This is a relatively simple "what if?" Photoshop I did a while back after watching the remastered version of "Charlie X." It bugged me a little bit that the Antares was a robot cargo ship with a crew module attached, so I thought to myself... what other class ship could the Antares have been? Anyway, I didn't spend much time on it, was pleased with the result, and then forgot I had done it until I came across it about ten minutes ago and thought I'd share.
Nothing really; sometimes I wish that's what I was. Honestly, that choice didn't bother that much. It was just one of those "You know what they could have done..." moments.
Isn't that scene where the Enterprise rendezvouses with the Medusan ship? I like your photoshop, but I hate the Oberth class, for a very specific reason.
Yep, it is indeed from that episode. And thank you! I'm pretty ambivalent about the weird little boat, but thought it would have been a cute cameo.
Since the Antares was referred to as a survey vessel science probe cargo ship I think an Oberth-class ship would definitely fit the bill.
Why thank you. I was surprised by how well she seemed to fit next to the TOS E. I did futz with her color a bit, as well as cheat with some of the livery, but that was pretty much it. Don't squint too hard at the nacelle stripe.
I hate the design because it's so not Star Trek. I'm perplexed by the anatomy of the Grissom. Is main engineering in the saucer... I mean bowl section of the ship or it's in the lower levels? If it's in the lower levels, does anyone have a clue how Operations enter the lower levels???
It could be that it's highly automated, meant to be run by a very small crew of scientists from the upper section. Or as Charlie said, it could have been not very well built.
My issue isn't so much the design (although that does have its problems) as it is that the model was so overused in TNG that when a new ship model could have been built, such as the U.S.S. Raman or the U.S.S. Pegasus, budgetary considerations necessitated the reuse of the Grissom model.
I love the Oberth-Class, though I do wish that during the TNG years they had amended the design to include a third/middle pylon to make the design a little more practical. In my head Starfleet did introduce such a refit, which became standard, the few we saw in TNG were the older model yet to be either phased out or modified.
If they did have to reuse the model instead of building a new design, it would have been nice to have had the lower hull swapped out for mission-specific pods for each use. Like for example, have the Biko’s pod be a cargo container, or the Tsiolkovsky’s pod be a science instrument package, etc. The problem with that, though, was that half the time we saw an Oberth it was just stock footage of the Cochrane from “The Drumhead.”
I agree - some variation indicating why the weird little boat was so useful would have been grand. A four nacelle variety would have been great, too, as some fans have whipped up over the years. Would have explained away those Pegasus LCARS diagrams too.
The shadows on the oberth vs the Constitution break the immersion, otherwise it is a good photoshop. Usually shadow disparity is one giveaway that something is photoshopped though. I always fixed the Oberth as a contemporary in the TMP era because so much of it fits with the rest of the TMP era advancements (sweeping curves, white hull, metallic inset parts). Never really believed the Oberth class was a TOS era construct, I just figured the three-number registry was used for smaller vessels. Might even be justification for those low numbers to be reassigned... at least until the lost era. Though one can figure that the Oberth-class is a fleet replacement for those crew-pod drone ships. Riding off the 2270s advancements to procure the bare minimum of "starship", the Oberth served in star fleet circles for a time before being phased out for newer craft and sold/donated to other interests in the Federation.
Agreed. They added a bunch of crap to the Reliant model to turn it into the Soyuz class. Greg Jein could have added some extra engines and a different pod to the original model for some variety. But alas, they didn't.
That works surprisingly well. There's really no clash between the eras, either in-universe or production-wise. I'm a big fan of the designs of both ships, especially the 1701.
Here's my version of Antares, the Capella-class utility cruiser. http://www.starfleet-museum.org/capella.htm I wanted Antares to be an older "jeep" ship that could be any of the types mentioned in the episode (survey, science, transport). So this is a precursor of both Oberth and Miranda which can be attached to almost any external module to do various jobs and whose nacelles can be mounted up or down. (By the way, this was the first choice [by the publisher] for the Archer-class ship in the Vanguard book series, but I said "no." Capella is too plain-looking for book covers.)
I remember this guy! And modeled it! Sadly it got lost in a harddrive crash last year... I still think the "Antares Class" robot grain ship + cargo pod ended up being cheaper to operate than the Capella, though Starfleet could depend on the Capella a lot more than the dinky Antares class. Ultimately Starfleet's next attempt in the Oberth worked a lot better. *Shrug*