the way they replaced those iconic shots in doomsday machine with awful ones is inexcusable imho.
Ambassador Class Variations
- Thread starter yotsuya
- Start date
I disagree. The shots of the AMT Constellation were always a bit painful. The 11 foot model always looks glorious, even if the composite is off. I felt the composition was great, but the execution was not. I wish they'd revisited them for the blu-ray.
the CGI constellation was fine, what I didn’t like at all were the machine shots and many of the battle ones.
I agree mostly. In fact, take a look at the *original* TOS version of Harry Mudd's ship from "Mudd's Women" - sure, it's just a glowing shape, with zero detail, but note the shape - it's clearly a flattened teardrop shape.
Now, look at the version of Mudd's confiscated ship from "Into Darkness" - much more detailed, but note the shape - a flattened teardrop shape. And I don't think that is a coincidence - I think that the designer of the ship in "Into Darkness" watched the original version of "Mudd's Women", and tried to extrapolate what it might look like with detail.
Now compare it to what the TOS-R people came up with - ugh. It looks so fake to me. Like a toy. A Christmas tree ornament. And worse, it doesn't even *try* to look even remotely like the shape of the ship we (sorta) saw onscreen.
(I really wish that I could post attached images, but I am posting from my crappy slow underpowered
I also really disliked that ugly completely redesigned ship from "Spock's Brain"
The problem with Mudd's ship is that it was used as three separate vessels: Mudd's ship, the Denevan ship, and the Aurora (with slight modifications.) So rather than try to replicate what was originally seen on screen, they just reused a production asset three times over to save time and money. And before anyone corrects me, yes I'm aware that there was no original Denevan ship. Which was why that production asset should have been used for that ship only, and Mudd's ship and the Aurora should have looked like they did originally. IMHO, of course. I'm sure there are some people who are just fine with what they did in TOS-R.
From what I understand, they didn't like the phallic nature of the original design.
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indeed. A real pity, given the level of camp in that episode (I find two redeeming qualities in spock’s brain: those beautiful bridge shots and the fact that’s so bad it’s good).
I'd like to see you make a fresh new saucer for that top secondary hull....it deserves one...the lower two were examples of cost cutting perhaps?
It was cheaper to fabricate a round saucer than an elliptical one. The original Probert Ambassador was supposed to be elliptical like the Galaxy class (but not as severe), but Jein couldn’t replicate that with the budget he had.
Kind of wish they'd taken the opportunity to fix the Constellation's registry number. The only reason it was NCC-1017 was because of taking the model decals from 1-7-0-1 and shifting them around. They should have made the Constellation NCC-1710 this time.
Or, failing that, just having the registry number illegibile or even missing because of the battle damage.
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Was it though? Probert had the opportunity to correct this on the "original concept" Ambassador he worked on with Tobias Richter but it's still got a circular saucer.
Was it though? Probert had the opportunity to correct this on the "original concept" Ambassador he worked on with Tobias Richter but it's still got a circular saucer.
This was Probert’s work far after the fact. In 1987, the idea was that the saucer would be elliptical. Perhaps he and Richter were taking cues from the actual model produced by Sternbach and Jein.
There was nothing to fix. There is nothing wrong with the Constellation’s registry number being 1017.
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Why would they want to? The whole point of that project was to create the Ambassador-class as Probert originally envisioned it.
You would have to ask Probert. Okuda mentioned in Doug Drexler’s blog about them originally wanting the ship to have an elliptical saucer. I have no reason to doubt him.
this looks REALLY niceWas it though? Probert had the opportunity to correct this on the "original concept" Ambassador he worked on with Tobias Richter but it's still got a circular saucer.
I know a few things were changed from the original painting of the ship. The CG version went from one torpedo tube to two side by side. But Tobias's 3/4 front view matches nearly exactly to Probert's painting. So I think the change from elliptical to round was made before Probert had finished his design. But if not it was definitely a call be Sternbach in his drawings for the model for Yesterday's Enterprise. He calls out the round saucer on there.
