[prideout]

Whenever there is a flotilla of ships in Star Trek, they seem to always arrange themselves into a two-dimensional plane and orient themselves according to their artificial gravity. This evokes ships at sea.

Starfleet seems to use a naval ranking, and officers use words like "hail", "heave to", "away team", and "bearing". The navigation terminology in Star Trek sees to be related to the galactic plane, which again evokes the surface of the sea.

The drive section of the Enterprise looks like the keel of a boat to me, and her nacelles look like the hulls of a catamaran.

Roddenberry loved the Hornblower books and I'm sure he was influenced by naval aesthetics.

[jimktrains2]

The honor Harrington by Weber series is also based on Hornblower and has some very nice, realistic depictions of physics and battle in space (minus the ftl, of course). I highly recommend it.

[zrail]

The one very notable exception to the two-dimensional flotilla is the depiction of the battle of wolf-359. As I recall the battle played out as a ball of Starfleet ships surrounding the Borg.

[TeMPOraL]

Wouldn't say it's an exception; the scenes from the battle and the aftermath still look pretty planar to me. Similarly, the battle with Borg over Earth, while not completely flat, had ships orbiting the Borg cube more-less along a plane.

The Dominion Wars in DS9 had been both the best and the worst, sometimes in the same battles. I remember the confrontation when the Federation fleet tried to punch through a Dominion blockade to DS9. Yes, they were saved by the Klingons arriving off-plane (and with the local star behind them, reminiscent of a WWI/WWII fighter tactic), but other than that, the battle was terribly planar and terribly crowded.

Star Trek has IMO nailed most narrative, but I wish they'd remake combat scenes with a little better, and more 3D, choreography. Leave the FX the same, though; IMO the TNG/DS9/VOY/ENT style of weapons was the best in the whole series, and the best in "soft sci-fi".