Why Are Original Trek Ships Darker In Remakes?

The original Enterprise appeared in DS9s tribbles episode.

The Defiant (a sister ship of the Enterprise) appeared in Enterprise's two Mirror episodes.

In both, the Constitution class ships looked alot darker than Constitution class ships did in the Original Series.

In the original series, the Enterprise and her sister ships practically glowed.

How come?

The ships in "Trials and Tribblations" were CGI.

The TOS ships were models.

I figured.

So why can't they make CGI ships glow like the originals did?

I thought I read somewhere that the original Enterprise model is quite a bit darker than it looks on TOS, that the filming on TOS has it quite a bit overexposed.

Could they use CGI to duplicate the "overexposed" look of the original series?

Actually, those were models in that episode.

The Enterprise miniatures were painted gray, but appeared very white due to the nature of effects in those days.

And, yes, the Enterprise (at least, if not the space station and Klingon ship, too) in "Trials and Tribbleations" was a new-built miniature, not CGI.

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Oh certainly. I'd imagine it'd take a lot of work and CPU render time, though. Personally, I prefer the look of the non-overexposed Enterprise simply because it fits in better with how ships look in, well, the rest of Trek, even the crazy stuff like TAS .

It seems to me that making it darker makes it more realistic, since there would really only be one light source (a solar system's sun) big enough to light the ship up. The background stars would just provide minimal lighting or a silhouette.

No, they were not. They were new models, at least according to the DS9 Companion (yea, yea, I'm a nerd).

In Trials and Tribbleations, The Enterprise, the Klingon D7, and Space Station K7 were all new models built by Greg Jein. They can be seen here:
http://members.aol.com/idicpage/main.html

The original Enterprise was painted a medium concrete gray. See Paul Newitt's analysis here:
http://www.culttvman2.com/dnn/tabid/74/ctl/ArticleView/mid/408/articleId/7/Default.aspx
It was stood against a bluescreen and lit incredibly brightly, because cameras needed shitloads of light back then.

They went for a more "out in space away from a sun" effect for T&T, and the CGI Defiant.

I always reasoned that the glowing effect was a side effect of the shields or other energy fields generated by the ship.

I really love how it made the ship stand out.

^ And so we come up against the age-old "artistic effect vs. realism" quandary yet again.

If you check out the remastered Trek episodes, the Enterprise isn't nearly as 'white' looking. Much better, in my opinion.

The fuzzy, glowey version looked like crap, in my opinion. I'll be the heretic who only buys the remastered version of TOS.

Whenever I hear people talk about "realism" in special effects I'm reminded of SeaQuest.

When a new producer came on before their last (3rd) season, he asked the effects people "When can our CGI produce sharper images?".

One of the effects people said "Oh, we can do that already. But it is supposed to be really murky underwater"

The producer reportedly roared "Who gives a damn about how things are supposed to look like underwater! Viewers tune in to see cool stuff!"

And if you want to talk realism, in their space battle sequences, the original series was arguably alot more realistic than modern Trek.

How.

In no original series Trek battle (aside possibly for "The Doomsday Machine" where the closeness of the Enterprise to the planet killer was stated in the episode) was the Enterprise shown firing its weapons IN THE SAME FRAME as its opponent.

This allowed you to reason that the enemy ship might be hundreds of thousands of miles away.

But all modern Trek has tended to show the Enterprise (or Voyager, or Defiant) and their opponents in the same frame of film. At literally spitting distance.

Incredibly UNREALISTIC when ships weapons ranges are in the hundreds of thousands of miles.

How is it unrealistic? Phaser fire and torpedoes take time to reach their target. The further the target is, the better chance it has to outmaneuver the weapons. It's stands to reason that you'd want a target closer rather than further away.

The only place I've ever seen giving the range of Trek weapons is Bridge Commander, and about 50,000 km is around the range for most Federation weapons.

DS9 had excellent space battles that used all three dimensions and engaged in close combat. In TOS, the Enterprise just sat there motionless firing bursts of energy. Same in TNG and even VOY.

I'm just, um, 'renting' one of those. Somehow I have a feeling that I'll be glad that I didn't buy until now.

Well, I liked those big DS9 scenes, so .

And it seemed to me that they did OK with the physics. Perigrines flitting and darting like space fighters, Galaxies, D'Deridex &, Galors swooping slowly, Defiants, Birds of Prey, and Jem'Hadar bugs somewhere in between.

Remember, inertial dampers. That's enough to explain pretty much all of it.

It would make more sense to keep all your big ships in close formation where their shields could help cover each other and their weapons could all be targeted on just a couple of nearby targets.

Allowing their combined fire to overwhelm each target in turn.

By the way, dogfights never make much sense. American, British, and other aircraft pilots absolutely hate the idea of dogfighting opposing aircraft.

I seem to recall them used as escorts and to harass capital ships on DS9.

The root of Starfleet warfare is not the modern style...

Trek style naval combat is based around Napalonic war era Ships of the line style combat... Fighters in trek would be equated with small boats.

Which is what the Cardassian/Dominion fleet did, until the Federation/Klingons/Romulans proved that to be a bad idea in space.

That's because airplanes are limited by earth's gravity, where as starships have limited gravitational pull working against them. Thanks to inertial dampers and thrusters, a starship can literally stop on a dime and strafe sideways, up, down, or backwards.

No, pilots hate it because anything can happen in close combat.

Skill and superior weapons go very much out the window. Get in close to an enemy ship (or fighter in the case of today) and if things get really critical they can simply ram you.

Pilots preferred method of downing an enemy is to come up from behind and gun them down before they ever see you.

Real starship combat thus might well be more like ships dropping out of cloak, firing, then slipping away to try it again.

The Klingons did that all the damn time.

I don't really have any piloting experience, so I wouldn't know.

I do know that in Bridge Commander, the quickest tactic for a sure victory is to maintain close combat with an enemy, constantly changing phaser firing arcs, focusing fire on one area (dorsal, ventral, starboard, or port) and not letting the enemy do the same thing. There's even the possibility getting so close to the enemy that one can fire at an enemy's hull directly since the shields become "merged."

Firing at ships from great distances (35-50 km) allows them more maneuverability and diminishes one's chances of victory. Staying motionless (as the Enterprise did in TOS and TNG) almost guarantees a loss.

Bridge Commander seems to be pretty realistic for the Trek universe, but any writer can change it depending on the story.

The white/gray look also varies from shot to shot throughout the series. Some shots make the ship look very white while others look more gray.

I'm watching "Spock's Brain" on TVLand right now (unadulterated, no CGI) and the shot of the Enterprise while the title font is up looks great. Nice and gray.

In fact, most of the Enterprise shots look that way in this episode.

IN 30+ years they bought better cameras and learned how to light things properly


Just watch the TOS movies and see how big a difference 35 mm film and a detailed model make.

The farther you are away from your target in Bridge Commander and StarFleet Battles (StarFleet Command), the less of an impact your weapons have.

So no, it doesn't make sense to shoot from afar. Especially Romulans with their nifty plasma torpedoes or whatever they were called.