Be Excellent To Each Other

Best Sci-fi at the cinema since Serenity, I reckon.

While I'm not as enthused with the film as everyone else, I think it is the best sci fi film since serenity. Serentity was better though. Probably. Firefly was better.

There hasn't been much else in the Sci-Fi genre since though, has there? Sunshine springs to mind.

You've got that a bit wrong, I think Archer's Enterprise was one of the first to reach Warp 5, Kirk's Enterprise can do Warp 8.

Surely Kirk's Enterprise did Warp 10? Not entirely under it's own steam, admittedly.

Well, yeah. So did the Enterprise-D. According to the Star Trek wiki, there was even a pre-NX01 Enterprise, some kind of 'warp liner' which could do Warp 2. It looks not far removed from some of the conceptual craft NASA talk about, consisting of a long slender tube and a large 'hoop', which I presume are the warp engine and crew modules respectively.

I've always been slightly annoyed by the silliness of design of the Enterprise and most sci-fi ships. Why would you put the bridge right up on top where a stray shot can take out the entire upper branch of the crew? Why wouldn't you bury it in the middle of the ship, and use screens and cameras to show them whatever they need to see?

Why would you have boarding parties consisting of the higher ranking shipboard officers? The marines were created for expressly that purpose - as a military force on board ship used for boarding parties and the repelling of enemy boarding parties, so why would you change that?

Also (although I can see why they do it), what's with the manual firing control on the captain's voice orders? When you're trying to hit a moving point in space, surely your computers can do a damned sight better job of tracking your target than doing it manually, and waiting for the captain to tell you when to fire? Explains why they miss so much, I guess.

I wonde rif it goes back to Ship design, where the bridge is high up so you can see further across the water.

It probably does, but that's no reason not to can the idea when the technology makes it possible.

Not sure..

Wasn't there a battle bridge in the cente of the 1701-D, that they used then the ship split in two.

Yeah, and that one sort of made sense - but the fact that it's about a quarter of a mile away means they only ever bother using it when they have some cool plan involving dumping the saucer section.

The bridge is where it is as it's designed to be interchangable - in theory, if the ship was needed for a new specialist purpose, the whole bridge module could be quickly removed and replaced with a new one.

There is a battle bridge - the idea is that the saucer can seperate to save the majority of the crew (especially on the Enterprise D which, as we all know, is filled with endearing children and helpless spouses, all of varying ethnicities) while the 'engineering section', which has the main power supply, most of the weapons and engines can then do the fighting. This is also the plan if the engineering section is going to explode (because we CAN'T DUMP THE CORE!!!!), or if they need to make an emergency atmospheric landing (the saucer section is designed to survive landing rough)

As for away teams... when they go planetside they're often just exploring, not heading off to wage war. Boarding parties is another matter, and you're right there. I suppose it goes back to the era when the original series was conceived, when you expected a dashing captain hero to swashbuckle his way personally through each encounter. You could argue that this has been retained because people still want to follow the heroic captain, and not the tragic redshirts who get sent in to die first.*

*though there was an amusing series on Icebox.com called 'Starship Regulars' about the ordinary joes who'd have to work on each starship. The pilot episode showed while a typical epic sci-fi battle effects the heroic command crew, at the rear of the ship the off-duty regulars are ignoring the explosions outside and having a drinking contest.

Mmm. Surely if converting the ship to a specialist purpose, pretty much the only bit that wouldn't need much in the way of changing would be the bridge? Also surely the fact that they're a sitting duck up top there rather outweighs the convenience of a modular ship design that they never took advantage of?

I heard that the special effects cost of doing this meant it was only used rarely in the series as it was too expensive. Not sure how accurate that is though.

I can believe that. I prefer to believe that they realised it was a really dumb fucking idea.

The only time it would have made sense was at the end of Nemesis when they rammed the bugger. And they didn't do it.

Yes, well, there's a lot of things they didn't take advantage of. The captain has his own personal ship called the Captain's Yacht (it's on the underside of the saucer, right in the middle) that they never showed in action.

You do sort of see a replacement bridge in the episode with the Enterprise C... the alternative Enterprise D's bridge is designed for battle, with several additional stations for crewmembers to cling onto when the ship inevitably rocks around, waiting to be told to fire.

I'd wager that a 'fire at will' or 'weapons free' order can be given, but I don't know if you ever see them use it. The captains seem to prefer controlling their ship by giving the 'fire phasers' and 'take it slow' verbal commands.

Also, the ships are heavily dependent on their shields, moreso than any armour plating. This is why when the shields fail, they're fucked, and perhaps that's why the bridge is where it is.

Or on the otherhand - it's not primarily intended to be a warship. Do you cuss the Klingons for putting their command centre at the front of their ships in an obvious place?

I think they probably didn't give it all that much thought when they first came up with the design. They hardly would have expected that millions of nerds would be examining every detail for decades. They probably just wanted some familiar aspects from naval war films etc where the captain and his crew stand on the bridge.

Since World War 2, most of the actual 'controlling' is done from the CIC which isn't necessarily on or near the bridge. The bridge is where they steer the ship, while the captain paces in the CIC shouting 'GOD DAMMIT!'

It would appear that the original was, at least according to the new film. It's referred to as the fleet flagship, not as a survey vessel. And I do equally think that the bridge placement on the Birds of Prey / Warbirds is just as stupid.

Star fleet ships mainly the Enterpise in most guises, have been explorer ships, but being so, they need enought firepower to get out of trouble

I think it's about the visual imagery and not the practicalities, as other have said. Mind you the verbal commands always made me think more of sub warfare than of 19th century naval engagements, but either way the Enterprise does not steer like a fucking X-Wing, Star Trek game makers.

Although it's a flagship, the Federation's touchy-feely nature mean it's primarily about exploration and diplomacy. Hence senior staff on away teams, etc. Where was the bridge of the Defiant?

Aside: I love the fact the Galactica has almost no windows at all.

It's been referred to as a 'heavy cruiser' and 'dreadnought' at times, go figure. It was 'Trek Time Travel' weekend on Virgin One, I quite liked the look of the 'Soyuz Class' that Kelsey Grammer was commanding, it has a huge gun turret on the rear.

There's a sci-fi series I own that I regularly re-read. The plot is absolute guff, but the space combat is the best I ever read. It's clearly been unbelievably well thought through. Combat takes place over thousands of kilometres, between ships that take hours to turn round, and is based primarily on firing missiles at where you think your opponent will be when they get there. Brilliant stuff for a massive military sci-fi nerd like me.

But the shields are shit. Not only do they seem to do very little (seemingly every time the ship takes a hit some consoles explode, which would indicate massive damage) but in the new film when the Enterprise warped to the battlesite late for the party there were chunks of debris meandering calmly into the hull, ffs.

Quite. If the Enterprise isn't actually a military vessel, you'd think they'd have learned by now that the amount of fights it gets in means it could probably do with an escort.

I thought you could not have your shilds up in warp.

It is a military vessel, I thought the whole of the starfleet ships were, but they have different clasifications.
The lite Matel posted has most of them.

This was once it had arrived.

B5 was always pretty good for this. More so in the way it handled fighters than capital ships, though.

I the Starfury.

Star Trek always struck me as odd that it doesn't use fighters - unless you count a pathetic shuttlepod firing its phasers, which is essentially the same someone driving a transit van firing a spud gun out of the window.

It also means that most battles (especially in the TV series) are tedious as hell to watch. What should be an exciting battle as the Enterprise D frantically defends the Enterprise C as it returns to the time rift is instead five very large ships slowly drifting around each other, bouncing shots of each other's shields. It certain is incongrous when you regard the carnage on the inside, as Riker gets blown up, crewmembers go flying everywhere and Picard desperately takes to the tactical station as everything bursts into flames. Back outside, a Klingon ship slowly coasts past at walking pace while the Enterprise fires phasers at it with all the visceral impact of a dead cat being prodded with a stick.

It is awful space combat - but then it's always been all about the people, which is why you see most of it from inside the bridge with only the few sweeping external shots for wow factor.

Visually I quite like that sort of combat, big, majestic futurey space galleons getting close up. Having fighters with actual people inside them is probably every bit as unrealistic as anything in Star Trek anyway.

Not entirely sure why. If you can make a plane, you can make a spaceship. It'd be a bitch to learn how to control your momentum, but as long as you assumed it would be carrier launched - ie would never have to get out of a gravity well under its own steam or penetrate atmosphere, I'd say the engineering difficulties aren't insurmountable. We could probably make passable 'fighters' now, if we had a fabrication platform in upper orbit.

I think he's saying "you'd let computers fly it".

Yeah, I mean that with all the future technologies and whatnot that even if the things still needed pilots then they would probably stay where it's safe. The reason you see them in sci-fi films isn't because someone had a good hard think about the future and decided that it was something that was likely but that it was a great device for action sequences and just general drama. Same with all the Star Trek type stuff someone just thought wouldn't it be cool if we had all these people on a voyage of discovery, like the voyages of discovery on Earth in the olden days and they could go around in space "ships". And it works and it's great fun. That's why I never have much time for analysing it beyond noticing massive internal inconsistencies that stick out like a sore thumb.

Ah, gotcha.

I overanalyse purely because I'm massively interested in all the different scifi 'takes' on the ways of getting around the technical challenges that space travel and colonisation provide. I'm pretty sure we're going to need to be able to do all that shit, and sooner than we think, because we're on an irreversible path to annihilation staying on this ball of rock.

We're never getting off, we're going to die here.

I liked the Known Space view of spaceflight - that you had to do lots of slingshots and other complex maneuvers to help your way along, and that FTL travel was a very rare and special thing indeed.

We were just saying in the office now how 'great' it is that the United Federation of America exists in Star Trek to spread the word of peace, tolerance and FREEDOM!!!! across the galaxy.

There's one single reason for this, and it has nothing to do with logic. Basically, Gene Roddenberry was a massive fan of C.S Forrester Hornblower, in fact he always saw Kirk as a Hornblower figure - caring for his crew, wrestling with great responsibilities and solving problems - it's amusing how far Shatner took Kirk away from the internal struggle of Hornblower. Roddenberry pitched the show as 'Waggon Train in the stars' to reassure nervous executives, but he'd always been thinking of the 18th century period of British naval warfare and Forrester as the best structure for space stories.

That's why officers are the first to beam down and to board enemy ships, like in the Royal Navy. That's why there's one 'quaterdeck', highly visible and vunerable where all the command staff dwell, but visually bold and daring. It's why orders are relayed verbally down a chain of command, where the Captain gives the order to the 1st lieutenant (Number One) who passes it on to the officer. And it's why the combat owes so much to naval tropes, gauging the right moment, lining up the shot, human skill - etc. Though I always felt they should have highlighted that more, making the battles longer and tenser like in Khan as a result.

Top marks for Metal Angel's wonderful battles description by the way. I chuckled.

That makes a lot of sense - but the 20th century navy had already abandoned all of that for two main reasons:

1) Naval ratings were no longer thugs dragged on ship while drunk in an alley, they were trained professionals. As there wasn't quite the requirement for officers to handle every little detail as if their crew were morons.

2) The technology has the ability to handle much of the work that your 18th Century officer would need to be doing. You don't need an officer gauging by eye what elevation to raise the cannons to overcome the wind shear - because your computers have already worked out the precise firing plan needed to achieve maximum effect (that and the fact there's no wind, natch).

I'm also pretty sure that even in the 18th Century, you wouldn't have had the ship's captain and senior crew leading the charge across the boarding ropes. In fact, not just leading the charge, being the sole boarding party (less the traditional nameless ill-fated redshirt). It's a totally untenable risk.

I understand it, and appreciate the romanticism - but it still niggles.

Actually, apart from being the sole boarding party, you would, and they did. If a captain fell, his 1st lieutenant would take his place, and so on. The moral imperative was considered to far outweigh the loss of experience. It's why the French when entering a one on one fight expected to lose, and why the British expected to win - with that moral superiority we gradually became the maritime leader. (That and designing ships according to hard-wearing living practicalities, and not to theory that the French did, where their ships were awesome for two cruises and then began to fall apart.)

I never understood why Star Trek didn't do a full out battle episode, taking us through every variation of a ship on ship duel. Hammering away from long range, nebula hunts, short range firing, dead on deck, medical station overflow, and then a boarding party of a massive wave of transportation - using the cargo beamers and everything. It would have been the coolest thing ever.

Going across with a gang of ratings, I'd have no issue with. No different to an army lieutenant leading an infantry unit. First man across though? First man across in a boarding action is a dead man, 99 times out of 100. And absolutely, definitely not on their own.

Yes - a full ship-on-ship fight to the death would have been awesome.

I never understood why they didn't transport a big fuck-off nuke over.

Prob had some directive about it.. and that would not be cricket

Here's another thing I've just thought of - remember when Kirk and Sulu were beamed onboard while they were falling, and they broke the floor?
Just think about the implications of that for a moment

You had "transporter bombs" in one of the games.

That's another thing. Why hasn't there been a good Trek RTS?

Not sure it's necessarily flawed. Momentum is a function of an object, so moving it instantly from one point in space to another needn't mean that it would lose its momentum.

Also, when a ship's shields are down, why do they always teleport over to it? Why not just carry on blowing it the fuck up? It's not like they ever actually plan to salvage the ship, loot it, or take any prisoners.

oh yes... not you mention it.


Also would you not have to take your sheilds down to transport, and not a good idea in battle.

I kind of thought that they'd fallen from sort of head height to the floor of the transporter room. If they still had all their momentum then they'd have just splatted same as if they'd hit the planet.