E rising out of Titan’s atmosphere with Saturn in the background for my desktop.
Uh, Bob O…. that possible?
Still no direct quote from anyone at ILM…and this is the 5th number to come up from various articles.
You know how large those windows would have to be if the ship is indeed that big.
Imagine in the NEW timeline… how the Enterprise-D or E would look like, It would look soo freaken huge !
I honestly thought if anything it looked just a tad smaller than the original due to the camera angles. Closer inspection allows a dirrect comparison with windows and airlocks which makes it roughly shorter but taller than the original.
Then how big was the Kelvin?
It would seem the Kelvin-class of the 2230s was even bigger than the Classic connies of the 2260s. But wasn’t the Kelvin a colonizer ship with 800 people onboard?
So Nero’s intervention caused the federation to start making ships way bigger soon after the Narada’s intervention. Look at the size of the other ships in the movie.
Maybe when the Narda went back it time, creating an alternate reality/timeline, measurements changed as well? Perhaps a “foot” in this new Star Trek universe is equal to seven feet in the original Star Trek universe?
(Said with loathing sarcasm. Using the excuse of an “alternate timeline” to justify change for change’s sake is unimaginative and ridiculous.)
I like the big ships, since after TNG, all the ships started to get smaller in the Berman era, defiant, voyager, nx-01, I’ll pretend the size is the same as the one in TMP etc.
Cool, but I like the Defiant more.
THERE IS NO WAY, REPEAT- NO WAY THAT THE ENTERPRISE IS THAT BIG!!!!
Ha! Everyone who complained about the NX-01: We never knew how good we had it.
Not that I wouldn’t want the size of the ship to be consistent with earlier movies, but the size doesn’t really matter. Larger engineering doesn’t necessarily equal better engineering, just different. The pyramids were gigantic, the Titanic is still on par with relative sizes of both cruise ships and warships, etc etc.
I agree that the visual evidence with the windows makes that big of a size kind of iffy, but how long the Enterprise is doesn’t impact my enjoyment of the movie in any way. In the 1960s they wanted the Enterprise to be big and powerful for it’s long mission of exploration, so they made it roughly the size of a modern aircraft carrier. The point is big and powerful; the relative difference between the movie and the TV series shouldn’t really matter — at least it doesn’t to me.
Agreed with #13. I mean, come on, just look at the ship as it was *on the screen*. The detailing, everything from airlock hatches to viewports to phaser banks to the windows on the bridge, suggest a ship comparable in size to the TOS and TMP-TUC versions.
To ILM, I call shenanigans! I don’t know what they’re thinking, but it makes no sense whatsoever.
718 meters. no still not the right size. That’s bigger than the E and the ship is only supposed be between 289 and 305. This ship is still too large
The new Enterprise is almost the same as the TOS Enterprise, remember the shot pull back out the bridge view window. Its the same as TOS.
Also those shuttles were not 30 feet long
I know a few guys at ILM…they love the chatter about the new size…becuase it is not really the new size.
People will be very surprised when the official numbers are released.
So, the Narada is bigger than Babylon 5, eh?
@10 – Yeah we get it, the flick has been out for a while, lets move on now….
The ship is obviously large.
And the interiors and windows of the old Enterprises (All of them) never made one damn bit of sense, so I don’t know why people are bothering to compare them.
23. Prologic9 – June 9, 2009
Wrong on multiple fronts. Save for the Defiant the windows on most federations ships were scaled correctly for the size of the ship.
Check any modeling resource for this information.
You’re killing me, ILM Dude! It is funny, though, that they have caught the discussion (actually, it’s harder to miss it these days). I hope they’re not amused by it, though.
BTW… I’m totally in the nuEnterprise=700+ meters camp. Way, yes way. There’s much more evidence that it is than evidence that it is the same (or even slightly larger) than TOS version. But some will never be convinced, even if there ever is a single, definitive, official statement made.
Well of course the Enterprise is that big…just look at the size of the ego of the movies stupid director. Star Trek 12 – The Search For More Lens Flares.
#20: “People will be very surprised when the official numbers are released.”
I think, at this point, people will be very surprised _if_ the official numbers are released, since nobody seems eager to release them :)
But I gotta ask (and I know it’s redundant, but I gotta): why does anyone care? I mean … gah. “Kirk is a douchebag now” seems to me a much juicier nit to pick than “the ship is a funny size.” :)
The ship size…is inconsiquential…
Seriously…this is a new timeline…there is absolutely no guarantee that this timeline will result in anything resembling what we know of from TNG/DS9/VOY/Future of ENT
There may not even be 1701-(insert letters here). The next Enterprise in this universe could just as easily be the NCC-2001…
And from what some folks have been reading in the articles from ILM…for them it wasn’t that big of a change because the ILM guys thought Matt Jefferies design was the size we attribute to the 1701-D and that ship was even bigger than that.
Well I for one have a problem with the Abrams camp claiming credit for the viewscreen/window to justify the bridge being exposed on the top. Matt Jefferies came up with it first in the Pilot episodes. Sadly they scrapped the idea when it went to series. The real shame is CBS-D actually removed the window from the re-mastered CGI model in those episodes.
http://startrekpropauthority.blogspot.com/2008/05/uss-enterprise-original-series-11-foot.html
I think the removal of the window on the CGI ship was purely a move to avoid comparisons to the new movie…due to the ongoing “difficulties” between Paramount Movie Division and CBS-TV Paramount.
26 – Just look at the size of the box office take. The director is not stupid.
So that can make a 1200 foot cruise ship, but a starship that can be in space for a 5 year mission can’t be bigger? Riiiiiiight.
@ 22, how right you are. Here we are, a month after the release and the OCD Trekkies are are still here, trolling.
Oh yeah, here’s the 1200 foot cruise ship:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/worldnews/article-1088688/The-largest-lavish-cruise-ship-world-making-history.html
not even a half mile. thats not that unbelievably big. i always imagined it to be that big or bigger to hold all the necessary technology and machinery as well as crew and passengers.
Yikes — I can’t buy the design of the new Enterprise (no matter how beautiful and spectacular it is) measures the length of the Enterprise-D! That’s just unbelievable and seems physically impossible based on it’s design that it would traverse through space. I can accept that when it is set up side-by-side the original Matt Jeffries design and the refit from TOS that it is and should be comparable to those vessels — regardless of an alternate universe or timeline. Just do a visual match from when we observed the ship being constructed in the teaser…people were walking on the surface of it — the ship “felt” like the size of the original refit. You can stick how many people you want on it — it’s not bigger than the D!
The current number released in this article is approximately twice the length of today’s Nimitz Class aircraft carrier. The numbers were alway a little suspect. The TOS Enterprise was smaller than an aircraft carrier, but only by a slight difference. The crew on the Enterprise: 400 plus. The crew on a modern day aircraft carrier, over 3,000, with room for an airwing of approximately 2,200. Such a large spaceship could handle 10 times the crew originally stated in TOS. Always found the number of people on the ship far too few to sustain the mission. Think the larger E, with a MUCH bigger crew would be more realistic.
Oh, and there would be pipes of some sort, I’m reasonably certain. But let’s face it, that was an aesthetic choice, so let’s move on.
The window is still very visible in the remastered Where No Man Has Gone Before…
I don’t have a problem believing a spaceship CAN be 2000 feet long, I just don’t believe the new E is. With the exception of the first shuttlebay scene every other piece of evidence externally, including the scene when Pike’s shuttle leaves the Enterprise, shows a ship no larger than 400 meters. Further, it doesn’t make sense that Nero’s incursion changes Starfleet shipbuilding techniques to that great extent.
I know it’s a new universe, but that blows the whole TOS connection. The thing is this- the VAST majority of viewers don’t care. I see no reason to change it and befuddle the 4% of us who do. I drank the kool-aid on this movie, and it won’t ruin my appreciation of it if the ship is that size, but it’s a mark against it being a sequel to TOS.
I don’t mind that they’ve decided to “super-size” everything. After all, with giant arcologies and 400-floor office buildings being depicted, this is probably a more muscular Federation than the one we know and love from TOS and spin-off series.
But, yes, the scale is massive by Star Trek standards. In fact, these ships are as big as the ones in Star Wars. Even the orginal timeline’s mightly Borg Cube, which measures 29 cubic kilometers according to Seven of Nine, would look considerably less intimidating in this alternate reality. If these figures match with the models, that would make the Narada roughly half the length of a Super Star Destroyer (with the drill deployed, it is just about the *same* length) and the Enterprise roughly half the length of a regular Imperial Star Destroyer.
Well, that seems to be answer to everyone’s question–whether anyone wants to accept it is the even bigger question.
I don’t have a huge problem with the Enterprise being that big (in fact, it certainly presents the opportunities for more stories: instead of a crew of hundreds it is now thousands).
….but it does present a another problem: How in the hell did they lift something that big off the ground and beyond the stratosphere? … yowsa, that would take an incredible amount of energy … but then (oops) that presents another big argument between the camps on whether the Big E was built on earth or in an orbital drydock.
#26: Whoa, partner… ithat was pretty uncalled for…
Surely your mamma taught you “if you can say nothing nice, say nothing.”
sorry i dont like this size
and I dont like this star trek
39
the kelvin had 800 + (dont ask)
now with the entire fleet engaged elsewere (dont ask)
forcing them to use cadets (fine for TWOK, but what about the crew on the space station, r they sayin cadets are better. dont ask)
i think its kinda hard to call out several thousand names manualy for cadets to man their ships. i can see dr beckett now. lets take a break. tomorow cadets with names D thru H. lets hope Vulcan can last that long.
31-
Thanks for the pic.
This is getting too crazy around here.
Leave the poor ship alone.
You seem to forget that they had no idea that it was an ambush. All of those cadets were on the way to Vulcan to help the planet cope with an anomaly.
There was a plane crash at Detroit Metro Airport in the 80s and my friends (all in their late teens and early 20s) who were in the Civil Air Patrol were called to provide the Air National Guard with on-site support, so that seasoned Guard members could do things a little more crucial than set flares, direct traffic and maintain perimeters.
You have every right to hate Trek ‘09, but I’m curious, why, after a month of being-out, do you still hang-out here to bash the movie? Surely you have something better to do than to visit boards to spread your unhappiness!
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
41. Enc – June 9, 2009
sorry i dont like this size
and I dont like this star trek
39
the kelvin had 800 + (dont ask)
now with the entire fleet engaged elsewere (dont ask)
forcing them to use cadets (fine for TWOK, but what about the crew on the space station, r they sayin cadets are better. dont ask)
i think its kinda hard to call out several thousand names manualy for cadets to man their ships. i can see dr beckett now. lets take a break. tomorow cadets with names D thru H. lets hope Vulcan can last that long.
The size thing is so off with the new Enterprise, probably one of the biggest tech errors of the movie, besides the transporters and the entire engineering section.
I agree the size is off! My humble opinion is that the new Constitution classes fall just short of the Excelsior Class.
Paramount has to give the size stats. I say its got to be 600-700 meters long!
#37 – I don’t have the Blu-Ray, just the broadcast SD on DVR and there’s no good shot that shows the detail of the window in WNMHGB. So I would say it is not “very” visible. However, it is definitely not in The Cage which has a nice close up shot of the bridge, and it is supposed to be the same CGI model, much of which was re-used in WNMHGB. But good to know they didn’t eliminate it completely (just created another variation of the Enterprise!).
But it’s interesting that in the ST09 re-designed bridge section, they’ve incorporated and lowered the first bump into the upper slope and kept the same general proportions of the original “top-hat” bridge, with a smaller domed-section on top of that. The bridge itself appears to have at least three stories on top of it based on that promo construction picture that shows the exposed decks. The entire saucer appears to be about 20 stories tall. If that’s true, assuming 10-feet per deck, that’s 200 feet high by almost 1000 feet long in the saucer section alone. That ratio translates to around 2,100+ feet long total and about 500+ feet high total.
Now that’s an extremely rough estimate based on an inexact number of decks in the saucer and their actual height, using a ruler and a printout of the profile, but it’s pretty close to the size given by ILM.
Also, is that construction image of the saucer considered canon since it wasn’t actually in the movie?
@45
700 meters = 2296.587 feet, which is bit smaller than the ILM number.
ILM is not Paramount or Abrams.
Just because their CGI model was designed a certain scale in order to acheive their desired perspective shots doesn’t make that canon in the official Trek fictional context.
That’s like saying that TOS Enterprise was 11 feet long because the shooting model was.
It’s not like the Enterprise is every going to be shown in scale against anything measurable. It’s really not up to the “prop” people to write the script. I await Abrams, Orci or Paramount releasing official specs.
I’m sorry, but I always hated the ADMITTEDLY FAN-DERIVED measurements of the 1701. They never say ONSCREEN how big the ship is. In fact, the only time a starship’s size is ever mentioned on screen is in First Contact. 200 some odd meters long for a crew of 400 just doesn’t seem right when a modern aircraft carrier is about 300 meters long with a crew of 3000. No, just…no. I fully accept the adjusted, and probably more accurate, dimensions for the Enterprise.
Not only did the Kelvin have 800 people on board, they all escaped in about 16 shuttles….
So many things about the plot don’t make sense but they don’t have too because
a) It’s made to be commercial – emphatically not to appeal old-school Trekkers
b) It’s emulating the original Star Wars trilogy: action for actions-sake; keep the audience busy and hope they don’t notice the dodgey plotting.
c) “It’s an alternate time-line.”
For us old school fans there’s Spock prime, colored uniforms and a glimpse of tribble. Take it or leave it.
#48 – whatever Abrams, Orci or Paramount say doesn’t make it canon either. Only what’s on screen.
However, I disagree that the Enterprise is not shown in a scale against anything measurable. Forgetting the construction scene, which is technically not canon since it is not in the movie, there’s a good shot of the exterior bridge window which is roughly floor to ceiling. Based on that information, an approximate deck height can be extracted and applied to the height of the saucer section, then from that scale, the approximate length and height of the ship can be ascertained.
In my rough estimates, based on the method used in #46 above, the Enterprise is roughly 2,100′ long by 500′ tall. Pretty close to what ILM is saying.
Just found something interesting on the discussion page of this Big E over at memory-alpha: http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Talk:USS_Enterprise_(alternate_reality)
If you have time I recommend you read that discussion, especially the ones by ‘rogue vulcan.’
Just my $.02
–M–
The problem is the number of people that were supposedly saved by George Kirk. Because, look, if you encountered a ship like the Narada, wouldn’t you want to develop a line of starship that could stand a chance? Wouldn’t it affect your shipbuilding if you were in Starfleet Command? If not, you’d be criminally negligent. I’d toss a lot more weapons on those ships before sending them on their missions of exploration relative to my parallel universe self unconcerned by the Narada.
Of course, it is possible that the crew of the Kelvin bunked like on submarines, or were carrying refugees, or… :: shrugs :: It seems like there are lots of possible explanations to make this work.
Bad link ^
Just look up the alternate reality USS Enterprise on memory-alpha and go to the talk page.
–M–
#49
You forgot:
d) it captures the spirit of Star Trek better than anything since maybe The Undiscovered Country.
e) is the best Star Trek movie ever made, with perhaps the exclusion of Khan for nostalgic reasons.
Enterprise size is wrong, it should be the size it was in TOS, hell even the Kelvin is bigger than the Enterprise as Pike says Kirk’s dad saved 800 people and that was meant to be when the timelines diverged.
In TOS I believe the compliment was 412, so therefore I feel more as even the Kelvin sequence was in a parallel universe, Nero and Spock were brought to this new universe.
Its a better way to accept it than the timeline divergence.
Timeline my butt.
I agree that the new Enterprise can’t be anything bigger than 400m.
True, sensor logs from the Narada attack on the Kelvin could provide inspiration for new designs and technologies, but I also like to think that engineers that were assigned to the Constitution-class project in the original timeline died on board the Kelvin, thus a whole new batch of engineers went on to influence mid-23rd century starship architecture.
It’s the simplest explanation, really.
57: Like Janice Newfield?
Talk about easter eggs! Calatrava’s Planetarium in Valencia was slipped into the San Francisco skyline!
Why even bother changing the size of the Enterprise anyway? Leave it at what it was!
49
yeah i too counted shuttles
so righ tnow i have no problem with the general plot. except the 25 year wait is over.
th eproblem i have is with the details, the no reset end and the non tos kelvin with 800 crew in the begining etc. the flip style phaser, instructor spock has relationship w/ cadet, prod placement, galaxy destroying stars.
#52 – considering Chris Pine is supposed to be around 6′1″, I’m thinking that window is about 8 feet tall and at least a couple of feet between decks. So 10′ per deck and anything close to 20 decks and that’s a huge ship.
http://www.scificool.com/images/2009/03/star-trek-nero-2.jpg
Also the shuttle in this pic appear to be about 14 feet tall (conservatively) which makes the bay about 140′ tall which makes the secondary hull around 250′ tall, making the primary hull about 200′ tall making the length of the ship around 2,100′ long.
http://mag.awn.com/issue14.02/14.02images/startrek01_NCC-1701.jpg
Why do people assume that because it’s overall length is greater than the Galaxy-class that the ship overall is ‘bigger’. The saucer is probably between the Excelsior and Ambassador-class in size, the secondary hull isn’t terribly large due to the huge undercut, and the rest of the length is the warp engines. In terms of habitable interior space, the Ambassador-class and Galaxy-class are bigger. The new Enterprise is just longer because of the warp nacelles being quite long.
Also, my theory on the Kelvin and it’s size… I think it’s part of yet another alternate timeline. Though you could argue that the events of First Contact were ’supposed to happen’ in the original timeline, I don’t think that’s true. I think it created an alternate timeline, and ‘Star Trek: Enterprise’ and the NX-01 are products of changes in the timeline. Especially if you consider episodes like ‘Regeneration’. I could certainly see the Kelvin being a product of that timeline. So I don’t think the events of the movie actually created an alternate universe, I think it would’ve been one all along. I know that opens a whole new can of worms so to speak, especially if you try to rationalize whether anything after First Contact is in the first or second timeline, and if Spock and Nero going back is actually occuring in the first or second timeline or not. If it’s all occuring in the second timeline, then none of the events in the movie would even be changes to the original timeline. @_@
56
Enterprise had 203 under Pike
It still had over 200 under the early Kirks days
later Enterprise under Kirk had over 430
Ashley, that’s exactly how my eyes look right now thinking about all of this. LOL.
“Enterprise: 2,357 feet long (ILM)”
niiiiicccee … i like the new E. its bigger than the 1701-D, isn’t it?
Who cares about the size of the effin ship? Some of your are arguing over a FICTITIOUS SPACESHIP. Chill…please…
its become apparent to be that the people who hate the new trek come to these boards to complain, while the people who like the movie are still watching it in the theatres and powering Star Trek to a top 5 finish for 2009.
lets see…
top domestic gross of 2009:
1 Harry Potter
2. Transformers
.. ?
… ?
3-5. Star Trek
There is simply NO way the Enterprise is 2,357 feet long. The window sizes don’t support it. The beauty shots from the film don’t support it.
Bigger than Enterprise-D? I can’t understand why this claim continues to be propagated. ‘Course, this is the same group that put Vulcan in the Delta Vega sky, big as life…so I guess there is a strange sort of consistent inconsistency here.
please please please put all of this in a MAKING OF book!!!!!!
@39 – regarding your question about how they got the Enterprise into orbit…
Tractor beam seems as good an explanation as any. Or anti-grav units.
The Enterprise does seem to be a little on the large side compared with previous stuff – but I always thought the dimensions of previous ships was too small. They’ve got to be able to hold the crew, machinery, equipment, many of them have storage bays, etc… I think they underestimated the size of the ships before.
I could live with an Enterprise that big … but none of the visual evidence suggests that’s true. Unless the people of the new timeline are several times larger than people in the original timeline….
I always have and will continue to ignore all those unholy statements of the new Enterprise being this ridiculously much bigger than the previous one(s). It should be approximately like them, and also looks like it is in the movie (compared to the escape pod just to name one example out of many more). Besides, that size would not suit the design and is generally unreasonable as well as it is stupid when there is an established original. We are the fans, they are just a bunch of Star Wars effect producers. It might sound foolish, but I think that we know better than them. So they are bound to change their minds on this matter sooner or later, or else they should just be continously ignored. Otherwise we might aswell accept the serious scale errors of the Enterprise-A in “The Final Frontier”, as seen in the shuttlebay scenes. What would come next? An alternative timeline Enterprise-D measuring ~2 kilometres in length?! Honestly…
I’m fine with the Enterprise being that big. Didn’t they say the crew was 1,100 in the new film.
Also, I simply assume that this universe for all its Nero-incited divergences from the ‘regular’ timeline was different in the first place. The Kelvin had a crew of at least 800, for starters.
I kind of like to think that the neo-Trek universe is an extrapolation of our world now, so Khan Singh’s Eugenics Wars, for example, didn’t happen in in the 1990s (but may yet!)
For all those unconvinced at the size of the ent, I will say this, a lot of times when they do CG work, they build the cg models to scale so that the model size remains consistent throughout each shot. the size given by ILM is most likely the size the model was built to. remember too that the enterprise carried some refugees from vulcan, but i’m uncertain if it’s just the high command, or if othewr vulcans were evacuated to the ent
I don’t care how big the ship is as long as it makes sense. This is a new timeline after all. It just needs to fit and not be “larger on the inside than the outside”.
Pretty crazy that so much scrutiny on the ship size. It’s understood and clear that the ship is big, do we really need to know exact measurements? This is what killed the franchise and maintains the public perception out there that Trekkies are NERDS who need to get a life. Just enjoy the movie and quit picking it apart for once.
I don’t care for the exact size of the ship. For me it’s size is the same as original. Nobody will convince me!
For those who say they built bigger ships because of Narada: Don’t you think Enterprise is still tiny compared to the romulan vessel? If so then why bother?
718 meters? The ship does not look that big if you look at the window sizes and the bridge window seen from outside.
Well, what does it matter? I think the movie sucks even if the Enterprise has a traditional size.
77 Scott: I’ll enjoy what is enjoyable to me and not what you tell me to!
#50 – I’ll leave it then.
Star Trek was a great show, but that was another life.
The people from ILM are out of their minds! Did they even know Star Trek?
No way that ship is that big. Except from one scene (the one with the shuttles heading for the shuttle bay) every other scene suggest the ship’s just 300m+ long. The TMP-saucer would not make sense if the ship ist 718 meter long.
The Enterprise is most certainly not that big.
#67-I totally agree. This is science FICTION, everyone. Not science FACT!!! Geez…I am reminded what William Shatner once said years ago in a SNL skit………………
Where was Rick Sternbach when you needed him?
The ship is that big. The windows are ginormous! It all makes sense. Stop denying numbers!
Interesting! So what way do we go now in modern ship design? :) It seems the playing field is wide open again.
I don’t think the argument is about science fiction vs science fact. The problem is simply: When you set out to create an illusion, be it solely for entertainment or anything else, then you have to make this illusion believable or at least consistent. This is the whole point, nothing else.
I hoped the best for this movie and, at the same time, feared the worst. It’s not the director’s ego that messed this thing up, it’s the writers’ incompetence to tell a story that makes sense.
One thing that made me fear the worst was, of all things, the Transformers movie. Ok, it’s supposed to be a big dumb movie, but still…! It’s full with inconsistencies. Just the remember what Optimus said at one point in the film: We must not harm the humans!
Now, what about those Geiger-counters? No, you just poison the humans with radiation…
That’s just a tiny detail, I know, but the list goes on and on. The new Trek is just crammed with the same ill-conceived ideas that come up late at night, beginning with the questions: Wouldn’t it be cool, if…?
No, it wouldn’t.
@33
That is one huge boat! The picture of the ships amphitheatre reminds me of the new Enterprises shuttle bay. It looks to be about the same size, wouldn’t you say?
The size of the new E seems a bit more practical to me. When it comes to fictional starship designs it only makes more sense that it be large enough to support all the necessary equipment, materials, living quarters, and crew to operate a vessel of that nature. Truth be told: I don’t really care how big it is because it’s not like they’re gonna build the damn thing tomorrow. It’s a movie. Enjoy it…or don’t, but stop crying. Every tissue you use to dry your tears and blow your noses is another tree wasted. Think “Green” people!
87. Lee Kelso – June 10, 2009
YOUR CHILDHOOD IS RUINED
THE MOVIE IS CRAP
(I bet it only makes 20 dollars after all is said and done, they probably paid Nimoy 110 million dollars and the rest of the money went to the terrible script. They totally paid Nimoy millions so they could ruin his legacy and fart in the “general direction” of all the loyal Star trek fans)
The loyal Star Trek Fans that kept Enterprise going to our current 8th season.
Also, the Shuttle dimensions make sense, it even feels a bit small. My Girlfriend’s boat is 30 feet, and i can’t imagine its big enough.
There seems to be an awful lot of window-size experts around here…
63. Ashley
Y’know, that’s exactly what I have been thinking for the past month or so. =P I asked something very similar to Mr. Orci here on TrekMovie and he replied: Interesting. Why not?
http://trekmovie.com/2009/05/18/orci-kurtzman-to-answer-fan-questions-at-trekmovie-transcript-of-last-weeks-impromptu-qa/#1828686 (comment #481)
So who knows? ;)
no way the enterprise is that big- they are just bumping up the size to justify the lazy job they did on hiding the extra space on location in engenering with matt shots- they need to just let it go- keep the 400+ meter enterprise with its tardis engenering and do it right in the next movie.
Who cares how big the ship is?
OK, seriously does Abrams have size issues, and a bad case of “starship envy”?!
There is no logical reason for this ship to be scaled up to this size. Plus given that it strongly sounds and appears from the visual styling cues, and comments from Bruce Holcomb that the CG model may have initially been created at 1300ft (396m), then super-sized up.
Seriously, by just adding some extra windows in the saucer rim to visually reference that there could be 3-4 decks would have gone a long way to alleviate the confusion. But ILM may not of had the time to make the substantial changes (or Paramount wouldn’t give them the extra funds).
The windows are now approximately 5ft in height, and the docking ports 14ft diameter!
I’d been slowly warming up & liking this design, but at these scale numbers – not so sure anymore.
Here’s a reference picture I put tgether this morning.
http://farm4.static.flickr.com/3310/3613899580_047a090927_b.jpg
I hate the idea of the ship being that size. It simply has nothing to do with the original Enterprise.
So the Edselprise is over 2000 feet long ! Longer than the QM2 and was built on earth and blasted it into orbit, right ! And I wounder why we did not see that shot in the movie ! That because no one working on the film thought any of this out . Its all willy nilly!
I know that they say, but I like to go by what my eyes tell me. And when I see a figure walking on the catwalk, in relation to the starship being built, he looks about the same as the humans in relation to the starship in TMP, both in the shuttlebay and the top of the saucer.
Also the scale of Scotty and Kirk’s pod, touring the ship and flying behind the impulse engines, looks to be about the same as Pike’s shuttle flying bewteen the nacelles and impulse engine. So, in this fan’s eyes and mind, JJ’s ship is roughly the same size as the refit, which is basically the same as the original ship from TOS…despite what ILM tells me.
94. John Shorey – June 10, 2009
Who cares how big the ship is?
The designers should.
As much as l ‘enjoyed’ the movie, this lack of thoughtfulness in the overall design really turns me off. The ship should simply not be THAT large..I could see a small increase, but not to Galaxy Class size…that’s just preposterous.
That’s a really big ship!
My question still remains–I can accept the timeline change. Something has to happen if we want any new trek–BUT, if the timeline changes after Nero arrives at the Kelvin, shouldn’t the Kelvin look like it came from TOS, with it’s spinning orange nacelles, and 23rd century looking engineering? (not 20th century factory)
95. Ed
“OK, seriously does Abrams have size issues, and a bad case of “starship envy”?!”
We may never know, especially since he didn’t design the ship. -_-
81. Captain Rickover
“The TMP-saucer would not make sense if the ship ist 718 meter long.”
The saucer might have some resemblance to the TMP-saucer, but they are vastly different things. The saucer in this movie appears to be much thicker and a bit more bulbous.
The ship is about the same size as our old 1701. Just look at the locations of windows on primary hull. It is only 2 decks, just like the old one. If it was Galaxy class size it would have to be four decks of windows. If it was galaxy size it would have to have windows everywhere. The ship is obviously the same size as the TOS 1701. Just becasue they filmed the engineering scenes in a brewry factory does not mean the ship is huge…..
That “water chopper” was so stupid in engineering. Why can’t they can’t put a safety scrren on the inlet side? You need to press an emergency open for pipe out the bottom of a pipe? Why did all the water in the system not drain out?
They really could have used an engineer and TOS advisor to keep these writers from making such dumb mistakes all movie long.
For such a fun movie they really took the “science” out of science fiction.
I wouldn’t doubt that the choice to use the immense brewery as engineering was the single “biggest” factor in scaling up the Enterprise.
“As much as l ‘enjoyed’ the movie, this lack of thoughtfulness in the overall design really turns me off. The ship should simply not be THAT large..I could see a small increase, but not to Galaxy Class size…that’s just preposterous.”
No offense, but this isn’t the 23rd century and you’re not a starship engineer.
I believe some of you are taking the “fiction” out of Science Fiction. Obviously the 324,000,000 dollars worth people didnt really care about nit picky details (RUINED YOUR CHILDHOOD)
Why don’t we line up EVERY FREAKIN EPISODE OF EVERY STAR TREK EVER. You can nitpick in EVERY ONE… there is no consistent/perfect episode.
The Scale was always wonky in the show’s too. People forget there was no size consistance (Ex-Astris-Scientia is a good source for this). For god’s sake there were TWO BOP variants. One that held like 600 people, and one that held.. 12… and they were EXACTLY ALIKE… just upscaled.
RD – that window was ONLY on the WNMHGB Enterprise (which is what those pictures are from). Go watch the un-remastered Cage (or Menagerie, or WNMHGB for that matter) – you clearly see the bridge dome on the original 11 foot model. They added the window for the second pilot but they never made any new shots that showed it. And you can see the window just fine here: http://tos.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1×03hd/wherenomanhasgonebeforehd208.jpg
For all my complaints about Remastered they did make all three Enterprises. (Both pilots and the series.)
I have to put it out there. some of you guys in here are really lame for practically trashing what the team behind this film put together. I mean did you want the franchise to drift away into nothingness?
It’s one thing to argue the technical/mechanical issues in this new universe (i’m totally cool with that and as fans you have every right to debate/argue) but when you simply trash the film and the hard work that was put into it, it makes you look childish and simply stupid. Remember what Mr. Nimoy had to say about the people who kept posting over at trekweb. As a lifelong trek fan, i can say: we’re so much better than that. So hey, chill out.
If the new Enterprise is that big, then the escape pod which marooned Kirk on Delta Vega should have seated 50 people comfortably. And the shuttles and shuttlebay were way out of proportion to the ship’s dimensions.
I guess the boys at ILM just feel the need to exaggerate when it comes to size.
Narada 5 miles. wow
In the words of the immortal Benny Hill..”I like um big!”…We must get over this nitpicking for just nitpicking sake!…Size matters not…This is a new TREK..with a new ship!…It makes perfect sense that things are changing, and we must adapt with these changes. Though the Big E is a character in herself, I find that she is not a big as her captain I think…or the rest of the crew… Beside the TOS Enterprise, I have never felt the same love for any of her incarnations. I did feel sad when refit E fell In ST3…and loved seiing what 1701A’s got…
1701 bloody A,B,C, D, and E really did nothing for me in the sense of being one of the characters of the show…I felt very litle for the NX 01, Voyager, and though she was a tough little ship, the Defiant did little to instill the warmth of the original Enterprise 1701…this was coming home!
This is a new TREK, new people…new ship…new BIGGG scope…the ship should be just as big..I like um big too!
46- I just tried to post links to trekcore’s HD gallery where you can see the window pretty well in the remastered WNMHGB, but the system ate my post. Don’t know if its the links, so I took them out, but you can even see it in the first picture on page 1 of Trek Core’s r-WNMHGB galleries.
If the rest here is a repost because the first one suddenly goes through, I apologize:
Here’s a simple fact as well- we may never get a true answer. The numbers Paramount puts out may not be correct either- look at Paramount approved publications in the 70’s like “Star Trek Maps” or “The Spaceflight Chronology.” Maps says the TOS E is around 267 meters rather than 289. The Chronology had the Enterprise built in 2188. That carried on into “Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise” in the 80s. Fanon was tracking two possible time periods, both of which had been quoted in “official” publications until “The Neutral Zone” definitively established a year for TNG. Paramount may out out a number like 720 meters- and then have JJ come along in the sequel and have someone say it’s a mile long. For years we have been working off a preponderance of the evidence, and honest guys like Rick Sternbach have done their best to make things consistent, but the realities of production can come along an cast good intentions aside like a rag doll.
Why are there multiple sizes of the same Bird of Prey and spacedock? Because they had the models! The interpretation is left to those of us who care. I am one of those geeks. Put me in the 4%.
I think this all needs to be investigated and clarified by an in-depth article in the next issue of J.J. Abrams favorite monthly publication… ‘Nacelles Magazine’…
Ha ha ha ha ha… good one, ILM! 700 meters… those zany…
Wait. They’re serious?
The producers, writers, and designers of Star Trek should know how much fans (and new fans too) love the technical side of Star Trek. They should not have decided midstream that the ship was bigger than the Enterprise-D just so that the beer brewery engineering wouldn’t seem out-of-place. Engineering and the shuttle-deck in TMP seemed enormous and expansive, maybe bigger than what that ship should have had.
But based on everything else on screen in the new Star Trek, as others have mentioned: the windows, the docking ports, the shuttles, the escape pod, etc. the ship is not much bigger than the original or movie Enterprise. They should not suggest that it is such and someone involved ought to put a stop to it.
I also disagree with those who say it doesn’t matter or it’s stupid to talk about. Star Trek has always had a lot of fans who are interested in technical matters. People who buy books like Franz Joseph’s Starfleet Technical Manual or Mr. Scott’s Guide to the Enterprise or the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual. Rich Sternbach and others were always very helpful and brought a reality to the series that was usually consistent and exciting. To throw that away now would be a very poor choice. And to make the Enterprise ridiculously large so that it comes close in size to the Enterprise-D is just dumb. By the time to Borg arrive, Starfleet ships would be so big, they’d probably scare the Borg away. And what kind of sci-fi drama would that provide?
Well…judging from most of these posts:
Size DOES Matter!
I heard the new Enterprise was covered in Swiss Cheese. Granted, a half mile of Swiss Cheese is a bit hard to believe.
To borrow parts of a song from my favroite band, Does anybody really know what size it is & does anybody really care? It’s a beautiful ship, I’m more interrested in how the hell it got into orbit.
#121 – It’s a beautiful ship, I’m more interrested in how the hell it got into orbit.
I’d be interested to hear that. Even see how one gets to orbit in the next movie.
#71: “Tractor beam seems as good an explanation as any. Or anti-grav units… The Enterprise does seem to be a little on the large side compared with previous stuff – but I always thought the dimensions of previous ships was too small. They’ve got to be able to hold the crew, machinery, equipment, many of them have storage bays, etc… I think they underestimated the size of the ships before.”
Agreed. Having served aboard an older style aircraft carrier (USS KItty Hawk), which in itself was huge, and incredibly packed with machinery, storage, work and living spaces–and people… if you take that to the next logical step. the machinery needed to support warp drive HAS to be huge, not to mention a self-contained gravity and life support system that earthbound vessels have no need of.
and yeah, tractor beams or anti-gravs seems logical as any offering… I like it, though I have to admit I prefer the orbital drydock idea (but what I prefer is not that important–heck, people in hell want ice cubes too).
#72: “I could live with an Enterprise that big…”
Not only could I live with… I would love to live *on* (except in that awful engineering deck) LOL
#123 – Not only could I live with… I would love to live *on* (except in that awful engineering deck) LOL
–
I always thought someone would make a shipload of money if they had an Enterprise replica that could be visited. I’d pay good money to walk the decks.
Yes, it would be a costly endeavor…for sure.
106. Ryan – June 10, 2009
No offense, but this isn’t the 23rd century and you’re not a starship engineer.
Did I claim to be a starship engineer? I’m an artist / graphic designer by trade. There is enough collective technical support to hold things together for the Trek Universe. None of it is perfect, but generally it held together. ILM is making claims that don’t hold up under some pretty basic tests. Doesn’t take a starship engineer to figure that out. Rogue Vulcan made a pretty clear case over on Memory Alpha…the sizes ILM are quoting simply doesn’t match up with what we see onscreen in the physical sets. He extrapolated from several shots where characters were standing in front of the view screen and was able to come up with a far more realistic figure than what ILM is saying. lol In the end, I’m not concerned over whether the ship is a bit bigger than the original…but it’s not THAT big. It would have been nice if the team had put a bit more thought into things. The varying numbers are a sign of form over function…which is the approach taken in the majority of the movie. I still enjoyed it, but I would still have liked to see more care taken. With so much talk about making the movie ‘real’…it just strikes me as odd.
#96: cool graphic… nice work!
Here’s my scale comparison:
http://i10.photobucket.com/albums/a115/doubleofive/NewEnterpriseScales.jpg
I won’t comment on how big the ship should be.
CANON!!!!!!!!!!!!!
they never said on screen how big it was.
Problem Solved.
Well see… its big… and I like it… everythings seems to fit, if someone says the outer view doesn’t fit into this… GO GET TO AN OPTICIAN! You certainly need glasses…
There is now way this ship is as big as they claim. Just look at the people’s size compared to the ship. Case closed.
I can not believe there is a argument over the size of the ship and the crew. ITS A MOVIE but what the heck i will put my ,02$ in. In the the 40-50 a US Battleship had a crew of 5k, Gene went off this. The Enterprise was not an aircraft carrier in fact the only carrier was in BSG. Now depending on what web site your trolling the Enterprise was Constitution Class heavy cruiser.
Now with the new movie, it rocked. The Enterprise look great, better than ever. Todays technology is showing more systems being ran automated, which means less crew and smaller ships. You can see that today with today’s navy. Smaller ships smaller crews but more fire power with out the big guns. So why can the Enterprise be the same?
The best thing about the movie we get to start over, A total remake.
Post
#121
That’s a good question? Maybe we will get to see.
The new start better than the Wrath of Khan which was the best out of all the movies.
#39 That was one of my biggest disappointments in the movie. I wanted to see how they got that behemoth into orbit. Did they attach thrusters? Did they beam it? Did they lose any tiles in the process? ;-)
95 Ed: “OK, seriously does Abrams have size issues, and a bad case of “starship envy”?!”
LOL!
#125 – I apologize. I misunderstood where you were coming from. I was thinking that you were proposing that a huge starship was just unplausible. But I see what youre saying.
Bigger is better… but really, it’s how you use it.
We got some people ’round here with serious starshipis envy! ;)
Translation:
The size of the Enterprise doesn’t detract from my enjoyment of it.
And yes, Pike was quoted having 200-some crew, and Kirk right at 430 at one point. But who’s to say that was at full staff? Pike had lost quite a few people at Rigel… and Kirk’s ship seemed to be understaffed quite often. I suspect the 430 number is the regular crew needed to run the ship, and it doesn’t include part-time assignees such as a historian (McGivers), a specialist in Vulcan medicine (M’Benga), etc. The bulk of the 430 are people like Leslie, Lemli, Hadley, Gabler, Alden, Bailey, Stiles, …
#109: Ex-Astris-Scientia is also a good source for why ILM’s claims of size are just implausible. FORTUNATELY there is no dialogue or anything else that establishes this size in canon, so we are free to look at the size of windows, people, and the like to establish dimensions. Otherwise, alternate universe or no, the external windows would need to be about 10 feet tall each, and standard decks would need to have 15 foot ceilings to make them fit!
110. Tallguy wrote:
that window was ONLY on the WNMHGB Enterprise … Go watch the un-remastered Cage (or Menagerie, or WNMHGB for that matter)
Thanks for the link. To all those who say HD doesn’t make a difference … well then the Devil is in the details!
I did go back and look at the originals and as you say the dome is clearly visible. HOWEVER, If they used the WNMHGB model at all in the second pilot, I did not see it, most of the shots were re-used from The Cage.
The Cage model also had a window, which is what they removed from the re-mastered Cage. The window in The Cage was a more appropriately sized-to-scale of the oversized “derby” bridge dome, which they put into proper scale when it went to series. In the Cage it was a small black rectangular window which appeared in the upper portion of the 2nd story of the dome where the bridge would be. The window in WNMHGB was definitely not to scale, spanning across two floors, so it’s probably best it did not make it into TOS. I did not realize the amazing attention to detail CBS-D paid to actually render the second pilot Enterprise, even though it did not actually make it into the original WNMHGB.
This just proves they had problems with scale from the beginning, not just ST09.
#131: “Now depending on what web site your trolling the Enterprise was Constitution Class heavy cruiser.”
The TOS Enterprise was established as “Constitution Class” in canon during “Relics”.
Oh, come on guys, don’t get bent out of shape over this — let’s just fall back on that old standby, Fan Rationalization! Like so:
EXCERPTED FROM PROCEEDS OF THE STARFLEET CORPS OF ENGINEERS BIANNUAL CONVOCATION, STARDATE 2260.6.1
“Prior to the Kelvin Incident, starship design had been running up against what seemed to be an insurmountable utmost size limit. Failure to heed it resulted in dangerous structural deficiencies — the oversized Kelvin class, a most eggrecgious example, tended towards structural integrity failure at high stresses. As a result, Starfleet design doctrine had revamped in the 2230s, adopting a rigorous program of downsizing to avoid this. The foremost casualty was the in-development Constitution Class, whose initial conceptualization had called for a ship of over 900 meters in length. The post-revision plans, though retaining the overall spaceframe, had radically downsized the frame in deference to these subspace stresses, with the disappointed structural engineers provisionally and begrudgingly settling at a final scope that was almost a THIRD their original size. The ships would suffer dreadfully in terms of power, sophistication, and in the amount of specialized personnel and equipment they could carry — and their complement of support craft, especially, would have to be drastically reduced.
All this changes, however, following the Kelvin Incident. A mysterious five-mile-long craft (rumored to be Romulan, though Starfleet never confirms this) engages and destroys the USS Kelvin… but not before the Kelvin is able to obtain extensive external and (courtesy of the late Catain Robau) internal sensor data. Most critically, the survivors bring back data on an internally propagated energy field generated by the intruder ship that, according to the scans, is absorbing MILLIONS of kilodynes of structural stress. Jubilant Federation engineers are able to reproduce the technology, which they dub a “structural integrity field”. Immediately putting the discovery into practical use, the engineers are freed of the previous size constraint. Several designs in progress are reverted to their earlier, larger original sizes – including the Constitution. Though this double refactoring of the plans delays inception of the class by over a decade, the trade-off as deemed worthwhile, given what is gained in the larger, more capable design. (Starfleet brass, meanwhile, reeling from the Kelvin’s handy defeat by the intruder ship, mauy have other, more militaristic purposes in mind for the upscaled class….)
[and just for additional retcon fun]
Other results of the Kelvin Incident were less positive, however: serving as Assistant Chief Engineer on the Kelvin was T’Doofa, a regular remote correspondent to various prestigious starship engineering publications. Her loss in the disaster cuts short her highly influential series of articles outlining her iconoclastic theory of Starship Interior Design, BPCAS (Bright, Primary Colors, Angular, Simple.) Based in part on the prevalent “look” of the Vulcan homeworld, this design ethos advocated plain, untextured surfaces, discreetly camouflaging working parts behind simple bulkheads, using colored lighting to influence mood, etc. Her death throws the continued growth in popularity of this previously rising design philosophy into serious doubt…”
See? Easy and fun.
I concur!
#139 Thumbs up fun! Reminds me of the Best of Trek books :)
Thanks Daoud, that’s kind of what I was going for!
I would love to see a Kelvin based Trek novel or comic book.
#139: Doktor Gonzo, that was awesome. I wish that Trek fans in general would have more of that kind of enthusiastic spirit regarding the new movie, as well as the future of Star Trek.
I have seen a lot of comments stating that the size of this new, alternate timeline Enterprise is “impossible,” or “ridiculous.” However, most of the comments do not explain the reasoning behind this criticism – they just say “it’s preposterous!” And leave it at that.
To those who made those comments, I ask: Why would it be impossible or ridiculous for the Constitution Class to be built to this scale?
Merculin… Because it ruins their childhood.
Just judging from the Bridge window, which you can see on the outside and the size of the 5-10 to 6-0 people near it, it doesn’t appear that the ship would be that big.
Hmm.. Keenser’s eyes looked like a practical effect to me. I don’t know why they wouldn’t have been, just two chromed rods that move back and forth.
77. Scott wrote:
Pretty crazy that so much scrutiny on the ship size… This is what killed the franchise and maintains the public perception out there that Trekkies are NERDS who need to get a life.
I assure you this is NOT what killed the franchise. Maintains the public perception yes. But since when did a “Trekkie” care?
These kinds of arguments have been going on for two years before the movie came out and as far as I can tell have had little or no impact on Trek at the box-office, unless of course you think think Trek should have made double the money by now if Trekkers had not been nit-picking this movie apart. I guarantee perfectly normal people who have never discussed Trek over dinner have seen the movie, loved it, told their friends, and could care less what any Trekker debates in the privacy of his own internet chat room. Obsessive Trekker’s debates about canon or nacelle size seem to be having no effect on the relative self-esteem of so-called “normal” wide audiences so as to dampen the general public’s enthusiasm for the movie by association.
Well when I was a kid watching Star Trek after school, I knew that the Enterprise was about as big as my imagination…
just sayin’
It’s not the size that matters – it’s how you use it.
Of course that’s what guys with small “ships” say.
@ 29. RD & 148. RD;
Thank you.
I love everyone’s enthusiasm over the size of a fictional ship.
The nuclear wessel Enterprise was 1,123 ft (342 m), which is probably where the TOS number originally came from. Now the world’s biggest naval ship is the Knock Nevis at 458.45 m (1,504.10 ft). Do you see where I’m going with this? Why is it so “preposterous” that a ship from the 23rd Century be 2,357 (718 m)?
Its completely realistic. How do you know what size those windows are? You DON’T.
145. Duncan MacLeod
I’m not sure what your neurotic obsession with whether other people feel that their childhood has been ruined or not is all about, but I really doubt that very many people actually feel that way. You’re starting to sound like a very lame broken record.
Ooops, I just pulled a billy goat gruff…
Anyway, suffice it to say that this whole argument over the size is kind of illustrative of my whole take on the movie. While there are many things to really enjoy (foremost being the cast), there are plenty of poorly thought out or plain old irritating change-for-the-sake-of-change things that at least even out the good things and may, in the long run, outweigh them.
#153: You are correct: we have not seen the size of the windows compared to a person. But given that the windows and docking ports are the same shape and placement as in the Enterprise Refit, it is logical to state that either (a) the ship size is about the same as the Enterprise Refit or (b) the windows and docking ports are proportionally bigger. If the ILM figures are to be believed, then the windows and ports would be about twice as large as in the refit.
This would mean docking ports about 16 feet or so in diameter, and windows about 8-10 feet tall, with deck ceilings to make them fit. Yes, it is possible . . . but as many have pointed out it would be silly. It is far more reasonable and logical to simply dismiss ILM and go with what we see and what makes sense: a size relatively similar to the original TOSEnterprise.
The only reason for this ludricous size is that the film producers want to make that awful brewery set to fit.
I have seen the movie 6 times already and for me the shot of the E being constructed cleary shows a person walking besides the Warp nacelle.
That person has what? 12m???
And if you do not care for the size issue, just step aside from the discussion.
154. earthclanbootstrap – June 10, 2009
I see you have made the cardinal mistake of taking me seriously!
I jest! I jest!
I am as obsessed as the next person, but i find grinding myself down with minutia takes away from my enjoyment of the franchise as a whole. It just seems that sometimes people are so obsessed about singular details, that they lose perspective on the whole…
157. Duncan MacLeod
I say somewhat sheepishly: oh… okay, I get it now… as in “THAT CAKE IS A TOTAL DISASTER!!!!” I apologize, I think everyone arguing so very, very seriously about it kind of fouled up my humor sensors. Apology hereby offered! ;-)
Meh.
I think it looks funny that big, especially in comparison to other SF vessels. Doesn’t make me enjoy the movie any less.
What is a little annoying, however, is the inconsistent portrayal of the ship in the *actual* film. It’s big in some scenes, but small in others. There are 42 shuttles in once scene, but barely one fits through the shuttlebay door in the next. It’s like deck 72 all over again.
Since ST isn’t exactly known for its accurate ship size portrayal, it doesn’t take away form enjoyment, but it is a little annoying that, with all the things they tried to make new and improved (with mixed results in my opinion), and all the extra time they had, they didn’t take the time to really look at their own VFX work and see if it was consistent. Their work is GREAT in terms of quality, but a little lacking in terms of consistency of scale.
Still a nice flick.
-P
Wow, wish I had an edit option:
*once = one
*form = from
-P
160.
I think the answer…. FORUM!!!
Then we can keep the off-topic stuff off the threads…
I like the idea where you click a link in the article that automatically generates a forum topic for that thread… ala Ars-Technica.
158. earthclanbootstrap – June 10, 2009
I should probably use tags more often LOL!
Its all good!
#49 – “I’m sorry, but I always hated the ADMITTEDLY FAN-DERIVED measurements of the 1701.”
Sorry, my friend, but no.
The original measurements of the 1701 were established *by its designer*, in collaboration with the show’s producers. Everything that has come since has been based, directly or not, on that original 947-foot figure.
#67- “Who cares about the size of the effin ship? Some of your are arguing over a FICTITIOUS SPACESHIP. Chill…please…”
Think of it like this. For many fans, the Enterprise is, in its way, a character, as much as Kirk and Spock. Transforming it to the degree the new numbers suggest would be at least as significant as gender-swapping or changing the personalities of the humanoid characters, and people react to that.
Also, for a very long time, most folks’ ideas aboput Star Trek’s world were heavily influenced by the sizes of the ships that inhabited it. And those sizes were all based on the scale of the original 1701. Change that, and it transforms everything, in ways much greater than Mr. Abrams or the writers ever suggested would be happening. And people are reacting to *that*, too.
#144 – ” I wish that Trek fans in general would have more of that kind of enthusiastic spirit regarding the new movie, as well as the future of Star Trek.”
I had that enthusiasm…until they decided that Trek’s world was not worth preserving and continuing. And then I lost it. QED
The actual dimensions of the original Enterprise were never mentioned on-screen, therefore they aren’t canon. QED.
On another note, I never believed in those sizes on the original anyway. For one thing, the two deck saucer rim? No. That makes NO sense whatsoever. For the TOS Enterprise, that’d be cutting the three forward windows in half. Makes no sense to me. Heck, a while back a friend asked me how big the original Enterprise was and when I told him, we both thought “That doesn’t seem right.”
To all of you who don’t care for the size of Enterprise:
Some things shouldn’t be changed. Enterprise is a symbol. It’s a legendary spaceship. They can refurbish it a little bit but they can’t make it bigger. If they do – it’s not the Enterprise.
@163
You’re right! For me the Enterprise is the main character of Star Trek. No Trek without it!
Now tell me – why should they make Kobayashi Maru with 3 Klingon cruisers if a Federation ship is that big? They are no threat then. And the scenario doesn’t make sense…
I don’t buy into the JJ-Prise being half a mile long. The window sizes don’t fit. The windows would have to be two or three decks high for it to be so huge. I’ll just ignore what they say about that.
All in all, though, that and the brewery engineering room are the only complaints I would have, though. I really enjoyed the movie, and I’m eagerly anticipating the next one :)
Has anyone ever considered that Humans in this alternative timeline are giants compared to average humans in the prime timeline so therefore the Enterprise has to be larger to accomodate them? Think of a human being 10 to 15 ft tall compared to the average 6ft human. It would make sense for things to be bigger.
HA VINDICATED AGAIN!!!! I was right about the size when the teaser was released and I sketched this pic
http://i188.photobucket.com/albums/z138/bearsturf/EnterpriseComparison.jpg
!! I was right a few weeks back when Bad Robot announced the offical-ish size and I’m Right again!!!! I love being right!!! HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA HA!!!
This E could crush The Flutist’s E’s into paste!!!!
I did some comparisons of the Enterprise and scale, and according to scaled drawings, there is not way the Enterprise is 781 metres long. 300 maybe.
#127: nice, but you neglected to include NX-01.
Uh, you did forget, didn’t you?
#132: “That was one of my biggest disappointments in the movie. I wanted to see how they got that behemoth into orbit. Did they attach thrusters? Did they beam it? Did they lose any tiles in the process?”
Oddly enough, in today’s Navy we have boats called side-load warp tugs, maybe there is 23rd century equivalent? (grin)
#155 – how do you know that the windows aren’t 8 feet high, or the docking ports 16 feet high?
If I were building docking ports on a ship, I would make sure they could accommodate a “cargo” sized opening. Even if you don’t buy that, they could simply accommodate an area larger than the actual door itself to establish a reliable seal with multiple vessels, not just starfleet pods.
As for the windows, in looking at the high res photos, two things jump out at me. There are very few windows on the ship to begin with. The only functional window we actually see is on the bride and it used for observation. It only makes sense that on decks where there are windows that they would have a similar function. Therefore, all of the large square and rectangular windows appear to be large looking glass observational types in the 8-10 foot range.I don’t see anyone complaining about the 16 foot high windows in TNG. Also, if you look at the high res photo, you’ll see very tiny “porthole” windows around the saucer section in between the larger observation windows. They are quite tiny and better identify the size of the decks. I count 3 decks per band for roughly 12 decks in the saucer’s mid-section alone.
http://img.trekmovie.com/images/st09/st09_hr_ncc1701.jpg
http://trekmovie.com/2008/12/30/super-high-resolution-images-for-star-trek-2009/
111. PJ – June 10, 2009
“some of you guys in here are really lame for practically trashing what the team behind this film put together. I mean did you want the franchise to drift away into nothingness?”
There IS a middle ground. They could have been a lot more careful about the changes they made and about explaining things within the movie — and Star Trek would still have made it. It’s not all or nothing. Very few of us actually want things to remain exactly, exactly the same. But a bridge that somehow resembled the original would have been really freaking appreciated. They just chose not to do it.
#164: “The actual dimensions of the original Enterprise were never mentioned on-screen, therefore they aren’t canon. QED.”
Actually, a diagram of the Enterprise, showing its size as approximately 1000 feet (complete with scale) was show on screen in “The Enterprise Incident”. This diagram was reproduced in The Making of Star Trek.
So the size of the TOS Enterprise at about 1000 feet is established canon.
If the new Enterprise is that big, how large is the wrecked saucer section it passes in front of at Vulcan when the Enterprise goes thru thedestroyed fleet? That saucer was nearly as long as the Enterprise, I wonder how big the rest of that ship was?
The size of the new Enterprise doesn’t bother me, it just doesn’t look like it could be that big. Maybe if the saucer and engineering hull were larger, we all know the nacelles are definately large enough…
@172
“If I were building docking ports on a ship, I would make sure they could accommodate a “cargo” sized opening. Even if you don’t buy that, they could simply accommodate an area larger than the actual door itself to establish a reliable seal with multiple vessels, not just starfleet pods.”
Then how big a photon torpedo launcher is?
This size is ridiculous
#172: You can accept if you wish a “double the size” on windows and ports that just HAPPEN to appear the same proportional size to the rest of the ship as with the Enterprise refit. It would be a remarkable coincidence, would require incredibly high ceilings on the ship (a seeming waste of space), and would require ignoring that in the same picture you linked to that a shuttle with a typical 8-10 foot docking port couldn’t link up with the ports on the ship.
I fail to understand why people WANT the ship to be so much larger than it appears in comparison with other elements of the film, and so much larger than the TOS Enterprise that it was intended to replace. Seems to me that we should trust our own eyes and – in the absence of actual canon to the contrary – discount ILM and assume the size is relatively the same as the original TOS Enterprise.
#144: “To those who made those comments, I ask: Why would it be impossible or ridiculous for the Constitution Class to be built to this scale?”
Yeah, let’s talk about impossibilities. 100 years ago people would be laughed at (maybe even committed) for saying man could fly; 60 years ago, people said it would be impossible to go to the moon; today we say FTL travel is impossible; 25 years ago there was basically three TV networks–no internet, no email, no blogs (gasp).
Each generation has benefited by those who refused to acede to the naysayers. Sad thing though, each generation seems to forget those who paved the road to our present.
For example, today’s 20-somethings (and younger) cannot even fathom the notion of life without a cell phone on their belts while those of us in our 30s and above can clearly remember feeling lucky if we even had a telephone in our bedrooms.
See how 20 years makes a difference?
#178: It is not *impossible* for a Constitution Class vessel to be 2000 feet long. It is not *impossible* for it to be 5000 feet long. It simply doesn’t match the data as seen on screen, which supports a size about the same as the TOS Enterprise.
Pretty simple, really.
@178
And that’s why we should change it? Then the next James Bond should be changed to Jane Bond, Indiana Jones should wear a baseball cap and Superman should be blond.
QED?
As in the military world, I hate acronymns, and hate them in internet language too.
Doing some comparisons as to the size of the Enterprise vs. people. On the Christmas 2008 trailer, the segment where workers are on the spine of the Enterprise, the size of the workers, and scale wise would say the Enterprise in within the 300 metre range.
Where the workers are on the edge of the saucer, the radius indicates the saucer is probably no more than 200 metres, more likely 150 metres. Making the Enterprise in the 300 metre neighbourhood.
Where the worker was on the nacelle pylon, the curvature of the nacelle pylon there dismisses the possibility of the 718 metre length. More realistic if the ship were in the 300 metre range.
When it is revealed that the ship is the Enterprise, I could not lock it down.
Perhaps this altering of the timeline has also altered how big your standard humanoid are. Perhaps Kirk, Uhura, the hot Orion girl, Spock, etc. are all now 12 feet tall. Would that help you all who care accept the size of the ship at 718 meters??
Just sayin’.
#181: “QED” stands for quod erat demonstrandum, which translates to “which was to be demonstrated”. It is frequently used at the end of logical argument to essentially mean “the answer I have derived is the same that I sought to derive”, or sort of a “see, told ya!”. It predates the internet and was used by the ancient Greeks.
Randy give it up brotha. You are WRONG!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Now go to the Dean’s office!!!!
VIVA GALACTICAPRISE!!!!!!!!!!!!
And Portholes now about the same size as the big ass oval portholes on the Ent-D (Which had waaaaaaaaaaaaay to many portholes to make delicious targets for weapons)
Now Bring on the Star Destroyers!!!! Next Gen Era sized and techno enabled ship, without interiors like a LaQuinta Inn and the ship’s kindergarten and elementary school, plus James T. Kirk = Destroyed assed Star Destroyers!!!
For all of those who keep telling me it doesn’t matter what size the ship is:
Why do you care so much that it might matter to a person like me? When I first started watching Star Trek 40 years ago, the FIRST thing that caught my attention was the Enterprise. I was completely fascinated by the fact that this absolutely unbelievable ship was soaring majestically across my TV screen in a manner that I had never seen before. I became obsessed with trying to make my own Enterprise to pay with and look at until I finally got my first Enterprise model at the age of 6. I built it and fawned over it and cherished it for many years. In fact, I still own it. And I have continued building models of ships ever since as a fantastic hobby. I have built well over 20 different Enterprises in my life and have definite opinions on what I like and what I don’t. As a matter of fact I have two more Enterprises in the closet that I am going to build in the coming months. So you see, to some of us, it does matter. As much as Kirk, Spock, and Mcoy are important characters in Star Trek, so are the ships. At least to me. When the Enterprise was destroyed in TSFS, I sobbed almost as much as I did when Spock died in TWOK. Please don’t be so dismissive of something that you don’t get or aren’t into. I have spent the better part of my life studying up (in my leisure hours, certainly) on the different classes of ships in not only Star Trek, but most of science fiction.
And I still ‘aint buying that it’s nearly a half mile long.
#185: Sorry, but multiple exclamation marks and “street lingo” do not really bolster an argument. That is the equivalent to yelling louder to encourage people to accept a position on something. It doesn’t change a thing: the new ship *appears* consistent with the original Enterprise in terms of size throughout all known images of it. That is despite claims by ILM (or anyone else) of sizes that are *not* consistent.
#179:
Actually I am not arguing one way or the other regarding the size of the Enterprise. I was just saying nothing is impossible…
Maybe the things we assume are window ports are nothing of the sort…. I recall reading somewhere 25 years ago that the surface features we assumed were windows, are/were not… not that I buy that explanation either.
Back to acronyms for a second… as a journalist I discourage using them, clear writing is superior… it makes the readers’ job easier. Acronyms, to me, act as a writers means of being smug, superior or lazy (for those who don’t want to take the time to write things out).
Lastly, this whole argument about the size of the Enterprise really is mute…. it’s a movie, folks. enjoy it for what it is… or not.
Far nicer and more elegant than the eventual screen image as depicted – I still think the shot as shown needed something extra to add to the emotional imapct of Kirk’s first view of the E. Then again I was so rolling along on a trip of enjoyment with the film it didn’t spoil the moment in the slightest, but something closer to John’s art would have been nicer to look back on in retrospect. The distracting part for me was more the idea of basic manual 1950’s welders being used – something more futuristic in thinking for construction techniques 250 years hence would have struck me as being more realistic.
189 wrong post sorry
I agree with Chris”Beep” Pike, fun arguement and mute because it’s OFICIAL ETCHED IN GRANITE CANNON. Yo!!! Holla at ya RH!!
Just look at it this way, folks: ILM does not have sway as to the length of the Enterprise.
The quasi-canon Ballantine blueprints are a starting point, and I am sure the geeks at ILM have a few copies lying around. Next is Andrew Probert’s majestic re-fit, which ILM has modeled as well.
There must be at least one bright spark there who would have raised his/her hand at the staff meeting to make sure the “fact” of the Enterprise’s dimensions were known.
Of course, Trek has done this before. Klingon BOP’s which once had a compliment of “a dozen officers and men” were stupidly supersized by TNG to the point that they were larger than the Enterprise-D (Yesterday’s Enterprise is a good example).
Someone at ILM simply should ‘restate the number’ to 300m, and we’ll all quiet down ;-).
Said in the credits that Kerner Optical worked on the film – Kerner was formerly the ILM Model Shop.
So I question the claim that no model work was done for the film.
Weirdos!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
#192
Don’t forget the scene in Trek IV-The One With The Whales, where the ginormous BOP is hovering over the tiny whaling vessel. Actually the scale of the BOP changed a couple of times in that one film alone.
And Garth, where in the movie does it state that the E is a half mile long? Only THEN does it become canon.
Laaaaame. Why did the design share the saucer shape with the TMP Ent if the size was going to be twice as big?
I miss the days when Jefferies, Probert and the like would put thought into how everything was put together…
#191: THX-1138 (#195) is right: canon is what is seen or heard during the show or movie. The original TOS Enterprise’s size was established during “The Enterprise Incident”. The size for the newer version has not yet been established in canon. So we can only go by what we see – which thus far supports a size consistent with the original Enterprise. And excessive use of exclamation points won’t change those facts.
Or, as my son’s science teacher says: “Everyone is entitled to their opinion, but no one is entitled to change the facts; the data is the data.”
139-
Thank you.
More creativity and less complaining.
(I suppose that should be “the data *are* the data, but that sounds odd.)
#67- “Who cares about the size of the effin ship? Some of your are arguing over a FICTITIOUS SPACESHIP. Chill…please…”
For me, the reason I’m concerned with it is this: Does the presented reality come across as believable?
When people see two rows of windows on a spaceship (or building, or airplane), they assume one row corresponds to one deck (or floor). For me, seeing two rows of windows on the edge of the primary hull implies two decks.
I realize the ship is imaginary. I go to a movie to loose myself in the story that’s being presented to me. When I see something that couldn’t jive with reality, it takes me out of the movie experience.
Perhaps that helps people understand why this is a concern for many people?
Believability for a spaceship as iconic as the Enterprise is crucial. 430 people live and work on the ship, and the Franz Joseph blueprints in 1974 sliced and diced all the decks t show us how it worked.
I think in the last 43 years, someone would have said “Matt Jefferies’ original design was undersized for a crew of that size.” But Andrew Probert did his movie refit based on the classic original. If the E had to balloon up to 700+m long to show up in the shots with the Narada, I say ‘who gives a shit?” Just declare a different length and let the issue die.
You don’t make the Batmobile into an RV or the Tardis into a Post Office. You don’t mess with the Enterprise.
Whoops. I accidentally posted this in the shipyard thread as opposed to this one. Anyways:
John Eaves on the 2357′ figure:
“These figures are what was tossed around in the planning stages so without a direct confirmation from ILM or Bad Robot you can give or take a hundred feet of 2357 and your just about right!”
When asked whether the ship was designed small, and then scaled up:
“She was always planned to be a huge ship,, No scaling up and the original TOS wasn’t even used as a measuring rod,, They set out to make a big ship, drew up the concepts , set a rough figure of measurement and then went for it!”
See: http://johneaves.wordpress.com/2009/06/10/new-ship-scales-revealed/#comments
201. AJ : “…the E had to balloon up to 700+m long to show up in the shots with the Narada…”
Seems kind of backwards. Why not make the Narada smaller? Was it because the Narada had been previously defined? Because it had history to it? Because everybody besides the design teams and producers had seen it before? Nope. None of those reasons. But the Enterprise did have those reasons. And they chose to change the Enterprise… ?
So if ILM said the Enterprise was the exact same size as the original you wouldn’t take their word for it either right?
You see, as long as an entity says or states something that fans don’t agree with then it makes them wrong, regardless of the fact that they CREATED THE DAMN MODEL
This movie ruined Star Trek. They are failures.
Assuming that John Eaves is correct, then what Ryan Church designed, and what they put on the screen, just doesn’t jive with the scales they are talking about. Somewhere, somehow, it seems like there was some sort of disconnect.
As a few have pointed out, it used to be that the modelmakers and the set designers sat down together and *worked this stuff out* at the beginning of production. It spoke to a level of care being taken that doesn’t seem to have happened on this film. It also suggests that, as a director, Mr. Abrams perceived verisimiltude of setting as less important than other aspects of the story. I’m sad to say that, if this is true, it’s yet another area in which this production team and I part company.
why is getting the ship off the ground such a hard thing to process. The ship has space warping engines. Are you all really suggesting that the warp engines can not produce a warp field that equates to greater than 1G of lift???? If the Enterprise can not break Earth’s Gravity what hope does it have navigating space??? How many Gs of force do you think the original had to counteract to tight orbit the sun??? Please apply a little logic.
Aaagh!
206
could not have said it better
now let me add my own.
Remember those days before the end of the strike and the end of production. Those days before the studio saw the daylies and thought this was bigger/better then they thought and wanted to go big summer blockbuster with huge addvertising blah blah blah. Remember those days. the days when JJ wanted this to be super secret. Non disclosure agreements. NO ONE reads the entire script. only special occasians under gaurd in a room return it when your done? the various depts only get the portion of the script that apllies to them. Black tarps/blankets to hide people etc. Jackets to hide costumes etc. Do you remember those days.
I didnt like this movie. Have no love for JJ. BUT I loved what he was doing then.
Maybe the left hand didnt know what the right hand was doing. maybe its ’cause JJ’s secretive nature here got in the way. A failure of its own success.
ILM knows the numbers better than we do, I suppose. If they say the ship is 2,357 feet long, well, the ship is 2,357 feet long.
By the way, in my opinion the original Enterprise has always been undersized, with too few crew members. Not believable.
#205 – I totally agree! Star Trek is finally dead!! I suggest you move on….
#186 – Your post says it all. However, some of us have actually moved on, become adults, have lives. We know our childhood is gone. I was actually very similar to you. I had spiral bound notebooks with my own designs of Starfleet vessels. I think my mom threw them out when I moved out ….
As for the size, I don’t really care. But it’s obvious in the original trailer and the scenes in the movie that the widest part of the saucer has at least 5 or 6 decks. Not every deck has a window, nor should it. This is not a cruise ship. The saucer is also thicker than in any other version. It’s obviously a much bigger ship than the OS E. As a 40 year Trek fan I certainly didn’t notice any problems. The one and only time I can remember noticing scale problems was in TVH. And you know what, I said WTF?, remembered it was a fun science FICTION movie, a FUN Trek movie, and enjoyed it. It’s still one of my favorite Trek movies.
I love how people everyone’s preaching: either about how big the ship aparently is; or whether people shoudl be concerned with the ships size.
Someone already said hereLook at the shot of kirk’s life pod being shot out of the port on the neck. The pod is huge or the ship is not over 2000 feet long. There are huge scale issues in this version of Trek! It was not thought out clearly! THe scale issues are clear in the fact that there are very few windows on the Edselprise! Window are a good way to show scale.
#210 – I agree. It may be sacrilege to some, but the original design was flawed in many ways. Much the same way the “earth is flat” idea was. No offense to the OS team meant. It’s called progress.
To open a new debate: I feel The E became more ugly as it evolved. I almost threw up when I saw the TNG E for the first time! Way too many windows, and too aerodynamic (which is not necessary in space). It, and all of the TNG movie E’s I simply hate! But I never even thought about the size, it never mattered. I just hated the design. I think the “new” E is just fine, kinda beautiful in fact.
Wow, way too many window-size-queens/experts to argue with. Funny, while enjoying a good Trek movie for the first time in 20 years, I failed to notice that crucial element……….
Jeez, next time I recommend an article to Trekmovie, maybe I should make sure there are no NUMBERS in it. :P
My apologies to all of you for unduly raising your blood pressure.
I at least hope there are a few SFX geeks among us who found the article interesting.
Totally Agree with #210
ILM is pretty much the BEST CGI company there is (non-animation) and I actually feel honoured they worked their magic on our movie. So if they say the new “Connie” is 718m, then its officially: 718m, despite how any fan-site authors (like Ex Astris Scientia) may argue.
Now, what I wanna see is: gigantic, super crazy advanced, re-imagined new universe Enterprise-D and other TNG ships, like 2 km’s long with 78 decks, and 5 shuttlebays! wowowowowow :D
@217: Hee. Maybe that turboshaft from ST:V will finally make sense then. :)
#211
Now your just being a flamer. Quit trying to imply that somehow you are superior to those of us who might feel passionate about this. Guess what: The article is about the size of the ship. May we please discuss it? Would that be alright with you? How about if it doesn’t suit you, you just go and peruse some of the other articles on the site.
For your information, I am a grown up human being. I have raised 3 children through high school with one in college, one raising their own family and one in the military. I have three more at home and I own my own business and it is quite successful. Perhaps you have me mixed up with someone you are more familiar with as I am sure you don’t know me at all. Perhaps your issues stem from your mother throwing out your things and you have jealousy issues wioth those of us whose mothers didn’t trash their belongings in an effort to rid themselves of their children.
Oops. Sorry. That was out of line.
2,357 feet? Really?
As Pine says to Nimoy in the movie: Bullshit.
#219 – Thus spoke the ultimate flamer! See every other thread on this site and see who is the flamer. I prefer the term troll. You can be counted on to criticize every positive mention of this film, simply because it does not continue your childhood vision of Trek.
Being “grown up” and adult, and acting adult, are two very different distinctions. As are remembering my childhood fondly but leaving it behind, as opposed to clinging to it desperately, as if it never ended. You assume a lot, apparently, about my relationship with my mother. I purposely left that stuff behind, I had outgrown it as an adult. She did not “trash my belongings”, lol! And we remain very close. So who has mother/son issues? It sure isn’t me…….
Discussion is fine, I enjoy it. But obsession is another matter, especially over trivial matters such as the size of a fictional starship.
This is ballshit if the USS Enterprise 1701 is 2,357 ft them USS Enterprise E 1701 has to be 10,000 ft long because the first Enterprise was half the size of the Enterprise E
E is number one and will always be demand more films with the Enteprise E in who’s with me comment back
#182. I don’t know about that. This shot, while not canon since it is not in the film, is presumably based on the models ILM claims they conceived at this size from the beginning:
http://trekmovie.com/images/sttease/sttease_01.jpg
The scale can be pretty easily obtained across the nacelle and then applied to the whole ship. Based on a 6′ tall person I’m getting around 140′+ wide nacelle. That translates to a roughly 2,000′+ long ship.
The figure quoted by ILM sounds about right, all the onscreen evidence points to it being somewhere between 700 and 750 meters in length.
ha-ha, this is too funny. When we first saw shots of the big E months ago, all the newbie next gen folks dumped on people like me for saying that TOS looked way better. Funny now that the new E is as big as the next ships, that the next gen folks are crying about how their galaxy sized ships have now been trivialized. And who gives a flying f about that NX-01 piece of garbage?
# 210
First, I’m not sure if ILM is aware of the size-issue. It seems that they have
used two different Enterprises in the movie. I wouldn’t doubt that the last model they used is over 2000 feet long. But the most scenes in the movie contradicts that statement. You don’t believe me? Watch it again and be concentrated on the two shuttle-scenes. You’ll find out that the hangar seems to have different sizes, one very big and one standard-Enterprise-size when Pike’s shuttle leaves the hangar. Another evidence for the 1000 feet Enterprise: Riverside yards. You could see people working directly under the saucer. The ship in that scene is 100% not any longer than 1000 feet -except they’ve hired giants for the shipbuilding.
hmmmm…. even at 2,000 feet long, it is still smaller than the Fesarius, yes folks you and I are much alike, both proud of our ships…
I’m just glad the discussion is finally over.
The new Enterprise is (and always was) 2,357 feet long.
Now back to work on my schematics and deckplans!
I just arrived from another viewing. The scene in the Riverside shipyards shows clearly workers under the saucer and alongside the nacelle.
No way a 700m ship could be seen in it´s full glory by the camera perspective of Kirk.
Sorry ILM, but your fanboys are wrong.
Was Keenser’s name ever actually said in the movie?
Yes, we know. You hate the movie. I know this because you like to tell us over…and over…and over again.
>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>
209. Enc – June 10, 2009
206
could not have said it better
now let me add my own.
Remember those days before the end of the strike and the end of production. Those days before the studio saw the daylies and thought this was bigger/better then they thought and wanted to go big summer blockbuster with huge addvertising blah blah blah. Remember those days. the days when JJ wanted this to be super secret. Non disclosure agreements. NO ONE reads the entire script. only special occasians under gaurd in a room return it when your done? the various depts only get the portion of the script that apllies to them. Black tarps/blankets to hide people etc. Jackets to hide costumes etc. Do you remember those days.
I didnt like this movie. Have no love for JJ. BUT I loved what he was doing then.
Maybe the left hand didnt know what the right hand was doing. maybe its ’cause JJ’s secretive nature here got in the way. A failure of its own success.
#221
OK, Brian, you’re a troll. Whichever you like. But please let me know what’s your problem with the discussion here? You came out of nowhere and started insulting me. I would love to see where what I said in my initial statement warranted your insinuation that I haven’t been able to leave my childhood behind.
And what the hell are you talking about when you say you can point to any thread about me saying only negative things about this movie? Read my review, moron. It was positive. As a matter of fact I have been posting here for three years and have been mostly in the camp of this movie. The only point I wanted to make in this whole thread was that:
#1-I thought that it would be OK to be passionate about the ships in Star Trek. I think you might find that there are a lot of us that feel the same way. And by and large we don’t knock you for being a dick.
#2-I think that there is something wrong about the statement that the E is a half mile long. The perspective in the shot with Kirk on his bike would have to be from a couple of miles away to get the whole ship in the frame and it just isn’t so. And #223, I’m sorry to say that your measurement is off. In that shot it is only 150 to 175 feet across the nacelle.
I think you have some issues, dude. Otherwise why would you feel compelled to insult someone you don’t even know?
@226
Perspective and distance contribute heavily to the appearance of a variable-sized shuttlebay. And actually, for the rest of the ship as well. When Pike’s shuttle leaves the bay, it’s a totally different angle and is much closer than the previous bay shot.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Forced_perspective
228
you do your own deck plans? your own ship design?
me too. :)
Good God, if they say the ship is 2,357 long then it’s a freaking 2,357 long! Who cares if that’s bigger than it was in TOS? Screw canon. The ship is still obviously the Enterprise. Geez!
Umm, how can you compare the new “E” to future iterations of the ship from another timeline? New “E” has NOTHING to do with Enterprise-A, B, C, D or E. Those ships might never exist. Just because they were larger in the Prime universe is meaningless in the new universe… WHICH WAS THE POINT! To eliminate the minutiae and focus on story and character. New “E” looks like the Enterprise. Fully identifiable as the ship we all grew up and loved. Looks far more like the Enterprise than did TNG’s version (which I never liked). So while you argue over the size, how much you like or don’t like it, comparisons to later versions of ships in the “Prime” universe are ridiculous and make no sense… completely illogical. If there were to be later versions (Alphabet E’s as I call them) they perhaps could be either bigger, smaller, or the same size, as there is no precedent in THIS universe to determine that.
That being said, some “official” determination (Church, JJ, Orci?) of the size would quell the discussion and be definitive, even if ILM is not. Then you can merely argue whether you like it, not whether it’s true.
Carry on…
Anxiously awaiting the next film, as this one was marvelously entertaining and well done.
I hate that they made the Enterprise that big.
It sickens me and just about ruins the movie for me. :(
It makes no sense in the universe.
It also makes no sense why the Saucer section looks like the refit Constitution Class Enterprise with so many similar rows of windows.
It is all just terribly upsetting.
237
LOL
237
were doing a prequel that is an origin story. we want to honor canon so it should have similarities to the classic movie version…. oh wait ….
were trying to honor what came before so it should look like a pike era ship …. oh wait …
its a tos film but make it look realy differant so the new fans arnet scared away from the theatre. but give it a NON tos movie era element as an easter egg to the fans they love that kind of stuff.
I still fail to see why our discussing this issue seems to bother so many people. As I said before, the article to which you are commenting IS about this very subject.
I’ll give you an example of how I navigate this site:
I am not that interested in Futurama, Tom Cruise or MI:IV, the new Hallmark ornaments of Ilia and Uhura, the new Star Trek gold watch, Orci and Kurtzman’s new movie, or the new TNG book.
So I don’t bother commenting on them. I let the people who are interested in those subjects enjoy their discussion without my adding nothing to it or just being a wet blanket. I look at this as my version of “polite internet behavior”.
If the ship size issue is of no interest to you, could you just move along? Because harping on those of us who may wish to discuss it makes you look kind of like a jerk. In this instance, Jupiter is ours and you may have the rest of the universe.
I couldn’t give a crap what made up number the FX guys give for a made up space ship. The Enterprise held lots of people, was bigger than the shuttles, and smaller than the bad guy’s ship. That’s all that’s required to tell the story of the movie. For those who have a deep seated need to obsess over fictional details, and draw blueprints, etc. then I’m sure you can ignore/rationalize any details the producers drop.
#241
Then why are you commenting on an article about it?
I give up. Enjoy the website. I’m done.
#228 – I think you vastly underestimate the ability of fan to debate something. ;)
After all, we have people on here now who are debating the validity of the specifically-explicated size of the TOS version of the ship…after 43 years! Y’think they’re going to set aside the debate over this version in a few weeks?
#235 – “Who cares if that’s bigger than it was in TOS?”
Me, among others, the same way that I care that the other characters of Star Trek are portrayed consistently.
“Screw canon.”
Thank you, but no. It has its place.
“The ship is still obviously the Enterprise.”
Well, it’s obviously a ship, and it’s obviously named Enterprise. I can cheerfully give you that much. :D
#240 – “I still fail to see why our discussing this issue seems to bother so many people.”
I wouldn’t presume to know for certain what’s in someone else’s head, but I think that at least some–not necessarily all, by any means–of the folks who have rushed to become adherents of the new film feel somewhat threatened by those who choose not to join them in doing so. “It’s new Star Trek, so we must like it, and support it, lest it go away again and we have nothing!” And if people challenge the statements made regarding that film, it risks undercutting the foundations of their adherence.
I, for one, feel no need to so rabidly support aspects of Star Trek that I do not like. But I also feel no need to criticize those who enjoy them. Either way, I also have no fear of discussing the things that disturb me about any incarnation of Trek, and this change in the size of the Enterprise, one merely claimed by ILM (and whoever else; it doesn’t really matter) and not necessarily supported by on-screen presentation, certainly falls within that category.
In the end, one aspect we shouldn’t forget is that there’s a whole, giant Star Trek Universe out there, of which this film is not a part, and which is not affected by this film in the slightest, so those who have enjoyed it can remain secure that if JJ Abrams wants to spend six hours over the next few years pretending that the Enterprise is more than 10 times as big, it will have no effect whatsoever on the fact that the original version of that ship measured 288.6 meters long by 127.1 meters wide, based upon which the sizes of dozens of other vessels were determined.
My biggest complaint, really, is that the claims regarding the size of *this* Enterprise do not match the preponderance of visuals of the ship, and in the end, those are what need to take precedence.
241 & everyone else who says “it doesn’t matter,”
Fine for you. But as many good fiction writers– whether novelists, playwrights, or screenwriters know, consistency, realism, and attention to detail are often good, sometimes necessary. For Abrams, who was constantly proclaiming the need to be realistic, this issue would seem to matter.
Further, Star Trek fans have always had fun with the technical aspects of the ship and Paramount and its licensees have made money off of that interest. Model kits and technical manuals have always been part of Star Trek.
If coming on a Trek fan site and saying “it’s just a movie” makes you feel good, then your apparatus for good feelings is rather pathetic.
This size issue didn’t detract from my enjoyment of the movie, which I thought was fantastic, but to either not know how big the ship is or to change it midway or to not care or to make it super big for little reason is sloppy filmmaking and design.
Writers and designers know that making an internal world (especially one that a lot of people love) consistent and realistic is an important part of their job. Certainly, telling a good story is primary, but “it’s just a movie,” ignore the details is a stupid way to conduct business for any movie, let alone a Star Trek movie.
I loved the movie, loved the characters, the story, and all of it. I hope Orci and Kurtzman are involved with Star Trek for a long, long time.
But I do hope we soon find out that the Enterprise was not all that much bigger than the TOS/TMP ship.
I was just looking at a thread about Matt Jefferies original design and this struck me from the timeline of events around the TOS Pilots:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?p=2694622
Now keep in mind that this was pre-Trek. There were no fans to appease yet – nobody interested in the minutiae of the Enterprise construction details. This was the producers being proud of their accomplishment and the intelligence behind their creative vision and attention to detail. Part of marketing this new series to the media was to show them they took it seriously, this was not some campy sci-fi B-movie from the 50’s this was a serious attempt to look at the future of mankind.
I don’t recall ANYTHING like this officially coming out of Abrams or Paramount. Or did I simply miss it? Hard to imagine everyone connected to the original series thought the media and general public would care about such trivial issues, yet after 40 years of intense fan focus the current film thought nothing of them.
#207: “why is getting the ship off the ground such a hard thing to process. The ship has space warping engines. Are you all really suggesting that the warp engines can not produce a warp field that equates to greater than 1G of lift???? If the Enterprise can not break Earth’s Gravity what hope does it have navigating space??? How many Gs of force do you think the original had to counteract to tight orbit the sun??? Please apply a little logic.”
I believe it has been long established that it is dangerous to engage a warp drive within the gravity well of a planet, it’s even stated as so in ST: TMP (but I think the franchise has broken that rule on occasion).
#207/246 – Since we on TNG discovered that traditional rocket thrust (impulse engines) couldn’t accelerate multi-hundreds-of-metric tonnes starships they way they were depicted in the franchise, we added a space-time driver coil to the impulse system to do some subtle mini-warping and/or mass reduction. Since even impulse travel can involve multiples of g, moving a ship off the 1g planet is actually fairly simple with the right shaping of the field. Smashing through the Warp 1 barrier near a planet is still an iffy proposition. :)
Even multi-thousands or multi-millions of metric tonnes. Heavy suckers.
What about that pod that Kirk was shot out in? The opening in the ship’s neck couldn’t have been more than a meter or so wide, considering the pod was about two meters long, judging from Kirk’s snug fit inside. Which would place the ship’s actual size at close to the original. Onscreen evidence seems to maintain a size of about 300m, from this perspective.
As for the Kelvin’s large complement, it’s entirely possible that ships in those days required a relatively greater crew complement to operate, and in Kirk’s days automated systems started to take over more operations, enabling a smaller crew. Those revolutionary duotronic circuits the Enterprise was said to have may have something to do with this.
the ship size is retroactive spin control. A friend of mine who worked on the movie said teh ship was supposed to be roughly the same size as in TMP (check the scale with the welders on the saucer in the trailer). Supposedly the Brewery sets were a financial necessity and more then a ‘design choice’. After the fact they had to try and reconcile the size of the ‘industrial sets’ with the size of the size of the ship hence the MULTIPLE ‘official sizes’ of the ship from ‘official sources’ that have been released. Fact is they didnt think things through and are going back to try and reconcile these inconsistencies. Even some of the folks at QMX who did teh 34″ display models and are releasing the 34″ collectors model were doing it with the understanding it was 1/350th scale. All this size nonsense about the new size is just these folks trying to cover up the
fact that they had interiors that didnt jive with exteriors and theyre trying to act like they INTENDED the ship to be this big. Just admit you screwed up and move on.
See: http://ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise_comment.htm#size
@251 -
Interesting, as always, from that site. But again, it’s just opinion based on a pre-conceived notion, or dare I say prejudice, against a larger Enterprise. Again, we get the “window” argument, as if this was a cruise ship. I see no need for windows on every deck, or even every other. “Enlist in Starfleet, get a room with a view, guaranteed!”
Rewatch the teaser trailer. There are clearly 5, maybe 6, distinct decks shown on the edge of the saucer being constructed. Then refer to the deck breakdown schematic they show, based on a size of 300m. Extrapolate it out, using 5 decks instead of the 2 they show in the schematic. It comes out close to what ILM says.
Another beef I have is their use of camera shots at odd angles and unknown distances to come up with their figures. They seem to ignore the perspective aspect and even cheat a little in their diagrams.
The movie was good, but that is the ugliest Star Ship in sci fi history.
[...] about the new Star Trek movie and the various visual effects. I had found that article through this page, which I got from @mexijew’s [...]
252, “Another beef I have is their use of camera shots at odd angles and unknown distances to come up with their figures. They seem to ignore the perspective aspect and even cheat a little in their diagrams.”
THANK YOU!
That’s exactly why I roll my eyes when someone mentions the window and airlock sizes or the shuttle/shuttlebay comparison, or when someone ‘measures it out’ on a picture. It’s ridiculous to try and do that with the angles presented in the film. And to attempt it with a fan-made diagram which often either has the wrong proportions of parts and/or has a bias towards being ~300m is also ridiculous.
253, That’s exactly how I feel.
#253, I hope you’re referring to the Narada, otherwise you’re trolling.
Fail! Reported Narada drill cable length by ILM directly contradicted by the movie. Note that Chekov starts the orbital dive countdown by saying 20K meters (to the platform)…and that’s after the three divers have fallen a significant distance. Do the math. Fanboy estimates are one thing, pro estimates are another and should be precise.
If one wants to really geek it, take the dive length and divide it by time to get Vulcan’s rate, which may be different than Earth’s 32′/sec.
Also, Toy manufacturers have been stating the E’s size at 1000 meters on some of the packaging for replicas of the E.
ILM can’t be used as a definitive reference because the computer modeling for ships/objects is never consistent through a movie, as several have already noted. This is called artistic license. For example, I counted four different times that the E’s scale was significantly different, based on the fanboy ‘eyeball’ observation. I didn’t calculate size, because that’s fun, but futile. But I did calculate proportion (ie, between E and shuttle) and noticed 4 different ’sizes’ in the movie.
Hopefully when a definitive ‘canon’ explanation comes (probably with next year’s detailed Enterprise manual), they’ll take the movie imagery into account.
Note that when the pioneering Starfleet Manual manual came out in 1973, it was a risk by Ballantine Books, who normally published industry-size paperbacks…yet it was one of their bestsellers that year. The even earlier Enterprise deck plans was a good seller.
These debates have been going on for decades, and will continue for decades. The people who engage in them are neither ‘childish’, ‘obsessed’ or ‘mired in the past’. They are neither superior nor inferior to those who don’t get into Trek minutiae and ephemera. It is the nature of fiction to evoke wonder, and by the number and intensity of the posts in this thread, this new Trek movie has done just that…
Yeah, its funny that the info given to the licensees BEFORE the movie came out all had the E at 1000 meters. again, this all retroactive spin control due to what appears to be a lack of communication between departments ie SLOPPY.
I dont have a problem with the new ship being twice the size and it has nothing to do with Canon. I have get irritated when I see sloppiness covered up by retroactive lame excuses of, “Oh, we actually PLANNED it to be that big” when obviously you DIDNT plan. Let the E be twice the size but then do your homework and scale it correctly so it LOOKS twice the size. This is teh same thing that bugged me about the Klingon BOP in Trek 3 miraculously and dramatically changing its bridge completely in Trek4 and all of a sudden having room for two humpback whales and tons of water. I hated that the TNG BOP was the same model but all of teh sudden it was three times as big and that didnt fit the scale of the model. Theres was the same retro excuses made for those decisions too. Its very apparent from both the licensees and the scaling from th emovie and initial trailer what teh size of the E was supposed to be and it conflicts with the latest info from the powers that be that ironically have changed at least three times in the last couple of weeks.
Attention to detail gentleman…we all love this franchise but this is a fanbase with a microscope and if you try and cheat things by us we will chat amongst ourselves (dont get me started on Trek V which all of the sudden had 50+ decks. According to THAT ‘canon’ the REFIT ‘E’ is the same size as the (supposed size of) the NEW E. Trek has always been riddled with mistakes like these including the TOS Shuttle interior vs its exterior including McCoy entering the shuttle from outside through the REAR where there was no door and phaser lockers that disappeared in to inch thick bulkheads. This isnt a new phenomena just one I hoped would be better taken care of in the revitalization of TREK.
” 253. TheWon – June 11, 2009
The movie was good, but that is the ugliest Star Ship in sci fi history.”
Ah, so what did you just watch: First Contact, Insurrection, or Nemesis? :^D
Sean4000 – June 9, 2009
Then how big was the Kelvin?
It would seem the Kelvin-class of the 2230s was even bigger than the Classic connies of the 2260s. But wasn’t the Kelvin a colonizer ship with 800 people onboard?
I’ve skipped a lot of posts….will backtrack, especially want to read Alex Rozenwiegs’ posts but:
a 330 meter aicraft carrier like the Nimitz holds ~5000 personnel so Kelvin’s 800 could all have deluxe cabins.
My apologies for skipping over your post.
Spock’s Uncle – June 9, 2009
The current number released in this article is approximately twice the length of today’s Nimitz Class aircraft carrier. The numbers were alway a little suspect. The TOS Enterprise was smaller than an aircraft carrier, but only by a slight difference. The crew on the Enterprise: 400 plus. The crew on a modern day aircraft carrier, over 3,000, with room for an airwing of approximately 2,200. Such a large spaceship could handle 10 times the crew originally stated in TOS. Always found the number of people on the ship far too few to sustain the mission. Think the larger E, with a MUCH bigger crew would be more realistic.
Oh, and there would be pipes of some sort, I’m reasonably certain. But let’s face it, that was an aesthetic choice, so let’s move on.
_____________________
Then there is the page from the original “Making of….” book that has the Jefferies Enterprise superimposed over its’ wet navy counterpart.
That image has been placed at Memory Alpha and other places on the web go see.
The First Contact incursion already influenced the tech and size of the Kelvin before Nero ever got there. Orci has said that this new timeline includes FC and ENT. Conversely, TOS Prime may not. Zefram Cochrane and Lilly Sloane’s contact with people and tech from the future had almost as much influence as the meeting with the Vulcans, who now are an endangered species. So you see, this universe begins with the Borg-altered First Contact. Nero merely accelerated the process.
#262. Did Orci say that the new timeline included FC & ENT here, or somewhere else? If so, I am somewhat surprised since FC nor ENT fit with his application of MWI QM time-travel in this movie. I have no trouble rectoning this timeline with those films to explain many discrepancies, however, I have to throw out the multi-verse theory Orci is adamant about adhering to (which is possible per on-screen canon). But for him to do it …
This particular debate is highlighting something about this movie I had been willing to dismiss, which is everybody makes mistakes and it doesn’t harm the film. Not that any of this diminishes the film significantly, but there seems to be a lot of loose ends that I wouldn’t expect from the producer’s of LOST. That show is similarly under an equal amount of scrutiny by its fans, with every piece of information logged in a database and dissected for any clues to the answer to the mystery. Abrams appeared to have been reveling in the creation of this fan fueled machine and further driving his own attention to detail. Now I wonder if LOST will end satisfactorily. It almost seems like they they were making it up as they went along and got a big laugh out of the fact a mistake would be “one more thing the fans can recton”. Sadly, when the producers set themselves up as these masters of detail as a hallmark of their brand of entertainment and storytelling, such lack of attention to basic elements is discouraging. If Sherlock Holmes solved a crime by pointing to a piece of evidence which is directly contradicted by events depict in the film, audiences would ultimately not accept it, is they noticed. And that seems to essentially be the goal here: perhaps audiences won’t notice or care, seemingly forgetting who they are dealing with: the fans who have been a steady supply of revenue for Paramount in the form of often obsessive dedication to licensed technical manuals and other official products. This film seems to have a lion’s share of continuity and other unexplained problems and considering it’s dual heritage, is somewhat unforgivable.
#252 – “Rewatch the teaser trailer. There are clearly 5, maybe 6, distinct decks shown on the edge of the saucer being constructed.”
Funny… I did just that, and saw pretty solid evidence of a two-deck outer-saucer-edge. Two decks, plus some additional hardware above and below the habitable spaces consistent with the hull structure. Heck, one of the very first things I did, way back when I first downloaded the trailer, was look at that front view, especially, and start counting decks. ;) From the bridge level to the outer saucer edge, I got 7. I breathed a sigh of relief and said, “Okay, they got it right.”
#258 – “Yeah, its funny that the info given to the licensees BEFORE the movie came out all had the E at 1000 meters. again, this all retroactive spin control due to what appears to be a lack of communication between departments ie SLOPPY.”
1,000 meters, or 1,000 feet? (Gotta watch one’s units! ;) )
Seriously, though, is there any possibility of getting copies of the info you mention? It’s not that I disbelieve you, because I don’t. I’m quite convinced, based on the exterior design of the ship as portrayed in the film, that it was intended to be in roughly the same size ballpark as the other versions of the 1701. I really just don’t believe that all the detail-similarities to both the refit-1701 and the original were simply random coincidence. But it would certainly alter the nature of the discussion if there’s some documentable verification of what you’re claiming. Without it, it’s just hearsay, and with the folks involved in the actual film claiming otherwise (irrelevant of whether or not we believe them), it’s hard to win that sort of “he-said, she-said” argument.
#264 –
Sorry, but your arguements are illogical ;-)
Consider this screenshot from the trailer:
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xitrailercaps/tc_stxitrailer019.jpg
You honestly only see 2 decks in that massive structure? The new Enterprise was obviously originally intended and designed to be much bigger than the OS E, with a much thicker and wider saucer.
Does your number of 7 decks extend to the bottom of the saucer? If so, by using your logic the number would be 4 or 5 tops. Again, my whole basis on criticism of the size debate is the website cited by #251, and their deck breakdown of 3m, and the whole basis of their size figures based on a 311m Enterprise.
http://ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise/enterprise-deck-structure.gif
They only allow 6 decks to the bottom of the saucer. And they don’t allow for your infrastructure between decks. Add only 2m between decks for your infrastructure and you’ll see my point. By your logic the saucer could only contain 1 deck!
So, logically, this Enterprise is much bigger, and I lean toward the 700 m+ figure. And to bring this full circle, I believe the original design of the OS E was flawed. Way too small, way undermanned. And no allowance for infrastructure, as you correctly point out.
It was 45 years ago, so we must give the designers much credit, but their design and dimensions were way off, and should not be the basis of current discussion. The original OS Enterprise would have been much larger as well.
Argh! None of the links I provided seem to be working!
So search for the original teaser trailer and watch and pause 00:48 to 00:53.
And for the second, go to http://ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise_comment.htm#size and scroll down to and click on the “deck structure of a 300m Enterprise” graphic. (It’s kinda buried and small, I wonder why?)
#265 – “#264 –
Sorry, but your arguements are illogical ;-) ”
I actually think the desperate attempts to justify the ILM numbers are rather more illogical, but to each his (or her) own. :)
(ILM has a long history of being very slipshod with scale, anyway, making me even more suspicious of their claims.)
“Consider this screenshot from the trailer:
http://movies.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/xitrailercaps/tc_stxitrailer019.jpg
You honestly only see 2 decks in that massive structure?”
Yup. Two decks, plus additional equipment space above the upper deck and below the lower, and hardware of various sorts all through the structure. The hardware is layered and overlapping, and tends to obscure the deck structure, but there’s a central deckline that’s visible, barely, in both of the open areas at the bow of the saucer. (Note that, especially in the rightward opening, there’s also platework obscuring some of the interior, which might be mis-identified as a deckline, but it’s not.)
“The new Enterprise was obviously originally intended and designed to be much bigger than the OS E, with a much thicker and wider saucer.”
I don’t see that at all. It was, to my eyes, “obviously” intended initially to correspond roughly to the size of the OS and TMP E.
Now, could I *force* myself to see 4 or 5 decks in there, if I started from the idea that it was a much bigger ship? I suppose, but it’d be a reach in a way that seeing the two-deck structure wasn’t.
“Does your number of 7 decks extend to the bottom of the saucer?”
Bottom meaning the lower sensor platform? No. My count gets us from the upper dome area to the widest part of the saucer. (Add another 3 or so decks below to get to the lower sensor dome.)
What actually surprised me a little was that in the trailer, the area that we now know to be the bridge location seems to be Deck 2. So it’s apparently a lower bridge, relative to the original ship (which would make sense, given the additional areas outside the bridge itself), and either there’s a deck above the bridge or just a lot more hardware in the upper sensor platform.
“Again, my whole basis on criticism of the size debate is the website cited by #251, and their deck breakdown of 3m, and the whole basis of their size figures based on a 311m Enterprise.
http://ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/new_enterprise/enterprise-deck-structure.gif ”
I think that graphic is slightly off, myself, but I also think the site has a slightly misdrawn bridge superstructure area, flattening it a bit too much. The result is the graphic putting decks 5 and 6 in the widest part of the saucer, whereas I still put Decks 6 and 7 in that location (not coincidentally consistent with the TOS and TMP designs).
“And they don’t allow for your infrastructure between decks. Add only 2m between decks for your infrastructure and you’ll see my point. By your logic the saucer could only contain 1 deck!”
Well, I don’t put anywhere near 2 meters worth of infrastructure there. ;) There’s a meter, tops, and probably less, between the Deck 6 ceiling/Deck 7 floor and the outer hull. And from the floor to ceiling between the decks, maybe half a meter.
“So, logically, this Enterprise is much bigger, and I lean toward the 700 m+ figure. And to bring this full circle, I believe the original design of the OS E was flawed. Way too small, way undermanned. And no allowance for infrastructure, as you correctly point out.”
Alas, I’m not in agreement with your logic. You’re assuming a lot of very bulky hardware spaces that aren’t necessarily supported by the evidence. (I’m seeing it clustered around the decking, not between it.)
As for the issue of how large the original ship was, I can tell you this much. I was part of a project to do deck plans of a Star Trek ship of approximately the same size (though not the same shape) as a Constitution. I can tell you with confidence that there is a *lot* of room in those ships! And that’s accounting for some large hardware, tankage, and so forth. If crewmembers on Federation starships had accommodations similar to what crews on US Naval vessels have today, getting 800 people onto a Constitution-class ship, or something even smaller, wouldn’t really be a huge reach. (There are very good reasons why that’s not the case, at least for the Enterprise, but that’s off topic for this discussion. :) )
While I can appreciate the idea that everyone who’s ever had an issue with the size of the original ships is now leaping onto this “reimagining” as a way to justify it, for me, I never had that issue, and these new numbers just don’t wash. I have studied the way these ships were designed, for more years than I’d care to count ;) , and I can tell you that, IMHO, the design of the TOS version of the ship, and *especially* the TMP ship, is both sound and extremely well thought-out.
“It was 45 years ago, so we must give the designers much credit, but their design and dimensions were way off,”
Really, for the way they intended to portray that ship, the design and dimensions were just fine.
“and should not be the basis of current discussion.”
But, see, that’s my point. I haven’t been basing my contentions based on what those sizes were, except insofar as the extent to which the new version used design elements lifted directly *from* those designs. Were this an entirely original property, then those other aspects wouldn’t even exist, but it’s not, and as such, it does exist in the context of what came before. And when we look at the design and see features which almost precisely match equivalent features on previous designs, to draw information from those correlations is completely within bounds.
In simpler language, if TPTB wanted to suggest a vastly larger ship, they should have detailed it accordingly before it hit the screen. They didn’t, however, and they now reap what they have sown.
As a blueprint maker Alex knows what he is talking about,
(if they would have made the portholes smaller, OTOH, there is much to be said that tweeking the dimensions, here and there would substantially increase volume)
Point I was trying to make earlier;
Add this Alex, ……..
http://www.trekcore.com/specials/albums/sketches/STTOS_Drw_2Enterprises.jpg
and the black silhouette once held something like 3500-4000 persons.
Ok Alex, I guess we’ll just respectfully agree to disagree! You’ll see what you see, I’ll see what I see. It’s all in the eye of the beholder, since neither of us has actually seen a “real” Enterprise or “real” schematics.
I’ll just leave you with one last image. If you continue to see only 2 decks, then fine. But three points to remember when considering my opinion:
Decks do not need windows, this is not a cruise ship. There are many, many decks on the E without windows.
If there are only 2 decks in this massive structure there is lots of wasted space, a luxury a starship designer wouldn’t be afforded.
Visually, I see the banding on the edge of the saucer as decks. Each distinct and the same dimensions. So the dark bands are either decks or wasted space. I stick to my theory that the saucer is thicker and wider, thus proportionally making this Enterprise much bigger.
Again, we may agree to disagree. No problem! Life holds much bigger concerns!!
Live long and prosper ;-)
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/File:USS_Enterprise_(alternate_reality),_profile.jpg
ok assuming this number is correct that 55 to 60 decks
[...] New Details On Star Trek VFX – Ship Sizes Revealed | TrekMovie.com [...]
Don’t mind the new size. it works and makes sense. Plus, who’s to say in this dimension / time line / alternate reality, Enterprise D & E is the same size as their previous sizes?? They will be more awesome & appropriately huge in this time line. Word!
To ALL posters:
Many of the arguments made here are precise, careful, and logical. With that said, please allow me to offer a few observations.
Flamers, trolls, and all of your kin—just knock it off.
I happen to be in the “JJPrise is right around the same size as TOS’s beloved NCC-1701″ camp, based largely on the apparent relative dimensions of the Iowa “graving dock”, the ship itself, shuttles, airlocks, logistics hatches, people, etc. I DO understand the sense of dislocation that a number of things from this new film individually and collectively generate. I happen to be comfortable with the basic premise that this “re-imagined” Enterprise sits right around 1000′ x 460′ x 270′ and around 250,000 metric tons rest mass.
There ARE a number of inconsistencies in this movie. I wholeheartedly agree that the “continuity of mythology” is an essential part of not only suspending disbelief but also maintaining that condition. If your presented science and technology base in an SF story has certain parameters, then stick to them. If there is an exception that falls significantly outside those parameters, then explain it in an intelligent way that doesn’t blatantly create a “deus ex machina” solution to a plot problem or simply erode your storytelling through sloppy writing.
All this “alternate timeline” hooey to explain differences between and among different established ship designs, weapon systems, Starfleet uniform styles and standards, and myriad other components of the Trek universe is simplistic rationalization. It has been reduced to this state because it is the big fallback used by anyone and everyone trying to explain away major and minor continuity errors in the whole collected Star Trek mythos.
I grew up on TOS in syndicated reruns, and have enjoyed a lot of the “expanded universe” of new TV series, big-screen films, and novels. I love the tech manuals. They’re tons of fun. I really DO tire of people engaging in largely pointless online shootouts about what are, ultimately, fictitious things. This has a lot more to do with concerns about civility and about people looking at things more objectively. Do I think that ILM is doing some retroactive damage control in terms of stated size stats for the JJPrise? Absolutely. Does that sort of poorly-addressed continuity error surprise me? Not at all, in an era in which most Americans under 25 don’t even know what the Cold War was or who the United States and the other Allied Powers had to defeat in World War Two. There is a rather alarming lack of attention to REALLY IMPORTANT THINGS in modern society—so, if young adults can’t be bothered to know that Hiroshima and Nagasaki were destroyed with nuclear weapons in the endgame of the aforementioned WWII, or that claims that the U.S. never put men on the moon are absurd, then how can we expect people to pay sufficient attention to details in Hollywood when producing various television shows and movies?
Don’t get me wrong. I really LIKE jumping into these discussion forums sometimes, and I DO agree with Star Trek and SF fans who argue that continuity matters in storytelling. I just think that a sense of proportion is in order here—and I’m not talking about scale issues for made-up starships built in made-up “future histories”. JJ Abrams and Company should pay careful attention to the Trek canon and to many of the meticulously-thought-out aspects of future hardware design that are a vital part of the creative world of Star Trek. Ultimately, though, this boils down to discussion of a major SF franchise that has been consistently a lot more intelligent and meaningful than most of its stablemates, but which is, in the final analysis, a very cool but very fictitious animal.
After some resistence (my son had to drag me there) I somewhat enjoyed this movie. BUT, I still have to ask myself why JJ took on the job in the first place. He thought Star Trek had gotten stale, and needed to get back to basics and rid itself of 40 years’ worth of baggage. Back to basics; back to the core of Star Trek (as if the movies, TNG, DS9 & TNG Movies weren’t true Trek.
Okay, I respect that line of thinking. Or, more precisely, I respect his right to have that line of thinking. But, in getting back to “true Trek”, he got new actors, a completely different (2x scale) ship, new brifge, blew up Romulus (in the Prime Universe), blew up Vulcan (in the Alternate Unitverse), etc.
It seems “true Trek”, to JJ, simply means using the names “Kirk” and “Spock”. Not the same actors, nore the same characters.
Once again, I did ultimately like the movie, but continue to wonder about the use of an alternate timeline. Why attract new viewers at the expense of the old? Why not attract everybody? Throughout the viewing, I wondered how it would have come off if, right before filming had started, they had revised the script in these ways:-
1) The ship had been changed to USS Enterprise, NCC-1701G.
2) Spock had gone FORWARD to 2500.
2) The uniform had been changed slightly to be beyond TNG.
3) The bridge . . . well, the bridge as it was looked pretty post-TNG.
4) The names had been changed.
Then there would be no choosing between universes. The new movie would have been just as “fresh”, just as “back to basics”, etc. It would have been just as good and enjoyable (probably more-so), and maintain continuity to everyone’s satisfaction.
The new Enterprise looks pretty cool, nice bridge! Quite a weird engine room, looks more like a factory than an engine room! Maybe the writers and designers might tidy it up a bit for the sequel! As for the size, thats nice! a couple of shots did kinda make the ship seem like a tardis, but the size on paper is real nice! I just wish that it were made even bigger to make the death star look like a football!!