Talk:Star Trek: First Contact

One point of interest in this movie from a gun perspective is the new phaser rifles, which were developed because of a problem with the original prop.

See, Rodenberry didn't want the Enterprise's crew carrying anything that looked like a gun, so when he got more creative control over Next Generation he replaced the handgun-like Phasers with a thing that appears to be the offspring of a TV remote and a dustbuster. The Phaser Rifle was the same, with an awkward 2-point grip with no stock, and a fakey reflex sight with no second aim point.

The trouble wasn't apparent until the more conflict-heavy DS9; the Phasers were completely impossible to aim consistently, and when it came time for the SFX guys to draw in the beams, as often as not they didn't actually match the barrel axis. This becomes a problem when an actor is trying to make it look like they're lining up a difficult shot only for the gun to seemingly aim all by itself in the final cut. Hence the new rifle prop.

Moral of the story: guns look like guns for a reason. Evil Tim (talk) 01:37, 10 September 2012 (EDT)