• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

TAS made real....

In years past I have sketched different ideas for the Bonaventure. I would try to retain a measure of its onscreen appearance while trying to distance it as best I can from being such an Enterprise derivative.

So my answer is a firm...maybe.
Dude, I live for firm maybes!

(that's what she said)

Quiet, you! I mean, the interpretation @GeekFilter posted wasn't completely irredeemablethere's... something there. I'll wager a thousand quatloos you can do better.

Speaking of whom...
Apologies - I rarely find anything TAS to comment on and then I found myself replying to everything. And given the negativity in response (not you) I probably won't be back this way. I've been 'sheltering in place' for 130 days--I'm a little punchy.
@GeekFilter, speaking for myself I hope you won't go. Not just because there are so few of us who appreciate animated Star Trek, but also because I think it's fair to say we are all a "little punchy" right now, and understandably so. I'm pretty sure any negativity you encountered was more than a little due to the sheer exhaustion of life we're all feeling these days.

I was gone for TEN YEARS because of some personal stuff in my life, but when I came back last summer the warmth I was greeted with really did my heart good. We're a cantankerous bunchafter all, many of us are frustrated artists! :D But compared to the rest of Trek BBS, I think we're pretty darn laid back. Please give us another chance, and LLAP!
 
Apologies - I rarely find anything TAS to comment on and then I found myself replying to everything. And given the negativity in response (not you) I probably won't be back this way. I've been 'sheltering in place' for 130 days--I'm a little punchy.
Oh no, please stay! As I said, I so appreciate you dropping by. As a big fan of the Bonaventure I'm still in awe of all the work you put into analyzing it and creating a 3D version. Actually, I still hope this might become a reality some day. Also, it would be a total loss to the forum to not hear from the author of “The Official Guide to the Animated Series” more often. :bolian:

And I don't think anyone was directing negativity towards you personally. It's just that for some reason the Bonaventure seems to be a kind of controversial topic for some people. So please don't feel discouraged to join in the conversation more often. I would love for you to start a thread and share some of the artwork you created. :)

Other than that, what @Professor Moriarty said above! :bolian:
 
Apologies - I rarely find anything TAS to comment on and then I found myself replying to everything. And given the negativity in response (not you) I probably won't be back this way. I've been 'sheltering in place' for 130 days--I'm a little punchy.
On balance it seems some people like the design and some don't. That's pretty normal.

Some fans seem to miss the fact that all these things seen on the show were ground out on deadlines. Who under a time crunch is going try to devise a spaceship wherein all the lines in all angles match up from different elevations when it's only appearing on 2 or 3 cels (reused) and usually only for a couple of seconds at a time? In the era before home video it was all blink and you miss it.
 
I did not intend to disparage anyone’s quality of work. I apologize if it came across that way because I chose my words poorly. I have just never liked the Bonaventure’s design and it is to that which my remarks were directed.
 
Hey, I am bumping this thread up to see if we have anything still coming down the pipe. I am enamored by this subject and hope it continues.
 
I want it to continue. Real life has been a pain recently. Please bear with me.
Life does that. Now and then, even little things seem insurmountable. Do the things you love as often as you can. Hug the ones you love a little more often. Tackle the hard things one step at a time, and get back to us when you can.
 
I've been thinking about the Bonaventure. It's no secret I'm not a fan of the design as is, but the vessel is prominantly mentioned in the episode so it cannot really be ignored (unless one envisions a live-action version of the episode where the vessel is never mentioned). That said my view is to try to come up with something more plausible that fits with what we do know from TOS and supports Scotty's refrences.

Scotty said the ship was the first ship with warp drive and it disappeared 150 years earlier. Okay, technically Zefram Cochrane's ship was the first Earth ship with a space warp drive. But maybe the Bonaventure was the first Earth ship with a more familiar warp drive system although by TOS era standards it was still a rather primitive setup and thus not conflicting with Spock's assertion in "Balance Of Terror" that Earth ships a century prior to TOS were "primitive" vessels (primitive being a relative term).

So that leads one into speculation as to what TOS might have come up with to depict a 150+ year old starship. I think it's reasonable to assume it wouldn't have looked remotely like the 23rd century Enterprise. And I am not going to use ENT designs as a reference point since those wouldn't have existed back in the day as reference anyway. Different creative teams from different eras with different objectives and reference points.

I might have something of a starting point since I have taken a stab at designing early 22nd century starships by extrapolating from some of Matt Jeffereies early conecpt sketches when he was working his way toward a final design for the Enterprise.

Although not specifically dated this was my take on an early to mid 22nd starship. Yes, it has three nacelles, but I reasoned this was an era (late 21st to mid 22nd) of experimentation when different things were tried in search of an optimal arrangement and configuration. I envision the Bonaventure looking smaller and more rudimentary than this.



 
Last edited:
Interesting design. :mallory: I guess old ships would have more than a few different powersources and engine types to prevent getting stuck somewhere when one kind of propulsion or powersource would fail.
 
I’m starting to work out an idea for the Bonaventure in my head. I might try to incorporate some design cues from the TAS version if possible although my primary points of reference are Matt Jefferies’ early concept sketches and whatever other source materiel he might have seen back in the day.

The Botany Bay isn’t much of a reference point given it dates a century before the Bonaventure and it’s a completely different kind of ship. We know MJ did explore a ringship concept even then, but we wouldn’t see evidence of that until TMP. Even so it is a point of reference although I am not thinking of a ringship design for the Bonaventure.

Scotty’s reference to “the first ship with warp drive” is a clue (for me) that the design needs to be somewhat familiar in configuration without looking like a simpler/cruder version of the Enterprise. For me that means nacelles as a visual cue this was an early step on an evolutionary path that would lead to the Enterprise design more than a century later.

During TOS we had no clue whatsoever regarding the design of Zefram Cochrane’s prototype space warp ship. I rather liked the concept first seen in the early editions of the Star Trek Chronology and was less enamoured with the version seen in First Contact, but basically they are somewhat similar with the FC version lacking the supposed radiation shield behind the cockpit of the Chronology version.

The ringship referenced in TMP (based on early MJ concepts) tells us Earth experimented with rings before settling on nacelles. It doesn’t tell us whether Cochrane’s ship had nacelles or rings leaving that to speculation. You could make a case either way. You could say they started with nacelles then tried rings then went back to nacelles. Or they started with rings then went to nacelles. What this conjecture suggests to me is that Earth’s early decades of FTL starflight was an era of experimentation where they tried different systems and configurations.

Nonetheless, Scotty’s remark tells me the Bonaventure should have nacelles rather than rings even though it dates from that era of experimention.
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top