movie XI questions(Potential Spoilers)

[Praetor]

My thoughts (having just seen the film less than an hour ago:

Red Matter, short of being derived from decalithium(star trek:Countdown), has the property of converting a planetary object into a temporary wormhole?

I imagine it has something to do with the magical properties that seemed imbued into 'lithium derivatives in the various Trek incarnations. (Read: because they wanted it to, it can.)

How large/long is the new Enterprise?

I'm guessing, based upon the various details of it, about twice the length of the TOS/refit ship. I shall think 3000 feet/5 miles were exaggerated comparisons until I am proved wrong.

What speed can it attain(in TOS/TNG warp scale units)?

I don't recall hearing a speed faster than warp four. Indeed, Spock ordered a speed of warp three to rendezvous with the fleet in the Laurentian System. To wit, it should likely go faster but we do not know, and we do not know for absolute certain that they were even using the TOS scale...

How could the Narada change the tech of the Constitution class ships so rapidly?

For my money, it wasn't the Narada so much as the destruction of the Kelvin. Consider the Butterfly Effect. (No, not the movie.)

Captain Pike commented in the bar to the effect that Starfleet had become more cautious in the intervening years. I suggest that their "caution" took the path of fear comparable to the Cold War era United States, funding fewer "superfluous" exploratory programs, and investing instead in developing technology and building ships at a rate comparable faster than in the "Prime" timeline. (Faster to us, an independent observer, anyway.)

This would explain why the new Enterprise seemed larger/more advanced and why it seemed so much more heavily armed - and indeed why the Constitution class might have been delayed - more time to put into the research program for it, combined with research allowing existing ships to be upgraded to a higher tech level. Indeed, it seems that the design size itself was increased by a factor of at least two between initial design and construction compared to the Prime timeline - a practice not unheard of in Trek, at least. I believe there are also some real-world airplane/ship examples.

Indeed, in the altered timeline the Constitution class may take a position in the Starfleet ship evolutionary chain more akin to the Excelsior in the prime timeline.

How did the stardates before Nero's incursion become yyyy.ff?

Since we never actually heard a pre-TOS stardate that I recall, I would argue that early stardates in particular used this system, and that this system may have gained heavier useage in the altered TOS timeframe. Alternatively, it may have actually been another accepted form of stardate recitation that we did not hear in TOS.

My $0.02

 

[Myasishchev]

I wonder if we can we say for certain the Enterprise from Trek-2 is still designated Constitution-class. There's some implication that it's the first of its kind, namely the "newest flagship" line, which again shows that no writer of Trek can recall what "flagship" means in military terms--continuity? )... this might indicate that the Enterprise-2 is the absolute best Starfleet has to offer, without innumerable sisters like the Enterprise-1 had. At any rate, I don't know if it can just be assumed she's a Trek-2 Connie.

But the ship class I really want to know about is whichever one that huge-ass piece of saucer in the battlefield over Vulcan belongs to.

The fanboy's dream? Could it be the U.S.S. Dreadnought?*

*Not that there's any good reason not to name a regular ship Dreadnought.

Indeed, in the altered timeline the Constitution class may take a position in the Starfleet ship evolutionary chain more akin to the Excelsior in the prime timeline.

I do want to see what they'll do with the Excelsior-class in J.J. Abrams' Star Trek 3: The Search for More Money.

 

[Timo]

Indeed, in the altered timeline the Constitution class may take a position in the Starfleet ship evolutionary chain more akin to the Excelsior in the prime timeline.

Going by the current dearth of information, we might just as well assume that the new and old timelines were virtually indistinguishable in the technology sense. Both may have prominently featured the Kelvin school of shipbuilding right until the late 2250s, and both may have refitted those vessels to the TOS style (with the sisters of the Kelvin turning into Franz Joseph's Saladin class) in the 2260s.

Both may also have featured the familiar Constitution class. Indeed, the new timeline may have featured a Constitution class starship USS Enterprise, a vessel whose service history under Captain April was indistinguishable from the (largely fan-created) history of the TOS ship - right until the moment when this Enterprise was tragically lost, in 2252 or so. The new timeline Starfleet then decided to build a bigger and badder vessel that would inherit the name.

Of course, the registry of the new vessel would no longer be the NCC-1019 of April's ship, but NCC-1701 - the same that was reassigned to April's ship in the old timeline when that ship was radically refitted to the TOS configuration.



Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ronald Held]

I checked Memory Alpha. Their referernce to a site http://www.experience-the-enterprise.com/ww/ produced this data:

Class: Constitution class ship. Type: Heavy Cruiser. Registry: NCC-1701. Designer: W. Matt Jeffries [sic]. Construction Site: Starfleet Division, San Francisco Fleet Yards. Overall Mass: 495,000 metric tonnes. Length: 2500 feet. Saucer Diameter: 1100 feet. Ship Height: 625 feet​

 

[Santaman]

Matt Jefferies had nothing to do with that monstrosity, how dare they even connect his name with that "thing"?

 

[Ronald Held]

True which could make some of it suspect, although the dimensions are in the range we have discussed.
I forgot, that in the MA article, the claim was the Bridge was on Deck A.

 

[ST-One]

c

I checked Memory Alpha. Their referernce to a site http://www.experience-the-enterprise.com/ww/ produced this data:

Class: Constitution class ship. Type: Heavy Cruiser. Registry: NCC-1701. Designer: W. Matt Jeffries [sic]. Construction Site: Starfleet Division, San Francisco Fleet Yards. Overall Mass: 495,000 metric tonnes. Length: 2500 feet. Saucer Diameter: 1100 feet. Ship Height: 625 feet​

Her construction site were the Riverside Ship Yards.

 

[Praetor]

I don't trust the MA measurements yet because I don't trust the 3000 feet/five miles comment as being more than hyperbolic ball-parking yet.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

What did the Kelvin's bridge look like? Did it look more like ENT or TOS? Or did it look changed too...

What was the top speed listed of the modified Enterprise?


CuttingEdge100

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

The Kelvin's bridge looked... different. It didn't really look related to ENT, but it was structurally more like the TOS bridge. Actually, it seems to have taken much of its visual style from naval command centers.

The top speed wasn't actually listed for the Alternate Enterprise - the highest stated factor was Warp 4. Assuming the same scale is in use.

 

[Praetor]

I quite liked the Kelvin bridge. It seemed very practical - perhaps even oversimply so compared to the Enterprise bridge.

 

[TIN_MAN]

I don't know if this helps much but FWIW, "red matter" sounds like it was inspired by "red mercury" which is supposed to be a Russian cold War surples substance for sale on the black market a few years back? It's supposed to have exotic properties, like detonating a fussion bomb without the need for a fission bomb detenator? It was also linked to a top secret Nazi program from WWII called "the Bell" which attempted to manipulate space and time?

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

I quite liked the Kelvin bridge. It seemed very practical - perhaps even oversimply so compared to the Enterprise bridge.

Indeed. I liked the businesslike submarine-ish vibe it had. Reminded me of the dramatically-cooler-than-real life submarine bridges from Hunt For Red October.

 

[Ronald Held]

I thought that the Kelvin bridge may have "evolved" from the NX-01 style more than back from the 1701.
They did seem to use TOS style communicators on the Kelvin. i do not recall seeing a Tricorder or phaser.
This is pasted from gizmodo.com. Note the source.
725.35 meters. A whoppumental 2,379.75 feet. That's how big the new super-sized Enterprise is. Here you can see it compared against the Battlestar Galactica, the good old Enterprise, the Blockade Runner, and the ISS.
Click on this image to see the full picture.
When JJ Abrams said that he wanted to put some Star Wars into Star Trek, apparently it also applied to the scale of spaceships (and matching viewscreens.) And while the new Enterprise doesn't even reach half of the 1,600 meters—that's a mile long—of an Imperial Star Destroyer, it's still amazingly big compared to the 288 meters of the old Enterprise. Maybe now you would be able to take down an Star Destroyer with a couple of these.
The battle I would really want to see now, however, is not the old Star Trek vs Star Wars (we already know who would win that one.) No, you know what I want to see.
Yes, Starbuck vs Uhura. In a chocolate pudding pit.
Maybe Galactica vs Enterprise too, but that's a distant second. [Thanks to David B. from Bad Robot Productions

 

[SoM]

As for the stardate issue, I think we could pretend that it was just coincidence that SD 2233 happened to match the year 2233, and SD 2258 happened to match the year 2258... I mean, in the TOS "system" there must have been at least one such chance match, too. And if stardates are cyclic (or have more than four digits, of which the first ones are usually dropped), then there'd be a number of such chance matches.

The Jellyfish was supposedly launched on SD 2390.xx or thereabouts, as I recall. That number should have been in the 64000s, per Countdown (and in the upper five digits on any measure).

I don't recall hearing a speed faster than warp four. Indeed, Spock ordered a speed of warp three to rendezvous with the fleet in the Laurentian System. To wit, it should likely go faster but we do not know, and we do not know for absolute certain that they were even using the TOS scale...

There were several of the always-generic "Maximum Warp"s thrown about when the ship was meant to go fast, however.

 

[David cgc]

I am going to email Ryan Church, but do not expect an answer about the absolute dimensions.

John Eaves might know as well johneaves.wordpress.com

EDIT - I just checked there myself and he didn't know the exact numbers but agreed on the 2500 to 3000 ft length as a ballpark. Maybe this should get posted elsewhere or throughout trekbbs as a semi-factoid?

If someone did a model of the ship without even a general idea of what goes inside it... without incorporating clear indications of scale... I'd be deeply shocked.

I'd like to introduce you to the Klingon Bird of Prey, the U.S.S. Defiant, Matt Jefferies' original U.S.S. Enterprise (chop the bridge in half and it works just as well at double the length!) and pretty much every spaceship that ever appeared on Babylon 5.

 

[trevanian]

John Eaves might know as well johneaves.wordpress.com

EDIT - I just checked there myself and he didn't know the exact numbers but agreed on the 2500 to 3000 ft length as a ballpark. Maybe this should get posted elsewhere or throughout trekbbs as a semi-factoid?

If someone did a model of the ship without even a general idea of what goes inside it... without incorporating clear indications of scale... I'd be deeply shocked.

I'd like to introduce you to the Klingon Bird of Prey, the U.S.S. Defiant, Matt Jefferies' original U.S.S. Enterprise (chop the bridge in half and it works just as well at double the length!) and pretty much every spaceship that ever appeared on Babylon 5.

There are almost never hard scales on ILM stuff because they always resize for dramatic effect [bozos!], but I'm surprised to hear that there are issues with DEFIANT.

As for the Jeffries, most of the lights and windows got added by Datin when the series went into production, so the most obvious indications of scale only came about after the crew complement was increased.

 

[bullethead]

725.35 meters. A whoppumental 2,379.75 feet. That's how big the new super-sized Enterprise is. Here you can see it compared against the Battlestar Galactica, the good old Enterprise, the Blockade Runner, and the ISS.

They screwed up the size of the Galactica. She's over 1km long, not 615m (I have no idea where they got that figure).

 

[Cary L. Brown]

John Eaves might know as well johneaves.wordpress.com

EDIT - I just checked there myself and he didn't know the exact numbers but agreed on the 2500 to 3000 ft length as a ballpark. Maybe this should get posted elsewhere or throughout trekbbs as a semi-factoid?

If someone did a model of the ship without even a general idea of what goes inside it... without incorporating clear indications of scale... I'd be deeply shocked.

I'd like to introduce you to the Klingon Bird of Prey, the U.S.S. Defiant, Matt Jefferies' original U.S.S. Enterprise (chop the bridge in half and it works just as well at double the length!) and pretty much every spaceship that ever appeared on Babylon 5.

Sorry, that's not really a counter to the point I was making.

The BOP was designed with a specific scale in mind. The fact that nobody in the "shooting" part of ILM (or any of the other SFX houses which made use of it) bothered to pay attention to that doesn't mean that the guys who did the original design didn't have it well-thought-through.

Similarly, the Defiant was pretty well-thought-out. The problems came later as nobody bothered to follow those "instructions" at all.

For the TOS Ent, I don't buy your argument there, because the one inside-to-outside shot we have in "The Cage" is not at "half the length," so it seems pretty obvious that the upscaling took place, production-wise, before that point. And with the ship at "half the size," the bridge would have had to be in what we now think of as the "B/C-deck superstructure" teardrop. It wasn't a matter of not thinking things through, it was a matter of revising the design... BEFORE the show was ever shot, and before the miniatures were completed. Again, the "Cage" shot establishes that extremely well as far as I'm concerned.

As for B5... the ships were all designed to proper scale. But... and this is a common refrain, here... the folks filming the shots (albeit in this case not using "film" at all) were guilty of sloppy work, but that doesn't infer that, say, a Starfury didn't have a specific size, and that the bay entry on the station didn't have a specific size. Only that these were ignored sometimes (and yes, fairly regularly... sigh...)

My point wasn't "the guys shooting the shots don't screw up." Or that "production people don't introduce ridiculous levels of 'feature creep' in the ships, sometimes altering them dramatically from what they were designed to be." Only that "the guys who designed the ships knew how large THEY intended them to be."

And SOMEBODY ought to know how long they intended the nu1701 to be.

 

[Herkimer Jitty]

I think the problem is that they DID know, but everyone had a different intent from one another. The exterior looks workable at a scale close to the TOS/TMP ship, considering the windows and the hatches, but then there's the construction scenes and the shuttlebay and that darned shipboard brewery.

So, somebody did think it out and make instructions, but the problem is that everyone wanted to think it out and do it their own way. And now we have a gigantic ship with docking bay-sized windows. Or Starfleet reverse-engineered a TARDIS.