greenmm wrote:Actually, I think green or any other colors beyond bare hull or white/cream would be bad for both Klingon and Romulan ships.
I mean, really: the TOS Klingon and Romulan ships had the same basic hull color as the E-nil did, with the Romulans adding the Bird of Prey on their belly. They didn't have dark green Klingon ships until ST3, and they didn't have dark green Romulan ships until TNG.
Oh, wait, that's right: we're talking continuity here, and B&B ignore it whenever the hell they want to.
Yep. Whoops! Heh.
Seriously, I don't have a problem with the green, Green
I should admit beforehand, I'm biased because I'm a pretty serious modeler; I've worked hard to come up with the exact ratios of X brand paints to match Y model as depicted onscreen, to match the studio model, you name it. After investing all that time researching tedious details, I don't want my work to be in vain.
...But:
I don't think going from grays to more varied colors need constitute a continuity breach. We never saw much of the Klingon or Romulan fleets in TOS, for one thing. Plus, modern militaries have certainly come up with different color schemes for their own aircraft, armor, etc. (That's environmentally dependent, I concede. And the fact remains, perhaps the best analogue for Trek ships, naval vessels, don't have apple-green armor plating just for the sake thereof. They're fairly uniform.)
I also think that if, say, the
Valdore-type suddenly appeared gray as a throwback to the TOS ship, we'd simply face a more recent continuity breach: TNG Warbirds are bright, almost luminescent, green on TV. Why start coloring your ships as you did 100+ years ago? Why not go with the more recent trend?
For that matter, some don't like that Klingons and Romulans both now have green ships. While that's a bit dorky, would gray Klingons and Romulans be better, keeping in mind that the Federation uses gray itself?
Everyone would have gray ships; that's worse than only two groups using similar, if not identical, colors.
Even if all this did somehow trample on continuity, I think it quickly becomes an issue of blandness.
Simply, gray can be boring to look at outside of a super-detailed Star Destroyer model. Building and painting such things is worse yet, especially when there's not much to otherwise grab your interest; e.g., as is the case with the detail-averse TOS RBoP or the smoothish D7.
I suppose one might still find some ships compelling even if their base colors were identical; however, that requires that the alien ships' designs are
sufficiently different from one another to "grab" your eye.
The current alien lot oftentimes don't have that luxury. Many of them are built very much the same, like the Jem'Hadar/Son'a/Reman capships. They almost
have to adopt a funky color scheme to stand out. (Ironically, those races go for the dull gray stuff, too, so their boring look is all the worse. Only the Jem'Hadar throw in some tan and purplish panels.)
