Kirk's previous ship before Enterprise

Uh...it was a rush job. Yeah, that's the ticket.

Rick

 

I loved the Baton Rouge when the Chronology came out. I thought the culmination of the design lineage made sense, with BR being the penultimate class before Constitution. It was very easy for me to imagine our heroes serving on ships like that before stardate 1312.4.

Thanks, Rick, for filling in the blanks for a young Trekker in 1980.

 

And the flat saucer also ties it in the the Kelvin type saucer rather nicely. I like the Baton Rouge myself. Nice model of in in 1/1000 some years ago (some differences though)

 

I'm not crazy about the aesthetics of the Baton Rouge's secondary hull -- it looks really bad from the front in that CG image posted above -- but I think with a little tweaking it could be a good design. And it seems to be popular in tie-ins; not only was it used in those Marvel and DC comics stories I mentioned, but it's referenced in Federation: The First 150 Years as one of the successors of the Daedalus class following its retirement in 2196 (the Einstein class, like the Kelvin, being the other successor).

 

Here is Rick's art:
http://www.trekbbs.com/showpost.php?p=2353577&postcount=6

He has more in storage from his Chronology. I do hope he shares his superwarp ships. I prefer line drawings to CGI myself.

 

That is not an attractive design.

 

Yeah, I gotta agree there.

 

It's pretty rough, yeah, but I do think that with some refinement and smoothing out of the shape, it could be a viable design. There are a number of such variants online, such as this kind of Excelsiorish one and this more Constitutionish one.

 

I didn't like all the designs in the SFC but I did love the diversity of the designs; one of the few interpretations that didn't feel linear/cut&paste in the design heritage.
So another vote of thanks to "the brilliant artist of the space age."

 

Since Reliant was a "starship", too, and TMoST refers to a "Destroyer Class" I do not believe that Kirk's first command would have been a Miranda Class, but I must say that I find this image of NCC-1806 rather fascinating, especially how it it features the TOS main sensor-deflector that "has" vanished by the time of TWOK.

In a manner of speaking this TOS Miranda Class interpretation strikes me as some kind of lineage predecessor to the Nebula Class variation of the later USS Phoenix (by the way, what's wrong with the nav deflector of the Phoenix ?)

Bob

 

...Also, if Kirk's first command lacked such a hangar, it would explain why he never thought of using shuttlecraft in the early episodes!

Timo Saloniemi

 

Coincidental or not, the similarity of the Kelvin saucer and Baton Rouge is very cool. Dave Goodman's Federation: The First 150 Years has them as concurrent ship classes in the early 23rd century.

 

No offense, but I think the paintings of the Baton Rouge Class convey a nicer and better looking impression of the ship.

While the design may not be attractive, it does sell me the idea of a pre-TOS starship, where form follows function until the form got the aesthetic shape of the TOS Enterprise.

There was always one particular detail I really liked about the depiction of the ship in orbit. The bridge is a transparent reddish dome (think "Dark Star") enabling the crew to have an unobstructed 360° view of their surroundings.

I could imagine that this kind of bridge dome was not optimal in conflicts like the Battle of Donatu V and possibly lead to the "bunker" bridge design of the TOS Enterprise.

Bob

 

I never thought of the red dome as the bridge, but rather a sensor cluster atop of it. You're right that it looks a lot better in "reality" than orthographic views.

 

This ia great question, that I never thought about prior to this thread.