Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador kit!

[ancient]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

I like to pretend that the ENT-B modifications were a continuation of the failed transwarp perogram. Thus the extra glowies on the saucer, built up nacelles, re-inforced hull, etc.

In the 24th Century all the Excelciors seem to be without the ENT-B stuff, so they just...ripped it back off after they were done fooling around.

Yay for fanon explanations!

 

[lennier1]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

ancient said:
I like to pretend that the ENT-B modifications were a continuation of the failed transwarp perogram. Thus the extra glowies on the saucer, built up nacelles, re-inforced hull, etc.

In the 24th Century all the Excelciors seem to be without the ENT-B stuff, so they just...ripped it back off after they were done fooling around.

Yay for fanon explanations!

*cough*Lakota*cough*

 

[ancient]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

What about it? I could be remembering wrong, but I thought it was the regular model in CGI form.

 

[David cgc]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Nope. The Lakota was the physical model, with the Generations modifications still in place. There's a reason why they built an all-new model of the Excelsior for "Flashback" (though I don't know enough about what precluded restoring the original model to say if it was a very good reason).

 

[ancient]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Wow, that's nutty. They did do a CGI version at some point though, right? I could've sworn I saw one around that time.

Or maybe I'm thinking of a different ship. G'darn it.

 

[Unicron]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

AFAIK, the Lakota was the only other Excelsior to use the Ent-B modifications. All others have been standard TSFS Excelsiors.

 

[Trekker4747]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

ancient said:
I like to pretend that the ENT-B modifications were a continuation of the failed transwarp perogram. Thus the extra glowies on the saucer, built up nacelles, re-inforced hull, etc.

In the 24th Century all the Excelciors seem to be without the ENT-B stuff, so they just...ripped it back off after they were done fooling around.

Yay for fanon explanations!

And, see, I always thought the "transwarp" program was a huge sucsess in that for them "transwarp" became what we know as the revised TNG Warp Scale.

 

[Captain Robert April]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

The official word, as of the first season of TNG, was that traswarp was a flop, via a letter I got from Richard Arnold during that time period.

I think this was before his ego really got going, so in this case, I take him at his word.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Captain Robert April said:
The official word, as of the first season of TNG, was that traswarp was a flop, via a letter I got from Richard Arnold during that time period.

I think this was before his ego really got going, so in this case, I take him at his word.

Well, it was officially a "Roddenberry determination" that Transwarp was a failure, wasn't it? And as I recall, that was based upon a mistaken impression that the Excelsior didn't go to transwarp because it didn't work (as opposed to "because Scotty sabotaged the system").

The question, to me then, is... Was this Arnold feeding stuff to Roddenberry or Roddenberry feeding stuff to Arnold?

I'd tend to attribute this to (1) Arnold not really giving a shit about anything but acting as "human shield" for Roddenberry, and (2) Roddenberry's neurological deterioration being in pretty much full swing at this point.

Agree? Disagree?

 

[uss_griffin]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

^ don't really find it relevant.
Transwarp being a flop never appeared on-screen and is therefore not canon. I'm with Trekker4747 that what was temporarily called transwarp was just referred to as warp drive later (just as the term "timewarp factor" was shortened to "warp factor" earlier).

 

[FalTorPan]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Trekker4747 said:

ancient said:
I like to pretend that the ENT-B modifications were a continuation of the failed transwarp perogram. Thus the extra glowies on the saucer, built up nacelles, re-inforced hull, etc.

In the 24th Century all the Excelciors seem to be without the ENT-B stuff, so they just...ripped it back off after they were done fooling around.

Yay for fanon explanations!

And, see, I always thought the "transwarp" program was a huge sucsess in that for them "transwarp" became what we know as the revised TNG Warp Scale.

Throughout Trekkiness, the term "transwarp" seems to have been used as a blanket term to mean just about any propulsion technology that exceeds the capabilities of then-modern warp drive. As to the "truth" of Arnold's claim... I don't care either way.

Back on-topic, the Ambassador is looking very cool. I really look forward to seeing how the engineering hull and nacelle pylons flow together.

 

[Unicron]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Yeah, personally I like Tigger's take on tranwarp in his Excelsior entry on for the ASDB manuals. Transwarp did work, it's just that they couldn't get the kind of superior performance they wanted on a large scale product like the starship prototype. So not a flop at all, simply a concept that didn't work quite as well on a large scale. The TNG warp scale is a good alternative.

 

[Vance]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Considering that TNG completely changes warp scale, and it's treated that the new scale, etc, were there for a long time... I'm left to the conclusion that Transwarp (ST:III) actually DID work, and that the engineers made a new warp scale accordingly.

I mean, seriously, the TNG Tech Manual is full of crap anyway, why rely on it for something like this?

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

FalTorPan said:

Arpy said:
Was it Probert or Sternbach that said they designed the E-C by superimposing images of the E-B and E-D and connecting the lines? If that's the case, you can see where the thin nacelles and girthy stardrive come from - ditto the thin, squarish nacelle pylons, come to think of it.

I think both designers adopted that approach -- Probert in 1987, and Sternbach in 1989 or 1990.

I didn't. I developed the Ent-C by looking at the Ent-B and Ent-D with my plain old Mk. I eyeballs and sketching. No superimposing of drawings, just melding elements I saw in both ships and adding them to the solid foundation provided by Andy's color sketch. Since the color sketch was nearly edge-on, there wasn't a lot of data to be gleaned about the saucer shape or the exact form of the nacelles, etc. The final blueprint lines had to be created that would work in shapes from the color sketch and allow us to get a miniature built under TV time pressures (circular saucer, circular cross-section eng. hull). IIRC, the producers weren't keen on making a new ship, so I'm happy that we got what we got.

The slightly hefty nacelles in the final ship were likely a result of Starfleet wanting to go faster, but had to make the coils bigger, and only after the class was in production did they come up with a more efficient alloy vapor-deposition technique that led to the thinner (by comparison) nacelles for the U.S.S. Galaxy.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Captain Robert April]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Ya never do lose the knack for technobabble, do ya?

 

[GodThingFormerly]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Captain Robert April said:
Ya never do lose the knack for technobabble, do ya?

As was noted at TrekBBS.com a couple of years ago by no less a poster than Rick Sternbach himself, technobabble is only technobabble if it doesn't make any sense. Microgravity vacuum-vapor deposition, on the other hand, is a perfectly legitimate real-world space manufacturing proposal dating back to at least the L5 movement of the 1970s:

Illustration scanned from Colonies in Space by T.A. Heppenheimer (Stackpole Books, 1977).

TGT

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

The God Thing said:

Captain Robert April said:
Ya never do lose the knack for technobabble, do ya?

As was noted at TrekBBS.com a couple of years ago by no less a poster than Rick Sternbach himself, technobabble is only technobabble if it doesn't make any sense. Microgravity vacuum-vapor deposition, on the other hand, is a perfectly legitimate real-world space manufacturing proposal dating back to at least the L5 movement of the 1970s:

<snip>

TGT

I learned about plasma spraying of space inflatables in 1972 or thereabouts, as a technique for building the big 1000' diameter fuel sphere for an Enzmann starship. With balloons as big as Echo back in the early days, the idea of making a big metallic sphere doesn't seem so distant now.

And yeah, it's only technobabble in the wrong hands. There were days when I truly believed that Trek was like a chimpanzee with a Stradivarius. Fortunately those days weren't too frequent.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Unicron]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Yeah, I think sometimes it's too tempting to just say any significant amount of technical talk in an ep is technobabble, but I don't think that's always true. Anyone who's ever watched the CSI shows will hear a fair amount of forensic lingo, and it's not always explained in a given ep. Gun shot residue is frequently abbreviated GSR for example.

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Unicron said:
Yeah, I think sometimes it's too tempting to just say any significant amount of technical talk in an ep is technobabble, but I don't think that's always true. Anyone who's ever watched the CSI shows will hear a fair amount of forensic lingo, and it's not always explained in a given ep. Gun shot residue is frequently abbreviated GSR for example.

CSI was a good example of using terminology that was internally consistent. Same with The West Wing. I didn't understand 100% of the politcal discussions or how things in Congress worked, etc., but after a while, I got the gist of it. One of the problems with the modern-era Trek writing was that there were terms thrown in that made no real sense, like isogenic or metagenic or blahblahgenic or stuff I never would have offered to the folks banging keyboards in the Hart Building. We talked about the junk terminology here long ago, so there's no real need to go over it a whole lot more.

Rick
www.spacemodelsystems.com

 

[Cary L. Brown]

Re: Andy Probert releases prelim plans for USS Ambassador ki

Yep...

On-screen science talk should (1) be present because it MATTERS, and (2) should be consistent with real science.

The points made above are really spot-on. It's best to AVOID talking science in fiction, unless the fiction requires it... this is something that Roddenberry originally "got" but which got left behind later on. The idea was, in TOS, they'd never really explain what a phaser was. All the audience needed to know was what it DID. Nobody cared about "rapid nadion traces." They just cared that you'd point it, shoot it, and stun the bad guy.

I seem to recall a Roddenberry memo from "The Making of Star Trek" which pointed out how ludicrous it would have felt if, in a John Ford western, the hero were to stop and explain how his Colt pistol worked.