Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter pst
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Yep, it was going to be the first canonical thru-deck carrier in the fleet. At least, that’s how it was initially designed.
According to designer, Alex Jaeger, "This was my gunship/battlecruiser/aircraft carrier. It has 15 torpedo launchers and two shuttlebays - one in front, with three doors, and one in the back. I really got into it with this one, with the whole idea that the front bay would be the launching bay, and then to return they'd come into the back, because they'd be protected by the rest of the ship." (Star Trek: The Magazine, July 1999, Issue 3)
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Akira_class#Background_information
Basically all the ST:FC ships had forward openings that could be interpreted as "shuttlebay doors" or "launch chutes". Those on the Saber have no competition astern; those on the Steamrunner have the second-biggest rolling door in Starfleet history aft, making this ship look like a dedicated carrier (of whatever), essentially a Galaxy saucertop shuttlebay with warp nacelles bolted on.
Other fancy detail: the Akira torpedo pod seems to feature two carousels that bring a couple of tubes to bear on the forward opening and aft quarters at a time. And the Norway, an unfinished model lacking most classic starship features such as phaser strips, shuttlebays, transporter antennas or the like, has what looks like sliding nacelles, with nine dorsal features that suggest notches for nine positions.
In short, nothing should be too weird to become a starship fixture. And the Inquiry seems pretty mundane in that respect - although again they forgot to add actual phaser strips (lucky us that Riker is so good at bluffing!). I wonder what the glowing rectangles running along the sides are supposed to be?
Timo Saloniemi
Other fancy detail: the Akira torpedo pod seems to feature two carousels that bring a couple of tubes to bear on the forward opening and aft quarters at a time. And the Norway, an unfinished model lacking most classic starship features such as phaser strips, shuttlebays, transporter antennas or the like, has what looks like sliding nacelles, with nine dorsal features that suggest notches for nine positions.
In short, nothing should be too weird to become a starship fixture. And the Inquiry seems pretty mundane in that respect - although again they forgot to add actual phaser strips (lucky us that Riker is so good at bluffing!). I wonder what the glowing rectangles running along the sides are supposed to be?
Timo Saloniemi
That's the problem. The only canonical instance of a ship that was completely changed both inside and out after a refit was the original Enterprise. And all other evidence seems to indicate that this was a one-off thing. The only ship class that even comes close to possibly being refitted in such a fashion is the Niagara, which uses Ambassador-like components for the saucer and secondary hull, but with GCS nacelles. But there's still no proof that the ship didn't always look that way.
I'd be pleased as punch if a flashback showed the California class looking more primitive before a refit, to justify the wide range in registries. But I doubt that will happen.
I'm kind of curious where those wonky-ass California nacelles came from. They kind-of have the rear-3/4 of Sovereign nacelles, with the blue glowy bits and angled/tapered bodies, but then you have the early-mid 23rd c. Disco/TOS bussard stuck on the front that looks immensely anachronistic from the rest of the design. They don't really have a clear design lineage (at least to me).
Which I guess is almost the point. TPTB have hinted at the things opening up and being either easy to replace or the result of (possibly several rounds of) replacing already.
An "original" or "early" California would obviously differ in the nacelles, which are always the thing that recognizably changes with an "era". And it's not particularly difficult to visualize "older" nacelles there. But it's expensive, compared to recycling the existing art.
Nevertheless, LDS makes explicit mention of refits, and how Freeman hates to have her ship's innards brought to the latest standard just because. We can easily believe in Starfleet doing a lot of just-because there, because it's not expensive for them. We already have had to believe in older ship types with modern innards since the earliest days of TNG, "The Naked Now" onwards. That's what Starfleet does - the only dramatically unsatisfactory thing here is that the lowly California apparently gets the same treatment as everybody else, even when it would be humorous for her not to.
Timo Saloniemi
An "original" or "early" California would obviously differ in the nacelles, which are always the thing that recognizably changes with an "era". And it's not particularly difficult to visualize "older" nacelles there. But it's expensive, compared to recycling the existing art.
Nevertheless, LDS makes explicit mention of refits, and how Freeman hates to have her ship's innards brought to the latest standard just because. We can easily believe in Starfleet doing a lot of just-because there, because it's not expensive for them. We already have had to believe in older ship types with modern innards since the earliest days of TNG, "The Naked Now" onwards. That's what Starfleet does - the only dramatically unsatisfactory thing here is that the lowly California apparently gets the same treatment as everybody else, even when it would be humorous for her not to.
Timo Saloniemi
The one thing I find weird about the Inquiry class is that, from the front, it looks like Chinese pagoda. Is that deliberate? If so, that's one of the weirdest forms of pandering to the Chinese market I've seen so far.
I see the resemblance, but I’m sure it’s just a coincidence.
I'm thinking so, too. At least, I should hope that it was a coincidence.
I badly want to see an episode where we get to see a species join the Federation and refit all of their ships into Starfleet ships. Around the Picard era, the Xindi or Gorn are likely candidates.
The ship is called Zheng He, man. It's not a coincidence.
Wasn't it hinted on Enterprise that the Xindi had joined? By the 27th century, mind you, but I'd think it'd be much sooner.
The ship was based on a design John Eaves made for a defunct video game ten years before. And while Riker’s ship was named the Zheng He, the CGI model had no name or registry. As in, the script was written independent of the CGI model they used for the ship. As I mentioned, the front view does somewhat resemble what you say, but I still think it’s coincidental. YMMV.
True but it's not exactly the same. And of course we don't have the orthos of Eaves' ship to compare it to.
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I'm not sure how I feel about the Inquiry-class being 630 meters long (according to Eaglemoss).
There were at least one hundred and twelve of them at Coppelius -- I just hand-counted that many off of a screenshot of the Coppelius Standoff -- and while I could be severely underestimating the capabilities of Starfleet's other shipyards, but I'm not sure if building a single-class fleet of over 100 large vessels (comparable to the Galaxy or Sovereign in size) after their largest and most robust shipyard was effectively obliterated. There weren't nearly that many Sovereign-class or Galaxy-class starships that we knew of.
Then again, god knows how many Excelsiors and Mirandas were built. Then again, they were a good bit smaller than this beefy ship...
There were at least one hundred and twelve of them at Coppelius -- I just hand-counted that many off of a screenshot of the Coppelius Standoff -- and while I could be severely underestimating the capabilities of Starfleet's other shipyards, but I'm not sure if building a single-class fleet of over 100 large vessels (comparable to the Galaxy or Sovereign in size) after their largest and most robust shipyard was effectively obliterated. There weren't nearly that many Sovereign-class or Galaxy-class starships that we knew of.
Then again, god knows how many Excelsiors and Mirandas were built. Then again, they were a good bit smaller than this beefy ship...
Do we canonically know, that UP shipyards produced far more ships than any other shipyard in Starfleet?
Okay, I might be exaggerating. Might've heard that somewhere, but I guess not canonically per se. It definitely seems to be one of the largest overall, though.
We don't even know how many other shipyards there were in the Federation when Mars started burning. Let alone how that number has changed since then. If every UFP member has as many yards between them as Sol system did...I'm not sure how I feel about the Inquiry-class being 630 meters long (according to Eaglemoss).
There were at least one hundred and twelve of them at Coppelius -- I just hand-counted that many off of a screenshot of the Coppelius Standoff -- and while I could be severely underestimating the capabilities of Starfleet's other shipyards, but I'm not sure if building a single-class fleet of over 100 large vessels (comparable to the Galaxy or Sovereign in size) after their largest and most robust shipyard was effectively obliterated. There weren't nearly that many Sovereign-class or Galaxy-class starships that we knew of.
Then again, god knows how many Excelsiors and Mirandas were built. Then again, they were a good bit smaller than this beefy ship...
Memory Alpha lists seventeen known shipyards across the UFP within the primeline that aren't Utopia Planitia, so...fair point. I guess I was always under the impression that UP was its biggest and most robust. 112/17 makes about 6.5 Inquiries per shipyard -- which, I dunno. Maybe I am underestimating the logistics and overestimating the time + resources spent on making huge ships like the Sov and Galaxy -- and I guess the Inquiry now.
