10 Starship "Holy Grails"

IIRC, I remember reading somewhere (in its corresponding Eaglemoss magazine maybe) that the Charon was, indeed, supposed to have been the repurposed husk of a defeated Doomsday Machine. They decided not to go with that (at least, not in-dialogue), but that was the original concept, which is why the hull resembles the DM’s general shape.
I wish they would have gone with that.
 
Sounds like it would have been a cool story. As Dukhat mentioned, it would have completely messed up one of ENT’s best 2-parters.

Perhaps not…

We never saw what became of Defiant after ENTERPRISE’s credits rolled.

Hoshi might have gotten greedy and tried to go back through the rift in Tholian space looking for other prizes—rather than give up her Ace of Spades to engineers for a complete tear down. Without Defiant, she was vulnerable.

With only a limited time to examine Defiant, the Terran Empire lost an advantage.

In “Mirror, Mirror” the Terran Enterprise had Pilot nacelle spikes instead of the Federation production nacelle caps—so it was still behind the curve, as it took awhile for Terran-only forces to back-engineer a Constitution that had all Federation worlds to draw from.

Had Hoshi turned over Defiant—I reckon the ISS Enterprise would have been a bit *ahead* -Phase II maybe.

DC comic’s already had the 1701-A tow out the Defiant—so my head canon is that the Empress and a dead Terran Empire crew is what was found, much to Scotty’s surprise.
 
Last edited:
I imagine the Empire copies some of the tech, but did not learn about the principles behind everything. Without learning about the how's and whys, they basically just copied and pasted Constitution parts out for Starfleet while maybe developing from the NX-class with what they knew worked based on the Constitution tech. I mean ISS Enterprise was still basically the same when it was found by USS Discovery. Even though it had probably been refit a few times before it fled sometime in the 24th century.

Ex-USS Defiant was seen to have been heavily modified in the Imperial logs when found by USS Discovery during the 23rd century.
 
Curiously, when I was in school and had, at that time, watched little-to-no DS9, fellow students claimed that Scotty had shown up there to help in addition to his TNG appearance.
 
There were certainly rumours (though perhaps only well known after the fact) that there were plans along those lines at one point, but they apparently fell through.
 
Another Holy Grail update. This was originally an extra item I was going to add later, but it turns out that I don’t have to add it now: The original kitbashed model of the Melbourne used in “Future Imperfect” and “The Wounded”!

 
Just to add to the above: While the pylons for the small upper nacelles of the other battle-damaged version of the Melbourne were made from Robotix toy parts, the pylons for this model were made from the upper half of a Dark Star small-scale model kit, along with the captain's yacht attached to the 1:2500 nacelle pylons.
 

Julien's Auctions has posted pics of a battle-damaged saucer piece from BoBW. I have seen this piece before, but only as a tiny low-rez photo, not like these large clearer pics. I have determined that this piece was the section of saucer cut from the Melbourne model, as it matches the shape of the missing piece:


Why I've posted this in the Holy Grails thread is because this piece might be the object I mentioned in #3 in the OP (the object right above the Kyushu in this pic):


I'm not entirely convinced that this is the case, but for lack of any better evidence, it's definitely a contender. Just the fact that Sternbach added weathering and charring to this piece indicates that they intended on filming it.
 
Last edited:
Correction: I miss read what you wrote initially. ****The object to the right of the Kyushu is the USS Buran**** I think the object above the Kyushu is the USS Firebrand at an odd angle. I hear there is a behind the scenes with them filming the models for the sequence. I have not seen it nor seen any screen captures. Do you know if that exists?

I am more than likely to believe it's ??? this in this photo: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359/wolf359-4-1a.jpg

Also while reading MA, this caught my intention:

  • Visual Effects Supervisor Robert Legato was told to film the Battle of Wolf 359 prior to the start of live-action production. With no stock footage of the battle, Legato was given free reign to make it up from scratch, so he enjoyed devising the sequence. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 17) The battle, specifically the visual effects passes, went on to be one of the first sequences filmed. (Movie Magic – "Space Effects: The Space Race") "We just made as huge a fight as we could make in our time frame," noted Legato. ("Deep Space Nine Scrapbook Year One", DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) The battle sequence was originally more complex than it ended up, however. "I had tons of debris in all the shots," Legato said. "Ships that were burning, on fire, flying past the camera." Legato even ensured that all the debris was marked with the same names as the vessels which, in "The Best of Best Worlds, Part II", are referred to as having been in the battle. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 18) The work that went into designing the battle sequence also included the destruction of the Saratoga, which was shot on a Paramount soundstage, rather than at Image G due to the use of explosives. (Movie Magic – "Space Effects: The Space Race") Filming the battle sequence took approximately thirteen or fourteen days, whereas only four days were usually used to shoot the visual effects for a regular episode. (""Deep Space Nine Scrapbook Year One", DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) After the filming was done, it was made clear to Legato that this episode would concentrate on only the start of the battle, rather than joining the starships mid-fray. As a result, he had to return to the sequence and take out all the ships that were deemed extraneous, much to his disappointment. "It was a heartbreaker," he lamented, "because it was a ton of work and very good-looking stuff." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 18)

Specifically this: 'Legato even ensured that all the debris was marked with the same names as the vessels which, in "The Best of Best Worlds, Part II", are referred to as having been in the battle. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 18)"

So does that mean another set of filming models were created but we have never seen them? We sort of know that the USS Valkyrie was intended to be used for BoBWII. There is potential that the Jupp, Hutzel, Bradford, and some of the other kitbashed ships from DS9 were intended as well? That should mean there is a Tolstoy out there somewhere or a Gage.
 
Last edited:
Correction: I miss read what you wrote initially. ****The object to the right of the Kyushu is the USS Buran**** I think the object above the Kyushu is the USS Firebrand at an odd angle. I hear there is a behind the scenes with them filming the models for the sequence. I have not seen it nor seen any screen captures. Do you know if that exists?

The behind-the-scenes filming came from the extras from the BoBW bluray, which I bought specifically for those extras. Unfortunately, while the different passes shown allowed us to see the models far better than what we saw on screen, this particular object still could not be seen clearly. I sincerely doubt that it's the Firebrand, because that model was huge in comparison to the Miarecki kitbashes and would not have been filmed that far away in the same shots as those other smaller models. That object is roughly the same size as the other five models in the shot.

I am more than likely to believe it's ??? this in this photo: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/wolf359/wolf359-4-1a.jpg

Also while reading MA, this caught my intention:

  • Visual Effects Supervisor Robert Legato was told to film the Battle of Wolf 359 prior to the start of live-action production. With no stock footage of the battle, Legato was given free reign to make it up from scratch, so he enjoyed devising the sequence. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 17) The battle, specifically the visual effects passes, went on to be one of the first sequences filmed. (Movie Magic – "Space Effects: The Space Race") "We just made as huge a fight as we could make in our time frame," noted Legato. ("Deep Space Nine Scrapbook Year One", DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) The battle sequence was originally more complex than it ended up, however. "I had tons of debris in all the shots," Legato said. "Ships that were burning, on fire, flying past the camera." Legato even ensured that all the debris was marked with the same names as the vessels which, in "The Best of Best Worlds, Part II", are referred to as having been in the battle. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 18) The work that went into designing the battle sequence also included the destruction of the Saratoga, which was shot on a Paramount soundstage, rather than at Image G due to the use of explosives. (Movie Magic – "Space Effects: The Space Race") Filming the battle sequence took approximately thirteen or fourteen days, whereas only four days were usually used to shoot the visual effects for a regular episode. (""Deep Space Nine Scrapbook Year One", DS9 Season 1 DVD special features) After the filming was done, it was made clear to Legato that this episode would concentrate on only the start of the battle, rather than joining the starships mid-fray. As a result, he had to return to the sequence and take out all the ships that were deemed extraneous, much to his disappointment. "It was a heartbreaker," he lamented, "because it was a ton of work and very good-looking stuff." (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 18)

Specifically this: 'Legato even ensured that all the debris was marked with the same names as the vessels which, in "The Best of Best Worlds, Part II", are referred to as having been in the battle. (Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Companion, p. 18)"

So does that mean another set of filming models were created but we have never seen them? We sort of know that the USS Valkyrie was intended to be used for BoBWII. There is potential that the Jupp, Hutzel, Bradford, and some of the other kitbashed ships from DS9 were intended as well? That should mean there is a Tolstoy out there somewhere or a Gage.

I emailed both Okuda and Legato about this when the DS9 Companion came out. Okuda told me that there were no new models built specifically for that shot, and that he would have been the one who would have labeled any ships/debris with names and registry numbers, which he didn't recall doing. We know that the Kyushu and the Nebula Melbourne models were still around by that time, and were probably used. Greg Jein mentioned in an interview that they grabbed his 'three-nacelled ship' and his 'one-nacelled ship' from stock to use in some 'production.' The Valkyrie was a relabel of the Stargazer/Hathaway model, and it was meant to be shown at Planet Hollywood, not 'Emissary.' The Jupp, Hutzel, Bradford, etc. were all built during the hiatus between DS9 seasons 5 and 6 and were not built that early for this scene. Legato mentioned that his memory was very fuzzy about all of it but that he thought there wasn't any ship named 'Gage.' I did not ask him about the Tolstoy, but I'm sure his memory wouldn't have been sharp about that either. I would guess that if anything, since there was no original Tolstoy, that he either just assigned a random piece of debris as that ship, or the writer of the DS9 Companion got their facts wrong.
 
Last edited:
It's an interesting question, although for my part I'm not sure if the ??? could be the saucer fragment. I agree with Dukhat that it likely fits the chunk from the Melbourne wreck, but it seems to me like the ??? has more body (relatively speaking :D ) to it. It could be another sort of fragment.
 
Do you know if there is screencaps from that sequence? If not, I am willing to buy that set for those specific sequences.

While I can sorta see it, I can't see the direction any off the saucer would fit with what looks like something hanging or sorta separate from the left side. Also there seems to be a dark section in the center of the saucer that doesn't fit the Melbourne piece. Could this be the Reliant damaged model (the miniature) or even the SS Vico? Pretty much thus angle but lighting coming from the back and the roll bar casting a shadow. https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/m...ision/latest?cb=20110601104856&path-prefix=en

As far as the ???, I thought it looked like the Sarek from TMP originally.


This is what makes me think the Valkyrie was possibly being in Emissary.
 
Last edited:
Your link doesn't seem to work for me, for some reason. I'm not aware of any other uses of the damaged Vico model, although certainly it's the sort of thing that would seem useful as a W359 wreck. Memory Alpha doesn't clarify what was done with the model after the filming of "Hero Worship," only mentioning that the Vico was a copy of the mold used for the Grissom and then damaged specifically for the episode, so that they wouldn't damage the Oberth model.
 
Your link doesn't seem to work for me, for some reason. I'm not aware of any other uses of the damaged Vico model, although certainly it's the sort of thing that would seem useful as a W359 wreck. Memory Alpha doesn't clarify what was done with the model after the filming of "Hero Worship," only mentioning that the Vico was a copy of the mold used for the Grissom and then damaged specifically for the episode, so that they wouldn't damage the Oberth model.
See if this works better: http://archive.frogland.co.uk/Physical Models/Miranda class/damaged reliant/index.html

Sad thing is if it's a mold of the Oberth model then again it would be too large as well. The Vico model was used again in Emissary for the Bonestall after it was hit by the borg and flew towards the Saratoga.
 
It's an interesting question, although for my part I'm not sure if the ??? could be the saucer fragment. I agree with Dukhat that it likely fits the chunk from the Melbourne wreck, but it seems to me like the ??? has more body (relatively speaking :D ) to it. It could be another sort of fragment.

Yeah, as I mentioned, I'm not 100% sure ??? is the Melbourne saucer either, but I have no idea what else it could be. I once speculated that it was the drive section of a TMP Klingon battlecruiser model kit, but the angles don't quite match up to that either.

Do you know if there is screencaps from that sequence? If not, I am willing to buy that set for those specific sequences.

I made screencaps of those sequences. I'll try to find them and post them here.

Could this be the Reliant damaged model (the miniature)...

The only Reliant model it could have been was the small battle-damaged one they made for TWOK, if that's what you're implying. But I think Okuda would have mentioned that in all this time.

or even the SS Vico?

The Vico did not exist yet when BoBW was being filmed.

This is what makes me think the Valkyrie was possibly being in Emissary.

Now that's interesting. The Valkyrie was never used in DS9, which means either:

1. It was used in Legato's discarded footage (but then Okuda would have remembered relabeling and re-registering it specifically for this scene),

2. It was going to be used for another ship in the Wolf 359 footage that was used, but a different model was swapped out at the last minute, or

3. This information is incorrect.

Where is this info from?
 
This is from a picture I found when it made its tour. I will see if I can track down its source. If I remember I had to do some google search but only up to a certain date range.
 
Here is how it was displayed with that placard. https://starstation.wordpress.com/2011/10/09/stargazer-studio-model/

I stumbled across this when I was looking for the dark neck Galaxy models and the USS Excel models. Its possible I pulled it from a video from Star Trek: The Exhibition or Star Trek World Tour.

You might be right that its the drive section of a D7 and one nacelle. Do we have any pyro models of the D7 out there? Something along this angle http://archive.frogland.co.uk/Physical Models/Klingon Ktinga/index.html#img=Ktinga (84).jpg
 
Last edited:
IIRC, there was a close-up model of a blown-out K't'inga nacelle that was made for the V'Ger battle at the beginning of TMP. Never used, but it was highly detailed and extremely battle-damaged. I think I saw it on some auction block a couple of years ago.
 
Back
Top