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From: markv@dartvax.UUCP (Mark Vita)
Newsgroups: net.startrek
Subject: Re: Deflectors and ST 4
Message-ID: <2592@dartvax.UUCP>
Date: Mon, 26-Nov-84 14:37:56 EST
Article-I.D.: dartvax.2592
Posted: Mon Nov 26 14:37:56 1984
Date-Received: Wed, 28-Nov-84 05:19:08 EST
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Organization: Dartmouth College, Hanover, NH
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> An interesting observation:  The color of the Enterprise's photon
> torpedoes changes color between the two movies.  In ST-TMP they
> are blue and the Klingon's are orange.  In ST-TWOK, not only are the
> photon torpedoes red, but the phasers, which used to be blue (and even
> before that they looked like the photon torpedoes), are now also orange!
> What's next?  Chartreuse? :-)  Also notice that in the series, the
> Klingon's disruptors looked like little missiles that supposedly
> came from the front of the engine nacelles.  Now they come from
> where one would expect them to, from the tube in front.
> Anybody also notice that the color of the main sensor dish in front
> of the secondary hull also changed color between the two movies?

    Actually, I don't think the color of the ship's phasers was constant
even in the television series.  Usually the beams were blue, but I seem
to remember a couple of episodes wherein the beams were a sort of
orangy-red color.  (In "Who Mourns For Adonis?", I believe, for one.  At
the end, when they hose Apollo's abode.  Anyone else remember this?)
    The hand phasers were even more inconsistent.  Not only did the beams 
change color, but I seem to remember that in "Operation: Annihilate!", when
Spock goes beserk and tries to take over the ship, someone stuns him 
with a phaser, and what comes out of the gun resembles a "torpedo" more
than a beam.
    Of course, one could come up with plausible explanations for why the
beams are different colors at different times.  It seems pretty apparent
that the whitish-blue beam is "disintegrate" (i.e., when Kirk zaps
the Abominable Snowman in "A Private Little War"), and that the 
red-orange beam is "heat" (i.e., when McCoy heats up rocks in the same
episode.)  Another explanation is that the optical house that
did ST's effects messed up every now and then.
    (Also, according to the Technical Manual, the hand phasers have
a setting called "disrupt", which is different from "disintegrate".  I wonder
what effect this has?  Maybe it's the aforementioned beam that kills 
but leaves the body intact [like when Miss Karidian kills her pop at
the end of "The Conscience of the King"]).
    
    About the changing appearance of the Enterprise model between the
first and second films--I heard a story that might explain it.  The
special effects for the first film were contracted to Douglas ("Close
Encounters of the Third Kind") Trumball, but I guess he did kind
of a botch of a job, overran his schedule and budget.  So sometime
during the filming he was fired and someone else finished up.
When the time came to make ST II, Industrial Light and Magic (part
of Lucasfilm) was hired to do the effects, but they wanted to use the
model from the first film, which was still in Trumball's possession. 
They asked him for it, and I guess he was still a bit miffed at having
been fired, so he shipped them the model via 4th class U.S. Mail in a 
cardboard box.  It arrived not in the best of shape, and the ILM people
had to do some work on it.  Perhaps this is why the Enterprise appeared
differently in ST II than in ST I.
 
    By the way, can anyone confirm the above story?  I heard it quite
a while ago, and don't know if it's really totally factual or not.


-- 

                                Mark Vita
                                Dartmouth College

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