[AndysPlit]

Originally Posted by Livingston

The Wrath of Khan. The ships looked great, they looked huge and seemed tangible. I think it works better when they use models, something they can actually film. CGI looks great but there's something about the texture of the ships in the Next Gen movies (except Generations) that just seem too perfect to me. Those sequence where the Enterprise and the Reliant are searching for each other in the nebula, they look great. I hear Abrams is using a model and CGI for ships in the new film, he said in an interview he wants to film as much as he possibly can so can't wait for that!

Ditto on models vs CGI.

[HokieinSC]

Would say First Contact. Just a product of the times.

[Livingston]

Originally Posted by Doctor Bigglesworth

Almost 30 years later, The Motion Picture's effects are still the best. The Enterprise never looked better, the level of detail in everything was stupendous, and the V'Ger visuals, though they dragged down the pace of the movie itself, were ethereally lovely.

Think I'll have to agree with Bigglesworth, though his avatar is creeping me out!

TMP for the time and the budget had some innovative, nice effects. The scale was great, when the Enterprise goes inside VGER it really seems to dwarf the enterprise which up to that point in the film was shown as huge itself. Trek's 1-6 all had great effects I thought, except some of the dodgy stuff in 5 like with Spock's rocket boots.

Generations had nice effects and the battle at the beginning of First Contact was nice but after that they just ended up being so CGI, they lost me. I watch the last few trek films and I just don't buy the stuff is happening, it just looks so glossy and well, CGI. Kinda like the new starwars movies. But that crashing sequence in Nemesis did look pretty good from what I remember.

[Tygrrius]

Judging the movies against others of their same time periods, I have to go with Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan for best effects. A few of the effects of Star Trek II were lifted from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, though. Star Trek II vs. TMP (the Enterprise launch sequences in particular) is a great study of how the tighter editing and vastly superior music score of Star Trek II made the same scene much better than its TMP counterpart. TMP lulls me to sleep with the same footage, while Star Trek II brings me to my feet and has me pumping my fist in the air.

Judging the movies overall, without considering the time periods, I would choose Star Trek: Nemesis for best effects. Of course, going back to Star Trek II, the ILM-created Enterprise vs. Reliant battles and the nebula sequences are still top-notch - even by today's standards. However, Nemesis was able to show a level of detail unmatched by the other Trek movies so far. I'm pretty sure ILM is going to severely up the ante with 2009's Star Trek, though.

Worst effects would easily be Star Trek: Insurrection (not to mention worst movie by far, but I'll save that for another thread), followed by the non-recycled effects of Star Trek V: The Final Frontier. Still nice to see the incredible Enterprise-A reveal footage from Star Trek IV again in Star Trek V. If they were going to recycle, at least they chose a great scene.

[AndysPlit]

Cheesey that they recycled the destruction of the prototype Bird of Prey from VI and used it in Generations. Unforgiveable.

[Trekman7]

In DS9 and Voyager I got quite annoyed at all of the CGI ships. They didn't look realistic at all...everything was too smooth and it just didn't feel right, like how they flew and all that. But it gradually got better, and I got more comfortable. Models still have that amazing sense of realism to them, I love the use of models in the star trek movies and episodes, but when using the CGI ships you can do so much more, do tricky shots and have many multiple ships without a whole bunch of trouble. The Next Generation movies are very realistic with the CGI ships, (especially Nemesis) they have as much detail and realism as the Enterprise A model in the Original Series Movies (and all star trek models in general). CGI has officially outdone models, and I am perfectly content with the use of CGI in the movies...

[Trekman7]

I can't really say which Star Trek movie has the best Visual Effects, because all of them have had some of the best VFX from the time they were made.

[Zardoz]

I'd have to say Trek 3, the destruction of the NCC-1701 was well done, especially considering the times and what they had to work with.

The Excelcior design started here too!

[Saquist]

Star Trek 6 was really good.
But nemesis had good effects too even though I hated the film.

[16309A]

TMP still seems to hold up pretty good, but I do love the effects in Nemesis