Once again, Happy New Year, everyone! Thank you all, as always, for your responses to my latest update. And now for my replies to your responses!
As for politics, maybe someone such as hcallega could devise the TL. Work with the info you have given, and write events and legislation based on that.
I already have consultants with whom to discuss political issues ITTL, and many of them have been quite vocal about their ideas (which I greatly appreciate).
As an example, Liz Sladen's auto-biography relates that once they couldn't film a scene for Doctor Who because a chair was in the wrong place. The scene shifters weren't there and if anyone else tried to move the chair, it could trigger a walk-out due to demarcation. In the end, Liz pretended to have a coughing fit, sat down in the chair and "accidentally" moved it to the correct position.
Thank you so much for sharing that story, Nigel! I love it
NCW8 said:
Maybe something along the lines of committing to other series with an equal amount of special effects work. So we could see another series of Quatermass or an extra season of Moonbase 3 ITTL.
Perhaps. That does sound like a reasonable compromise.
NCW8 said:
I hope that things are going more smoothly for you now.
Indeed they are - thanks for your concern
Have finally read the bits about Star Trek and the Doctor. Oh dear I'm really not worthy (but its not going to stop me trying!)
Welcome aboard, Lindseyman! And thank you very much for your kind words.
Aaaaah, that goes down nicely as a postyule pickmeup.
Cheers BB
PS still not a full jeroboam yet tho
You're welcome, Professor, although I wouldn't advise you to consume a jeroboam unless you were making about a dozen
coqs au vin
Hi everyone. For quite a while Brainbin and I have been discussing what the refitted Enterprise from The Next Voyage might look like. After many PMs back and forth, we managed to dust off our old CED collection and we're now ready to present to you with a screen-grab from the show. I await the Puritan backlash
I don't have
too much to say with regards to nixonshead's renders that he hasn't said already, although obviously I think he did a fantastic job bringing the refit
Enterprise to life - while tolerating some rather exacting demands from yours truly in the process. In-universe, miniatures of this model went into unit production shortly after the airing of the miniseries in February, 1978, and was a smash seller that Christmas; re-invigorating the product line was always considered a key benefit of producing the miniseries in the first place. The other models that went on sale - and sold like hotcakes - were the
Excelsior and
Artemis designs, the first to depict models other than what properly becomes known as the original
Constitution-class starship (primarily known, prior to the miniseries, as simply the Starship-class).
Looks well by 1970s TV Standards. The beautiful Andrew Probert design for the Enterprise refit IOTL could only be achieved on film.
Well, that level of
detail could only be achieved on film at that time, anyway. One thing that's largely absent is the "Aztecing", not to mention the pearlescent coating.
Agree with the first part and its infinitely better than the Abramsverse version.
Thank you. As far as I'm concerned, the ship featured in the reboot films, whatever its virtues, is
not the
Enterprise - it just so happens to share the same name.
Lindseyman said:
[Also it should really have been called the Enterprise class rather than the refit Constitution. That was like the LMS claiming that the first Patriots were rebuilt Claughtons when all they used were parts of the wheels. (sorry non railway fans of this amazing thread but its the best analogy that I can come up with at the moment)]
Well, there
are nautical examples, and they've shown that it could go either way. Many of the WWII-era carriers were extensively refit (to include, among other things, angled flight decks) but retained their original classes; on the other hand, ships such as the
Baltimore-class cruisers were indeed reassigned to new classes post-refit. Although many people would describe the
Enterprise as a "cruiser" if they were forced to use 20th-century terminology, it's clearly intended as a capital ship, so those responsible IOTL decided to follow the carrier precedent. ITTL, the
Enterprise and the
Excelsior are different classes of
starship (analogous to a
ship-of-the-line), while the
Artemis is a
frigate.
There's a good chance that Bluhdorn could die earlier ITTL, due to stress resulting from the court case.
Well then, he'll just have to live long enough to see the Supreme Court hand down its ruling, now won't he?
Like every good trilogy, the heros have to experience a set-back in the second part. I'm looking forward to The Return of the Judiciary.
Ooooh, that's a
really good title - perhaps I might be forced to appropriate it
NCW8 said:
It almost sounds like you think wiping the tapes wasn't such a bad decision!
The opinions of the narrator, especially when quoting a sound-byte-happy television journalist, do not necessarily reflect those of the author
NCW8 said:
If pacing is a problem, did anyone come up with the idea of editing the episodes of a story into a single show, like PBS did IOTL?
I can't imagine that arrangement working on a private, commercial-driven station, with the syndication rights having been purchased from Desilu as opposed to the BBC.
NCW8 said:
And a Wacky New Year to you too!
Thank you, Nigel!
Oh, of course. Mind you, if he tries it in 1980 ITTL (as opposed to 1985 OTL) then the techniques are going to be less advanced. That could lead to a greater backlash and slow down the move to colorise films. Every cloud has a light-grey lining.
Well, let's put it this way - Turner has a
strategy. And how it unravels will form one of the major storylines for the remainder of the timeline.
I remember seeing a "movie" about Dr. Who battling the Daleks, created by editing together episodes of the show.I believe this was some time in the 60's and aired in the wee hours of the morning.
That sounds like an interesting experience, Chuck - obviously, programmers were very creative with their content, even (perhaps especially?) that long ago.
Just a quick update with a picture that wasn't quite ready for yesterday
For point of reference, that model is six feet long. The original
Enterprise model was, of course, eleven feet long - the smaller size here (as IOTL, for
The Motion Picture and all successive films) allows for the camera to maneuver about the model more effectively, and that pays dividends for the effects work.
Another great update, Brainbin -- and apparently it falls to me to be the first to
nominate That Wacky Redhead for the Turtledove Award it so richly deserves.
Thank you very much, Andrew - I appreciate your support, and your vote of confidence
It's an honour to be nominated amidst such an august crowd.
Quizás, quizás, quizás . . .
(I've been having a
Coupling fix as of late - the original UK version,
not the atrocity that was the US remake.)
I have to ask. Did you actually ever
see the American remake of
Coupling? It was on the air for such a short time, after all!
Dan1988 said:
Thank you, Dan!
You've nailed it there. Brainbin was quite keen on blue for the nacelle endcaps ("Blue is futuristic"!), and that theme spread to some of the surface colouring, so bluescreen would have been a problem. In fact up until quite late in the process the model had red and green navigation lights on the saucer, but these had to be sacrificed since the green light would cause problems with the greenscreen.
An unfortunate sacrifice - I really wanted to keep the navigation lights, but this model must represent what was feasible with the technology of the time.
nixonshead said:
So for The Next Voyage there could be a slight greenish tinge to the model shots - but I've instead assumed that Desilu Post Production's greater experience and budget in TTL's 1970s could mean they're able to rebalance it (who wants to see a green Enterprise?!).
You can
definitely assume they corrected for that - I imagine they'd devote resources to doing so even if they
hadn't yet figured it out.
nixonshead said:
The starting point for the TNV version was Matt Jefferies' OTL Phase II design (hence I used that for the background image in the orthogonal views), and that does have more rectangular nacelles, but we can well imagine that with more of the Big Five involved in TNV, plus the longer original run making that design even more iconic, there was a stronger direction from On High to keep closer to the original look.
This was certainly my rationale; that said, as an
intriguing WI, one interesting thing nixonshead and I discovered is that Jefferies even included rectangular nacelles as part of his original design proposals in 1964!
That certainly would have made for a very different aesthetic.
Thanks for the New Year present BB!
You're welcome, Professor
The Professor said:
Indeed - and this time, if all goes well, the sooner the better.