Sunday night at the Egyptian Theater in Hollywood, the Art Director’s Guild held a special event honoring the design of Star Trek. On hand was a panel of distinguished designers, including Scott Chambliss and Herman Zimmerman, sharing their thoughts and memories with the capacity crowd. Video will be made available next month, but we have photos and a report with some interesting comments below.
Star Trek Designers Honored
Report from Star Trek ADG Event September 27th
The panelists for the event were John Jefferies, who worked for his brother Matt Jefferies on Star Trek: The Original Series, Joseph R. Jennings, Production Designer on the aborted Star Trek Phase II and then on Wrath of Khan, Herman Zimmerman, production designer for all the Star Trek TV movies and TV shows (except Voyager) from 1987-2005, and Scott Chambliss, Production Designer on the new JJ Abrams Star Trek. The moderator was Darren Dochterman, one of the ultimate Trek fans, who also worked as an illustrator on Voyager and VFX Supervisor on the director’s edition of Star Trek: The Motion Picture.
(L-R) Dochterman, Jefferies, Jennings, Zimmerman & Chambliss
After some quick introductions the event was broken up into four sections, one for each panelist, firstly showing clips. Things kicked off with Jefferies and clips from episodes of the original Star Trek. Jefferies said that he got his start from his brother, but felt pressure because his hiring was "smacking of nepotism" and how he worked "under the shadow" of his brother. One of the tidbits the designer talked about was how much set dressings they used were scavenged from RKO where they would "paint them bright colors, stick ’em on the wall and run a piece of plumbing to it". Noting that they always wanted things to "identify things with a form of nomenclature" so they would color code and put numbers on things even though "it didn’t make sense, but look believable." John got a big laugh telling the crowd his favorite bit of nomenclature was putting "GNDN" onto things, which means "goes nowhere, does nothing."
John Jefferies
Next up was Joseph R. Jennings, who started talking about being an Art Director for Star Trek Phase II, the aborted TV show that was morphed into Star Trek: The Motion Picture. He talked about how the initial challenge for Phase II was how the show was to be set after the original series, noting "how do you go from depicting the future to fifteen years further into the future?" Discussing how TMP inherited the designs of the refit Enterprise, he said that he had a "war on his hand" that after the success of Star Wars, the studio wanted the ship to be much more complex with lots of bits and pieces on it, but in the end he won the argument to keep the simpler "Chris Craft" look, but in the end he said "I won the argument and the Enterprise stayed looking pretty slick."
Joseph Jennings
Discussing his return to Trek for Star Trek II, the Jennings noted how that film saved a lot of money by using a TV sensibility. On the notion of re-using set pieces Jennings quipped "if you are used to television, they save a lot of money because they don’t have time to argue about it" and joking that usually when you change things over and over "you don’t have anything that is any better." In discussing creating Ceti Alpha V on stages at Paramount, requiring all the sand and the big fans, the people who had it even worse than the actors were the cameramen who had to take apart the equipment at the end of every night worth of shooting because of all the sand that got into the cameras. Jennings also took some credit for the famous Mutara Nebula battle in Star Trek II, saying he had to convince director Nicholas Meyer that it was the only way to make his notion of two galleons fighting make sense, by stripping them of their sensors.
Up next was Trek vet
Herman Zimmerman, who reigned as Production Designer for Star Trek for 18 years. Zimmerman talked about his background before Trek and then how he interviewed with Gene Roddenberry while working at Paramount. According to Zimmerman the word on the lot was that Next Generation "was going to be a failure", but he was convinced by Roddenberry’s personality and commitment so he took the job. Zimmerman also gave credit to illustrators Andy Probert and Rick Sternbach for the look of Next Gen, especially the Enterprise D, but he noted that Probert did not have "a practical bone in his body" with regards to practicality or budget, and his job was to take their designs and "make it happen."
Herman Zimmerman
Zimmerman went on to discuss Star Trek V and VI, noting that on Final Frontier "the studio cut the legs out from under that film", citing how the studio would not give director Shatner the $2 million he needed to do the elaborate ending the film needed. Zimmerman talked glowingly about working with Nick Meyer on Star Trek VI. Zimmerman then went off on a tangent on how Gene Roddenberry’s vision of Star Trek is like the Sherlock Holmes series, where Arthur Conan Doyle set up the premise and other writers can come along and do Holmes stories. He then tied this to the new Star Trek movie saying:
I think the biggest tribute to Star Trek storytelling is what happened with Scott Chambliss’ film, and how JJ Abrams is able to grab a hold of the original story and take it way, way up in the stratosphere. Don’t you think?
Zimmerman pays Chambliss a compliment
Going on to talk about Deep Space Nine, he admitted that it was his favorite series to work on, as he had "three empty stages to fill" starting from scratch. And regarding his work on the TNG feature films, he discussed a highlight being the Ba’ku village that was built for Star Trek Insurrection, where he noted how the art department "made a village where there was nothing." Wrapping the discussion of his time with Trek, Zimmerman said of Star Trek Enterprise again talked about how he liked that the show was "closer to our reality"
The final panelist up was Scott Chambliss, the Production Designer on the latest Star Trek movie. Dochterman started off noted that Chambliss had the "no win scenario" taking on the venerable franchise and trying to please both core base and new fans, with Darren paying the compliment "I think you did it." Chambliss admitted that his first reaction to getting the job was "terror". He was concerned that director JJ Abrams would want to make a film dark, like the dystopic film Children of Men, which was released around the time Star Trek was in pre-production. However, and the designer was relieved in his early talks finding that with Abrams wanted an optimistic look for the film, actually telling Chambliss ‘we are not doing Children of Men, we are going Roddenberry here.’ Chambliss was also magnanimous in calling out his whole art department and how they "all did their best work on this film", especially noting the work of concept
illustrators Ryan Church and James Clyne.
Scott Chambliss
The discussion then moved on to the decision making for using sets, versus locations and CGI. Chambliss noted that they were blessed with a large budget, however that doesn’t mean that they got to always do everything they wanted as they wanted it. He then brought up the controversial use of a Budweiser plant for the engineering set of the USS Enterprise, as well as another industrial location for the engineering set for the USS Kelvin. Chambliss explained:
Those were choices based on the circumstance we were in with the budget. Both engine rooms were designed to be massive entire sound-stage filling sets that did not look at all what you saw on screen. But the realities of what we had to deal with made JJ And I go "okay, let’s find a location that has got to have huge scale…and see what we can find." I think that is the most vivid case where our original intention had to be modified to fit our budget circumstance.
Chambliss also discussed the different looks of the Earth/Federation, Vulcan and Romulans, explaining:
That was a building block of doing the show. It is three different cultures, and in our philosophy of where they came from, they come from three different places. The Vulcan culture, that technology so heavily relied on logic and science and the sensibility of emotion being way down there [motions down]. Starfleet and human beings obviously, emotion plus logic, hopefully in equal parts. And we determined that the Romulans were very much physicality, emotion, passion–that defined their world and technology.
Regarding the part of the film he was most proud of, Chambliss cited the interior of Spock’s "Jellyfish" ship. And, as he noted in our recent interview, he again cited the Iowa Bar scene as his least favorite. He went into more detail noting that originally that part of the film was to take place in a big village on an alien planet, but again it was something they couldn’t afford, so the scene was rewritten for Earth and Chambliss (noting he wanted to do it at the funky Clifton’s) chose to use the bar in an American Legion hall to suit Abrams taste.
Things wrapped up with some audience Q&A followed by a special credits reel made by Mike Okuda, crediting everyone who worked in the art department on Star Trek over the years, followed by a very candid unaired interview with the late Harold Michelson, Production Designer on Star Trek The Motion Picture.
Star Trek panel at ADG event honoring Star Trek
Video for the evening, both the panel as well as the clips shown, will be made available by the Art Director’s Guild in October. The above is only a small taste of the full event which went on for around 2 hours, so when the video is available TrekMovie will post it.
Star Trek panel at ADG event honoring Star Trek
Photos: Paul Cantillon
The more I hear about why star trek V was left unfinished, the more I understand it.
Chambliss seems to like the bling.
yeah I felt that the only set on the Enterprise that really didn’t look right was the engineering set. It looked too industrial and 21st century to be part of a 23rd-century starship.
I was there for the event – Daren Dochterman was a perfect moderator, the Okuda’s did a wonderful credit roll of Art department personel over the course of the series’ and movies and had a great choice of music to go along – “Fly Me To The Moon” by Sinatra. They really have class.
The Harold Michelson footage was also wonderful, especially his use of the word “Shock” to describe his experience with a Trek Convention!
That was a great article – glad that they will make a video available.
Thanks for getting that for us all.
And it was a pleasure to finally meet you in the lobby.
This is the problem with the new film, instead of sticking with a Star Trek Themed look liked Joseph Jennings fought for, they go for the Star Wars moving parts look for the ships in the new movie.
regarding TFF – when Paramount said no couldnt Shatner have raised the 2m himself to finish the ending? i mean it was his film and his reputation as a film director was on the line….or maybe he couldve said ‘ok forego my fee and i’ll take points’ or something…i dunno. im sure he mustve done something like that to try and get his vision up there as he was wanting it to be the best and most epic Trek…
its odd though that out of all the stories he couldve come up with (both new and recyclyed/sequels to TOS eps etc) he choose to remake The Way to Eden – one of the worst eps of TOS…
then again most ‘good’ remakes are of bad films so maybe that was the idea….
actually TFF isnt all bad though – in fact some scenes and ideas have been ‘stolen’ and used in others – e.g. the main character on ‘holiday’ opening – used in MI2 and AvP
plus Trek09 – Kirk hitting his head like Scotty……Spock poking the fire like he did at the start of Trek V toasting marshmallows…i really got a Trek V vibe when he said ‘mutiny?!’ just the camera angle, Nimoys expression and the flames lighting his face…..Spock getting it on with Uhura – like Scotty in TFF……..Kirk leading the assualt team with Sulu and Olsen – like Kirk leading the assualt team in Trek V with Sulu and a bunch of security guys
c’mon paramount…give The Shat the green light for a fully realized directors cut DVD of Trek V
7 – someones trying to start the ball rolling on it:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nCbJ9pG6Sv0
If only JJ Abrams could have known ahead of time that he was not going to need the Rura Penthe scenes for the final film, he could have scrapped the scene altogether and put that money into a proper Engineering set…
LOL, Shatner and The Final Frontier suffered the same fate as Abrams and NuTrek? Nice.
I still dislike the engineering sets. But now I have a better understanding of the facts about why they were chosen. I still don’t know why they had to be so massive, or for that matter, why the whole ship had to be so gigantic.
My preference wuld have been to scale back the size of the ship (didn’t it look big in all the other Trek movies? I never got the feeling that the Enterprise in the new movie was over twice as big.) that way there would have been no real necessity to have a set that was so big as to be impractical to build and film.
Interesting that they showed TMP on the big screen. I’ve heard that the Director’s Cut isn’t viewable at that resolution.
#12, I’ve always wondered about that as well, especially as I’m pretty certain the director’s edition was screened at a movie theater prior to its home video release.
I’ve always been interested in the evolution of Trek’s production design over the years so this would have been a fun panel to attend. I’d especially love to see that interview with the late Harold Michaelson as I always loved his work on ST:TMP even though, from interviews that I’d read, it sounded like he wasn’t much of a sci-fi fan.
It’s also good to finally get some concrete info on why the engineering and lower decks of the Enterprise looked the way they did in Trek 2009; while I loved the movie I never cared much for the aesthetic used for those locations. Hearing that it was in fact budgetary constraints that let to that look gives me hope that, now that there are some standing sets and Trek is viable again, the producers will be able to put some money into a proper engineering deck for the sequel.
Maybe now with the standing sets built, they can spiff up Engineering within the new film’s budget: At least show us a central control area buzzing with activity. A Jefferies Tube would be nice as well.
Would love to see Simon Pegg’s Scotty Jerry-rigging something in the tube while Spock looks in the from the corridor
I hope some of the other guys “rubbed off” on Chambliss.
It would do him good.
That Budweiser plant bought a lot of other production value for the film, period. You wouldn’t have seen the scope, the level of physical action and the polish of effects work that put the new film over the top without using that location and that’s a trade I’m happy they made.
I didn’t stay for the TMP screening but I did see it screened at Paramount and I believe it was projected right off the DVD–not exactly 70mm quality but it looked acceptable.
11
I don’t know, I thought it was about time they scaled up the size of the Enterprise a bit. While the designs still worked, the earlier ships no longer seemed quite as impressively huge and GRAND as they used to.
Especially when you compare it to something like the Galactica.
And if they didn’t BLOW most of the budget @ Shaper Image for the UPC Scanners, they’d have had the $ they needed for engineering set..ahahahahahahahahahahahahahahaha.
Price check on the bridge! oyyyyyyyyyyyyyyyvieeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeee!
“The Director’s Edition” of Star Trek – The Motion Picture was shown in standard definition from the DVD and it looked fantastic! Nobody complained about the image, which filled the screen and held up. I saw no jagged lines and details were very clear and the color was rock solid. The sound was also wonderful.
Star Trek always looked great, even when the stories weren’t exactly up to par. Thanks to Jefferies, Zimmerman, and the rest for making the future look so cool. I can’t wait until we get there….
BTW: I agree with Zimmerman that DS9 had the best production designs of any Trek show, or, maybe, any show in history, IMHO.
6. screaming satellite – September 29, 2009:
‘plus Trek09 – Kirk hitting his head like Scotty……Spock poking the fire like he did at the start of Trek V toasting marshmallows…i really got a Trek V vibe when he said ‘mutiny?!’ just the camera angle, Nimoys expression and the flames lighting his face…..Spock getting it on with Uhura – like Scotty in TFF……..Kirk leading the assualt team with Sulu and Olsen – like Kirk leading the assualt team in Trek V with Sulu and a bunch of security guys.’
Yes. Star Trek 11 is replete with references to past Trek. Here’s a few more that most of us probably spotted. Kirk compares Spock to a computer, in homage to ‘This Side of Paradise’…Nero’s viceroy falls off a platform, a la Shinzon’s viceroy in NEM, which was itself in homage to Kruge in TSFS….Kirk eats an apple during the Kobayashi Maru, in homage to TWOK….ETC.
wish I’d have had the possibility to attend. looking forward for updates.
is there any documentary or book out on various Star Trek designs (interiors and locations), with drawings, concepts, ideas that never were realised or how things were and are done if built physically and not CGI?
I for one would love to know how I can construct myself a Star Trek themed living room…
7. angry rockman – September 29, 2009:
‘c’mon paramount…give The Shat the green light for a fully realized directors cut DVD of Trek V’.
Sadly, I think that it’ll most probably never happen. TFF is certainly not one of the best Trek films; but I think that most fans are too critical of it. TFF has some great character moments; we learn intimate character details about two of the three leads, details of their past, of their roots, details that have shaped who they are, and details which weren’t considered in the TOS. This revelation should be valued by anyone who values these characters; i.e., all us Trekkies. In addition, the music score is beautiful: one of Trek’s best. I also like the fact that they break the traditional villain model: the story is not built upon an extremely angry guy bent on destroying Kirk or the Enterprise, a la Khan, Kruge, Nero, Chang, etc. (‘God’ only featured at the end and had nothing against Kirk (he didn’t know he existed: he wasn’t actually omniscient, after all!) until the end: he wasn’t a traditional villain); Sybok had nothing against Kirk nor did he try to destroy him; the Klingons were actually friendly in the end…
The special effects were awful; but Shatner didn’t have a proper budget. Besides, I place little value on the special effects: it’s all about the story and the characters. TFF at least had quite a lot of action, unlike the pedestrian TMP; and TFF’s story isn’t fundamentally flawed, unlike INS and GEN.
16. Jeff Bond – September 29, 2009:
‘That Budweiser plant bought a lot of other production value for the film, period. You wouldn’t have seen the scope, the level of physical action and the polish of effects work that put the new film over the top without using that location and that’s a trade I’m happy they made’.
Nevertheless, do you agree with those of us (who in fact seem to be the majority here) who think that the engineering set looked anachronistic and somewhat difficult to believe? Difficult to believe that the flagship of a 23rd century space armada, a ship that could travel faster than light and destroy whole planets no less, would have an engineering section that was replete with water pipes and steam valves? This is no mere quibble: the engineering set breaks the illusion of what you’re seeing. You no longer belive that it’s, to quote someone, ‘real’.
The engineering set from TWOK was brilliant: distinctive, whilst being different from the rest of the ship, functional, believable, and futuristic-looking. Ideally, they should have gone with something very similar to that.
I understand your point that it seems that the budget wouldn’t allow them to create the engineering set they wanted. My point is that it would have been better if they had been able to create the set they wanted: a point which has been denied previously by people working on or acting in the film. Further, Trek 12 can recycle many of Trek 11’s sets. If the sequel to our prequel-sequel is given a large budget, like the first was, then they can create the better engineering set. And do a lot else besides.
Incidentally, the new film needs another huge budget. The mainstream craves it. If the special effects, sets, locations, etc., go downhill, then the ticket sales will too.
I hope that someone had the temerity to honor Matt Jeffries, from whom all their hard work laid the foundation for their work.
#24 – don’t expect much in the way of criticism of anything associated with the film from anyone closely linked to TrekMovie.com.
Some of the CGI in this edition of TMP was not good on the big screen. Such as the San Francisco Scene. These guys were so nice, they all signed my ST VI Laserdisc cover, as most of them worked on there, also Ralph Winter is coming to my school next week and I am going to have him sign it too! So, it is covered with 10 signatures! But, Scott Chambliss is such a nice guy, I thought he had a lot of class, and here he is, a prod. designer for multi-million dollar films, and he was honored to meet me, because I enjoyed his work. I got a pic with all of them together and the Okudas, what a great night! 5 years ago I saw the original TMP there with Michelson there, that was another great night!
Oh, by the way this part:
“That was a building block of doing the show. It is three different cultures, and in our philosophy of where they came from, they come from three different places. The Vulcan culture, that technology so heavily relied on logic and science and the sensibility of emotion being way down there [motions down]. Starfleet and human beings obviously, emotion plus logic, hopefully in equal parts. And we determined that the Romulans were very much physicality, emotion, passion–that defined their world and technology.”
Was an answer to my question: Why did the Romulan ship have water knee high, where they tortured Pike?
Also, they filmed this session it is on the Egyptian website
I understand they had to use an industrial location for engineering, and it certainly doesn’t bother me as much as you guys, but I agree there are better locations to depict a 23rd century starship. They could have shot on location at a particle accelerator facility for example…
http://api.ning.com/files/yhCsS*vRHKjK5XSMYHVraaz5G2QrLO685BvTM99dIYAO3XSTCsQ4DGWsFWcsBsvjwkKPOjUM*tHp3ngpuNQdQQ1iiiDISKfm/061229_lhc_hmed_6p.jpg
http://astroguyz.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/12/lhc_hall_1.jpg
Add minimal set dressings, and more control panels and computers, and you’d really have something nice and more believable than a brewery. However, budget might not have allowed them to aquire such locations.
But in the end, the industrial locations don’t really bother me anyway.
Man, does every comment thread here have to talk about Engineering?
Yes, cuz the Budweiser engineering stands out as the only thing that wasn’t damn-near perfect in that entire movie.
It sucked, and therefore stuck out like a sore thumb in a flick that was otherwise a triumph of design.
It didn’t bother me at all. If you bothered to read the Cinescape magazine, they added a lot of CG to that set to make it look different like the piping, etc. I bet most normal moviegoers thought the set looked fine.
24: “Difficult to believe that the flagship of a 23rd century space armada, a ship that could travel faster than light and destroy whole planets no less, would have an engineering section that was replete with water pipes and steam valves?”
That is no harder to believe than that here in the 21st century we find modern technology using the same sorts of gears and cogs that have been around for 2000 years, just made of different material and often controlled by computer, but still very prevalent and necessary for modern technological devices to work.
Unless you are proposing that the people of the 23rd century no longer have a need for water, then how do you propose water on a starship gets from one place to the other?
I think it’s absurd that so many people here seem to think that how things are done in the 23rd century will have nothing in common with how they are done in the 21st century. Or that if the Enterprise does actually have plumbing, it will always be hidden, no matter how large the pipes are. What a bunch of prissy sissies the engineers of the 23rd century must be that they can’t stand the appearance of open pipes, even if that does make them much easier to work on.
The Budweiser set did not take me out of the movie. On the contrary, it made the Enterprise seem more real to me than it had been before.
Where was Rotten Rick??
And by the way, during the scene in ST.09 when the cadets are flying aboard the Enterprise via shuttle, what’s that spied through the open bay doors on the ceiling of the cargo deck??? Pipes. Lots of ’em. In CGI.
Can’t blame THOSE pipes on Budweiser.
33. dmduncan – September 29, 2009:
‘I think it’s absurd that so many people here seem to think that how things are done in the 23rd century will have nothing in common with how they are done in the 21st century’.
The people who think that the engineering set looks anachronistic and hard to accept don’t deny that there will likely be *some* continuity between the 21st and 23rd centuries. We deny that the continuity is likely to be as *strong* as is depicted in Trek 11. The strong continuity is, in fact, present only (at least it’s by far the most pronounced continuity) with engineering. All or almost every other aspect of the film looks futuristic. This is odd; and is best explained by the production designer himself, who has admitted that they ran out of money! Again, it’s difficult to accept that a ship that can destroy planets, travel many times faster than the speed of light, whose crew use energy cells and micro-technology in phasers, communicators, portable computer pads, etc., has an engineering section where water pipes and steam values play a prominent role.
In fact, several Navy officers and submariners (who, of course, should know what they’re talking about) have commented on this very site that engineering, as depicted in Star Trek 11, is actually less advanced that what they’re used to! Considering this, it’s hard to believe that a 23rd century engineering station would, in terms of appearance and composition, be akin to the engineering set on Star Trek 11.
I, for one, would have liked to have seen a towering warp core, perhaps several decks high, in all its glory: flashing and humming in the centre of engineering with computer terminals and technicians everywhere buzzing around. That would have been far more believable (in JJ speak, ‘more real’) and would have plain looked better. If only they had had (even!) more money. With recyclyed sets and the Trek tradition of updating the ships almost every film, a new engineering set would go down well. We now know that the production designer would have preferred something different himself…
I remember in Trek 5 where Kirk, Spock, Scotty walk through the corridors, and there’s lots of pipes around. In Trek 6, when the door opens to reveal the body of the dead assassins, you can see pipes all over the place.
29. Daniel Broadway – September 29, 2009:
‘I understand they had to use an industrial location for engineering, and it certainly doesn’t bother me as much as you guys, but I agree there are better locations to depict a 23rd century starship. They could have shot on location at a particle accelerator facility for example…’
Well, it’s a bit more difficult to plug a partial accelerator facility than a beer company in a film! If Uhura had instead said, ‘Hey Kirk, I can’t go out with you anyway: I’m going down to the partical accelerator facility at CERN tomorrow,’ I don’t think it would have quite the same marketing power… I’m sure that that little shameless Bud. promotion took a few million off the hire price…
Conduits are to be expected in any ship or structure until such time as wireless power transmission is feasible ala Tesla. My house and my own business has conduit that I have run myself. More than likely the structure that you are in now has some running through the walls. What I didn’t understand was the use of a water turbine. I’m sure that there will be an explanation of why there is a huge volume of water running through engineering that requires passage through one. And conduits aren’t necessarily “pipes”.
I just didn’t like the way the Budweiser plant looked onscreen. Not so much a matter of just how functional everything is. It just looked “off” to me. There was no other, better place that could be dressed up?
And #17
I guess the refit Enterprise looked grand to me. The new E looked no “grander” at twice the size than the ship I saw get the extended beauty shot in TMP. Somebody should put a side by side shot of the two ships in space and make them the same size to see which is “grander” looking.
I always assumed that what we saw in the new movie was just the brewery section of engineering where they make the Enterprise beer for the crew.
36: “All or almost every other aspect of the film looks futuristic.”
And that’s a totally subjective feeling that I don’t share. I can hear two Mideasterners of the 11th century talking about what life will be like in the 21st century, and one chastises the other claiming that surely by the 21st century steel and concrete will have passed out of use in favor of more “futuristic” materials.
“The strong continuity is, in fact, present only (at least it’s by far the most pronounced continuity) with engineering. All or almost every other aspect of the film looks futuristic.”
Have you ever been in the freight elevator of a modern office building where everything looks nice and shiny, and suddenly the doors open on the engineer’s floors and whoah skippy! but suddenly nothing out there is nice and shiny anymore? It’s all big and noisy and ugly. What sort of engineer want’s to have to remove an entire freakin WALL to get to the pipes behind it just so his engineering section looks consistent with the public part of the building?
So what you are really complaining about, it seems to me, is that it isn’t cartoonishly consistent in every area of the ship, which, just like the innards of an office building, is actually what you would find if you ever stumbled off the usual route to your destination in one of those places. Seeing the plumbing made the Enterprise MORE realistic to me, just as when I glimpsed the workings of a modern office building beyond the public facade, which is what most people ever see. But never having seen it doesn’t mean it’s not there anyway.
“Again, it’s difficult to accept that a ship that can destroy planets, travel many times faster than the speed of light, whose crew use energy cells and micro-technology in phasers, communicators, portable computer pads, etc., has an engineering section where water pipes and steam values play a prominent role.”
100% disagree. Why should a starship capable of traveling at warp speed and destroying whole planets not ALSO have plumbing? I think that’s ridiculous. I think that’s like asking how can a people who can travel to the stars still have a bodily need to use a toilet? As if humans will be loftier in that more futuristic time and not need to do that.
Part of the problem is, I think, a lot of fans are thinking in terms of there being A single engineering place on the ship. I think that is highly unlikely to be the case. In a ship that size there will probably be quite a few engineering stations, dealing with various different areas of shipboard engineering functions. Engineering doesn’t just mean engines, impulse or warp. There’s also environmental engineering, which is going to deal with water, waste, recycling, atmosphere. There will also be power management, supplying power to all the ships systems. So Scotty should oversee all of the other engineers and sections mostly from the bridge.
“We now know that the production designer would have preferred something different himself…”
And they haven’t cut themselves out of an engineering set for the next film at all, which makes the excess of complaints unnecessary.
But now that we’ve seen the plumbing I don’t want it to vanish. If they do an engineering set, I want them to do it in addition to what we’ve already seen, not as a replacement. You create the impression of the size of this new Enterprise by taking us to places within it we’ve never gone to or seen before.
Think big, and allow for bigger thinking from this new team. Don’t complain about the pipes. Demand instead to see more areas of the ship that might satisfy what you are looking for. Just because the Budweiser set was engineering doesn’t necessarily mean that’s the only or most relevant engineering section on this huge new ship.
39: “What I didn’t understand was the use of a water turbine.”
A few people have commented on the water turbine. I don’t understand other people’s confusion on that. Turbines are used to pump fluid. If you have water in pipes it’s not there to remain still but to get somewhere, and to get it where you need it you will have to pump it. What’s the mystery?
The engineering /brewery was just not right. The majority of new movie goers to Star Trek would not think of it being off base. Although they may now think all engine rooms will be like that…brewing beer. They could have made it look larger by doing something besides the industrial factory look. Not to mention the weight, how did that thing get off the planet? Granted its weightless in space but it must have been hell to get that off the surface into orbit.
My vote goes to Insurrection for worst… that was not good film and it is the only DVD I do not own and never will. Here we go with another starfleet admiral/commodore that goes rouge/traitor/insane.
STV was a good film, not the best, but certainly not the worst. But if you listen to the commentary by Shatner and his daughter on TFF dvd you get a better understanding of the films director and his visor. For an even better understanding or appreciation read Shatner book on the making of TFF. That made me think he really got a bum rap for the film as it was not his fault but the studio and how they saw the film should be made. It was Shatners films, not the studio heads.
Nemesis was just Ok, but one was the directors fault, you need to have some one who was on the inside of Trek to give a film what it needs or what the fans need.
dmduncan
I am familiar with impeller type pumps. I guess in my own clumsy way I’m trying to say that, to me, it looked awkward and out of place. Rather than having a readily discernible function on the ship (other than the obvious moving of water) it seemed to exist only to endanger the future chief engineer. Complete with clear pipes so that you could follow the action.
The human eye has ways of detecting when something looks inconsistent with the environment or surroundings it exists in. This is one of those cases where I didn’t buy into what I was seeing. Hanging a great big water turbine from the cieling attached to clear pipes was just too much of a visual affectation for me. And I admit that I much prefer the earlier interpretations of how a starship engineering section should look.
#42 – What’s the purpose of all that water on a starship? Think very carefully.
45,
So that when the ship needs to sneak up on somebody, they dump the water outside and let it freeze, so they look like a comet to outsiders.
Hey, the rationalizations that have been used for REAL to justify all these screwy art direction and storytelling bits on this Abrams thing are just as screwy as this!
Ah, design threads. How I love thee.
My 8 cents (accounting for inflation):
Budweisser plant, not the greatest, not the worst. It was actually the ORIGINAL way that they wanted to do the Enterprise in TOS, but they didn’t have the money.
Would I like to see the good old thrumming core? Yes, very much so. And maybe we will see it, since they lost their cores to the black hole, they may just do a “refit.”
Shredding turbine things: seemed a little bit “Galaxy Quest” for my taste. I could’ve done without it.
All in all, I can’t wait for the next one and all the controversy that comes with it. Because clearly, everyone here has made multi-million dollar movies along with reenergized a multi-billion dollar franchise. Bravo to those who “think they could do better.”
Shark
Much like the Holiday Inn commercials, no I didn’t make a “multi-million dollar movie(s) along with reenergized a multi-billion dollar franchise.”
But I have seen them. And I know what one looks like.
It’s all a matter of taste. And mine may be different than other’s.
45 – They were living in a brewery. Why do you think they had to have that much plumbing? Duh.
T,
You know I love ya and I respect your tastes. It’s really the ones that say stuff like “the film was bad because of this” or “I won’t see the next one if they have this” that bug me. You just said it seemed out of place, and I agree to an extent. Please see “thrumming warp core” comment above.
It’s a minor itch on the back of the movie. Either way, it lives on.