Here’s something extremely nerdy to ponder while you enjoy whatever snack you’re having for elevenses, a video compilation of “going to warp” scenes from all the pre-J.J. Abrams Star Trek movies, from 1979’s Star Trek: The Motion Picture to Star Trek: Nemesis in 2002. (I saw a similar montage a couple days ago that included the 2009 reboot flick, but it seems to have vanished. My guess is some copyright nazi got wind of it. Clips from all those old movies? No problem. But don’t go posting so much as five seconds of our shiny new Star Trek, you damn Internet bootlegging fanboys!)
Anyhow, it’s interesting to me that the effect actually became less spectacular over time. You’d think the opposite would be the case as visual effects technology advanced and this stuff (presumably) became easier to create. Of course, the Trek movies did see their budgets whittled away over time, so that may have been a factor. In any event, I give you… Warp Speed!
Since all Trekkies have a genetic imperative to offer unsolicited opinions on meaningless stuff, I’d like to announce for the record that my favorite warp effects are the “disco-tunnel” from The Motion Picture and the Wrath of Kahn “rainbow streak.” The TMP effect is the most spectacular of all of them, the most cinematic. The sound effects and the slightly drawn-out timing impart a sense of drama, as if massive energies are being harnessed and something truly extraordinary is about to happen. And of course, if you consider the historical context of this being the first time we’d seen the Enterprise on the big screen, and the desire (at that time) to make a Star Trek that really was something more than just a two-hour television segment, that’s exactly what the jump to warp speed was supposed to be.
The Kahn effect (seen at 0:17 and 0:22, if you don’t recognize them all on sight) wasn’t as spectacular or as “big” — I suspect it was cheaper to produce — but it was impressive in its own right, and probably better for story-telling purposes, since it could be placed in context with other objects and backgrounds. (I can’t quite imagine the TMP tunnel effect against the Mutara Nebula, the backdrop in the second Kahn clip; it seems as if it would only work if the Enterprise were alone in the frame.) Some variant of the rainbow streak would, of course, appear in all the rest of the movies derived from the original series, but for my money it was never as nicely done as in its first appearance.
As for the effect seen in the Next Generation movies, I was never a fan of the “rubberband” effect introduced in the Next Gen TV series, i.e., the way the ship seems to stretch out, then snap forward into the starburst/sonic boom thing. It always looked cheap and silly to me, and the big-screen version didn’t improve upon it…
It’s not just budgets at work, but different effects companies — Douglas Trumbull’s work on the first film, ILM for the next three, and the comically bad effects in Trek V.
Nothing from Trek VI in that video — it goes from V to VII. Did the Big E never actually go to warp in Trek VI?
And for some reason I’ve had it in my head for years that you can’t go to warp from planetary orbit, so that Trek IV bit where the Klingon ship warps while still in Earth’s atmosphere has bugged me ever since I first saw the movie!
Good point about the different FX houses — I hadn’t thought of that.
Now that you mention it, I totally missed that there weren’t any scenes from VI in this compilation. I haven’t seen that one in years, but I’m certain there are scenes of ships traveling at warp in it… maybe there just aren’t any of the transition to warp? I’ll have to dig out my old VHS copy and have a look.
And I’m in total agreement about the Bird of Prey going to warp inside the atmosphere. I always hated that too. I remember arguing with my high school buddies about it; my position was that they would’ve just ripped the atmo right off the planet!