The Romulan War: Beneath the Raptor's Wing - Discuss (SPOILERS)

It's a pity that all of the NX-class ships save Enterprise have been wiped out. I liked them.

Although, given that Doug Drexler's design for a heavily refitted NX-01 (now with a secondary hull) are coming out, I wonder if the novels will also do this? The ship would have gotten that refit if ENT had made it to a fifth season, apparently. So will the novels do the same refit?

 

Where can I see this? Sounds interesting.

 

Here is a link.

 

The refitted NX-01 will be in next year's Ships of the Line calendar, I believe.

 

That's pretty spiffy; thanks.

 

Yeah, I like that too. To bad we never got to see it on the show.

 

The Endeavour (NX-06) is still around though kind of damaged.

 

That's exactly how the NX-01 should have looked from the beginning.

As for the book, I just didn't care for it. Too much annoyed me about the story, plotting, structure and style. This series is going to drag if Trip complains about getting out of the intelligence business in every single book when we know he never will.

 

Thanks for the link, Mr. Laser Beam! That is one cool design.

 

I hate it. Amongst other problems I have with it, I just don't think that there should be such a clear lineage between the NX-class and the Constitution class. Human ships should be only be one of four different lineages -- Vulcan, Andorian, and Tellarite -- that all lead to Federation ship classes.

To be fair, that criticism also extends to the Andorian, Vulcan, and Tellarite designs. Okay, we all love the Vulcan ring ships, but Andorian and Tellarite ships should have both looked like they had important elements that later went on to be used in the Constitution class.

 

THAT. LOOKS. AWESOME . Pleasepleaseplease be on an Enterprise novel cover!!!!! I'm going to buy the calendar because of this

 

That looks awesome and I also think that it will be part of next year's Ships of the Line Calender. I just finished the book, borrowed it from a friend, and was rather disappointed by it. Not what I was expecting but it wasn't entirely bad either. The second half of the book I think really kicks into the plot while the first half spends too much time setting things up. Interesting take to show the "underbelly" of the war and not the front line battles. I assume that this is because we've been shown the front line and major conflicts in Star Trek before, this War seems very much both a hot and cold war with varying agencies working behind the scenes to try and increase their governments advantages. I did like the explainations of how this is known as the Earth/Romulan War. Interesting to see if this continues next year or when the Enterprise novels return.

 

It seems to get better as I go so far, the first part just seemed kind of slow to me. I'm now just over one third of the way through.

 

Does anyone know when the next one might be due?

 

Nothing is offically scheduled but I would guess probably around early 2011.

 

That's an element I feel is handled a lot more interestingly in the Star Fleet Universe than in the Franchise, personally.

In the SFU, Terran ships don't have the saucer-and-nacelle designs seen for the later unified Star Fleet hulls - and neither do the other pre-saucer ships from other member planets, either.

Plus, there's more of a point made about the technological and logistical elements which made the unified designs successful, in comparison to the planet-specific ships (with a few exceptions). The single-species ships were mostly upgrades of Non-Tactical Warp 'sublight' designs, which already put them into territory their original designers had not prepared for.

In contrast, the saucer-and-nacelle ships were built to use Tactical Warp from the ground up - and unlike the older ships were standardised in a manner which allowed them to be built and maintained across the Federation. Plus, while the first such ships were built at Earth, the design was one intended to not show overt favour to one planet's design heritage over another. However, it would not be until the second generation of Star Fleet ships for the unified fleet to integrate certain technologies which the Vulcans had developed on their own hulls - but even before that happened, the shift to the unified fleet was irreversible.

While a few notable Terran designs were given upgrades and served into the SFU equivalent of the TOS era - and, indeed, became the basis for a fleet built by a 'lost colony' in a more distant part of the galaxy - the newer ships had become the cornerstone of the fleet.


Further, the evolution of the Federation's separate navies into a unified Star Fleet caused a political shift, too. The major member planets retained their own squadrons of National Guard ships for local defence, but it would be Star Fleet which would be at the vanguard of the UFP's space-based presence - and the federal authority on Earth, which the fleet was beholden to, where the balance of power would shift.



(Something similar happened in the Inter-Stellar Concordium, too. The older ships flown by the five planets which would found the ISC were gradually replaced by a unified fleet, the operation of which would help drive the shift within the Concordium to turn it from an alliance into a government.)

 

That's a long wait, but I suspect it will be worth it.

 

I wonder if there could ever be actual novels set in the SFU? Would there be any licensing or legal issues that would prevent that?

 

It would be cool to see....

Spoiler: SFU possible spoiler and I don't know how the rules would affect this

How the Romulan Republic came about

 

No, it wouldn't have. On the very page you linked to, Doug says, "This is entirely on my own. It’s how I would have like to have seen the ship evolve."