Are Ferengi Ships upside down? "up" and "down" in space.

A discussion in another thread made me remember that when I first saw the Ferengi ship in "The Last Outpost" I, somehow felt that it looked "upside down" in relation to the Enterprise. Now looking at it in pictures I don't have a that strong feeling about it anymore, but still think that it could work either way:


Original



"upside down"

This made me think in turn that, not only is there no way to work out which way is "up" for the Ferengi but in a place like outer space, without a "bottom" or "surface" it would make perfect sense for ships to appear "upside down" to one another, as well as right angles and all in between, really it should be the exception for to ships to meet and both standing perfectly straight in relation to one another.

Yet it was never quite portrayed in that way on the show, likely for aesthetic reasons. Still you gotta wonder if there was some sort of regulation about this, at least within the Federation, perhaps in relation to the galactic plane. Or if other civilizations saw the universe as "standing on it's head" from a Federation perspective, or saw the galaxy and/or their solar system as a spinning wheel, with the Core "above/below" them.

What do others think?

 

I've thought it would be interesting to do some amps with the galaxy in the "wheel" configurations.

 

It was pretty much creative laziness that all ships that ever ran into each other were oriented the same way.

 

Maybe it's just a convention that ships approach each other orientated the same. A polite nicety.

 

That seems like up to me. If you ever looked at the bottom of a Ferengi murauder, it's like the botton of a car.


I remember shots of ships coming at the Enterprise from an angle and righting themslves in relation to the Enterprise. Perhaps it's a standard thing among races to do this. Maybe even tactical reasons.

 

^^ This, and also a convention that apparently occurred to many species totally independently of them ever meeting each other. But that could happen. Form following function and vice-versa.

Something harder to believe, that (coincidentally or not) changed somewhat after a conversation I had with someone involved in special effects for TNG at a convention, is that ships would maintain "up" relative to each other during combat.

And I never thought that Ferengi ships were upside-down, but I *did* think they were flying backward. Probably due to having played the old computer game "Star Fleet I: The War Begins!" well before I ever saw a Ferengi: their ships, viewed top-down, are the same shape at the Krellan ships from the Atari version of that game - except the aft is the fore and the fore is the aft.

 

That's generally how it is explained... approaching ships orient themselves according to the direction of the ships already in place.

It's complete poppy cock of course, as there is absolutely no reason for such behavior, other than to help out TV or film audiences who can't handle the three dimensional nature of space.

 

The only thing the Ferengi ship looked like to me was ... ugly.

As for up, down, sideways, etc, for quite some time I never gave it much thought. I've heard most of the theories, with the only one making any sense being that ships are on the same plan merely for the TV/film viewers' sake.

However, my own in-universe theory is that our galaxy does indeed rotate around an axis, and that axis is akin to the axis through planet Earth, with a north and south, so to speak and therefore an up and down. By some bizarre and lucky coincidence, all species thus far encountered accept that theory and orient their ship to that axis. Since it really could be a coin-toss as to which direction of said axis is up and which is down, by an equally bizarre and lucky coincidence, everybody picked the same one.

 

And there is no way to know what the correct orientation really is, especially on first contact. Well, you would know which way the "forward" direction is on an alien ship, so you've got a 1 out of 2 chance of orienting yourself correctly on first contact.

On the other hand, don't most stars ans planets orbit within the same general plane and same direction? If that's the case, then it might make common sense to orient your ship so that the top of your ship corresponds to the polar north of your home planet?

 

But ships (in most cases) generate their own artificial gravity, so who cares which way is "north" on the planet you are orbiting?
In addition, when starships "see" each other by the use of sensors, and the viewscreen is primarily for face to face communication, not detection or visual guidance.
So there really is no need for ships to change their orientation unless they are being filmed for a TV show or film.

 

Star Trek is just continuing a tradition going back to 1930s comics and film serials, and perhaps earlier, as in Georges Méliès' 1902 silent classic A Trip to the Moon. It's easier for an audience to immediately recognize a vessel if it's in a consistent orientation.

 

I always thought it odd that ships orbit the planet tilted sideways instead of having their top or bottom facing the planet. I have seen Voyager do that once in a while, but mostly the ships like to orbit with their port side facing he planet- I guess it is a carryover from the TOS where the port side of the model was unfinished.

 

Maybe it has something to do with the sensors - with the ship in that orientation it is better able to scan both the planet's surface AND watch for approaches from space?

That isn't much in the way of a serious, well-thought-out suggestion. I'm just trying to No-Prize it.

 

In TWOK we see the Reliant appearing to do this as it approaches the Enterprise.

 

Not so much that as it is easier to film and easier for the audience to understand.

Now sometimes in sci-fi this gets ridiculous and amusing, like in Star Wars Episode 3, the opening battle is so two dimensional that when General Grievous's flagship is taken out it practically "sinks." Or then there's Stargate, which always had two-dimensional space battles until the Ori showed up and fought three-dimensionally. No one was prepared for this therefore making the Ori unbeatable.

 

Or they orient themselves to the galactic plane.

 

Regarding the Ferengi ship, I tend to think that a flat or flat-ish belly makes sense on a starship, in case they have to land somewhere. If it was upside down, it would be canted forward when they tried to land, or the front landing leg would have to be disproportionately long.

 

What if a Starfleet vessel traveled from the Sol System to the Polaris System?

 

The underside seems a little concave even- gives the whole ship a 'hunkered down' look...

Three things about the Ferengi Marauder I wish we had seen onscreen:
-The large claws on either side of the main hull do something- they were designed more as grappling claws than weapons. It would have been cool to see the Marauder holding another ship with one as it was being 'acquired'.

-There was a smaller vessel tucked in the underside we never saw in action. It was sometimes called a scout on the call outs.

-When we first saw the ship, it was turning around, extending both it's forward hull hull and raising an upper section to expose weapons. We never did see the ship do that again. It would have been nice to see what weapons the ship did have, hell even have a couple of Marauders in the Dominion battles...

 

Kronos One does it in TUC when it first arrives

then later after being hit with the torpedoes it tilts as the crew loses control