U.S.S. Curry and other ships from DS9

Discussion in 'Trek Tech' started by Dukhat, Apr 2, 2013.

  1. Mark_Nguyen

    Mark_Nguyen Rear Admiral Rear Admiral

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    Oho! I had not seen that pic before, but I agree that's what it looks like (without the typically dark-colored Excelsineck, too). Could you show us what you did with it? As it stands, the neck would have to be trimmed to fit the underside of the saucer...

    Mark
     
  2. CharlieZardoz

    CharlieZardoz Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    http://i383.photobucket.com/albums/oo271/Mark96826/hokulea_new03.jpg

    http://images1.wikia.nocookie.net/__cb20091227022017/starship/images/d/d4/Mediterranean_1-1-.jpg

    Just putting this out there for general discussion. The excelsior kitbashes were never properly identified by class (Shelly, Raging Queen or Centaur types isn't really an official class name). Been wondering if anyone else thought these designs could/should have been other established classes in the Star Trek canon like the Hokule'a, Merced, or Mediterranean classes. I mean hey why not? :)
     
  3. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    ^^^ On the previous page, in the OP, there is an image of a kitbash with the name USS Trieste (NCC-3724), using a Miranda frame with Galaxy engines, Runabout weapons pod pylons, and a whole boatload of seemingly random greebles attached to it (including what appear to be a pair of very non-Starfleet looking Rebel ion cannons from Star Wars). It may match this USS Trieste (with a near-identical registry of NCC-37124) that was supposed to have been seen in TNG Redemption Pt 2 as a part of the blockade fleet, but was never actually shown. This may be what the long-lost Merced class looked like. I still don't think we've seen a Hokule'a or Mediterranean yet, but I think those are the last two class names remaining that we don't know what they look like, unless they can maybe be mapped back to some of the Excelsior study models from TSFS or something.
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2013
  4. CharlieZardoz

    CharlieZardoz Lieutenant Red Shirt

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    Well that's why I wonder about the Curry, Centaur and Raging Queen as being possible candidates for the Hokule'a, Mediterranean, maybe even the Apollo or Renaissance classes. The registries fit for those designs and it appears the Hokule'a was described to be a transport (though I've no real evidence to support that claim). Yeah it is also possible that (ugly) Trieste kitbash was the elusive Merced class (perhaps they couldn't find an extra 1 lol), so maybe the others are established classes as well? :)
     
  5. Praetor

    Praetor Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Man, that Trieste. I like her because of how fugly she is. I think. Some sort of surveillance/command ship would seem to fit her nicely, but then again Data said she was small and slow. Maybe a buoy tender or something like that?
     
  6. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

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    It is my personal belief that these kitbashes should not be equated with the conjectural classes simply because that was not the intention of the model builders, and also that I would rather classes like the Hokule'a, Renaissance and Merced be original designs instead of hastily constructed and out-of-scale kitbashes.

    Data actually meant that the Trieste was too slow to catch up to the hijacked Enterprise-D, not that she was a slow ship overall. Of course, why her small size would have anything to do with her speed is beyond me.
     
  7. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    The Trieste is awesome. Brings up warm fuzzy memories of FASA kitbash designs. It's such a shame we never saw her on-screen!
     
  8. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    Indeed, her small size and mass, coupled with the newer Galaxy-style engines would actually imply the exact opposite case to be true. The Trieste should be one of the fastest ships in the fleet! :)
     
  9. Praetor

    Praetor Vice Admiral Admiral

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    Big awesome engines, crappy underpowered power plant?
     
  10. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    It is possible that the older Miranda-style core that this thing might have had was too underpowered to drive the newer engines. It then begs the question of why did the Starfleet Corps of Engineers go to all the trouble of bolting on scaled down Galaxy engines (they were probably left-overs from an unfinished Nebula prototype stuck in a drydock somewhere) without beefing up the core to support the load?

    This may actually be touching on the reason the model was never used. The dialog was already written when Data described her as too slow. Then, when the producers saw the model with 24th century Galaxy components, they maybe felt like it didn't look like it should have been "too slow". It was likely just a throw-away line that didn't mean anything in the grand scheme of things, but the bridge footage was probably already filmed and put together and they just opted to save some money by leaving out the extra visual effects of a new ship that didn't quite match implied dialog (and they probably thought it was too ugly to show on screen, too). It is, quite possibly, one of the oddest kitbashes I've seen in Trek, rivaled only by a small handful of some of the more bizarre DS9 frankenfleet members.
     
  11. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

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    I suppose that would depend on how she is scaled. Are those GCS engines the same size as the Enterprise-D's? Or the New Orleans? Should we base the scale on the engines, or the bridge module? Or the size of the windows? Or Voyager's shuttlebay door? Or the original Reliant superstructure?
     
  12. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    ^^^ As I mentioned in a previous post (I was probably typing it at the exact same moment you were typing this :)), they were probably left-overs from an unfinished Nebula prototype (like the original Melbourne) stuck in a drydock somewhere. It has smaller engines that look like they would perfectly match what's on the Trieste, scale-wise.
     
  13. Unicron

    Unicron Boss Monster Mod Moderator

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    I'm probably weird in that I've never liked some of the conjectural designs that showed up in the Encyclopedia, at least the ones that are still primarily conjectural (such as the Merced). I guess to me there's no reason those ships couldn't potentially be part of an existing class, and just inventing some random unseen design seems lazy. But I'm probably overthinking it. :lol:
     
  14. Dukhat

    Dukhat Admiral Admiral

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    I'm not quite understanding what you said. There are no designs associated with the conjectural classes (except maybe the Trieste), so what don't you like? Or do you mean that you don't like the fan designs people have come up with for them? Or do you just not like the concept of conjectural designs? If that's the case, I suppose I can understand. When the first Encyclopedia was written, there weren't a whole lot of other ship designs other than the movie models and two or three newer ones like the Constellation, Ambassador, and Nebula (two of which weren't even "brand-new" as of TNG), so I can understand Okuda's intent to "flesh out" Starfleet. But that's kind of irrelevant now.
     
    Last edited: Aug 13, 2013
  15. Unicron

    Unicron Boss Monster Mod Moderator

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    What I dislike, to a degree, is that there were a number of vessels mentioned only in dialogue (such as the W359 ships) that were initially listed as conjectural designs, and later some of those details were actually fleshed out and identified. Some of them, like the USS Trieste, the Merced class, Deneva class etc. remain as nothing more than names with no specific details (fan attempts aside), and it's likely such details would never be created by anyone who worked on the show. So, to me, and this is again partly due to my own unique weirdness, it would be easier to simply stick those ships as Miranda, Excelsior etc. No guesswork required that way.
     
  16. Praetor

    Praetor Vice Admiral Admiral

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    I see where you're coming from, Unicron. It's like don't tell me there are four other flavors of cake, and these are their names, if you're not going to let me eat them? ;)

    That said, I do somewhat admire the effort to try to expand the universe via this method beyond what budgetary constraints allow.

    The problem with kitbashes, inherently, is that they're, well, kitbashes. Things are scaled weird. We can either choose to think of logical in-universe reasons why, or disregard certain details. (The latter being a slippery slope.) Given that the Trieste was not seen onscreen, it makes that choice here somewhat easy. :p
     
  17. Unicron

    Unicron Boss Monster Mod Moderator

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    Yeah, I understand why Mike Okuda invented those names for purposes of the Encyclopedia and the pressures that he and others would have worked under during production. I tend to like the W359 vessels and the Renaissance class reference because those wound up getting fleshed out, but that's probably just my OCD when it comes to technical stuff. :biggrin: :lol: I think in part too it's a bit of cynicism over the years when it comes to Treknical stuff, because it's been my experience that a lot of fan work has proven to be far better in depth and coordination than what was possible to establish on screen. And I feel like we, as fans, sometimes have gotten the short end of the stick because it'll never be recognized appropriately. But that's a discussion for its own thread.

    Battletech did something similar when they made Technical Readout: 2750, the first TRO that dealt with Star League era warships. Most of the entries had references to warship classes that were conjectural for a long time, and were eventually fleshed out in full with the revised version TRO: 3057. The real fun with that one was when the 2750 warships were brought back for the Clan fleets and given entirely new art, which didn't entirely line up with the originals. That's caused more than a few cans of worms.
     
  18. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    I remember when I first got the DS9 Tech Manual and saw all those weird designs and I specifically remember thinking, "where the hell did THESE things come from? They can't be real!" mostly because the detailing of many of these background ships was hardly discernible on low-def screens at the time, and that most of those ships were nothing more than random pieces of AMT/ERTL Enterprise-A and Enterprise-D flotsam strewn around the screen. It wasn't until several years later, when photos of the actual filming miniatures started surfacing, combined with the publication of more detailed views in the Official Star Trek Fact Files, that I discovered the Tech Manual schematics came fairly close to what they really looked like and I was genuinely shocked how bizarrely designed they were.
     
  19. F. King Daniel

    F. King Daniel Fleet Admiral Admiral

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    C'mon, I can't be the only one here who loves these bizarro kitbashes?



    *crickets*
     
  20. 137th Gebirg

    137th Gebirg Admiral Premium Member

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    I love _some_ of them. The Centaur and Shelly are my top favorites, and I even have a warm spot in my heart for the Jaeger. But the rest of them...not so much...

    And, of course, we always talk about the big capital ships, but we can't ever truly forget poor ol' Tugboat Willy. I can see a bunch of Runabout parts in there, some AT-ST legs, D'Deridex warp nacelles and Voyager warp pylons at the very least. If we wanna talk about mixed scales, that little guy wins first prize! :D