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.

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.

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

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.

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.

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?)