Then which ever one appeared last.
Differences between the novel and Lower Decks versions of the U.S.S. Titan.
- Thread starter Borg Queen
- Start date
The novelverse Titan was intended to have the most diverse crew in Starfleet. The doctor, for example, was a man-sized T-rex, there was an AI in a robot ball thing not too unlike Zero from Prodigy, an undersea alien in a suit full of water etc. The second Star Trek: Picard novel, Dark Veil, goes so far as to explain that these were planned for the Titan but those plans were scuppered in the wake of the Romulan crisis. Hence the generic humanoid crew we see in Lower Decks.
I clicked on the thread because I thought it was going to be about the differences in the crew!Of course I prefer the novel version of the crew, but it's not really fair to compare a series of novels against a few scenes in a handful of episodes in a half-hour show. What little of the Titan crew we saw in LD weren't fleshed out at all... most of them didn't even have names.
I don't really have an opinion on the models shown. Other than the colour, the main difference seems to be that the book version is somewhat blurrier.
But if I have to pick something to have a preference over, I prefer the modified font based on Microgramma Bold Extended from the book version, which was used in the pre-Kelvin movies and TNG through VOY, over the baseline Microgramma Bold Extended on the LD version, which the new streaming series prefer.
Does that count?
Can you describe the difference between the modified version and the baseline version?
And even then, The Dark Veil still included many characters from the Litverse serving on the Titan, who were not present in Lower Decks.
I chose to believe that Commander Vale was on one of her convenient vacations during the episode Titan appeared.
The main difference is in the 1, which is why the difference shows up on the Titan. The regular typeface has a really large serif on the number 1, whereas the modified version trims it down to a tiny spur. The difference is really visible if you compare the movie Enterprise to the Disco/SNW Enterprise.
I believe there are also minor differences in the 5, 6 and 9, but we don't usually see the numbers up close enough to really notice them. The difference in the 1 is fairly large, so it stands out even when it's not an extreme close-up.
And although I prefer the modified version, it's not like the unmodified version bothers me or anything. I just needed some kind of preference to answer the OP's question, and except for the colour, the models looked pretty much the same to me!
Thank you! I'm a sucker for typography talk. The modified version really does look more custom and the other looks like something stock. The real crime here is removing the red stroke, tho.
I hate it when they draw attention to the diversity of the crew. The crew should be de facto diverse because it's a Starfleet ship.
I mean, it's nice when they identify the crew so that us rubes can follow along.
Do you even Star Trek? A majority of Starfleet ships at least as seen in the 1966-2005 era are humancentric with only a few aliens sprinkled in here and there for flavoring. And that's before you get into the fact that most of those humans are in fact white. Maybe TMP went all in with aliens (an observation even made in the Titan novels) but otherwise true diversity on Starfleet ships didn't actually start until the Kelvin timeline movies and the current TV shows.
So yeah, in 2005 when the Titan novel series began, a diverse Starfleet crew was something unique enough to be commented upon.
I like that there was a conscious effort to create a really diverse crew before it became the norm, but I did think it was a bit weird that in-universe, Starfleet would have to go out of their way to make a ship seem diverse, and that the whole *thing* about he ship is that it's diverse.
I don't. Organizations can gravitate towards particular patterns, including preferring some groups over others just due to familiarity and experiences. The emphasis would sometimes happen to make sure the organization was being deliberate in their efforts to include all members.
I Star trek plenty, thanks. I Star Trek into the comics, novels, video games, etc. where budget and time in the make-up chair aren't considerations and there are often aliens all over the place. I understand the realities of making a TV show and am capable of assuming there are plenty of aliens on the ship we don't see and just assume that many of the "humans" we see in the background are Betazoid or Zaldons whose hands we can't see or Iotians or Risians or some other human looking alien.
IIRC, the "tail" was removed from the "1" in TMP so it was more distinct from the "7." Then in TNG, some tails were added to the "D," so it didn't look so much like an "O" (in the stock version, they're basically both squares, it's just the corners on the left are less rounded on the "D."
Those are really sensible changes.
Looking at some pictures of the D registry and I totally see the added serifs now. Really good change! It's very noticeably distinct from the 0 now and really completes the look of that era.
Looking at some pictures of the D registry and I totally see the added serifs now. Really good change! It's very noticeably distinct from the 0 now and really completes the look of that era.
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I prefer the straight 1 but I love that red outline. Now it's been pointed out it's gone I'm sad it's gone
When I would draw out registry numbers as a kid, the red stroke was a MUST. I was personally offended when modern era ship designs had a much more modern look for their registry numbers. It felt really sterile and lost a lot of the charm. I was cool with using white text, that was actually really slick looking, but that red stroke is what gives it the *ship decal* look!
