Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[Dukhat]

Your argument seems to be that looking almost like X makes the ship X in all cases.

No, that's not what I said. I said that in the case of the Enterprise-B, the intent, with the TNG Enterprise history wall showing the Excelsior class profile, the use of the Excelsior studio model in GEN, and the dedication plaque stating that the ship is Excelsior class, that there's no argument that the Ent-B is an Excelsior. You are welcome to debate that all you want, but it's not going to change those facts, or my mind. The only reason why the add-on parts were attached to the model was so that those parts could be damaged without damaging the main model. They weren't added on because someone decided the ship was meant to be a different class, which was the opposite case with the Bozeman.

Now, that's all I have to say about the Enterprise-B. Again, the question remains as to how Starfleet arbitrarily designates a particular ship as a variant of one class, or a different class altogether, based on subtle or not-so-subtle differences between individual ships. I doubt there will ever be an answer to that question.

 

[Timo]

Which I don't think is a negative thing at all. Real organizations create "non-arbirary" ways of designating stuff that are too complex for anybody in the business to comprehend, or to remember after the creators have slept overnight. And navies are among the worst. I think verisimilitude is a really cool word.

Better still, in this particular case, elimination of possible answers involves us getting more cool starship class names!

Getting stuck with baseless ideas is something of a problem, though. Would Trek be better if Spock really were the first Vulcan in Starfleet?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[cooleddie74]

Even by 1968 that notion was rapidly circling the opening at the bottom of the toilet since the entire crew of the U.S.S. Intrepid was Vulcan, and it's hard to believe that all 400+ of those Vulcans not only enlisted after Spock graduated from Starfleet Academy in 2253 but they all reached officer ranks and even as high as Captain within just a decade if not less time than that. Let's face it, the only way Spock would ever have been the first Vulcan in Starfleet is if the creators actually said so in an episode of TOS and "The Immunity Syndrome" never happened.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Even by 1968 that notion was rapidly circling the opening at the bottom of the toilet since the entire crew of the U.S.S. Intrepid was Vulcan, and it's hard to believe that all 400+ of those Vulcans not only enlisted after Spock graduated from Starfleet Academy in 2253 but they all reached officer ranks and even as high as Captain within just a decade if not less time than that. Let's face it, the only way Spock would ever have been the first Vulcan in Starfleet is if the creators actually said so in an episode of TOS and "The Immunity Syndrome" never happened.

They could have all been Vulcan Science Academy graduates. SF just handed a ship over instead of them using a Vulcan ship.

 

[The Old Mixer]

Fans love to completely disregard the high number of references in TOS to the Enterprise being an Earth ship, but Starfleet being established as an Earth-originating agency in Enterprise plays into the notion that Starfleet really was an Earth agency at that point, but beginning to transition into an integrated Federation agency...hence the human-centricity that continues into the 24th century. The Intrepid crew may have been transferred from the Vulcan Defense Force or whatever they were calling it in Enterprise.

 

[Timo]

TOS showed and told that major and longstanding (and indeed founding, as we later learn) members of the Federation were unknown aliens with unknown alien ways to our human heroes. A Starfleet that isn't necessarily Earth-only but is sharply divided into segments along species lines would flow naturally from that.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tomalak]

Doug Drexler is working on season two of Picard, which is pretty cool.

 

[DEWLine]

Season three, isn't it? (I'll have to recheck Doug's Facebook posting.)

Update 11 Sept. 2021: Yup! Doug starts with Season 3...which has just begun filming.

 

[Tomalak]

Season three, isn't it? (I'll have to recheck Doug's Facebook posting.)

Update 11 Sept. 2021: Yup! Doug starts with Season 3...which has just begun filming.

Thanks for the correction! I just saw that he was working on the show and assumed it was the current season.

 

[publiusr]

Very good.

 

[DEWLine]

I recall reading - also from source at Facebook - Geoffrey Mandel's been on the payroll as of season 2.

 

[Tomalak]

I recall reading - also from source at Facebook - Geoffrey Mandel's been on the payroll as of season 2. I should ask if that's still going as well.

Didn't he do some work on the first season? I could probably be mistaken but I seem to recall he did the maps which derived from his Star Charts.

 

[Tuskin38]

Didn't he do some work on the first season? I could probably be mistaken but I seem to recall he did the maps which derived from his Star Charts.

No, he only joined on with season 2.

The maps in Picard are based off the updated ones from ‘Stellar Cartography’ book, which I don’t believe he worked on.

 

[DEWLine]

Geoffrey worked on at least the "History of the UFP" map for Stellar Cartography, both editions.

 

[publiusr]

I love his work.

Nice photos of the Eaglemoss
https://blog.trekcore.com/2021/10/review-eaglemoss-star-trek-picard-la-sirena-starship-model/

 

[Bork359]

My favorite ship design was the USS Photoshop. You know, the one the CG artists cut and pasted 400 times in that final episode to counter the 400 "MS Paint" class Rolumin Warbirds. I loved that scene because of how much sense it made, with the Romulan fleet trying to launch a planet destroying bombardment to take out a single instillation, yet somehow leaving without firing a shot. I especially enjoyed how all the ships from both sides suddenly left together because the Federation just took the Romulan retreat at face value and didn't leave a single ship behind in case they came back.

That's some quality, consistent writing there Kurtzman. Brav-o.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Clever...

 

[Noah_23]

My favorite ship design was the USS Photoshop. You know, the one the CG artists cut and pasted 400 times in that final episode to counter the 400 "MS Paint" class Rolumin Warbirds. I loved that scene because of how much sense it made, with the Romulan fleet trying to launch a planet destroying bombardment to take out a single instillation, yet somehow leaving without firing a shot. I especially enjoyed how all the ships from both sides suddenly left together because the Federation just took the Romulan retreat at face value and didn't leave a single ship behind in case they came back.

That's some quality, consistent writing there Kurtzman. Brav-o.

 

[Tim Thomason]

That's some quality, consistent writing there Kurtzman. Brav-o.

The episode was written by Michael Chabon and Akiva Goldsman, with Chabon as the overall showrunner. Alex Kurtzman was not involved.

 

[dantini]

Huh? Oh's ship def does not look 50 meters long, it's way bigger than that. Just look at the view screen window on the outside and inside of the ship.

Do we know how wide that bridge set is? Even the Eaglemoss magazine doesn't seem to contain any information about the size of Oh's ship, so that might be the only way to calculate it.