You have, clearly, chosen a type of story to tell where you’ll always face nitpickers.
I’m also sometimes a nitpicker, I suspect, but I’m not exactly a full-blown Trekkie, so I thought I’d let you know I’m just reading through the archive and enjoying it so far.
Much as I’m nitpicking, is there any particular reason the Enterprise needs to get as close as 40 km when she was perfectly capable of nailing Nomad with photon torpedoes from 90,000 km in “The Changeling, or indeed any particular reason why 40 km is being spoken of as if it’s a long range in general? The Romulan KRs in “The Enterprise Incident” parked themselves from 50,000 to 150,000 km from the Enterprise and were still well within weapon’s range, and even situations that are treated as if they’re point-blank range tend to be measured in the low thousands of kilometres in TOS.
Also, I like how the ship is referred to as being off the freighter’s port bow, and then on the next page we see she’s directly astern. Your artwork’s OK, but the continuity could use a little work…
I’m going to assume (and you should too) that in the five panels between spotting the Enterprise and when Graunt complains that he can’t make the shot that Zhou has turned the ship the 10 degrees needed to line them up in the middle panel and that he’s smart enough to do that without being told. Otherwise Graunt would be saying “I can’t get a bead on them because our hull is in the way”. Why make the Enterprise off center in the first place? Because otherwise your comment would be “Really? The Enterprise came out of warp right in their sights? How convenient!” Sometimes you can’t win.
As for the Enterprise’s distance, she needed to be visible to make a dramatic impact on the scene. That would be the same reason the shuttle is the same size as the Enterprise when approaching the Doomsday Machine and not a speck smaller than a film grain. I could have made her 50,000km out and still seen or I could have judged a realistic distance for her to be visible from. Either way the job is done. I could also argue that Starfleet told Kirk the exact capabilities of the weapon in order to avoid losing another vessel, just as Quetzal speculates, so he knows what distance he can be without endangering the ship. The point is you can argue this stuff or you can understand that story telling trumps unnecessary slavery to realism and always will.
Seems like a pretty awful weapon if 40 km is outside of its effective firing range, but hey, I can readily accept that it’s a prototype and therefore not ready for primetime, especially when it was specifically mentioned that the weapon was supposed to be plugged into targeting computers and the freighter didn’t have that.
As for the freighter having turned (and it’s really more like a 135 degree turn rather than a 10 degree turn if the Enterprise started off on the freighter’s front-left arc, but whatevs), sure I can just assume that, but it’s better if the story itself establishes it, either with an image of the freighter turning or just one of the characters going, “swing us around!” or whatever. Like I said though, it is admittedly nitpicking. Although I actually would have no problems with the Enterprise ‘conveniently’ dropping out of warp directly behind them, since if they chased the freighter down it feels somewhat natural that they’d catch up to them from behind. But that’s just me.
As for the visual range for dramatic effect that, I can fully respect that. Normally what TOS did was have the distant ship be visible on the viewscreen (which is capable of magnification), but that effect would be harder to do in a three-panel comic, especially when you have our Tellarite friend hanging out the back trying to draw a bead on the Enterprise. Still, it’s worth at least keeping in mind, because otherwise you fall into the trap Star Wars did where they completely forget to ever establish that the ship’s can shoot at each other from distances outside a handful of kilometers. 😛
Actually, Graunt says “There’s no connection for computer control on this thing. It’s all manual”, not that their ship lacks anything.
I don’t see the point, in a three panel strip, of putting every sequence of events on page. In a film you don’t see someone exit their car, walk up to a door, open it, and step in. It’s extraneous information that the viewer can fill in themselves. Plus, it makes Zhou seem like a moron if he needs every obvious thing explained to him, especially when they’ve done this drill only a few hours before. Even Graunt gets up to go to the canon without being told. Technology can be tweaked any which way to support the story you want to tell, but selective stupidity will always ruin things.
Fair enough. Just seems like making SOME reference (visual or dialogue) to the fact that they turned would make the narrative flow more smoothly, but that’s just my opinion.
You have, clearly, chosen a type of story to tell where you’ll always face nitpickers.
I’m also sometimes a nitpicker, I suspect, but I’m not exactly a full-blown Trekkie, so I thought I’d let you know I’m just reading through the archive and enjoying it so far.
Much as I’m nitpicking, is there any particular reason the Enterprise needs to get as close as 40 km when she was perfectly capable of nailing Nomad with photon torpedoes from 90,000 km in “The Changeling, or indeed any particular reason why 40 km is being spoken of as if it’s a long range in general? The Romulan KRs in “The Enterprise Incident” parked themselves from 50,000 to 150,000 km from the Enterprise and were still well within weapon’s range, and even situations that are treated as if they’re point-blank range tend to be measured in the low thousands of kilometres in TOS.
Also, I like how the ship is referred to as being off the freighter’s port bow, and then on the next page we see she’s directly astern. Your artwork’s OK, but the continuity could use a little work…
I’m going to assume (and you should too) that in the five panels between spotting the Enterprise and when Graunt complains that he can’t make the shot that Zhou has turned the ship the 10 degrees needed to line them up in the middle panel and that he’s smart enough to do that without being told. Otherwise Graunt would be saying “I can’t get a bead on them because our hull is in the way”. Why make the Enterprise off center in the first place? Because otherwise your comment would be “Really? The Enterprise came out of warp right in their sights? How convenient!” Sometimes you can’t win.
As for the Enterprise’s distance, she needed to be visible to make a dramatic impact on the scene. That would be the same reason the shuttle is the same size as the Enterprise when approaching the Doomsday Machine and not a speck smaller than a film grain. I could have made her 50,000km out and still seen or I could have judged a realistic distance for her to be visible from. Either way the job is done. I could also argue that Starfleet told Kirk the exact capabilities of the weapon in order to avoid losing another vessel, just as Quetzal speculates, so he knows what distance he can be without endangering the ship. The point is you can argue this stuff or you can understand that story telling trumps unnecessary slavery to realism and always will.
Seems like a pretty awful weapon if 40 km is outside of its effective firing range, but hey, I can readily accept that it’s a prototype and therefore not ready for primetime, especially when it was specifically mentioned that the weapon was supposed to be plugged into targeting computers and the freighter didn’t have that.
As for the freighter having turned (and it’s really more like a 135 degree turn rather than a 10 degree turn if the Enterprise started off on the freighter’s front-left arc, but whatevs), sure I can just assume that, but it’s better if the story itself establishes it, either with an image of the freighter turning or just one of the characters going, “swing us around!” or whatever. Like I said though, it is admittedly nitpicking. Although I actually would have no problems with the Enterprise ‘conveniently’ dropping out of warp directly behind them, since if they chased the freighter down it feels somewhat natural that they’d catch up to them from behind. But that’s just me.
As for the visual range for dramatic effect that, I can fully respect that. Normally what TOS did was have the distant ship be visible on the viewscreen (which is capable of magnification), but that effect would be harder to do in a three-panel comic, especially when you have our Tellarite friend hanging out the back trying to draw a bead on the Enterprise. Still, it’s worth at least keeping in mind, because otherwise you fall into the trap Star Wars did where they completely forget to ever establish that the ship’s can shoot at each other from distances outside a handful of kilometers. 😛
Actually, Graunt says “There’s no connection for computer control on this thing. It’s all manual”, not that their ship lacks anything.
I don’t see the point, in a three panel strip, of putting every sequence of events on page. In a film you don’t see someone exit their car, walk up to a door, open it, and step in. It’s extraneous information that the viewer can fill in themselves. Plus, it makes Zhou seem like a moron if he needs every obvious thing explained to him, especially when they’ve done this drill only a few hours before. Even Graunt gets up to go to the canon without being told. Technology can be tweaked any which way to support the story you want to tell, but selective stupidity will always ruin things.
Fair enough. Just seems like making SOME reference (visual or dialogue) to the fact that they turned would make the narrative flow more smoothly, but that’s just my opinion.