Ugh!! Yet another instance of the auto-destruct failing. That excuse has been used so many times on screen it's ridiculous. While I haven't read the book, I hope the circumstances surrounding the failure of the auto-destruct was a little more creative than the computer voice simply saying "auto-destruct is offline."
Starfleet might be too short on resources to do anything about a ship lost so far out that the evacuees would "drift for weeks" in their shuttlecraft. OTOH, it may be they did go and have a look at the system, despite knowing an enemy stalks there - and found nothing, as the Ferengi had already towed away the hulk. The problem with that is that Picard himself doesn't seem to think the ship would have been destroyed - that is, it appears he never made any attempt to destroy her. He's happy with her "finding her own way", in a log entry apparently made just before he left the ship. Nor is Picard sufficiently surprised that the ship is still intact in "The Battle". So a botched scuttling attempt doesn't really fit the picture. The idea that the ship would have been difficult to scuttle is all right and well - we know autodestruct charges can malfunction. But apparently in such cases Starfleet does not require the skipper to go out of his way to destroy the ship by some other means; leaving her lying about is acceptable. (In contrast, no dialogue suggests scuttling would be a required maneuver in any context, and our heroes typically only use scuttling as a blackmail tool or a way of taking a few enemies with them.) Makes sense. OTOH, in the age of effortless replication of trinkets, it could also be that a generic model was replicated and then a very special number was painted on it before the item was handed over to Picard as a gift. Perhaps 7100 was the transporter number of an attractive lady from Picard's past, or his score in the Academy Septathlon, or the sum he owed Walker Keel? Let's remember that basically none of our heroes are suicidal. Auto-destruct is not a means of committing suicide, it's a means of scuttling the ship without harm to the crew - hence the countdown and the warnings and all. If the countdown timer doesn't work, there are a zillion ways of destroying the ship - but few or none to do it so that the crew survives. Timo Saloniemi
Agreed. I always assumed it an intentional homage to the original series ship of that name. Am I imagining that Ronald D. Moore actually said so during an interview?
I haven't read it in some time, but from what I remember they didn't so much set the autodestruct as the antimatter containment was failing rapidly from the ships power grid collapsing. They all took to the life rafts and assumed the ship would blow up itself but it successfully jetisoned the antimatter pods. Leading to the plot point of the Stargazer being flat out of antimatter and the ability to make her own in the TNG episode. And I think their detonation leading everyone to believe the ship had actually been lost.
I read that the reason the model was pulled from the ready room set was so it could be used as a reference for Jein's team to construct the Stargazer filming model. In one scene, Levar Burton does say "Constitution" class, so they were planning on using the movie model, but couldn't get it or something, so they decided to build the model based on the kitbash, and then dub over that line with "Constellation". I've studied that kitbash model, and it's really neat. A couple of AMT Enterprise kits, pieces from a Gundam kit, pieces from a Battleship Yamato kit, and other various Anime model pieces. I was able to find the exact model kits used, and buy them along with a vacuuform kit of the Stargazer in my closet (same scale as the ready room model), which I hope to build someday.
I recall that when everything else failed, Picard set a destructive course towards a planet, but the ship merely skipped off the atmosphere and floated safely to outer space. Probably both things happened in the story... We don't need to postulate the ability to make antimatter if we don't claim the pods blew. These things are supposed to be idiot-proof and all; safely keeping the antimatter in store for half a century might not be much of a problem. The same goes for the longer-idled Hathaway in "Peak Performance", although that ship could have been refilled by the E-D. Of course, the Stargazer could have been refilled by the Ferengi, at no extra cost (The shame! The shame!). Timo Saloniemi
Okay, flipping through the relevant chapter of the book The Buried Age this is what happens: After the battle is over the ship is overwhelmed by fires and explosions, so many that the fire crews/suppression systems cannot contain the blazes so Picard makes the decision to abandon ship. It seems the plan is to decompress the ship through various hatches and vents to extinguish the fire and maybe return to the ship (?.) Once the crew is evacuated one of the engineering crew reports to Picard that not all of the venting hatches have opened and that fire is still raging in the engineering sections of the ship, then he reports that the plutonium containers have ruptured and the radiation contamination is spreading through the ship and they haven't the gear to return to the ship to decontaminate, so the ship is a loss. They cannot make a connection with the ship's computer to initiate the auto-destruct, the shuttles/escape pods don't have the armaments to destroy the ship tactically, nor can they spare a micro-warp core from a shuttle to destroy the ship. Their only hope is that as they never made a stable orbit around a Jovian planet that the ship will be pulled into the planet and destroyed by the crushing gravity. While they can hasten process with the shuttles the risk of loss of life/equipment not to mention the fuel loss isn't worth the risk. So they leave the ship abandoned assuming that with in a few days/couple of weeks it'll be pulled down into the Jovian planet. Now, again, this is from a novel and isn't "canon" but is decent enough "speculative fiction" on what may have happened that sort of tries to explain the abandoning of the ship (they only left the ship "temporarily to try and stop the fires by decompressing the ship) but how the ship ended up not destroyed (the ship became contaminated with radiation they couldn't clean up so they couldn't return; and they couldn't make a connection with the ship to initiate the self-destruct. They assumed the ship would be destroyed within a few days as it got pulled into a nearby planet.) And leaves open the idea how the ship fell into Ferengi hands. (The Ferengi found the ship before it succumbed to the crushing gravity of the Jovian planet, effected radiation clean-up of the ship and Bok then decided to use the ship to try and to get revenge on Picard.... 10 years later.) ETA: AH. The next section of the chapter has Bok finding the ship in a decaying orbit (it seems the ship hit the atmosphere at the right angle, bounced off and entered into a new decaying orbit. Bok recovers the ship and decides to use to get revenge on the loss of his only male heir, against the advice of the crew and without consideration of the profit that could be gained from the secrets and technology in the ship.
I'd enjoy reading an author's take on the Stargazer incident, along with the court martial and the Picard/Louvois relationship. Is The Buried Age the one? I'm aware there's a Stargazer line of books.
The Buried Age touches on the Stargazer incident and resulting trial, but only slightly It more deals with the seven/eight year "gap" between the loss of the Stargazer and Picard taking command of the Enterprise. It's actually a very good book and it was written by board-member Christopher.
Yeah, what I think happened was this (and someone more in the know can correct me if I'm wrong): They did indeed pull the model so that Jein could use it as a reference. However, during filming of the episode it was determined that Jein wouldn't have the filming model done in time for the post-production VFX, so they filmed the ep with the intention that the Stargazer would be a reuse of the TMP Enterprise (the TMP desktop model, Geordi saying "Constitution class," etc.). But Jein did have his model ready by post, so they went back and dubbed over Geordi's line before the ep was broadcast, and in subsequent episodes the yellow desktop model was returned to the ready room.
The Stargazer was designed by Andrew Probert and Rick Sternbach. The miniature was built by Greg Jein. The Stargazer was original going be Constitution class, which was seen in Picard ready room in early broadcast episodes that had air before the Battle. But After the episode was film, they decided to not have the Stargazer be a Constitution, but instead a Constellation, which sounded almost the same. Later on while they were working on the series so it can be release on VHS they went back and edit the early episode, but left the battle episode along. Giving the illusion that they weren't in Picard ready room, but instead was in Commander Riker office and that the Constellation model was in Picard ready room all the time. What you see airing now days. Are the edit version, not the original air broadcast episodes. Those original air broadcast were either shelve or destroyed? NCC-7100 was going to be the Stargazer registry number, which was on the model that was in Picard ready room. Later on it was decided that the Stargazer should have a lower registry number, which went on the filming model.
Uh.... No. The Constitution model was clearly in Picard's Ready Room unless Riker's "office" also led directly from the door on the bridge and an inter-dimensional portal in the doorway somehow knew which room people wanted to enter. The story I had always heard was that the model went missing from the Ready Room so that the filming model designers had a point-of reference for building the filming model. Maybe the Constitution-Class was place there as a way to make people think the Stargazer was a Constitution-Class (as that was obviously the idea at one point given the line-dubbing) but at some point the model was used as reference work for making the filming model (IIRC the Constitution model is still there in "The Battle" episode itself where the mis-direction was obviously not needed) bu, whatever the case for the model going missing, the Constitution model was always in Picard's Ready Room and never in "Riker's Office", if we even ever saw such a thing. (Which we didn't.)
I didn't know there was ever a Connie in the ready room...I always thought it was NCC-7100 from the get go.
It was NCC-7100 from the get go. It was pulled temporarily and substituted with the Constitution model. It was gone in Hide and Q also, I think. The original was returned once the design team no longer needed it. Here's a screenshot: http://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/1x09/thebattle_hd_307.jpg I sure would have loved to see the Refit model on TNG just once. It's never appeared outside the movies, except for the destroyed model used as debris in BOBW, etc.