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Sternbach: Creators Disregard Tech Concerns


By Antony
January 12, 2003 - 8:14 PM

Former Trek senior illustrator Rick Sternbach, recently expressed his concerns over the approach to technology in Enterprise.

Although he wasn't picked to work on Enterprise, Sternbach revealed (while answering questions at STARTREKUK.COM) that he did give some information to the show's producers, including astronomical data for Enterprise's time period. However, Sternbach believes that his work has not been used, and criticized the show's disregard for technology. "As far as I could tell from the very few episodes of Enterprise that I've watched, none of the data had any effect," he said.

"They write the tech with no real concern as to whether it means anything," he continued. "Interesting tech isn't part of the equation any more. Good science fiction has always been a melding of those two words, science and fiction, and while you can have media SF biased to either the science side or the fiction side, I believe Enterprise has concentrated on the latter, actively retreating from any believable science and technology that was so well weaved into previous Trek shows. I believe Braga said something about Enterprise stories no longer needing to rely on technological solutions."

Sternbach explained some of the information "that he offered to the show's writing team. "What I was offering was some simple bits of information concerning the operational radius of a starship at certain low warp factors, between WF2 and WF5, using the old scale of WF cubed to get the equivalent number of times c (lightspeed). From the total radius of year's worth of travel, you'd be able to get at least some sense of the number of stars you could visit within a season. The maximum radius isn't the same as a random walk within the sphere, of course, but you can still derive some number of targets."

One of the questions that he also answered regarded a new technical manual. Sternbach wrote manuals for both The Next Generation and Deep Space Nine, However it's "very likely there will be no Voyager Tech Manual." That's the disappointing verdict from Sternbach, when asked for an updated on the development of the book. "Pocket Books has changed their publishing emphasis to fiction and the occasional splashy color production, like Geoff Mandel's Star Charts (which *are* quite nice, and I'm not just saying that because I helped him a little)."

"Voyager and DS9 have run their course as far as tech publishing goes," he continued. "If anyone does work up a manual for Pocket, it won't involve me, as their offer was simply too meager compared to the amount of work needed to make it the best manual possible. Trek tech fans may blanche at this, but I don't believe we're going to see any more manuals or blueprints from Pocket Books ever again."

Rick's been popping up n rec.arts.startrek.tech quite a bit recently.

here's what he had to say about Nemesis

Lord Edam wrote:Rick's been popping up n rec.arts.startrek.tech quite a bit recently.

here's what he had to say about Nemesis

Thank you, Lord Edam. I think it is really bad when former creative staff from ST start criticizing Enterprise.

Did Sternbach give us the K't'inga and Reliant, I wonder? If so, thanks !

Frank Hipper wrote:Did Sternbach give us the K't'inga and Reliant, I wonder? If so, thanks !

The K't'inga is just the basic Klingon battlecruiser with superdetail on the surface. The original ship was designed by Matt Jeffries, with the "decorated" version probably worked out by Andrew Probert. The Reliant was either Andy Probert's or Greg Jein's work.

Rick Sternbach is primarily responsible for tech drawings and astronomical art seen in the TNG-era series.

Patrick Degan wrote: The K't'inga is just the basic Klingon battlecruiser with superdetail on the surface. The original ship was designed by Matt Jeffries, with the "decorated" version probably worked out by Andrew Probert.

I don't mean to nitpick, but the original KBC wasn't used in modeling
the TMP K't'inga *if* you mean the same physical model was just spruced up with styrene and photoetched brass. The original Jefferies'
D7 was 31" long, but the final TMP model was 48", made by Magicam
Miniatures.

The Reliant was either Andy Probert's or Greg Jein's work.

Rick Sternbach is primarily responsible for tech drawings and astronomical art seen in the TNG-era series.

Rick designed the Vor'cha and a bunch of other stuff
like Voyager. But you're right; I don't think he always
built the models themselves, at least without Greg Jein,
Miarecki and a few others. He was more like the Nilo Rodis behind the KBoP; Nilo did most of the sketches, but Bill George was largely
responsible for its construction.

As for Reliant, the guys who did it were unknowns to me:
Mike Minor and Joe Jennings. ? They did a nice job. I would've
brought them back!

That said, I'd point out (as many probably have and will again) that Voyager and past trek shows haven't been that kind to science either (technobabble introduced in TNG and going strong ever since).

While this can be forgiven (though vastly annoying to people who know anything about real science) in the face of entertainment, I think the continuity problems with TOS are more objectionable.

I don't think that having "technology" as a panacea.... a cure all.. a deus ex machina... is necessarily a strength of Trek. From a storytelling perspective, its something that you shouldn't use too often or stories loss all of their drama, suspense, etc. especially when the technology involved is often based on pseudoscience (as we've all seen from Wong's analysis of numerous Trek ideas).

That he's disgusted by Enterprise lately is just a symptom of a problem that's been around for awhile in the franchise, IMHO.