What would have been a more fitting end for the E-D?

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-09-06 11:47am

Imagine you've been given special rights to re-write Generations, how would you handle the destruction of the E-D?

I personally would have loved to have seen a bigger batle scene, as follows.

- There are instead 3 BoP's, all cloaked and such.

- Anticipating a confrontation, the Enterpise seperates, deciding that if troube pops up, the saucer can high tail it.

- The Duras Sisters get the shield frequency, though with smarter means. The frequency is used to deliver a few big initial shots early on, they disable the saucer's warp capability.

- The E-D crew rotate the shield frequency quickly, and begin firing back with everything they have. One ship is destroyed.

- One of the Klingon ships, realising it is near destruction, charges at the Enterprise's drive section, it impacts the "neck" section, giving it about 30 seconds before the whole section goes kabloom.

- All regular cast on that section decide to perform an emergency beam out to the surface. The program the autopilot to move towards the last Klingon ship.

- The kabloom disables the saucer and destroys the last Klingon ship, unfortunately this causes the saucer crash.

- Movie continues as normal.

Tribun · Post by **Tribun** » 2003-09-06 11:54am

Sounds good.....a much better than the actual movie.

Embracer Of Darkness · Post by **Embracer Of Darkness** » 2003-09-06 12:18pm

Yeah, needs more suicidal piloting, a-la Nemesis.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2003-09-06 02:52pm

That sounds pretty good! It sure beats the lame method that they did use since it makes the ship's crew look like morons with the whole visor trick. The Three BoP is better too but one minor nit pick, the Dish section does not have warp capability.

paladin · Post by **paladin** » 2003-09-06 03:13pm

E-D should have been turned into a cruise liner! It had all the necessary fittings.

Uraniun235 · Post by **Uraniun235** » 2003-09-06 03:40pm

A K'vort class BOP and two other scout-type BOPs decloak. Battle. At one point every phaser array should be firing. Torpedos flying every which way.

At some point, the E-D's shields go down. A Klingon torpedo goes right into one of the saucer impulse engines, destroying that impulse engine. A smaller BOP gets in front of the E-D and lands several shots on the deflector dish; seeing the surface of it shatter would IMO be really cool. Then the E-D retaliates with full phasers and torpedos, smashing the BOP apart.

By the end of the battle, the E-D is severely damaged, with a deep crater in the top of the stardrive section where the K'vort tried to blast through to the warp core; this could allow for a cool debris trail as the deuterium tank leaked. The E-D would not crash to the surface; the money saved by not doing the saucer crash could go towards paying for the more extravagant battle.

If the E-D still needed to be destroyed, then adjust the plot so that this action occurs on the outskirts of Federation territory (which would make more sense to have the rescue action occur as well; it seems utterly ludicrous to me to not have even a single starship near Earth even if only to provide assistance in the event of someone having a breakdown). The E-D's warp drive has been more or less destroyed (the deflector destroyed, one of the warp nacelles shot to hell, the deuterium tank compromised) There are no starships large enough to tow the Enterprise at warp (or, if there are, it would be too long to tow it back to starbase; too tempting a target for too small a ship to defend) and the ship is already a shambles, so after evacuating the ship and taking what they can, they set autodestruct.

(comedy option Picard leaves his ship 'intact' again.

)

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-09-06 03:52pm

All these ideas sound nice, but I doubt they'd be anything like an option without a significantly larger budget for the movie. I somehow doubt they used the BOP explosion just for the heck of it.

seanrobertson · Post by **seanrobertson** » 2003-09-06 04:17pm

Sea Skimmer wrote:All these ideas sound nice, but I doubt they'd be anything like an option without a significantly larger budget for the movie. I somehow doubt they used the BOP explosion just for the heck of it.

Indeed. That was a disappointment.

Even worse is that the E-D'd already confronted Birds-of-Prey many times, not to mention the fact we'd seen the damn things in 4 previous films. And after 7 years of air-time, cruise ship or not, the E-D deserved to go down to something formidable. A scout ship doesn't cut it.

So if I had my druthers, I'd let the Duras sisters show up in a Negh'Var they and their supporters had hijacked fresh out of the shipyards.

That'd call for money the film obviously didn't have, though, as you pointed out. The Negh'Var miniature wasn't big or really detailed enough for the movie screen. It'd have to be reworked, and all new FX would need to be developed around it. A bad-ass Klingon ship would also make the "look through the blind man's haircomb filter to get the shield frequency" bit rather pointless I guess.

Oh well. I guess it's too much to want creativity from a movie which depicts Data on PCP.

Gil Hamilton · Post by **Gil Hamilton** » 2003-09-06 04:27pm

Well, for an action scene, they wouldn't need a huge model of the Negh'var. Models used for action scenes are purposely made low detail because they look better when filmed. The trick would have been some creative writing, so that the Negh'var was always in action and never still enough to require a fly-by model (the huge still models that are super high detailed). After all, action models are dirt cheap to make, model makers will make those things out of anything (and as one industrial designer who spoke to our video class once said, a suprising amount of spray painted pasta). How you would write that, I don't know, but it can be done.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-09-06 04:49pm

How would two renegades get their hands on a Negh'var? They had resources, but not fleet flagship resources.

Crazedwraith · Post by **Crazedwraith** » 2003-09-06 05:03pm

Frank Hipper wrote:How would two renegades get their hands on a Negh'var? They had resources, but not fleet flagship resources.

Fine a hot-roded vorcha?

Macross · Post by **Macross** » 2003-09-06 05:08pm

Gandalf wrote: - One of the Klingon ships, realising it is near destruction, charges at the Enterprise's drive section, it impacts the "neck" section, giving it about 30 seconds before the whole section goes kabloom.

That would have been too much like the destruction of the Odyssey in "The Jem'Hadar," which had first aired a few months earlier.

Frank Hipper · Post by **Frank Hipper** » 2003-09-06 05:08pm

Crazedwraith wrote:
Frank Hipper wrote:How would two renegades get their hands on a Negh'var? They had resources, but not fleet flagship resources.
Fine a hot-roded vorcha?[/i]

Now your talking. I'm sure the Duras family had a few before things turned to shit for them, anyway. A semi-loyal crew already, some money in the right places, an asassination here and there, and voila!

seanrobertson · Post by **seanrobertson** » 2003-09-06 06:08pm

Gil Hamilton wrote:Well, for an action scene, they wouldn't need a huge model of the Negh'var. Models used for action scenes are purposely made low detail because they look better when filmed. The trick would have been some creative writing, so that the Negh'var was always in action and never still enough to require a fly-by model (the huge still models that are super high detailed). After all, action models are dirt cheap to make, model makers will make those things out of anything (and as one industrial designer who spoke to our video class once said, a suprising amount of spray painted pasta). How you would write that, I don't know, but it can be done.

LOL

I actually saw the Negh'Var model up close. It's of course very well detailed and quite big, but nowhere near the size of the 6 foot E-D.

It's really amazing, the kind of detail that's lost on TV and the big screen. You need to amp it up to the point of near insanity for the cameras to pick it up. The K'T'ingas in the opening scene of ST:TMP, for example, look probably 100x more detailed up close, in the studio.

I think the Negh'Var mini, which was cast resin detailed with some etched brass, might've looked okay, but the reason I said it might not've been detailed enough is because the FX guys said as much when "Shattered Mirror" required close-ups of the ship. Rather than film the model in some shots, they had to come up with big mock-ups to photograph with the Defiant.

Frank:

I wondered if someone would say that or not

I figured that, since the Duras family had supporters on the High Council (guys even Gowron wasn't ready to get rid of after their Civil War), Lursa, B'Etor and a regiment of troops still loyal to them might try and capture the new flagship class.

Even if they escaped with the ship that'd mean certain doom for them, since Gowron would never let them get very far; but for some reason, the original draft of Trek III and its stolen enemy ship idea was ringing in my head.

Solid Snake · Post by **Solid Snake** » 2003-09-06 06:43pm

Have a Battlestar nuke it. By the Gods! We've destroyed a crappy movie!

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-06 09:56pm

Going down fighting 1 BOP or 3 would make no difference as far as I'm concerned; it would be a disappointing end regardless.

A good farewell would be something more dramatic, more monumental. For example, Soren has two missiles, because he's not taking any chances. He fires the first missile into the star, and the E-D tries to shoot it down. It can't, but they chase it at warp speed, figuring it will slow down once it hits the star's photosphere. They dump the saucer at warp and the stardrive section continues to give chase to the missile, plunging into the star's photosphere after the missile. They lose their shields and their hull begins to melt away as they heroically continue to close on the missile despite certain death. Just as they are consumed by the roiling energies of the star, they finally get an accurate shot away and destroy it.

Meanwhile, Soren's second missile is fired. The surviving saucer crew members are helpless as they watch it cause the ridiculous instant-nova reaction. Cue back to the original plot.

Mind you, this would involve an actual heroic death, which would be bad for some reason. And you would have to kill off at least one main character at the helm of the stardrive section in order to lend it gravity.

Ender · Post by **Ender** » 2003-09-06 10:10pm

Darth Wong wrote: Mind you, this would involve an actual heroic death, which would be bad for some reason. And you would have to kill off at least one main character at the helm of the stardrive section in order to lend it gravity.

Wesely does it.

Stormbringer · Post by **Stormbringer** » 2003-09-06 11:18pm

Darth Wong wrote:Mind you, this would involve an actual heroic death,
which would be bad for some reason. And you would have to kill off at least one main character at the helm of the stardrive section in order to lend it gravity.

Kirk! I mean that would have been a fitting and heroic death for him. Out with a bang instead of a whimper.

Solauren · Post by **Solauren** » 2003-09-06 11:49pm

Kirk doing it would have been SO Cool, if he'd be on the bridge during the 'second try' they would have needed (you know, post Pichard in the Ribbon)

The greatest captain in the history of Star fleet, goes out in the stardrive section of the most famous ship in Star fleet history, racing to save a whole star system (and perhaps more) from Death.

But he knows about the 2nd missile, so he orders the aft Photon's to fire on it's tragectory, it gets the second torpedo, then the Stardrive goes up.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-07 12:09am

Solauren wrote:Kirk doing it would have been SO Cool, if he'd be on the bridge during the 'second try' they would have needed (you know, post Pichard in the Ribbon)

The greatest captain in the history of Star fleet, goes out in the stardrive section of the most famous ship in Star fleet history, racing to save a whole star system (and perhaps more) from Death.

But he knows about the 2nd missile, so he orders the aft Photon's to fire on it's tragectory, it gets the second torpedo, then the Stardrive goes up.

Of course, if it's Kirk, we don't need two missiles. The first time around, the first missile is fired and the E-D fails to stop it. We revise the concept slightly so that Kirk can leave the Nexus but Picard can't (because he can't revise his own immediate past, while Kirk was never involved in it). This is actually cleaner since we don't have to explain why Picard can jump back in time without encountering himself.

So Kirk puts himself on the Enterprise, where he is still registered in the ship's computer as an Admiral and has authority to seize command. He immediately orders the stunned crew to prepare for a suicidal warp-speed jump directly toward the Sun, pulling out just short of its photosphere (cue the obligatory bits with Guinan somehow knowing that all of this would happen and Kirk remarking that the controls haven't changed much since the E-B). During the short trip, he orders the saucer separation (perhaps with some aside about how Picard told him all about the capabilities of the ship), and performs his heroic plunge into the star to destroy the missile and save a planet from destruction.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2003-09-07 12:25am

You know that really works! Also it would be good to include having the rescue party detecting a shuttlecraft Ion Trail heading away from the star and giving the impression that Kirk might have found a way to still survive but we will never know.

Post by **Sea Skimmer** » 2003-09-07 12:52am

Isolder74 wrote:You know that really works! Also it would be good to include having the rescue party detecting a shuttlecraft Ion Trail heading away from the star and giving the impression that Kirk might have found a way to still survive but we will never know.

I think its better to kill him in someway no matter what the rest of the changes are, to bring that era to a close. The shuttle explanation doesn't work anyway, what reason would the Federation have for not following up on it? And you can't have Kirk abandoning ship unless he's taking the rest of the crew with him or gets them off before hand, something he wouldn't have time to do. Plus how does a tiny shuttle escape the temperatures of the sun when the E-D can't?

Also the "traveling off in a shuttle" thing was already used with Scotty as I recall.

Isolder74 · Post by **Isolder74** » 2003-09-07 01:23am

One thing that bugged me about Generations was the scene with Soran having his gun to Kirk's head. And Picard has to come in and heroically save him. "If I understand corectally your dead" He said to Kirk and Picard deprived us of Kirk's witty retort to that statement. Something like "then it doesn't matter if you kill me then does it as" all the while Picard is doing HIS job of shutting down the missile. The we get to see Kirk at his best in a drag out fist fight istead og the falling bridge thing.

Post by **Darth Wong** » 2003-09-07 01:27am

Isolder74 wrote:One thing that bugged me about Generations was the scene with Soran having his gun to Kirk's head. And Picard has to come in and heroically save him. "If I understand corectally your dead" He said to Kirk and Picard deprived us of Kirk's witty retort to that statement. Something like "then it doesn't matter if you kill me then does it as" all the while Picard is doing HIS job of shutting down the missile. The we get to see Kirk at his best in a drag out fist fight istead og the falling bridge thing.

I've blocked out that part of the movie from my mind. I suggest you do too.

Post by **Gandalf** » 2003-09-07 01:31am

Isolder74 wrote:That sounds pretty good! It sure beats the lame method that they did use since it makes the ship's crew look like morons with the whole visor trick. The Three BoP is better too but one minor nit pick, the Dish section does not have warp capability.

IIRC the TM's say it can go to Warp 5, and I think Riker orders them to set a course for the nearest starbase.

Macross wrote:That would have been too much like the destruction of the Odyssey in "The Jem'Hadar," which had first aired a few months earlier.

Good point.

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What would have been a more fitting end for the E-D?

What would have been a more fitting end for the E-D?

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