Ah, now this is the kind of good old fashioned Trek discussion I love. Debating some technical minutia that doesn't really matter or some supposed contradiction from some obscure statement in an old episode, not "why is this character crying all the time" or "why is every story THE END OF THE WORLD". It's good to be back baby!
the props all look great, but the cast has me doubtful. M'Benga should not be on the Enterprise, it should be Phil Boyce. then there are two of Khan's kids on the ship?? really? Uhura is there but not Sulu? (neither should be there, but that's beside the point)
This is after Cage, so the crew could have changed between Cage and SNW, allowing for M'Benga to be CMO before McCoy. And honestly Uhura doesn't bother me since she's fresh out of the academy.
If she were out of the academy she wouldn't be a cadet, she'd be an ensign
Uhura should probably be an ensign instead of a cadet, but the movies got that wrong too (with Saavik. The Kobyashi Maru test is command school, not basic program, so Saavik would have been at least a Lt. jg, and graduated a full Lt.). "Cadet" is only used in the basic program, where raw recruits go in and ensigns come out, and cadets only go on short trips, not full deployments like Uhura is apparently doing in SNW.
Kirk's bio on Memory Alpha shows the pattern that Starfleet uses, which is Basic (which graduates as ensign) followed by their first full deployment (in Kirk's case on the Republic), then when they are Lieutenant jg and ready for full Lt. they are rotated back to command school (or department head school for science, medical, and engineering) where they graduate as full Lt. and go off on regular duty (Kirk was assigned to the Farragut) with no more promotion ceilings like the one between Lt. jg and full Lt.
You shouldn't take anything memory alpha says at face value. Thats just stuff random people put in there
I didn't take Memory Alpha at face value, I just pointed out that what they had written for Kirk was the correct pattern according to all the little hints in the shows themselves as well as what was written in behind the scenes materials like the show bios that were in the writer's package for the show.
Another point is that Uhura was in command uniform when she joined the Enterprise crew in TOS, and not only is she a fully competent astrogator (as shown several times in TOS), in Who Mourns for Adonais? she is shown to also have enough engineering experience to rig up a subspace bypass from available components without consulting the computer for plans to build it, which taken together hint that she was probably on command track. Chances are, she would be wearing command avocado instead of ship's services red early in her career.
the props all look great, but the cast has me doubtful. M'Benga should not be on the Enterprise, it should be Phil Boyce. then there are two of Khan's kids on the ship?? really? Uhura is there but not Sulu? (neither should be there, but that's beside the point)
This is after Cage, so the crew could have changed between Cage and SNW, allowing for M'Benga to be CMO before McCoy. And honestly Uhura doesn't bother me since she's fresh out of the academy.
If she were out of the academy she wouldn't be a cadet, she'd be an ensign
Uhura should probably be an ensign instead of a cadet, but the movies got that wrong too (with Saavik. The Kobyashi Maru test is command school, not basic program, so Saavik would have been at least a Lt. jg, and graduated a full Lt.). "Cadet" is only used in the basic program, where raw recruits go in and ensigns come out, and cadets only go on short trips, not full deployments like Uhura is apparently doing in SNW.
Kirk's bio on Memory Alpha shows the pattern that Starfleet uses, which is Basic (which graduates as ensign) followed by their first full deployment (in Kirk's case on the Republic), then when they are Lieutenant jg and ready for full Lt. they are rotated back to command school (or department head school for science, medical, and engineering) where they graduate as full Lt. and go off on regular duty (Kirk was assigned to the Farragut) with no more promotion ceilings like the one between Lt. jg and full Lt.
You shouldn't take anything memory alpha says at face value. Thats just stuff random people put in there
I didn't take Memory Alpha at face value, I just pointed out that what they had written for Kirk was the correct pattern according to all the little hints in the shows themselves as well as what was written in behind the scenes materials like the show bios that were in the writer's package for the show.
Another point is that Uhura was in command uniform when she joined the Enterprise crew in TOS, and not only is she a fully competent astrogator (as shown several times in TOS), in Who Mourns for Adonais? she is shown to also have enough engineering experience to rig up a subspace bypass from available components without consulting the computer for plans to build it, which taken together hint that she was probably on command track. Chances are, she would be wearing command avocado instead of ship's services red early in her career.
She does wear the green/gold dress in at least one early S1 episodes.. I want to say the Man Trap Edit. Corbomite Maneuver and Mudd's Women
I have no problem with the casting considering that continuity in the case of April is still VERY muddy. We've NEVER seen him in live action, and the only portrayal we have of April is from one episode of the Animated series, which has bounced between canon and non canon like a frickin' racket ball bouncing off every surface in a room.
I have no problem with the casting considering that continuity in the case of April is still VERY muddy. We've NEVER seen him in live action, and the only portrayal we have of April is from one episode of the Animated series, which has bounced between canon and non canon like a frickin' racket ball bouncing off every surface in a room.
Same. Until now April has been an extremely minor character and prior to this news breaking I honesty don't think the majority of Trek fans could have told you who he was or what he looked like.
That said I do think it's a mistake to do this with well known characters. Obviously diversity is good, but IMO the best way to do it is to create new characters like nearly everyone on Discovery. I'm not a Discovery fan, but I know many are and that proves you can create new diverse characters in existing IPs rather than just recasting existing ones as a different race/gender/etc.
But again, I'm completely fine with this. Maybe we'll even get an April show one day
Yeah, they should stick with the original portrayal of Robert April - a poorly animated caricature of a human being, who looked white, but then again the Klingons had purple uniforms, so...
The cartoons were usually secondary canon until recently, but they were always canon within those limits. On the other hand, the depiction of April in TAS was about as generic as it gets so even if his look there is considered hard canon, it would not mean a lot.
It will be a bit weird seeing someone who played a Pike (Police Captain Franklin Pike from Arrow) playing Admiral April and giving orders to another Captain Pike though :lol
Whoa! There is a Fresh Prince reboot! Best news ever!
Haven't watched it, but apparently it is darker than the original. Instead of being a comedy with a few really impactful moments like Will and his dad, it is the opposite with lots of drama and little comedy.
Well I not long finished watching the final episode of season 2 of Picard, it was a truly wonderful episode to finish the season..
I wont give any spoilers..
But i followed it up with Strange New Worlds, what an absolutely amazing episode, really looking forward to more..
And may i say Meeeow on nurse chapel, she was hot..
So far, this (SNW) and Lower Decks are the only "new Trek" shows I have felt a desire to rewatch. My only question is should I rewatch episode 1 now or the day before episode 2?
just a bit of trivia.. Ansopn Mount spoke more words in the first 10 minutes of SNW than he did in all the episodes of the inhumans. and did i catch it right? not the Kirk we expected?
just a bit of trivia.. Ansopn Mount spoke more words in the first 10 minutes of SNW than he did in all the episodes of the inhumans. and did i catch it right? not the Kirk we expected?
Anson Mount couldn't speak in "Inhumans", because Black Bolt's power is so extreme that his whispers can destroy mountains. And yes,
that was Lt. Sam Kirk. Sometime in the next ten years he's going to retire to become a colonist on Deneva. That will be a mistake.
just a bit of trivia.. Ansopn Mount spoke more words in the first 10 minutes of SNW than he did in all the episodes of the inhumans. and did i catch it right? not the Kirk we expected?
Kirk? Anson Mount plays Pike, who was always a completely different character from Kirk. According to Roddenberry, Pike was loosely based on Horatio Hornblower (from C. S. Forester's novels), an officer of "humble beginnings" but with great natural talent for command. Like Hornblower, Pike was more of a networker than an autocrat and could inspire his crew to greater performance with his unusual command style in a way that more conventional captains could not, and was the balance point between his two main advisors, Number One and Spock.
The problem was that NBC did not like the fact that he had an alien and a woman as the other two points in his inner triangle and when they demanded that he "lose the ears and ditch the broad" as the NBC rep phrased it, Roddenberry went into one of his snits and scrapped the balanced listener Pike entirely for a slightly darker and more pragmatic (and flamboyant) captain, though he was able to combine the other two into a new version of Spock as the first officer for the new setup.
That new captain was Kirk of course, a totally different character with a totally different background and outlook. Instead of an "everyman" style like Pike, Kirk came from a Starfleet family and if his father's connections hadn't gotten him into the Academy despite his questionable youth record he would probably have been an adrenaline-junky grifter like Mudd for the thrill of outwitting the law, and a chip on his shoulder. While he took advice from his officers to some extent he was a charismatic and cocky loose cannon tempered with wit and guile, which skirted about as close to an antihero as network TV would allow at the time for a show that had to be "family friendly".
Mount plays the part of Pike perfectly, and the command triangle is extremely well done (and well cast) from what little I have seen of it so far just in the trailers and a few clips, though (due to Roddenberry's combining aspects of Spock and Number One for Spock's TOS version) Una and Spock are more or less the reverse of their The Cage counterparts in a lot of ways.
just a bit of trivia.. Ansopn Mount spoke more words in the first 10 minutes of SNW than he did in all the episodes of the inhumans. and did i catch it right? not the Kirk we expected?
Kirk? Anson Mount plays Pike, who was always a completely different character from Kirk.
Have you seen the episode yet? If not, I don't want to spoil the moment for you.
just a bit of trivia.. Ansopn Mount spoke more words in the first 10 minutes of SNW than he did in all the episodes of the inhumans. and did i catch it right? not the Kirk we expected?
Kirk? Anson Mount plays Pike, who was always a completely different character from Kirk.
Have you seen the episode yet? If not, I don't want to spoil the moment for you.
I have not seen any of the full SNW episodes yet (I probably wont get a chance to until the season is over) though the trailers look great, and I saw some of Pike, Spock, and Una in DSC. The character introduction ones were especially helpful in getting the impression of the characters in the context of SNW (assuming they were not misleading).
I know they run across Kirk at some point because of a leaked photo but I had no idea it would be so soon in the season. I don't know how he is portrayed in SNW yet, so I don't know how he matches up with the behind-the-scenes early Kirk (who was a bit like the Kelvin one except smarter, everyone knew he did something to the Kobayashi Maru simulation but unlike the Kelvin version he was able to cover his tracks better so no one could prove it was him for instance).
There's only the one episode so far. I spoiler-tagged the important information about three posts back. I don't think you'll be disappointed, exactly...
I caught the pilot episode yesterday (that first episode free thing they do). It was great
Akiva Goldsman is known as a deft hand with character interactions, and it really shows in SNW. It is the first NuTrek to feel anything like TOS instead of just another generic TV sci-fi show, and even uses some of the classic TOS conventions like going directly to warp from orbit instead of faffing around with impulse the way they started doing in TNG.
...the classic TOS conventions like going directly to warp from orbit instead of faffing around with impulse the way they started doing in TNG.
I'm afraid I'll need to see some data on that one - TOS didn't have a warp-out animation, and in the series the matter was never directly addressed. In the first TOS movie, they stated in dialog that it was hazardous to go into warp closer to the Sun than the orbit of Jupiter, but they were just going to have to chance it.
...the classic TOS conventions like going directly to warp from orbit instead of faffing around with impulse the way they started doing in TNG.
I'm afraid I'll need to see some data on that one - TOS didn't have a warp-out animation, and in the series the matter was never directly addressed. In the first TOS movie, they stated in dialog that it was hazardous to go into warp closer to the Sun than the orbit of Jupiter, but they were just going to have to chance it.
In the SNW pilot episode they came out of the slip on thrusters, coasted while Pike gave orders and whatnot then went directly to warp. That is consistent with TOS and some episodes and movies from later series, and when they do it they almost always set a low warp factor, like the warp 2 they went to in SNW.
In TPM one of Kirk's voiceovers mentioned that they had to take the risk of taking the Enterprise to warp in the solar system, but in light of the six-minute test run from earth orbit out to one of the outer planets and back later on, the danger in TMP could have been that it was the first refit Constitution and the new warp drive installation was untested and if it went worst-case disaster it could damage the ships and tech in the system in a similar way to the Praxis explosion in miniature or something else along those lines.
If that is the case, being out as far as Jupiter might have put Earth (and possibly the shipyards at Mars) at a relatively safe range from the possible subspace blast or flash or whatever.
It is also possible that the line was just a throwaway that they never expected people to remember but was deemed necessary to build tension, like Tom Paris and his no turns in warp nonsense that was necessary for one plot but never used again.
TOS didn't have a warp-out animation, but they didn't need one either since the stock shots generally followed the ship out, or were just a second or two of them just starting to pull away and it took them around five or ten seconds at least to get up to speed. The dialog where Sulu is calling out speed firmly places the maximum "zero" to lightspeed acceleration at about 10% of lightspeed per second near the lightspeed point, but it probably starts out slower than that early on and faster as the acceleration progresses.
On top of that, they were viewscreen-style sensor views even though they were not on a viewscreen (notice how the ships stand out in TOS instead of half blend into the darkness) rather than a bare eyeball view from a fixed position so you don't get the motion blur or the sonic-boom-like flash of it passing the light barrier you see in the movies and TNG-era shows.
There were no exterior windows in the TOS version of the ship except on the three on each of the two shuttlebay catwalks (according to dialog in The Conscience of the King), especially not on the bridge, so the starbow would not have been visible from anywhere inside the ship unless they were on one of those catwalks (or they told the computer to show it instead of sorting it all out, but there would be no practical reason to do so). The starbow or not was long a matter of speculation about what travelling in warp would look like to a person looking out a window instead of with the processing, and SNW settles the question, it is the starbow.
On top of that, they were viewscreen-style sensor views even though they were not on a viewscreen (notice how the ships stand out in TOS instead of half blend into the darkness) rather than a bare eyeball view from a fixed position so you don't get the motion blur or the sonic-boom-like flash of it passing the light barrier you see in the movies and TNG-era shows.
Dude, you are reading a lot into the limitations of TV technology in the 1960s. They didn't even have CGI - those phaser beams and transporter patterns were hand-animated, which is why everyone had to hold still while beaming or shooting. The ships "stand out" in TOS because they were shooting with models and minimal-cost film lights, not simulating a proper starfield and spacelike conditions.
And you're making positive, absolutist statements about the technology level of the 23rd century based on these facts.
On top of that, they were viewscreen-style sensor views even though they were not on a viewscreen (notice how the ships stand out in TOS instead of half blend into the darkness) rather than a bare eyeball view from a fixed position so you don't get the motion blur or the sonic-boom-like flash of it passing the light barrier you see in the movies and TNG-era shows.
Dude, you are reading a lot into the limitations of TV technology in the 1960s. They didn't even have CGI - those phaser beams and transporter patterns were hand-animated, which is why everyone had to hold still while beaming or shooting. The ships "stand out" in TOS because they were shooting with models and minimal-cost film lights, not simulating a proper starfield and spacelike conditions.
And you're making positive, absolutist statements about the technology level of the 23rd century based on these facts.
What I meant was that the view you see in the "outside" shots are the same style as the ones on the main viewscreen and the mainscreen is supposed to be an enhanced view. And there is nothing that says that an outside view has to be a bare eyeball view instead of something that shows the scene better.
And yes, the realworld reason is the techniques they used to film it and the fact that they wanted to show the ships clearly instead of the hokey "rocket in the dark" style that was common at the time. But at the same time, it is a good guess at what a ship in interstellar space would look like with enough amplification (and possibly toning down the stars direct brilliance) since the lighting would be billions of point sources from all directions, sort of the ultimate diffused lighting shell.
Assuming even a little processing of the screen image by the ship's computers, the way they showed the ships in TOS is just as realistic (and in some ways even more realistic) as the darker view CBS uses nowadays since the current rendition does not look quite like what the human eye sees though windows in Earth orbit either, and in interstellar space it is likely that the only thing visible to the bare eye would be the nav/running lights and possibly its silhouette against the stars.
The SFX in TOS were done on a triple-head travelling mat compositor, not hand drawn. It used three film paths, the primary scene layer on one film, the addition layer on another film, and a mask that would block out the silhouette of the secondary image so that bright objects behind the added image would not show through it.
It is the same system that allowed TRIBBLE Van TRIBBLE to dance with the animated penguins in Mary Poppins, Patty Duke to play identical cousins in the same frame, and most of the other high-end special effects of the time. Contrary to popular belief Star Trek was not low budget for a TV series, the budget problems came in because they used a lot more of those special effects than other series of the time and those effects were movie grade for the most part.
As for the motion blur and "sonic boom" analog warp flare thing, that is how it was explained by the people who thought it up, they figured it would seem natural to the viewers because of familiarity with the idea of supersonic jets breaking the sound barrier. Also, a practical realworld reason it exists is to cover the switch between different shooting models (like between the two-foot and six-foot Galaxy models, which had slight differences) and between the physical models and purely optical or digital effects.
In TOS, and all the other series before the JJwindow became a thing, dialog calls for magnifying and clearing up images on the screen so there is no question that they do enhance the images even if they don't technobabble it to death. Also, at least a few times someone has fooled the sensors to put something on the screen that wasn't there, from the wavy distortion effects of the distress signal in The Cage, an alien ship masquerading as a mythical creature in TAS, the Romulan Drone ship's tricks in ENT, and others that may or may not be visible to the human eye.
Comments
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
I didn't take Memory Alpha at face value, I just pointed out that what they had written for Kirk was the correct pattern according to all the little hints in the shows themselves as well as what was written in behind the scenes materials like the show bios that were in the writer's package for the show.
Another point is that Uhura was in command uniform when she joined the Enterprise crew in TOS, and not only is she a fully competent astrogator (as shown several times in TOS), in Who Mourns for Adonais? she is shown to also have enough engineering experience to rig up a subspace bypass from available components without consulting the computer for plans to build it, which taken together hint that she was probably on command track. Chances are, she would be wearing command avocado instead of ship's services red early in her career.
She does wear the green/gold dress in at least one early S1 episodes.. I want to say the Man Trap Edit. Corbomite Maneuver and Mudd's Women
And...
cue controversy of course... *groan*
Its not an old white man playing April.
https://trekmovie.com/2022/05/02/star-trek-the-animated-series-writer-welcomes-new-robert-april-on-strange-new-worlds/?fbclid=IwAR1IfiWjKB_8Sl38hquGGjwRH_M3r4ytjqiTeNR9KvFAM-26nnc0jQRAnZs
I have no problem with the casting considering that continuity in the case of April is still VERY muddy. We've NEVER seen him in live action, and the only portrayal we have of April is from one episode of the Animated series, which has bounced between canon and non canon like a frickin' racket ball bouncing off every surface in a room.
Same. Until now April has been an extremely minor character and prior to this news breaking I honesty don't think the majority of Trek fans could have told you who he was or what he looked like.
That said I do think it's a mistake to do this with well known characters. Obviously diversity is good, but IMO the best way to do it is to create new characters like nearly everyone on Discovery. I'm not a Discovery fan, but I know many are and that proves you can create new diverse characters in existing IPs rather than just recasting existing ones as a different race/gender/etc.
But again, I'm completely fine with this. Maybe we'll even get an April show one day
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
It will be a bit weird seeing someone who played a Pike (Police Captain Franklin Pike from Arrow) playing Admiral April and giving orders to another Captain Pike though :lol
https://www.syfy.com/syfy-wire/star-trek-strange-new-worlds-reviews
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
There is a Trek for everyone.
Haven't watched it, but apparently it is darker than the original. Instead of being a comedy with a few really impactful moments like Will and his dad, it is the opposite with lots of drama and little comedy.
I wont give any spoilers..
But i followed it up with Strange New Worlds, what an absolutely amazing episode, really looking forward to more..
And may i say Meeeow on nurse chapel, she was hot..
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Kirk? Anson Mount plays Pike, who was always a completely different character from Kirk. According to Roddenberry, Pike was loosely based on Horatio Hornblower (from C. S. Forester's novels), an officer of "humble beginnings" but with great natural talent for command. Like Hornblower, Pike was more of a networker than an autocrat and could inspire his crew to greater performance with his unusual command style in a way that more conventional captains could not, and was the balance point between his two main advisors, Number One and Spock.
The problem was that NBC did not like the fact that he had an alien and a woman as the other two points in his inner triangle and when they demanded that he "lose the ears and ditch the broad" as the NBC rep phrased it, Roddenberry went into one of his snits and scrapped the balanced listener Pike entirely for a slightly darker and more pragmatic (and flamboyant) captain, though he was able to combine the other two into a new version of Spock as the first officer for the new setup.
That new captain was Kirk of course, a totally different character with a totally different background and outlook. Instead of an "everyman" style like Pike, Kirk came from a Starfleet family and if his father's connections hadn't gotten him into the Academy despite his questionable youth record he would probably have been an adrenaline-junky grifter like Mudd for the thrill of outwitting the law, and a chip on his shoulder. While he took advice from his officers to some extent he was a charismatic and cocky loose cannon tempered with wit and guile, which skirted about as close to an antihero as network TV would allow at the time for a show that had to be "family friendly".
Mount plays the part of Pike perfectly, and the command triangle is extremely well done (and well cast) from what little I have seen of it so far just in the trailers and a few clips, though (due to Roddenberry's combining aspects of Spock and Number One for Spock's TOS version) Una and Spock are more or less the reverse of their The Cage counterparts in a lot of ways.
I have not seen any of the full SNW episodes yet (I probably wont get a chance to until the season is over) though the trailers look great, and I saw some of Pike, Spock, and Una in DSC. The character introduction ones were especially helpful in getting the impression of the characters in the context of SNW (assuming they were not misleading).
I know they run across Kirk at some point because of a leaked photo but I had no idea it would be so soon in the season. I don't know how he is portrayed in SNW yet, so I don't know how he matches up with the behind-the-scenes early Kirk (who was a bit like the Kelvin one except smarter, everyone knew he did something to the Kobayashi Maru simulation but unlike the Kelvin version he was able to cover his tracks better so no one could prove it was him for instance).
The-Grand-Nagus
Join Date: Sep 2008
Akiva Goldsman is known as a deft hand with character interactions, and it really shows in SNW. It is the first NuTrek to feel anything like TOS instead of just another generic TV sci-fi show, and even uses some of the classic TOS conventions like going directly to warp from orbit instead of faffing around with impulse the way they started doing in TNG.
I'm afraid I'll need to see some data on that one - TOS didn't have a warp-out animation, and in the series the matter was never directly addressed. In the first TOS movie, they stated in dialog that it was hazardous to go into warp closer to the Sun than the orbit of Jupiter, but they were just going to have to chance it.
In the SNW pilot episode they came out of the slip on thrusters, coasted while Pike gave orders and whatnot then went directly to warp. That is consistent with TOS and some episodes and movies from later series, and when they do it they almost always set a low warp factor, like the warp 2 they went to in SNW.
In TPM one of Kirk's voiceovers mentioned that they had to take the risk of taking the Enterprise to warp in the solar system, but in light of the six-minute test run from earth orbit out to one of the outer planets and back later on, the danger in TMP could have been that it was the first refit Constitution and the new warp drive installation was untested and if it went worst-case disaster it could damage the ships and tech in the system in a similar way to the Praxis explosion in miniature or something else along those lines.
If that is the case, being out as far as Jupiter might have put Earth (and possibly the shipyards at Mars) at a relatively safe range from the possible subspace blast or flash or whatever.
It is also possible that the line was just a throwaway that they never expected people to remember but was deemed necessary to build tension, like Tom Paris and his no turns in warp nonsense that was necessary for one plot but never used again.
TOS didn't have a warp-out animation, but they didn't need one either since the stock shots generally followed the ship out, or were just a second or two of them just starting to pull away and it took them around five or ten seconds at least to get up to speed. The dialog where Sulu is calling out speed firmly places the maximum "zero" to lightspeed acceleration at about 10% of lightspeed per second near the lightspeed point, but it probably starts out slower than that early on and faster as the acceleration progresses.
On top of that, they were viewscreen-style sensor views even though they were not on a viewscreen (notice how the ships stand out in TOS instead of half blend into the darkness) rather than a bare eyeball view from a fixed position so you don't get the motion blur or the sonic-boom-like flash of it passing the light barrier you see in the movies and TNG-era shows.
There were no exterior windows in the TOS version of the ship except on the three on each of the two shuttlebay catwalks (according to dialog in The Conscience of the King), especially not on the bridge, so the starbow would not have been visible from anywhere inside the ship unless they were on one of those catwalks (or they told the computer to show it instead of sorting it all out, but there would be no practical reason to do so). The starbow or not was long a matter of speculation about what travelling in warp would look like to a person looking out a window instead of with the processing, and SNW settles the question, it is the starbow.
And you're making positive, absolutist statements about the technology level of the 23rd century based on these facts.
What I meant was that the view you see in the "outside" shots are the same style as the ones on the main viewscreen and the mainscreen is supposed to be an enhanced view. And there is nothing that says that an outside view has to be a bare eyeball view instead of something that shows the scene better.
And yes, the realworld reason is the techniques they used to film it and the fact that they wanted to show the ships clearly instead of the hokey "rocket in the dark" style that was common at the time. But at the same time, it is a good guess at what a ship in interstellar space would look like with enough amplification (and possibly toning down the stars direct brilliance) since the lighting would be billions of point sources from all directions, sort of the ultimate diffused lighting shell.
Assuming even a little processing of the screen image by the ship's computers, the way they showed the ships in TOS is just as realistic (and in some ways even more realistic) as the darker view CBS uses nowadays since the current rendition does not look quite like what the human eye sees though windows in Earth orbit either, and in interstellar space it is likely that the only thing visible to the bare eye would be the nav/running lights and possibly its silhouette against the stars.
The SFX in TOS were done on a triple-head travelling mat compositor, not hand drawn. It used three film paths, the primary scene layer on one film, the addition layer on another film, and a mask that would block out the silhouette of the secondary image so that bright objects behind the added image would not show through it.
It is the same system that allowed TRIBBLE Van TRIBBLE to dance with the animated penguins in Mary Poppins, Patty Duke to play identical cousins in the same frame, and most of the other high-end special effects of the time. Contrary to popular belief Star Trek was not low budget for a TV series, the budget problems came in because they used a lot more of those special effects than other series of the time and those effects were movie grade for the most part.
As for the motion blur and "sonic boom" analog warp flare thing, that is how it was explained by the people who thought it up, they figured it would seem natural to the viewers because of familiarity with the idea of supersonic jets breaking the sound barrier. Also, a practical realworld reason it exists is to cover the switch between different shooting models (like between the two-foot and six-foot Galaxy models, which had slight differences) and between the physical models and purely optical or digital effects.
In TOS, and all the other series before the JJwindow became a thing, dialog calls for magnifying and clearing up images on the screen so there is no question that they do enhance the images even if they don't technobabble it to death. Also, at least a few times someone has fooled the sensors to put something on the screen that wasn't there, from the wavy distortion effects of the distress signal in The Cage, an alien ship masquerading as a mythical creature in TAS, the Romulan Drone ship's tricks in ENT, and others that may or may not be visible to the human eye.