This has been driving me NUTZ!

[miraclefan]

It's been awhile sense I last posted (a lot of things have been happening) But now That I'm back this issue from the movie has been bugging the hell outta me! It's been awhile sense I last saw STAR TREK so please correct me if I'm wrong, but the Starfleet ships being sent to Vulcan were supposed to evacuate the areas that they believed were suffering from the planetary ''disturbances'' correct?
Then why would Starfleet send ships that don't seem to have Shuttle Bays? (I presume they would have shuttles to ferry people off the planet) I mean some ships had 3 nacelles, but NO shuttle bays! So...how where they going to help Vulcans?
Just beam them up?
And aren't TWO nacelles enough? I mean three? Really? Where would the shuttles be at?
Do these ships even have shuttles?

 

[Avon]

nx-01 style shuttlebays. sorted.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Newton-type had two Kelvin-style engineering hulls, and thus two shuttlebays with around 20-40 shuttles each.

Some of the other ships had 3/4 saucers (the three-nacelled one IIRC), and may have had room for shuttlebays in the openings at the rear. We never got a good look.

The Mayflower (whole saucer and two nacelles) probably doesn't. Unless it's got drop-down shuttles like the NX01 Enterprise.

Honestly this never occurred to me. Or, perhaps, the CG people either

 

[Avon]

or they could just beam them all up...

 

[G2309]

Then why would Starfleet send ships that don't seem to have Shuttle Bays? (I presume they would have shuttles to ferry people off the planet) I mean some ships had 3 nacelles, but NO shuttle bays! So...how where they going to help Vulcans?
Just beam them up?
And aren't TWO nacelles enough? I mean three? Really? Where would the shuttles be at?
Do these ships even have shuttles?

In the nicest possible way if this kind of thing drives you nuts you need therapy. I'll assume you're joking though. It is after all a film. Cheap and lazy story telling annoys me because ther's a lot of talented writers who could do a better job. Minor nitpicks don't bother me.

 

[CommanderRaytas]

I never would have noticed. Don't let it bug you.

 

[miraclefan]

Then why would Starfleet send ships that don't seem to have Shuttle Bays? (I presume they would have shuttles to ferry people off the planet) I mean some ships had 3 nacelles, but NO shuttle bays! So...how where they going to help Vulcans?
Just beam them up?
And aren't TWO nacelles enough? I mean three? Really? Where would the shuttles be at?
Do these ships even have shuttles?

In the nicest possible way if this kind of thing drives you nuts you need therapy. I'll assume you're joking though. It is after all a film. Cheap and lazy story telling annoys me because ther's a lot of talented writers who could do a better job. Minor nitpicks don't bother me.

It's not literally driving me ''nutz'' I admit to the exaggeration!
It's really been something on and off at the back of my head whenever I watch the movie.

 

[G2309]

[
It's not literally driving me ''nutz'' I admit to the exaggeration!
It's really been something on and off at the back of my head whenever I watch the movie.

That's a relief i have met a few obsessed people in my time. YOu know the type who talk at you without stop not letting you geta word in... spouting some weird opinion that you dont want to talk about.

 

[Therin of Andor]

It's really been something on and off at the back of my head whenever I watch the movie.

I've seen the movie about twelve times now but I've never thought to look at briefly-shown ships to find evidence of shuttlebays. I have enjoyed alien-spotting new UFP member races, though.

 

[Timo]

or they could just beam them all up...

That's what they usually did in TOS, at any rate. Unless there was some very special reason that forced them to use shuttles.

In ENT, it was vice versa. And for some reason it appears that the STXI Starfleet also preferred shuttles to transporters, or else all those cadets would have been beamed up. Organizing them into files next to transporter platforms, then sending them up in bunches of six or so, each bunch going up in a matter of seconds, would surely have been quicker than organizing them into groups of twenty or thirty and loading them into shuttles that took ages to reach the target starships...

Anyway, like KingDaniel says, only one of the ships seemed to be lacking shuttlebays. The three-naceller with the cut saucer, the one warping to Vulcan right off the bow of the Enterprise, has these large dark squares in the cutouts, so similar in shape and placement to the ones on ST2's Reliant that the designer intent probably was to show shuttlebays.

However, we don't really know what the mission of the ships was. Nobody really said they were going to evacuate - and why should starships from another star system be needed for that, when local surface or air transportation would probably have more capacity, and when Vulcan might be expected to have plenty of starships of its own, too? Starfleet probably sent a generic response, hoping for the best but fearing the worst, and didn't leave any ship behind just because she wouldn't have been optimal for some specific rescue mission profile.

Probably Starfleet did expect trouble there, or why else would Chekov have mentioned a disturbance in the Neutral Zone in the same phrase with Vulcan's plight? The ships might have been used for fending off a threat force (that is, unless it proved to be undefeatable!), or for phasering down the fault lines on the planet's surface until the vulcaniquakes subsided, or for providing emergency power and lighting for disaster areas, or whatever. And seven out of eight were probably expected to turn back once the nature of the calamity was ascertained... In most of the scenarios anyway.

Timo Saloniemi