Topic: That was a GORN!??

[Lono]

BOO!!!

I mean - I liked they played him as intelligent but what was with the weak CG??

Sheesh!?

Anyone else irritated they varied so much from the kirk era likeness?

[Alidar Jarok]

First off, no, you are not the only one who was bothered by the appearance.  Myself, I found the eyes the most annoying (so I made this pic)



But, after looking at some pics, they changed the appearance a lot less than I first thought.  They still maintained a fairly humanoid shape, just gave him a smaller head and longer neck



Oh, and I made this pic as well

[Lono]

Interesting - yes I think the eyes were the worst - glad to see you correct them!

You know when he was actually moving he didn't convey a humanoid shape at all to me - but when you look at that screen shot I guess that he was supposed to.

I like how they used him in the show - hope they put some anatomically correct Gorns in one of the future movies.

[Rat Boy]

Slar-Slar Binks was atrocious, not only because it bore so little resemblence to the original Gorn, but because it was perhaps the worst bit of CGI work I've ever seen.  Scott Bakula wrestling with a rubber alligator would have done a better job at looking more realistic.

[Alidar Jarok]

I found a clip of that whole scene on the internet and I was going to link it here, but it stops working after 30 seconds, so you barely get to see anything.  Its from the same link as I posted in the thread called "Tholians", though.

[Chris Johnson]

Like the Tholians, I actually liked Slar.  People make the misconception that all species that aren't almost human-look-a-likes are supposed to look alike from each other.  Look at ourselves: We have species diversity.  Did it ever occur to anyone here that there may have been some diversity in the gene pool for Gorn to look different from each other?  Perhaps on one continent in their homeworld there's a population of bug-eyed Gorn whilst another have more velociraptor-like.  Perhaps there's even another type of gorn with a tail?  I never got the idea that all Gorn should look alike.

[Lepton]

At first sight, I was repulsed by this version of a Gorn as it was quite divergent from my expectations, but upon seeing the episode for a second time, I felt the Gorn was believable if not preferable to the TOS Gorn.  I mean, the TOS Gorn was a bit silly and perhaps based upon some rather out-moded ideas about reptiles and dinosaurs.  I fully expected the Gorn to be slow and clumsy, then when it was stealthy and quick, I was totally shocked and thought it inappropriate, but really it's much more in keeping with reptiles in general.  Just feel lucky that it didn't have feathers as is being suggested now for a number of dinosaurs.

[Soreyes]

OMG!!!!!!!!   Kroma The Skinny

[Nemesis]

OMG!!!!!!!!   Kroma The Skinny

Kroma just loves those fun house mirrors.

[GDA-S'Cipio]

The way they used the Gorn was OK.  I've been waiting 35 years to see another Gorn in an episode, and I was quite happy with his role 

His voice was perfect.  I don't mind his looks either, and they actually get a really big thumbs up for not giving him a tail.  (So many other places I've seen Gorn seem to forget that they don't have tails.)

He was quicker than expected, and not nearly strong enough.  But that's OK.  The only thing that dissapointed me was the CGI.  You're right, that sucked.  I mean, really sucked.  He'd have looked more realistic with a Mugato costume.  I'll forgive them for that though, and chalk it up to the fact that they probably really stretched the budget on this one.  The still frames are still cool

I love what you've done with the Kroma pic.   

-S'Cipio

-S'Cipio

[KBF-Crim]

OMG!!!!!!!!   Kroma The Skinny

Kroma just loves those fun house mirrors.

[Ravok]

 The only real problems I had with it where , It looked plastic and it was too weak.
 It should have smeared Archer all over the walls.

 It was really inconsistant. It fought weakly. But was able to stand breifly under 20 gees.

 At 20 Gravitys a human would die of heart failure instantly. and his spine and legs would snap. And a average human head alone, would weigh 220 lbs.

[Chris Johnson]

Think about this:

What you just said seemed as if a Gorn was poorly commenting on me being too weak and that was inconsistant.  What he never guessed was that I was just too weak period since I rarely work out for those muscles. :p

I think Slar was strong, but not as strong as his slow-as-heck descendent a century later.  And at least he was plastic and not rubber.

[Villa64]

 At 20 Gravitys a human would die of heart failure instantly. and his spine and legs would snap. And a average human head alone, would weigh 220 lbs.

I am not certain that is correct.  Plenty of people survive aircraft wrecks in excess of 20 G's.  They dont die instantly from heart failure, and many dont have snapped spine and legs, although many more do sustain spine and leg injuries.

[Ravok]

 At 20 Gravitys a human would die of heart failure instantly. and his spine and legs would snap. And a average human head alone, would weigh 220 lbs.

I am not certain that is correct.  Plenty of people survive aircraft wrecks in excess of 20 G's.  They dont die instantly from heart failure, and many dont have snapped spine and legs, although many more do sustain spine and leg injuries.

 20 gees for a second is survivable (maybe) an average ejection seat only causes about 10 for that same reason.

 To be standing in a 20 gee gravity like the gorn did would be fatal .According to my egress instructors in the USAF.
 ( at 8 gees most people start to black out because the blood starts pooling in their lower body)

 Being seated and wearing a G suit spreads the forces around and they can be tolerated briefly.
 To be standing and receive the same trauma, would leave you a puddle of jelly.
 
 Imagine somebody throwing a Volks Wagon on your shoulders while you where standing,and imagine what that would do to your legs, and spine.

 I weigh 235. At 20 gs I would weigh 2,700 lbs.

[Rat Boy]

Considering how this Gorn was a giant, badly-drawn cartoon character, I think we can give them as much leeway as if Daffy Duck had an anvil dropped on him.

[Grand Master of Shadows NCC37385]

Considering how this Gorn was a giant, badly-drawn cartoon character, I think we can give them as much leeway as if Daffy Duck had an anvil dropped on him.

Dont go throwing reality in here RB, they were debating real life. 

[Chris Johnson]

You must cut slack and consider the fact that these guys run under a limited time and have a budget.  Things may not be perfect if you have a short time to work on it.  It can't be helped if something's lacking on a specific CGI if you don't have enough time.  If it were a feature film, it wouldn't lack anything.  If one considers that, one might think the CGI might be impressive given the constraints, probably better than just a guy in a suit acting like he's in a 1980s Japanese monster movie or 1990s Sentai.

[Grand Master of Shadows NCC37385]

Kroma, the shy wall-flower, hasnt revealed the wonderful event that occured to him recently. After many years...and two children...Kroma has married the woman of his dreams! Here is their wedding photograph taken only moment after saying their "I do's". 
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[Rat Boy]

You must cut slack and consider the fact that these guys run under a limited time and have a budget.

Even they admit that they weren't happy with the final product and thought it didn't look that great.   I am merely judging the finished product based on the quality, not based on extenuating circumstances.  If all they had time to do was hand-draw the thing with pencils and crayons, would you still be defending them?

[Tus-XC]

i would suggest you base it on the circumstances  which happens to be the reason why they aren't happy with the quality.  You seem to forget that time and quality are directly linked, the more time you have the better it will turn out.   as it was they didn't have 2 years to make it perfect, they had maybe a month, not including all the other scenes they were required to do, i tihnk they did a fairly good job. finally i would like to point out that making anything organic and realistic is extremly hard..  look at hl2, its grahpics are phenominal, they also have been working on it for 3-4 years.   if you could do better with a deadline which limited their time significantly then you have all the reasons to complain.   Its not like they had as much time as they needed to get it right like the cgi in most movies.  and as for a pencil and paper drawing, if they had all of 2 mins to do it then i would understand, if they had 2 weeks to do it then i would wonder about their time management. 

[Rat Boy]

You seem to forget that time and quality are directly linked

Again, what is wrong with calling it a bad CGI?  Why should I not call the quality of it into question?  Do they get a free pass because they didn't have time to finish it?

[Tus-XC]

no free pass if the the quaility does not match the time put in, but your previous statment already said that you have completly forgotten that quality in CGI requires time, unless of course you never realised that and figured it appeared from thin air.  for example, me being the novice modeler that i am modeled one ship in approx 2 days  an expert could produce the same quality as me probably could have it done in a few hourse so i wouldi figure a team would be much faster.  however when you are held to a deadline it is neccesary to choose which projects are higher on the list.  If you try to give them all equal time then you will most likely fail to achieve a good result.  Taking into consideration that both epsisodes were done at the same time and required the approximatly the same deadline you realize that their time was probably shorter than what was required the episodes.  End result is somthign that is as good as you can get in the alloted time.

My problem with you calling it bad CGI is that you are simply failing to take into account the amount time it actually takes to produce anything in CGI.  Considering that they had to build two humonoids from scratch, a connie with a crap load of battle scenes (setting up a scene takes alot of time... and i mean alot of time....), a tholian web, which btw may look simple but probably took many many man hours to figure out how to pull it off effectivly and on top of the fact that creating anything organic is excessivly hard, and making it realistic just adds to that and that this is a TV SHOW and not a movie  i would have to say that the CGI was rather good, maybe a little rubbery (better than the some guy in a rubber suit though)..  Now  personally i would say if you could actually do better, go ahead and gripe about it, point out the mistakes and how they could have/should have been fixed.   i for one won't cause that is currently way outside my skill set

Though personally to me it seems you enjoy bashing enterprise, the fx team, and just about anything else that might be related to this show so i think that my rather long explaination will probably fall on deaf ears.

Rob

[Villa64]

<long, intellectually based analysis snipped>

Though personally to me it seems you enjoy bashing enterprise, the fx team, and just about anything else that might be related to this show so i think that my rather long explaination will probably fall on deaf ears.

Rob

The cadet has arrived at the accurate conclusion, now knows wisdom, and is a 'go' at this station.

[Rat Boy]

Though personally to me it seems you enjoy bashing enterprise,

That may be your opinion, but it is quite wrong.

[Alidar Jarok]

In the past, Rat Boy has been fairly supportive of Enterprise.  He included Enterprise in his timeline and posted the production reports for many of the episodes this season.  I think I've been disagreeing with him more lately, but he hasn't blindly hated Enterprise.

BTW, this may be small, but I think I saw one thing that makes the Gorn seem so weird, its his neck.  The original Gorn had a fairly small neck, this Gorn's neck is long and flexible.  From the shoulders up, you just see a Raptor from Jurassic Park (especially when he's on the ground and Archer is pushing on his head).

http://www.scifiheaven.net/site/downloads.php

Click on Evil Archer enters the Arena.  The video never completes itself, but you can get some idea of what I'm talking about.  Waiting from above, and when he drops on Archer, he looks humanoid.  When Archer pushes on his head, he doesn't.

[Chris Johnson]

In the past, Rat Boy has been fairly supportive of Enterprise.  He included Enterprise in his timeline and posted the production reports for many of the episodes this season.  I think I've been disagreeing with him more lately, but he hasn't blindly hated Enterprise.

After rummaging around this forum, I can say I'd agree on the fact that Rat Boy isn't blindly hating Enterprise.  There are moments when Rat Boy even praises Enterprise here and there, although I do see the reasoning behind Tus's assumption considering things Rat Boy had been "critical" of lately.  So I stand by my assumption that one should see Enterprise for him or herself regardless of anyone's comments about episodes that have yet to air (or even that you haven't seen yet).

[E_Look]

Let me this time go beyond backing up your opinion- I actually liked it!

If you haven't seen it yet and are going to in about fifteen minutes to a couple of hours, then don't read this.

*                           *                             *

I thought this first parter was pretty good, and the Terra Prime guy made me think of Osborne from the Spiderman comics of the '60s... which is NOT a bad evocation, actually.  There was a bit of suspense and action, and I think the non-SFX part that made it for me was Archer putting the screws on the Minister.  Politicians are politicians, even in the proto-Federation!

SFX?  The entire Bond-like sequence of the bad guy's lair lifting off... AND THEN GOING INTO WARP was cool... and the homage to Star Wars' Death Star when he fired the ray from Mars to the Moon!  Future tech notwithstanding, how do they keep the power from attenuating on a ray from the Mars to the Moon to the point it can still raise a cloud of dust visible from space??  Nice.

*                            *                               *

Again, I just wish there were more seasons coming up.  It would be really great to see some of their adventures in the new FEDERATED Starfleet... war with Romulans, Klingons, police skirmishes with Orions...  alas.

[Greenvalv]

The FEDERATED Starfleet isn't to take place until six years later (Or so says the summary for the last episode).
 
That gorn stunk big-time.  Yes, they have a limited budget, but come on, a little more real, Archer's wrestling had B-movie grade graphics.

[Chris Johnson]

Well Green, just be lucky it's not a guy in a purple dinosaur costume.  Unless it would add more realism?

[Darth Sidious]

You have summoned Barney.

Someone klill it.  PLEASE.  In the most painful way a Phaser can

 

Well Green, just be lucky it's not a guy in a purple dinosaur costume.  Unless it would add more realism?

[Commander La'ra]

The CGI was bad.

The portrayal of the Gorn, overall, was good.  Very predatory, very intelligent.  Just what you'd expect from a race that shrugged off the best the NCC-1701 had to offer and then pretty much outran her.

I'm not that hung up on effects, hence I enjoyed the episode.  Take away the dodgy visuals and the Gorn was quite cool, and if you don't have the imagination to ignore dodgy visuals, there's a lot of old-school sci-fi you're never going to enjoy.