Now that's an ugly ship. And the design makes no sense. Why the double nacelle pylons?
Bonaventure class
- Thread starter Captain Thomas Wilson
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Now that's an ugly ship. And the design makes no sense. Why the double nacelle pylons?
Most ships have two nacelles.
Thank you.
I meant, why does the NX-01 refit have two pylons, going into the hull, and then extending further into the nacelles. The Bonaventure class is a decent half way between the NX and the Constitution, Drexler's refit is a frankenstein.
Oh, I follow you now. I personally don't really like the NX 01 refit to include a secondary hull.
While I'm sure there are tons of ship classes and types in various works here and there, I tend to keep things simple. I've always regarded the Miranda-class as a medium-sized starship, and only because the Constitution-class was larger. I know people have different takes on the subject, but that's been mine.
FWIW, STO uses ships of that shape (in many era-appropriate variants) as Escorts.
Also, I don't think that "Meni", the originating artist, ever associated the name Bonaventure with this design. At one point, it was considered the Horizon, for the registry range. The Bonaventure name is an Okuda invention from Ships of the Line. FWIW.
Timo Saloniemi
Also, I don't think that "Meni", the originating artist, ever associated the name Bonaventure with this design. At one point, it was considered the Horizon, for the registry range. The Bonaventure name is an Okuda invention from Ships of the Line. FWIW.
Timo Saloniemi
I saw that Doug Drexler gave a YouTube Interview with Trekyards some years ago explaining that this was so that the secondary was able to be more quickly added/removed, and that the secondary hull was more of an extra "boost," than the full-fledged part of the ship that it would be later on. In his mind, the "old" warp core would still be therein the saucer, with a "new" core in the secondary hull, meaning that the saucer could still go to warp even after separating the secondary hull, because the nacelles would still be attached to the "old" core and "old" pylons.
I like his take overall but I'm not sold on the ship being able to go to warp after separation because it seems weird this ship would do that and later ones could not.
Regarding the ship from the original post, I see what was intended, but I'm not sure that it works technically for many of the same reasons that the NX-01 was questionable to me.
The ship would likely need a deflector in that era, rather than just a strong shield grid as is supposedly used on the Miranda and so on. It would need a reactor of some kind somewhere, and two nacelles for balance early on makes sense. Getting rid of the secondary hull makes the ship seem smaller, and in a way less sophisticated. However...
We know from the show that the warp core can be dangerous even on advanced ships in the 24th century. It does not make sense for an early ship to have no secondary hull as the crew would be trapped with the core when it might explode. Doug Drexler had a fix for this in the NX-01, which was to have the engine on a outboard pod between the nacelles, where it could be jettisoned. Even his NX-01 refit has an eject-able core pod as part of the secondary hull. However, for some reason, the pod on the NX-01, where Engineering was supposed to be, got changed to being the uninhabitable "symmetrical warp governor," and Engineering was moved into the body of the ship, which I think is a problem for both these designs. Since the Reliant is later I can accept there and on other ships where that must be the case.
Makes perfect sense to me if I get what being described. Basically the original warp core is still in the primary hull where it was. with the addition of the secondary hull, the new warp core, presumably an upgraded model, becomes the primary warp core, and the original is a back-up or secondary. A bonus given what the engineers are working with in this case, but maybe not cost-effective or practicable in later designs for whatever reason.
I think the Meni design could have worked as a workhorse or guest ship if TOS had a bigger budget. I could see the Antares from Charlie X being a ship like that (and before anyone comments, I know in TOS Remastered the Antares uses the Grain Ship design from The Animated Series.)
Not a fan either, but then to each his own. In the world of Star Trek there are a wide variety of takes, designs, opinions, opinions about designs, and whatnot. You, as the audience member have to decide what you feel is consistent, or relevant in a lot of instances. That said, here is how I personally view this design as a designer and artist. First, its well executed (for an example of poor execution look no further than the Klingon D7 from the Remastered TOS episodes), but there are problems if you are looking at this as the original Bonventure from TAS. First, its livery is all wrong. If it came out before NX-01 or XCV-330 (whatever your take on Enterprise is) the livery is apropos to a much later vessel, say from the 2230 - 2240s era. Speaking to livery as an aside, if it was an earlier ship I would have been happier to see some UESPA markings, but alas such is not the case. Moving on, the features of the craft itself (the bridge/command forecastle, windows, general shape and design of the primary hull, and the intercooler loops on the nacelles) speak to it being a much later vessel from about the same period given for the livery. Also, I find the fusion of the secondary hull into the primary very.. jarring. I'm not a big fan of intermingled hull forms- so aesthetically I would say this would be one of my least favourite designs. That said, Meni may have been alluding to a early Enterprise design sketch, which you can see here..
I do not know if that is the case, but there are enough similarities between them that I make note of them. So, in summary- does it fit as the starship Bonaventure from TAS, I'll answer with a qualified no. Could it be a later Bonaventure named for the earlier exploratory vessel? Sure, it could be, but in my own little world I don't acknowledge it as such, and that's my POV and I'm sticking to it.
Oh, one last thing.. TAS' Bonaventure is far from perfect, but to give you a look at it "in the flesh" so to speak.. here you go.
I do not know if that is the case, but there are enough similarities between them that I make note of them. So, in summary- does it fit as the starship Bonaventure from TAS, I'll answer with a qualified no. Could it be a later Bonaventure named for the earlier exploratory vessel? Sure, it could be, but in my own little world I don't acknowledge it as such, and that's my POV and I'm sticking to it.
Oh, one last thing.. TAS' Bonaventure is far from perfect, but to give you a look at it "in the flesh" so to speak.. here you go.
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Drexler referenced the Bonnie when doing the original NX design and then later for the refit. Which is why we put it as post NX ship (despite Scotty--it's been sort of retconned as first ship with MODERN warp drive)
You can see more views of the 3D bonnie on the video version of that podcast
We created it with input from the original designer (Bob Kline) as well as Dough Drexler, Rick Sternbach and Mike Okuda.
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Looks WAY TOO cartoonish IMO.
Agreed!
Nothing wrong with the design, save perhaps for a bit of timidity in diverging from the hero ship norm. It's the backstory that poses some problems. "She was the first ship to have warp drive installed" seems to call for something pretty primitive, and not only do we currently have good Trek yardsticks for "primitive", we always were left wanting for a distinctly more elderly-looking vessel there. After all, Spock thinks that the crew's "descendants" might be around, rather than the original crew; a ship wearing the same pennant paint as Kirk's is a poor candidate for something that is necessarily at least half a century old.
But our case here isn't a hopeless one. Perhaps Scotty means "She was the first Bonaventure to have warp drive installed", thus establishing that she is indeed the "old" Bonaventure rather than the newer and perhaps better known one? Canon does not call for any ship named Bonaventure before the TAS one, and Meni's design could be the second one if we so wished. Even the pennant paint issue isn't fatal: might be the old Banana-And-Three-Stripes motif dates back to the early 23rd century, and Kirk's ship is grossly out of date in the 2260s where most ships have already moved on to DSC-style decoration.
Our Bonaventure above could well be from the 2220s, the decade originally credited backstage as the launch date for Kirk's ship until the Okudas went for the 2240s in their material. Warp drive of her sort could be old news without contradicting Scotty; we'd just have to accept that the man goes to greater technical-historical detail and specificity than we first assumed. Which isn't a bad thing to assume about Scotty.
Timo Saloniemi
But our case here isn't a hopeless one. Perhaps Scotty means "She was the first Bonaventure to have warp drive installed", thus establishing that she is indeed the "old" Bonaventure rather than the newer and perhaps better known one? Canon does not call for any ship named Bonaventure before the TAS one, and Meni's design could be the second one if we so wished. Even the pennant paint issue isn't fatal: might be the old Banana-And-Three-Stripes motif dates back to the early 23rd century, and Kirk's ship is grossly out of date in the 2260s where most ships have already moved on to DSC-style decoration.
Our Bonaventure above could well be from the 2220s, the decade originally credited backstage as the launch date for Kirk's ship until the Okudas went for the 2240s in their material. Warp drive of her sort could be old news without contradicting Scotty; we'd just have to accept that the man goes to greater technical-historical detail and specificity than we first assumed. Which isn't a bad thing to assume about Scotty.
Timo Saloniemi
As I think I have said before my interpretation has been that it was the first ship of the general sort or generation as Kirk's, and that the Constellation looked like this until at some point it was nearly lost and when retrieved was refit to look like a Constitution-class vessel (if we want to use that name in that way) and that is why its registry is so low compared with Kirk's ship. The same might be said for the USS Republic NCC-1371, the Eagle NCC-956 (not fully canon), and in my personal view the numbers 102, 705, 1300, and 1384 (which are found on the model and could have corresponded to feet but don't in the ship's scale) could also be considered for semi-canon TOS registries for ships that would have been older but looked a little like TOS ships.
