USS Bonestell in BOBW Part II

It has been long believed that the Oberth-class ship seen in DS9 "Emissary" is the USS Bonestell described in the Star Trek Encyclopedia with registry NCC-31600. However the Encyclopedia always implied the Bonestell was seen in TNG "Best of Both Worlds Part II" and not "Emissary". On the other hand there is no evidence that an Oberth-class vessel was ever used in the graveyard scene in BOBW2.

Recently, an internal TNG ship list was unearthed and published on the trekdocs Twitter account.
https://twitter.com/trekdocs/status/846068126181666817/photo/1
This list dated September 26th, 1990 was compiled around the time of BOBW2, so many years before "Emissary" was filmed. It looks genuine, and although the author is unknown it was likely drawn up by Mike Okuda (possibly for the production technical manual) and predates the first Encyclopedia. Among many interesting tidbits, the list has the USS Bonestell complete with class and registry.

All the other ships from BOBW2 are also on the list. What this finding implies is that the Bonestell had a physical model as early as BOBW2 that someone (Mike Okuda?) recorded on the list and that may or may not have been filmed and/or made the final cut.

The screencaps of BOBW2 have been thoroughly analyzed before, and most of the wreckage has been identified and linked to known physical models. Looking for a possible Oberth-class model among the few unidentified pieces of wreckage, there may be a possible match.
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359/wolf359-1-2a.jpg
The topmost unidentified ship in the Ex Astris Scientia screencap linked above looks like it might be an Oberth-class saucer with possibly a matching secondary hull, but no obvious nacelles.

Given the distance, lighting and blurriness, it's a long shot at best but could explain why someone identified the USS Bonestell as early as 1990, way before "Emissary" was filmed.

Does it seem plausible that there was an actual piece of wreckage identified as the Bonestell in BOBW2? Was the Oberth in "Emissary" actually modified with "Bonestell" markings, or was it just the USS Yosemite from "Realm Of Fear" ? Looking forward to your thoughts.

 

NX-1974 for the USS Constellation was officially established in Star Trek VI which came after this list was drawn up. Did Mr Sternbach come up with the registry first, or was it only after ST:VI?

Not sure why these class ship registries were later contradicted by screen evidence. Either the list was deprecated and forgotten about, or there were valid reasons to use different registry numbers.

 

The Galaxy appeared in DS9's "Tears of the Prophets", and it had the 70637 registry.

 

There was a shuttle with the registry NCC-70637 in "Identity Crisis". This episode aired before the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual was released, where I first learned of the Galaxy's registry.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/NCC-70367_shuttlecraft

The Gettysburg, misspelled in the list as Gettysberg, had a higher registry then the one most commonly associated with this ship - NCC-3890 vs. NCC-38902.

 

Very interesting find!
BOBW, part II aired two days earlier, September 24.
Here's an idea: maybe the Oberth studio model was intended for use on BOBW, but ultimately wasn't (for whatever reason). The name made it to the list because it was already approved by the producers. Is there any evidence to suggest that the Oberth in Emissary was actually labeled "Bonestell"? IIRC, the model went from Copernicus (TNG Season 4 "The Drumhead") to Yosemite (TNG season 6 "Realm of Fear", confirmed by HD caps and aired September 92, four moths before the DS9 pilot) to Pegasus (TNG season 7 "Pegasus"). The explosion of the Bonestell would have been a transition between the undamaged model (probably still named Yosemite) to the other Oberth studio model, the damaged Vico.
I just checked the encyclopedia(s). The first edition makes no mention of the ship, the second edition adds it to the ship list, but it doesn't get an entry. Fun fact: the ship list entry says "BOBW", too. The whole "Emissary"/Bonestell-connection was just fandom conjecture (I always took as a fact). So we got an unnamed Oberth at Wolf in the DS9 pilot and Bonestell is downgraded to Encyclopedia conjecture on my shiplist (unless someone has picture evidence that the studio model was named "Bonestell" at some point).

 

That's a valid theory. It would be surprising though in that case to include the Bonestell in the list and not the USS Liberator for which a damaged type 7 shuttle model was actually built and apparently not filmed.

You raise another interesting point: if an Oberth-class was intended to take part in BOBW, what physical model could it have been? They wouldn't have damaged the original model. Perhaps a mold of the original could have been taken, like they did for the damaged Vico model from "Hero Worship" which was built much later. There was a prototype Oberth model labeled Valiant at some point, maybe they intended to use that? Where is that model now?

There are actually two Oberth-class ships in "Emissary", the one destroyed in the flashback scene and another one berthed at the station here. There's no evidence to suggest that the destroyed Oberth was labeled Bonestell, but there's also no evidence that the model was still labeled Yosemite in "Emissary". Given that every other model used was specially relabeled for the pilot (Miranda, Ambassador, Nebula, Excelsior) except for the Enterprise-D, I'd be extremely surprised the Oberth wasn't. As far as I know the screen captures do not allow for positive identification of the berthed Oberth as the Yosemite. It could be named anything else, and hopefully not Bonestell. The Encyclopedia has it as the Cochrane, that makes even less sense unless it was relabeled Cochrane yet again. And I don't think that any of the Oberth shots in "Emissary" were stock footage reuse.

Yes, that's also my take on it. But I do think the BOBW Bonestell is as authentic as the other wrecked ships, perhaps in time the Bonestell model will come to surface.

 

That is assuming the shuttlecraft model from the Liberator was really intended for use in BOBW (even though "The Art of Star Trek" says it was), or - if it was - whether that name had to be approved. There are lots of ships that only make an okudagram appearance that probably needed no confirmation (coincidentially, non of those is listed here; it only has ships mentioned in dialogue or actual studio models).

That one got me thinking. I suppose they shot the BOBW scenes first (I think the DS9 Companion mentions something along those lines, they did some shots, then the script changed and they had to scrap them). But for those scenes, they relabeled all the big ones, the Saratoga, Yamaguchi, Melbourne and Bellerophon. The Saratoga was Saratoga until the end, when she was auctioned off (the rollbar was added for GENS, but the name stayed). Bellerophon became Farragut for GENS and I believe Yamaguchi stayed Yamaguchi until the end, too. Melbourne of course became Enterprise-B. So, for the later shot of that Oberth docking at DS9, the Oberth model was literally the only available ship (except Hathaway/Stargazer) that would not have had a Wolf-359 name. This is all just speculation, but given the time and money it took to relabel these things (which they probably did not have at that point), I believe the ship we saw at DS9 was Yosemite (and, for that matter, the Wolf-Oberth was Yosemite as well, plus the Vico wreck).

 

I see your point. Makes sense. Another theory would have that the Oberth was relabeled just like the other models for the Wolf scene, then reused without change for the later shot given that the name and registry would be unreadable in either scene anyway. The next time the Oberth would be used is in "Pegasus" where it was obviously relabeled again, so no help there. Well if only we had HD caps of "Emissary"! It's likely that the Oberth registry would become readable then.

 

Then let's agree that it is defnitely not Copernicus. (Of course, story-wise, Copernicus would make a little more sense than the science vessel Yosemite, and a lot more sense than the dead-and-assimilated Bonestell ).

One interesting tidbit: why is the miniature listed as Grissom (mod)? For the Lantree it makes sense, they removed the rollbar, but what did they do to Tsiolkovsky and Bonestell?

 

Yes, I was wondering about that. Nothing was done to the Tsiolkovsky that could be noticed on film, so I wonder if this might be a case of cell auto-complete in Excel or whatever spreadsheet was used? Was this already a feature back in 1990?

As for the Bonestell, the list says it was destroyed in BOBW so I imagine it would have appeared as a wrecked Oberth, or a modified Oberth to which a damaged appendage was added. That could explain the Grissom(mod).

 

IIRC, the extent of the Bonestell's destruction was a vaguely large explosion and then the saucer goes sailing by the Saratoga's window (outside the Sisko's quarters). So they probably didn't need to damage the model that much. The saucer could probably be easily separated from the 'body' for filming purposes.

 

That would be in "Emissary", but the list mentioned above was compiled at the time of BOBW2, a few years earlier. It suggests that a model was prepared and labeled for the Bonestell in BOBW2, but no other evidence of that seems to have survived.

 

If there were ever any actual Oberths appearing onscreen in BOBW, I'm not aware of them. I'm only going by what I saw in DS9, because the only thing I remembered from the BOBW ships is a bunch of random debris that I couldn't possibly identify.

Although I suppose the Borg could have further "pummeled" the remains of the Bonestell, such as if they detected any survivors on board. But they didn't do that with the Saratoga, so I doubt they did it with any of the other ships either.

 

While we're at it, the other new piece of information in the chart is that freighter Odin (Oden in the list) from "Angel One" is an Apollo class ship. I don't think this made it into any of the reference books.

 

Another Apollo sighting. Just the other day on facebook I put the record straight with one of those gullible "T'Pau was an Apollo-class because the Encyclopedia says so" sheeple. Same Apollo-class that would be fighting the Dominion war and getting experimental warp drive upgrades. Yes, right.
Same story as Hermes being an Antares class (either of that TOS freighter or the Xhosa, pick one) and running the blockade in Unification. I think this list proves that we should just ignore Encyclopedia made-up facts on classes and registries if they don't make sense (and have no on-screen validity, anyway).

The only way to have a model with extensive damage would be casting a new one. They only did that with Vico, one year later - building a second model. So the Grissom miniatureno could not have been used as a Bonestell wreck with extensive damage.

However, I remembered something: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/USS_Valiant_(studio_model) The Valiant prototype model may have been used in se same fashion as those Excelsior prototypes. It never popped up anywhere. Might be a contender for Bonestell in BoBW.

 

It should be noted that you can have two classes with the same name a century apart.

 

That, or a Starfleet Apollo-class next to a civilian Apollo-class. Same goes for Antares.