True! Though with all the modifications and upgrades she received over the years, Sirena might be a bit of an outlier.
Could even be that the ground clearance issue pointed out in the analysis is Rios' own doing - of him locking a pair of hinges that are only necessary for the container-hauling task and present a weakness in a ship he seldom chooses to land and never utilizes as a tug. So he has to extend a ladder down from the cargo doors at starports, or use the tractor beam crane... Timo Saloniemi
The exterior of the ship I like the look of, it's a proper hard working little ship, compact and rugged. The interior though I'm not a fan of. The huge open space that isn't really all that well defined, whilst it seems to have who knows how many cabins and passages that jut off somewhere in the spaceframe.
Yeh theres still something about the completely open deck which doesn't sit right, I know towards the end of the season they showed off that you could close it off with a forcefield but maybe Im just stuck in the train of thought that the cockpit / bridge is closed off like the Runabouts vs the Shuttles. That said I started a Picard rewatch, after watching all of Clone Wars ready for the Bad Batch I felt like I needed a change of scifi - The La Sirena interiors seem brighter and better lit than I remember from the first time around, Im wondering if the dropped the lighting levels as the season progressed or if Im just remembering it wrongly.
Thanks for the article link. I think I do like it more in the gray, and the name ARAÑA COSMICA (aka Cosmic Spider). Although it absolutely needs the "Ñ" otherwise it reads like (A)- Cosmic Frog. "Swiss Army Knife" "able to do a lot of different things", I think Disco Booker's ship stole that thunder (although to what ends or purpose that served?), not sure they conveyed that. The shark head, and the more aggressive military looking one, are great designs, yet seem they were all over the place as to what they wanted. Yet at least got a bit closer. The utilitarian hauler they wanted, maybe without the paint scheme (and with less sporty speed-fins) I can somewhat see it. I would love to see it used the way they suggest , and see it haul cargo. Maybe season 2 has Rios committed to a hauling freight job, that they then use as cover. temp load
Aside from the colour scheme of the hull, my considered opinion is that La Sirena isn't really meant to stand out.
Not a lover of La Sirena at all. In fact, none of the ships post JJverse have any character. Someone needs to have a serious rethink about ship design in nutrek.
Also shot design. You need those thirty seconds staying with the ship from angles of the week while Rios is going “Captain’s log, stardate 77525.4. On route to planet… where our illustrious client is about to take matters into his own hands, once again. Will he succeed, I wonder, or is it all quite meaningless in the end?”
Of course the real life reason the runabout had a closed cockpit is because they didn't want to build the entire interior as a set. In universe a big open space makes more sense, the tiny doors to the runabout cockpit and implied tight corridor the actors squeezed into always felt like a waste of space for such a small ship.
But you also want it to be modular for different mission profiles (how many versions of the open set would it take?) and allow the people in the back to get some sleep while you’re having a chat in the cockpit.
Agreed. It just doesn't look very Trek at all to me. Are those pods on the sides the warp nacelles? If not, where are those? Why does it have a dozen engine exhaust-looking things on the back in a couple of different shapes? Are those all impulse engines? Why? May have gone overboard there, but I think you get my point. The ship just doesn't fit in the universe. To me, anyway.
Obviously the bathroom and small cabins would allow for privacy but the majority of the runabout should logically be an open space, having a crooked corridor (obviously built that way to obscure the view for the audience) is a complete waste of space.
The engine layout was explained in the magazine that came with the Eaglemoss booklet and shakes out something like this: (from this tumblr post) I don't know what all on the back are impulse engine exhausts (I imagine the old impulse engine is still used in some minor capacity when it's not blocked by towed cargo), so can't give you any insights there, but this is the idea behind the design at least.
Star Trek ships can be any shape or size they want. It's a giant universe with trillions of cultures, not everyone makes their ships the same. Does This look like Trek to you? Or This? or this? All of the above appeared in TNG (technically the first one first appeared in DS9 first and TNG later), none of them have a common design language that says they're from 'Star Trek'. If you showed those images to someone who never watched Star Trek, they'd probably never guess they were from the same franchise. You're free to dislike the design, but saying it doesn't look 'Trek' doesn't make sense because there's no common 'Trek' design language, except within the galactic powers themselves, but even that's not consistent sometimes. La Sirena isn't a Federation ship according to one of the set designers, but Rios did refit it with Federation tech. Whether that becomes canon in the show, who knows, we'll have to see.