Timeline for Starship Enterprise: Always flying left-to-right?
Current License: CC BY-SA 4.0
24 events
| when toggle format | what | by | license | comment | |
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| May 26, 2021 at 14:55 | history | edited | fgysin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |
deleted 3 characters in body
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| May 6, 2021 at 18:33 | comment | added | Adrian McCarthy | @user14111: In our solar system, the planets all orbit in approximately the same plane. When we send a probe to another planet, its course remains in that plane. The planets revolve in the same direction around our sun, and thus our spaceships do the same. (The most efficient approach is to slide up alongside a planet rather than to come at it head-on.) The planets also rotate about their axes in the same direction, so almost all of our satellites go west to east. Perhaps, at the galactic level, there's also a natural orientation that, while not required, makes a convenient default. | |
| May 6, 2021 at 18:14 | comment | added | Adrian McCarthy | In the TOS opening title sequence, between "Star Trek" and Shatner's credit, the Enterprise does a background right to foreground left pass. | |
| May 5, 2021 at 20:43 | answer | added | Kaz | timeline score: -1 | |
| May 5, 2021 at 15:56 | comment | added | Flater | In support of @dennis_vok 's point, take the example of The Lion King (animated, not CGI). When Simba runs away from home, he runs LTR. When he later returns home, and Timon and Pumbaa follow, they all run RTL. It's a very subtle trick that makes the viewer feel more acquainted with the lay of the land than they actually are. | |
| May 5, 2021 at 15:53 | answer | added | blobbymcblobby | timeline score: 7 | |
| May 5, 2021 at 7:26 | vote | accept | fgysin | ||
| May 4, 2021 at 18:13 | comment | added | Mark Ransom | In space you can put the camera wherever you want, so there's no reason not to keep a consistent perspective. | |
| May 4, 2021 at 15:00 | history | tweeted | twitter.com/StackSciFi/status/1389595735788765184 | ||
| May 3, 2021 at 23:23 | comment | added | Hypnosifl | If you're interested in TNG as well as TOS (unclear from the question), the very beginning of the episode "Evolution" (season 3, episode 1) shows the Enterprise-D moving from right to left while flying near one member of a binary star system (possibly in orbit). | |
| May 3, 2021 at 22:29 | comment | added | Anthony X | As M A Golding answers, it's because the TOS Enterprise was represented on-screen in "hero" shots by one large (expensive) physical model which was equipped with lighting effects, those effects needed wiring, and the wiring had to enter the model somewhere. It was obviously a production choice to rig the wiring on one side, making it unfilmable; that it was the left/port side (making the right/starboard the "hero" side) vs the other way around seems to have some psychological/theatrical underpinning. These days, with CGI, it would only be a stylistic and arbitrary choice. | |
| May 3, 2021 at 20:12 | answer | added | Machavity | timeline score: 14 | |
| May 3, 2021 at 18:52 | comment | added | NKCampbell | you can see good shots of the original model that is at the Smithsonian here that shows the cables on the side - airandspace.si.edu/collection-objects/… | |
| May 3, 2021 at 18:03 | comment | added | Philip Klöcking | Does an Enterprise flying right-to-left in every single episode of TNG in the intro (even though obviously a mirrored shot) count? | |
| May 3, 2021 at 17:40 | history | became hot network question | |||
| May 3, 2021 at 17:00 | answer | added | M. A. Golding | timeline score: 115 | |
| May 3, 2021 at 11:22 | comment | added | Alith | As the lyrics in star trekking mention "always going forward 'cos we can't find reverse" | |
| May 3, 2021 at 10:49 | answer | added | Henning Kockerbeck | timeline score: 37 | |
| May 3, 2021 at 10:37 | comment | added | dennis_vok | Furthermore, in addition to @Valorum's main point of recycling stock footage, the reason that the stock footage is left-to-right (and not right-to-left) could be due to the fact that audiences in Western cultures tend to view L2R movement as more positive than R2L. So often you'll see the 'hero' of a movie or tv-show move from left to right and the enemy from right to left. See also here: kottke.org/16/02/left-to-right-character-movement-in-movies | |
| May 3, 2021 at 10:15 | comment | added | user14111 | Yeah, and why is it always "right side up" on the screen when there's no up or down in space? | |
| May 3, 2021 at 10:14 | comment | added | dennis_vok | I recall that in "Mirror, Mirror" there's a shot where we see the Mirror Universe Enterprise going right-to-left. This was done by flipping the negative, so it's still the same side of the model we're seeing though. | |
| May 3, 2021 at 9:40 | comment | added | fgysin | @Valorum I thought about this, but it isn't true (at least for the remastered CG version). Also my observation also seems to cover shots which include one-offs such as enemy space ships or strange creatures, force fields, etc. | |
| May 3, 2021 at 9:38 | comment | added | Valorum | Because you're watching the same shot endlessly recycled | |
| May 3, 2021 at 9:37 | history | asked | fgysin | CC BY-SA 4.0 |