Regarding the Astral Queen: Is there anything substantial to identify her as a stand-alone starship with her own warp engines? After
reviewing the transcript from the episode, it's less clear than one might think.
Here's Kirk's line while he is calling Uhura via communicator from Thomas Leighton's house on Planet Q:
KIRK: Put me through to Captain Jon Daily of the AstraI Queen on orbit station, and put it on scramble.
It does indeed appear that "Astral Queen" refers to a vessel of some kind, the dialogue make it clear she is a form of interstellar transportation, capable of hauling people, and that she has a captain who owes Captain Kirk many favors. But it is not firmly established
what kind of vessel she is or what organizational flag said vessel operates under.
AQ could easily be a private, stand-alone, warp-engined starship in her own right. She could look like any number of deep space vessels depicted in
Masao Okazaki's Starfleet Museum, perhaps the
Pioneer-class, or the
Olympus Mons-class, or perhaps the more modern
Ocean-class or even the later
Starmaster and Huron designs.
But there's nothing that clearly states whether the Astral Queen is an actual starship (though implied, however loosely), and we don't know if she was a Federation vessel, or an Earth vessel, or maybe a vessel in service of Planet Q. Could Astral Queen be a "starliner" -type transport vessel of the cargo pod variety, with no warp drive of her own, capable of docking with any robot or manned warp-sled pseudo-starship for passage between star systems? There's nothing in what Kirk or Daly or anyone else says in "Conscience of the King" to discount that possibility.
By separating pods from sleds, many possibilities would be opened up for colonies, space stations, bases and homeworlds. Pods would be much easier to build, reconfigure and maintain than complete starships. Warp-sleds would be far easier to build and maintain, since there would be very little actual ship to them. A pod could be attached to a ship like FJ's Ptolemy, or the fan-envisioned
Sultana, or and number of other simpler and smaller warp-sled scenarios. The only spec for a warp-sled would be the ability to reliably interface with a pod (or perhaps several of them) and to be able to carry said pod(s) reliably at warp velocity from one star system to another. The only spec for a pod would be its ability to interface with a warp-sled (it has to fit), to withstand the stresses of travel at warp velocity and the ability to break free at the destination, travel in-system on its own impulse power and then to establish and hold orbit or to dock.
In that sense, a pod would be a space vessel, with starliner-type pods employing a small crew and captain, but they would not be a full-blown starship.
Great idea, let me know when your Kickstarter launches...
