Spoilers Star Trek: Lower Decks 2x05 - "An Embarrassment of Dooplers"

By the looks of the inside of the station, it was more like DS9 than any standard Starfleet starbase. The old ships could have belonged to anyone (ala: the antique BoP in Picard). Or else Quark is running a used ship business on the side.

 

Training vessels then. If any explanation is needed then I could see such vessels being recreated for training purposes.

 

They may be museum ships parked there for tourists since the station itself is described as an antique Starbase and is full of retail businesses and visitors who aren't in Starfleet.

 

or still used for that and other purposes…this is the same Starfleet that used mirandas, excelsiors and oberth in war some 15 years earlier.

 

Also a possibility.

 

They used them because the IRL budget necessitated they be used. This is a cartoon. There’s no budgetary considerations for what they draw.

 

I mean, not to be too pedantic, but the animator's time still costs money as well. So, there are always budgetary concerns for what is being spent time on.

And, to @jackoverfull's point Starfleet has already demonstrated the willingness to utilize older ships for various reasons. The Raider type ship is a not a surprise as I imagine it would still be used by local patrols. The Daedalus one is the one I see as more of museum piece, or used for training purposes.

 

as fireproof78 correctly points out, there can still be budgetary issues today. Just look at the copypast fleet in Picard.

But even if there weren’t, this is a show that has shown to take the past in serious consideration, it’s hardly beyond them to acknowledge this Starfleet habit and build on it, whatever the real world reason. For this very reason they recreated classic locations such as Vasquez Rock and the planet hell caves.

 

Er, no. There’s nothing inherently more expensive or more time-consuming between drawing a Daedalus and drawing a new design. If that were the case, then we would have had a Sovereign class ship as the Vancouver instead of the newer Parliament class.

These ships aren’t physical models or CGI meshes. They’re drawings.

 

Of that I have no doubt. But, I also have no issue with these older ships appearing at a starbase because there are reasons why they could be there too. It works at multiple levels for me.

Since I don't know the process I'm willing to bet there is a factor of cost at some level. Or, it could just be something fun thrown in there too. Not sure. I personally have a theory that the production has a library of ships that they want to insert at some point in time. Perhaps these were already done, thus saving time and money.

Or it's all for fun. Nah, that can't be it

 

if I understand how the animation process of this series work, these are in fact CGI meshes, not drawings.

Still, I believe that in this case these were there only for fun, since they were ships that hadn’t appeared before on the series.

 

It should be noted that Andorian Kumaris are still in service in the 24th century according to the novels, and they definitely don't have to worry about budget there. And given the station itself is based on Starbase Vanguard also from the novels, maybe the shot was meant to be some sort of novel tribute?

 

As I mentioned before, I’m fine with fanwank. I just want my fanwank to make sense. Which is why I’m probably not the target audience for this show.

 

It was a facility with a civilian component, I imagine some of those ships were civilian.

 

You know what they say:

You need to have "Faith of the heart..." >Ducks<

 

They were probably museum and display ships and attractions.

 

[ beats you to death with a copy of Archer's gazelle speech ]

 

I think the docked ships and Starbase are 2D. Compare them the Cerritos when it's docked to the station, it's clearly a 3D model. There's no rendered depth to the ships and station.

 

Even if they were, they would still be made using a computer (Computer Generated Imagery), not drawn.