"Akira" class-A joke?

[Unicron]

How exactly did the Reliant "rip off" the original Enterprise by inverting it? Yes, the Akira does have some structural similarities to the configuration on the Miranda, but that hardly makes it a rip-off. The Nebula is more similar. It's like claiming the F-15 is a rip-off of the F-14 because they have many design similarities. Or the F-18.

And the Akira has been onscreen far longer than the few minutes in FC. It made quite a few appearances on DS9, and one appearance on VOY.

I'm inclined to agree with Forbin on this. The only other designs in canon that look so close are the original Enterprise and the movie refit, and there it's intentional. The Akira was chosen as a template for the NX because Berman thought it'd be kewl, just like it was "kewl" to add the Borg on ENT.

 

[137th Gebirg]

For those interested in what the Akira looks like, allow me to elaborate:

http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/battleship_akira.jpg

One of my personal favorite designs.

It was mentioned that the forward ports may be launch tubes of some kind. IIRC, she was originally designed to be a kind of "Thru-Deck Carrier", with landing bays in the aft of the primary hull, another similarity to the NX design. Quick-launch bays in the front were added to complete the effect, but never used in production.

There is also some debate on how many photon launch tubes this vessel has. If you look at the weapons pod on the rollbar, that thing has 12 launchers alone! Four facing front, four oblique-port-aft and four oblique-starboard-aft. Torpedoes were also seen launching under the primary hull around the area where the main navigational dish sits, probably a twin launcher like most starfleet vessels have for a total of 14 tubes. If true, and the Akira can launch multiple photon/quantum torpedoes 14-at-a-time, this is quite possibly the most devastating vessel in the fleet. I don't think a Galaxy or a Sovereign could stand toe-to-toe with one. S'why I like it!

 

[captcalhoun]

what about the similarities of the Northrop YB-49 flying wing bomber and the Northrop B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

40-some years apart and ZOMFG! TEHY RIPPD IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!ONE

 

[MarianLH]

All the in-world rationalizations and real-world examples in the world don't counter Forbin's point. It felt like a retread.


Marian

 

[Nerys Myk]

FalTorPan said:

roger1999 said:
I've never seen a photo of the Akira class starship? Which series/episode should I look for it?

The Akira is to Star Trek starships what Boba Fett is to Star Wars characters... or it would be if the Akira had been featured with slightly more prominence.

So it folds like a chump and meets an undignifed demise. yet still causes fans to "squee"?

 

[Unicron]

captcalhoun said:
what about the similarities of the Northrop YB-49 flying wing bomber and the Northrop B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

40-some years apart and ZOMFG! TEHY RIPPD IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!ONE

That's not the same. The YB-49 never made it into regular production because it was a late turboprop design that was built when the jet age started. Many of its qualities were used in the development of the B-2 Spirit, but that's a case of modern technology accomplishing what wasn't feasible when the YB-49 prototype was built, because it was practically obsolete by the time it flew.

That's entirely different from deliberately copying a modern design and putting it into a past era, and doing so because you think the fans will like it. Same with the "phase cannons" and "phase pistols" which look and sound like 24th century phasers.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Its a colored beam of light just like all the other phasers/lasers/disruptors on the shows. Any "differences" or "similarities" would come from the SFX being used. Unles s you're talking about the props. In which case I cant say a phase pistol looks much like a 24th Century phaser.

 

[Jono]

I also thought that people's main problem with the NX-01 been like the Akira was that it made the ship look too advanced and that people were more in favour of something that looked more like the Daedelus class.

That was what I thought back in 2000/2001 when I saw the first pictures of the NX-01.

 

[Forbin]

CaptJimboJones said:

The Akira class is an extremely obscure bit of Trek minutae that is glimpsed for a total of about three minutes in all of the many hundreds of hours of Trek.

And immediately became a tech fan favorite, showed up all over the net, in the ST Encyclopedia, and kitted as a resin model bought by a whole lotta internet Trek modelers.

Why people get so worked up about the NX-01's similarities is beyond me.

Because it was lazy, inappropriate, anachronistic, apathetic... wait, i think we've explained that already.

The ships all look similar, the NX-01 and the Akira no more so than any others.

Now THAT is plainly being in fanboy denial. The designers flatly admitted the NX was based on the Akira with only some minor tweaks.

 

[Forbin]

captcalhoun said:
what about the similarities of the Northrop YB-49 flying wing bomber and the Northrop B-2 Spirit stealth bomber.

40-some years apart and ZOMFG! TEHY RIPPD IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!ONE

Both planes designed and built by the same company, the latter being a development of the former. And outside of both being flying wings, their shapes and configurations are completely different in plan view.

 

[Forbin]

roger1999 said:
I've never seen a photo of the Akira class starship? Which series/episode should I look for it?

Akira images at Ex-Astris-Scientia:
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/scans/firstcontact1.htm

A thorough discussion of the similarities between it and the NX at Ex-Astris-Scientia:
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/enterprise_design_comment.htm

 

[CaptJimboJones]

Unwrapped said:
How exactly did the Reliant "rip off" the original Enterprise by inverting it?

You missed my point - none of these are "ripoffs," and its silly to accuse the Trek designers of such behavior, because all of the ships are very similar. They're all just various combinations of saucer and nacelle.

The NX-01's design is no more or less similar to the Akira than the Akira is to the Reliant, or that ship is to the Enterprise, etc.

That doesn't mean you have to love the NX-01. Hell, you can hate it. But the years of hysterical shrieking that "OMG itz a RIPOFF of teh Akira class!1! Bermaga you sux!!1! You rooned Trek!!!!!" is just nonsense.

 

[Noname Given]

Forbin said:
Also, because we KNOW for a fact that the NX is based on the Akira, not the other way around, and we know for a fact it's because Berman made a decision based on laziness, ennui, apathy, ignorance of fandom....

Actually, it was leaked in 'Enterprise' pre-production that they decided to go with a modified 'fan favorite' design that was a fan favorite; and previously only seen in a Star Tre T NG film. They never attempted to conceal or obscure the fact that the NX-01 design was based on the Akira design.

And while B&B can be blamed for a lot in the later decline of the Star Trek franchise; modding the Akira design to make the NX-01 wasn't one of them. You could easily see how the NX-01 could lead to the Constitution class (We've yet to see an actual 'Deadalus-class' on screen, so there's no 'cannon' look to them as yet); and the NX-01 IS NOT just an 'Akira' with a different texture - thus I fail to see how 'lazyness' can be claimed as th NX-01 model had a lo of work put into it to make it unique.

 

[Unicron]

Nerys Myk said:
Its a colored beam of light just like all the other phasers/lasers/disruptors on the shows. Any "differences" or "similarities" would come from the SFX being used. Unles s you're talking about the props. In which case I cant say a phase pistol looks much like a 24th Century phaser.

It's another example of laziness either on the part of Bermaga or the suits at the studio, I'm not sure which. It's been established canonically that phasers didn't exist in ENT's timeframe, but they still created weapons that have the exact same effect. It would be like shooting a Western movie and giving the sheriff a machine gun. Repeating weapons did exist back then, but they were uncommon and didn't achieve prominence as battlefield weapons until the First World War.

CaptJimboJones said:

The NX-01's design is no more or less similar to the Akira than the Akira is to the Reliant, or that ship is to the Enterprise, etc.

I disagree. The NX-01 looks almost identical to the Akira in physical terms, and as already mentioned the studio made no secret of the fact that they decided to use a modern ship instead of creating an original one. It may be true that the bulk of designs are simply a mix of saucers, hulls, and nacelles, but with a few exceptions they're all distinct.

 

[The Wormhole]

In regards to above comments about the Akira being an "obscure ship", that's not entirely true. Keep in mind that an Akira class ship is featured very prominently in First Contact flying by the Borg cube as it explodes. That's a pretty memorable shot that people remember, therefore the Akira is not as obscure as people claim it to be.

Add on to that, at various points during the Dominion War the camera would focus on Akira class ships, and in Voyager an Akira class ship was seen leading the task force sent to re-take USS Prometheus.

The Akira class is a ship that's easy to notice and is no more obscure than an Oberth class ship, or a Nebula class ship.

 

[MarianLH]

OMG itz a RIPOFF of teh Akira class!1! Bermaga you sux!!1! You rooned Trek!!!!!

ZOMFG! TEHY RIPPD IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!ONE

Do you suppose we could dispense with the slanderous ad hominems?


Marian

 

[Nerys Myk]

Unwrapped said:

Nerys Myk said:
Its a colored beam of light just like all the other phasers/lasers/disruptors on the shows. Any "differences" or "similarities" would come from the SFX being used. Unles s you're talking about the props. In which case I cant say a phase pistol looks much like a 24th Century phaser.

It's another example of laziness either on the part of Bermaga or the suits at the studio, I'm not sure which. It's been established canonically that phasers didn't exist in ENT's timeframe, but they still created weapons that have the exact same effect. It would be like shooting a Western movie and giving the sheriff a machine gun. Repeating weapons did exist back then, but they were uncommon and didn't achieve prominence as battlefield weapons until the First World War.

It's a good thing they had phase pistols and not phasers then. No matter what they called them, it would still be the same SFX: A beam o'light issuing from a pistol/rifle/cannon. To get all worked up over the use of "phase" in the nomenclature is a bit pedantic. All these weapons serve the same purpose in Star Trek. They are the beam weapons. They are fired at stuff and people and cause them injury, death or destruction. They're fricking rayguns.

The phase pistol is the predecessor to phasers. It is less powerful and less versatile. It is the repeating rifle to the phaser's machine gun.

BTW, reapeating firearms like the Winchester are quite prominant in Westerns. It wasn't call ""The Gun that Won the West" for nothing. I loved watching Chuck Connors in the "Rifleman" as a kid.

 

[Nebusj]

Nerys Myk said:
The phase pistol is the predecessor to phasers. It is less powerful and less versatile. It is the repeating rifle to the phaser's machine gun.

Yeah, after all, the phase pistol only has the one setting to stun and the one setting to kill, while the Next Generation phaser has 47 settings to stun and 247 settings to kill. You can see how they're so very different that it's impossible to tell the same sorts of story with one as with the other.

If I were designing a prequel, and had to have something with a phaser-type weapon in it, I'd try making it as different as possible. For example: what if there's no strong directional weapon, like the beam-weapon phasers are, but instead you get a wide-area effect so that there's this region where people are knocked out, another region where people are only dazed? What if it's not possible to fire the weapon to stun a target without dazing the shooter, too? Or if they only have a ``phaser grenade'' that will stun or kill everyone within a twenty-foot radius (or whatever), and is therefore a bit of a challenge to get into a target's range without getting yourself killed?

So you can have the prequel weapon and still have something that forces you to write different scenes than the last 250 phaser battles.

 

[Nerys Myk]

Interesting ideas but not very practical in storytelling terms. Phasers are guns. They take down the bad guys. That's their function in the story. Areas of non effect or side effects to the user would slow down the story. Unless the story was about those things. Which means solving those problems by story's end.

These weapons are just minor parts of the story. Something to help to move the story along when needed and shouldn't take away from the real focus of the storyline: The moral dilemma of the week, the romance or what have you.

The real rub for some fans is using the term "phase" in the nomenclature. If they were called Laze guns or pulse pistols and used the same SFX fewer people would care.

 

[captcalhoun]

MarianLH said:

OMG itz a RIPOFF of teh Akira class!1! Bermaga you sux!!1! You rooned Trek!!!!!

ZOMFG! TEHY RIPPD IT OFF!!!!!!!!!!11!!1!ONE

Do you suppose we could dispense with the slanderous ad hominems?

Marian

first off, that's libel, not slander. slander is spoken.

second, i was being sarcastic.

third, in the UK, you would have to prove i have lowered Northrop's standing in the eyes of right-thinking members of society and/or defamed their character to win a libel case. i studied libel and slander laws on my media course.