Star Trek Discussion

When TNG was first filmed they used to film the ship against a blue background for special effects shots. By the time of Voyager the industry had switched to using green screens. I'm guessing that the green lights didn't show up well on the blue screen, and on the green screen would have been interpreted as being part of the background. So for Voyager they may have changed the running lights to red on the physical model - which would be the model used for most of the stock footage. Towards the end of DS9 and roughly halfway through Voyager and during Enterprises run they tended to use CGI models for the ships, which would have allowed them to change the lights back to green as there would have been no problems in post production with them.

There were a few occasions where they flipped an image on TOS, usually noticeable when the parting in Kirks hair switches side. It is a cheap and simple way to get the image the director wanted in post-production without having to reshoot a scene. You don't normally see this in modern Sci-Fi shows as the effect images are all CGI - but it certainly was used when you have footage of physical models - which for Voyager would include most of the stock footage of the ship including the warp jumps. So a flipped image makes sense.

Trivia; On TOS they used stock footage from the first pilot episode throughout the shows three years. This caused a minor and recurrent gaff as the model of the Enterprise had been altered between the two pilot episodes. The most noticeable difference was that the original model had a flat 'grate' at the end of the nacelles, where as Kirks version was meant to have a smooth dome in the middle of the end of the nacelle. If you watch TOS episodes (or at least the ones where the effects shots were not remastered and updated) you'll notice that the end of the nacelles changes between the 'Pike' and 'Kirk' versions depending on what stock footage they used - which can often result in the end of the nacelles changing in the same scene.

I was referring to the impulse engines.

in this case it wasn't a "couldn't see it" you had a clear look into it. for some reason when they took that stock shot, one of them wasn't on - and they used that stock shot in nearly every episode.

I've been trying for a couple days, now, to find the particular clip on youtube, or anywhere else, with it clear enough to see.

Voyagers impulse engines are recessed in the cowling's, and have vertical 'walls' that run back from the cowling to the edge of the pylon. These can hide the glow of the engines unless you are looking at them from almost directly astern - especially since they are located so close to the warp nacelles and the light they emit.

This is why it often appears as if only one of the engines is active on the effects shots of the ship.

We're not used to this, as almost all of the previous ships we have seen at fairly close range have no sort of 'tail pipe', so the glow from the engines is visible quite easily in aft views. The exception was the Defiant, who's impulse engines are also recessed to protect them since she was a warship. (And because while an enemy will have no problem targeting the small red-glowing impulse engine they will never be able or willing to target the large blue glowing warp engine next to them.)

When Enterprise was cancelled I predicted that it would be at least a decade before Trek started to consider making a new TV series. I wasn't that surprised that they decided to make new films, as they have traditionally acted as 'place holders' to keep the franchise active and in peoples minds. (Star Wars in comparison used books and ironically TV/games as place holders)

As far as the latest films go, I think that we'll see one more before they seriously start to consider a TV series. The problem is that creatively they've boxed themselves in. I don't think that the current films have enough interest in them to warrant a series that follows on from them, or enough 'reality' in them to make a cost effective series - Enterprise was ultimately cancelled because it was costing too much to make per episode. A TV series that follows on from two or three high budget films would either need to have too large a budget to be sustainable, or be 'character driven' which would probably put off most of the fans of the films.

As much as I like TNG, which was a character driven show - at least technically - the films were slow paced and rather dull because of this. Even First Contact - unquestionably the strongest of the TNG films - suffers from trying to shoe horn so many characters into it. TV shows need to have a fairly large cast, so that the writers have the option to tell stories about someone other than the lead. Usually you see between five and seven 'main' characters on TV shows, although some of these may be listed as 'guest stars' and be recurring characters rather than officially part of the main cast.

Of course many of the guest stars and recurring characters can end up becoming part of the main cast - Green Arrow and Lois Lane on Smallville, Anya on Buffy the Vampire Slayer and even Worf on TNG. Having what is effectively an expanded cast helps a TV show feel part of a larger world, and you can set stories with those characters if you want to - Babylon 5 had at least two episodes where the Character of Bester (played by Walter Koenig) was effectively the lead.

This is because of the number of stories you have to write for TV - even a show that gets cancelled before it finishes a full season will have some 12 hours of story - six times that of most big budget films.

Films however have only two hours worth of story, give or take, which doesn't give you any real chance to introduce more than two or three characters in any detail. Consider that in Star Trek 11 we only really get to see Kirk and Spock in any detail, everyone else is basically a thumbnail.

This makes it hard to turn a TV series into a good film, or a film into a good TV series because the underlying structures are different. TOS of Trek had the advantage of being a series that effectively had three main leads, with everyone else being supporting characters - a sign of the period in which it was made. But today you couldn't get away with that on a TV show while still making it feel 'real'.

What you have to do for TV these days is have a fairly large cast, with recurring characters that help give the feeling of a larger world. Trek unfortunately tended to fall flat in this regards, with the exception of Enterprise and DS9, as they tended to never show you characters again no matter how much screen time they might have had in an episode. Remember 'Below Decks' from TNG? The episode in which they followed three low ranking officers on the ship and one of the bartenders in Ten Forward? Only on of those characters had been seen before (In 'First Duty') and none of them were ever seen or name checked again. Likewise in Voyager's two part episode 'Equinox' (the cliffhanger between season 5 and 6) they end up with a couple of new crew-members...who are never seen or heard of again.

A new Trek series therefore has a lot of problems to overcome before it could be considered viable. The 'old' model is not sustainable and I doubt that any major studio would be willing to put forward the money needed to produce a show even if they have that much money available. So they need something new, but at the same time not so new that you just put off all of the old fans, who you will be relying on to support the show for at least the first season or two - TNG relied on the existing fan base until around its third season when the show really started to take off.

There are three possibilities;

An animated series; This was already done for TOS of course. The problem here is that animated shows are viewed as being 'for kids', although that *might* be changing slightly since Star Wars The Clone Wars.

Cost wise animated shows have fairly flat costs, as the whole thing is effectively special effects it costs you nothing extra to animate a ship battle compared to a 'talking' scene on the bridge.

However animated shows take longer to produce - it took eight days or so to make an episode of TNG, a running time of roughly 50 minutes. While a single episode of the Simpsons, running time about 20 minutes, takes four months to animate. Plus animation can look really fake, breaking the fourth wall very easily - a killer for a 'drama' series and probably why a lot of people disliked the Trek Animated series.

It is also clear that Paramount isn't interested in an animated series. One was proposed several years back, and development even got as far as designing the characters. But it was ultimately shelved, making it very unlikely that Trek will go in this direction.

A traditional live action show; Risky because of the costs of making it, as detailed above. Trek does have the slight advantage of probably being able to reuse sets and props from earlier shows - probably not one of the Captains chairs as they tend to get stolen.

While this may seem the most logical way to go, it seems probable that Paramount is uneasy at this idea because it would be difficult to make it feel new or fresh. This is not just in regards characters or setting, but also in terms of stories - when you have written some 700 episodes you'd end up copying something that you'd already done very quickly.

A Mini-Series; This might be a viable alternative to a traditional live action show, and a much more tempting one for Paramount. Apart from anything else the most popular episodes of Enterprise and Voyager were the two parters. A Mini-Series would be harder to create, as they would need a very strong over-arcing storyline, but they could afford to spend more on each 'episode' than they could manage with a full on series while still spending less over all. The costs might also be offset, and viewer figures become less of a worry, by making this a 'feature' rather than something that will be aired every week for 22 weeks.


All three options do, however, have a problem when it comes to the setting. If they follow on from TNG era the technology and technobabble would exceed that seen on Trek at its worst - making the costs of the required special effects eye watering and putting off a lot of people. If they try to set it earlier than this, or follow on from the recent films, they have other problems - such as having to spend just as much money to give the same feel as a $150 million film or the fans simply knowing the sort of things they could expect to happen down the line - which is to say you can't really introduce an entirely new threat to the Federation that we have never heard about before. Romulans and Klingons have been used to death in Trek, and something new is needed.

This is what I meant earlier when I said that they'd effectively written themselves into a dead end. They can't realistically move forward from the films and can't go back from TNG era without causing themselves real problems.

There is a way around this - I was working on an idea for a Trek series that would work both as a conventional series or as a mini-series with little modifications. I'd say more but, hey, if anyone from Paramount is interested and reading they can always get in touch (riiiight, that's really going to happen). So if I can figure out how to get it to work they should be able to do so....

Prequels don't work, because on one level or another you already know what is or is not going to happen - in the case of character prequels you can't seriously threaten the protagonist when you know they will survive to appear in later stories. This is why Wolverine Origins didn't work as a film - we knew he'd survive to become the barely controlled ball of fury we'd seen in the three X-Men films. So you could only threaten or kill of those supporting characters we hadn't seen or heard of before - which usually depressingly easy to predict especially if they happen to be a close friend or love-interest.

Exploring how characters get to where we later see them can work in films - such as X-Men First Class - if done correctly. But it is very telling that the sequel to that is going to be a re-make of 'Days of Future Past' - which is an alternate reality story.

For a TV series the prequel idea really doesn't work because you can't 'realistically' have an 'Earth/The Federation' is threatened story when we know full well both still exist 200 years later. It also, in Trek, caused problems because introducing other races as protagonists when we've seen that 200, or even 100, years later they are part of that same Federation doesn't work - we know everything works out in the end.

It sounds like a good idea on paper, and can work as a stand alone story. But just doesn't really work as the basis for a TV series or mini-series - as Enterprise showed in its first three seasons.

I'm starting to feel that the Mini-series idea would work well, providing that there is a strong and clear story to act as a framework and course for it. It would also benefit from Trek's habit of either creating movie-standard props and sets or reusing sets and props that were originally made for films*. In both cases this means that they are perfectly placed to create a 'high quality' show without having to design and build such things from scratch.

(*The sets used on TNG were originally built for The Motion Picture - Rikers quarters are the same set used as Kirks quarters in TMP. The sets built for DS9 were built to movie standards, even though on the TV's of the time they could have got away with far less detail. Of course this also explains why Trek ended up being so expensive to produce.)

The story I had could work as either a mini-series, or as the framework to a conventional series. I'm starting to think of it more as the MS though.

Prequels are hard to make work. Look at the misbegotten Star Wars prequels. Or Prometheus.

Or, better yet, try to imagine the enthusiasm for "Notting Hill: The Early Years".

Seriously, most strangers to the story just aren't interested in most prequel's stories. They're usually too much "Inside Baseball". That's why, when a good prequel comes out, everyone's surprised.

Prequels are usually more popular with True Believers than the average public.

Personally, my reaction to the last Wolverine movie was "Why bother? I'll wait for Netflix." I was never a big X-Men fan to begin with, and yet another origin story just didn't do anything for me.

Perhaps what Trek needs is a bit more of a rest. Look at how much it helped "Doctor Who" when they stopped. Although I enjoyed the two new Trek films, they did seem to be thrashing about a bit and not really doing much but showing off special effects.