Miranda class starship phasers

[SicOne]

A couple of Miranda-related questions...

(1) Are we supposed to envision Mirandas as dedicated combat platforms, with the fore-and-aft photon torpedo pod and fore-and-aft megaphasers (for lack of a better description)? Or are they supposed to be research and lab platforms, which we tend to seem them pre-Dominion War in more modern Trek? I tend to lean towards the former, viewing them as combat-first and research-second, while viewing the Constitution-refit as research and exploration-first and combat-second. However, Mirandas without rollbars I can see being outfitted with more lab and research facilities.

(2) Have we ever seen any other rollbar options other than the two megaphasers/one photon torpedo pod? Like an AWACS module a la Nebula-class or anything else?

 

[Timo]

Are we supposed to envision Mirandas as dedicated combat platforms

IMHO, the fact that an important part of their armament is modular and optional speaks rather loudly against them being dedicated combatants.

Then again, they are cruiser-sized and carry plenty of apparently powerful phasers even without the module, so I wouldn't consider them dedicated research ships, either. Those we have already seen - the Oberth is the Starfleet approach to that.

Have we ever seen any other rollbar options other than the two megaphasers/one photon torpedo pod?

Not on screen, unless one counts as an "option" the standard torpedo roll bar that was (accidentally) mounted backwards on the USS Trial kitbash they used in filming some of the early DS9 fleet-and-station scenes ("Way of the Warrior", at least).

Fan ideas naturally abound. And indeed it is a fan idea that the original roll bar would have "megaphasers", when the ST2 movie itself only shows those roll bar corner things firing humdrum "standard" beams that do very little damage for a phaser.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[137th Gebirg]

There was a version, the Tian An Men from "Sacrifice of Angels", on-screen for maybe a couple seconds in a fleet shot, that seemed to have an extra pair of impulse engines in the rear of the weapons pod. Other than that, I can't think of any.

 

[Timo]

Ah, yes, good catch! Several late-DS9, computer-generated Mirandas appeared to have that "engine glow". The higher-resolution model of the spinning USS Majestic appears to be a completely different CGI creation, not used in the big fleet scenes much, and (like her equally unlucky wingman in that spinning shot) never seen from astern and above so that the pod aft part could be viewed. Was there ever a DS9 Miranda stern view without the pod impulse glow, then...?

http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x06/sacraficeofangels021.jpg
http://ds9.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/6x06/sacraficeofangels130.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

If there are phasers located on the port and starboard outboard ends of the rollbar how much coverage do they give the Miranda class aft section of the primary hull?
How much coverage do the fixed megaphasers afford the aft section of the primary hull?

 

[Timo]

The roll bar is mounted too far forward to offer the aft ends of its corner cylinders any appreciable view down. If firing straight aft, the corner pods can only aim down a pitiful ten degrees or so, due to the top of the hull being in the way. Moving outward, the beams can be depressed a little bit more, but then the nacelle aft tips get in the way; annoyingly, the roll bar is mere feet away from a position where the beams could find a convenient "notch" between the hull stern and the nacelles. The nacelle tips limit depression to about twenty degrees initially; when the beams move further out, this increases to sixty degrees down or so, but again gets limited to forty-five when aiming directly to the sides.

In essence, then, there's a big blind cone to the lower aft of the ship for the roll bar phasers, and some of it is not covered by the ventral saucer side phasers, either, because the nacelles keep blocking the way. Theoretically, an enemy craft could exploit the blind sectors to fly all the way to the shuttlebay doors of the ship, then ram through and deploy a boarding party!

Starfleet thus probably did not add the roll bar phasers in order to cover blind spots, because that could have been done so much better! Rather, Starfleet seems to have added the torpedo pod, and then decided that since there was a lot of power flowing to that location, some of it might just as well be routed to additional phasers, even if they didn't cover any significant new sectors.

Of course, all the blind cones go away if the ship has phaser turrets next to the impulse engine. The original Reliant model did have two yellow-marked squares on the impulse assembly, on the lower surfaces of the fancy lid that flanks the engine nozzles - if these were single emitters similar to the ones atop the Enterprise shuttlebay, then there are no worries. However, none of the commercial kits or later CGI versions of this ship reproduce these yellow squares, which are only ever visible in a certain ventral photo of the model - the ventral counterpart of the shot that blssdwlf is using upthread. Anybody know where that photo could be seen online?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

The roll bar is mounted too far forward to offer the aft ends of its corner cylinders any appreciable view down. If firing straight aft, the corner pods can only aim down a pitiful ten degrees or so, due to the top of the hull being in the way. Moving outward, the beams can be depressed a little bit more, but then the nacelle aft tips get in the way; annoyingly, the roll bar is mere feet away from a position where the beams could find a convenient "notch" between the hull stern and the nacelles. The nacelle tips limit depression to about twenty degrees initially; when the beams move further out, this increases to sixty degrees down or so, but again gets limited to forty-five when aiming directly to the sides.

In essence, then, there's a big blind cone to the lower aft of the ship for the roll bar phasers, and some of it is not covered by the ventral saucer side phasers, either, because the nacelles keep blocking the way. Theoretically, an enemy craft could exploit the blind sectors to fly all the way to the shuttlebay doors of the ship, then ram through and deploy a boarding party!

Starfleet thus probably did not add the roll bar phasers in order to cover blind spots, because that could have been done so much better! Rather, Starfleet seems to have added the torpedo pod, and then decided that since there was a lot of power flowing to that location, some of it might just as well be routed to additional phasers, even if they didn't cover any significant new sectors.

Of course, all the blind cones go away if the ship has phaser turrets next to the impulse engine. The original Reliant model did have two yellow-marked squares on the impulse assembly, on the lower surfaces of the fancy lid that flanks the engine nozzles - if these were single emitters similar to the ones atop the Enterprise shuttlebay, then there are no worries. However, none of the commercial kits or later CGI versions of this ship reproduce these yellow squares, which are only ever visible in a certain ventral photo of the model - the ventral counterpart of the shot that blssdwlf is using upthread. Anybody know where that photo could be seen online?

Timo Saloniemi

Is this what you were looking for?
http://bruce-domain.blogspot.com/2011/01/studio-model-reference-of-miranda-class.html

 

[Timo]

Yup, that's the one - and I remember the resolution not having been good enough to be decisive on the issue. But this one seems to be of somewhat lower resolution still.

Thank you for the link! I think we'll have to remain skeptical on the nature of those yellow squares.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[James Wright]

Yup, that's the one - and I remember the resolution not having been good enough to be decisive on the issue. But this one seems to be of somewhat lower resolution still.

Thank you for the link! I think we'll have to remain skeptical on the nature of those yellow squares.

Timo Saloniemi

I was looking for pictures of the Reliant model in hopes of seeing those locations on the rollbar but you are probably right, all we can do is speculate about those yellow squares.

 

[blssdwlf]

I scanned at 300dpi from "The Art of Star Trek" the image in question and viewable below. The two yellow spots under the impulse engine look like phasers, IMHO.

However, as we've seen in DS9, phasers don't have to come from visible emplacements so the lack of visible aft emitters on later Mirandas does not mean they do not have any aft emitters...

 

[James Wright]

Could it be that the yellow squares on the rollbar have one turret each, instead of the usual two turrets seen on the primary hull?
Just curious!

 

[137th Gebirg]

I don't think they "have" a turret per-se, in that there is no turret inside the yellow area, but rather a warning marker for the blue horizontal swivel turrets on the side of the mega phaser housing. That one close-up of the assembly blew my mind. I've been studying that ship for years and I never noticed those extra phasers on the side. Possibly because they appear to have fallen off the studio model during later use and were replaced by flat pieces of styrene. I'm also shocked to see that there may have been a pair of single turrets (in yellow boxes) directly underneath the impulse engine structure. Learn something new every day!

 

[Mister_Atoz]

Okay, I just watched the two combat scenes in slow motion.

In the first battle with Khan, the phasers clearly come from the sides of the roll bar, presumably from those little nipples.

In the second battle, the Reliant fires at the Enterprise head on, and the phasers emanate from the front caps. Actually, the front caps light up, but the beam seems to come from just above and to the right, but i think we can assume that's a graphical glitch.

 

[Timo]

...Or we can pretend that the position matches the "side nipples".

Did a Miranda ever fire the roll bar phasers again? DS9 ships nicely stuck to using the saucer phasers IIRC, save for "Emissary" where the Saratoga fired an unfortunate "ventral sensors phaser"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mister_Atoz]

...Or we can pretend that the position matches the "side nipples".

wouldn't be hard to do.

Just to clarify though, the shot I am talking about is the scene in the Nebula where Enterprise and the Reliant exchange fire.

The port side phaser comes directly from the front tip of the roll bar. The starboard phaser shows the front tip flashing, but the beam seems to come from the inner side of the pod.

I assume this is a graphical glitch, but does the model have nipples facing the inner side as well?

 

[Timo]

Apparently not.

An interesting feature of TOS was that the beams appeared to originate some distance from the hull of the ship - as if they "ignited" only a short while after departing the emitter. This ceased to be the case when the effects were redone as part of the remastering project, but it could have supported some interesting speculation on how phasers really worked. (The re-effecting also did away with the variations in beam color, removing another interesting issue.) Here we could have assumed that the roll bar cylinders fired their beams from the forward protrusions, but their "delayed ignition" made it look as if they came from the sides of the pod instead.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Mister_Atoz]

I didn't care much for the new phaser effect in TOS-R, the beams were too thin and chincy looking. In the original effect, the phasers feel more powerful.

 

[Forbin]

Agree. Also, they've never sounded as powerful over the years as with the TOS sound effect.