Discovery Turbolift Caverns - Explained with Science／Math - (Disco S3)

To quote: "They don't know us very well."

 

Probably not.

 

Bob Probert on Starship Modeler forum about Robert Wise's comment: "No one comes to these things with a slide rule."

No, we use graphing calculators and digital verniers!

 

And I'm just reminded of my encounter with a Trek writer at a convention. He simply didn't have the time that we do to dedicate to such things.

 

There is truth to that.

 

I’ve always thought of Enterprise as a city in space. TAS’ shuttlebay confirmed that to me.

It never sat well to have trek ships now on the smaller end of things.

 

It didn't with me either. Honestly, when I was younger and doing the whole (stupid) discussion with friends about Star Wars vs. Star Trek and the thing I took away from them was their ships. Star Trek always showed bigger being better. The ENT-D was bigger than the TOS ENT, etc. Star Trek presented ships as these beautiful complex things that got better as they go bigger. DS9 was the rare exception to that rule but that was my impression.

Ships getting bigger always seemed to be Star Trek's way of highlighting technical growth.

 

I like seeing the fuller range of possible designs, small, great and in between...

 

Watching TNG on its own gave me that impression with one caveat. The E-D is weak for its size, so a Vorcha matches it. I don't know if that's based on anything, because it's such an old idea of mine, but my thinking has been the E-D lugs around a city, while the Vorcha is a pure warship. That means the Vorcha has superior power density, making it a better combatant.

Episode 1 of TNG supports that with the idea that the E-D is much better in a fight without the saucer, and once the saucer is gone the battle section is pretty much Vorcha size.

 

In "Heart of Glory," Worf has a line to the Klingon criminals that the Enterprise-D is "an exceptional weapon" when "relieved of its bulk." On the other hand, in BoBW, Riker nixes the idea of separating when encountering the Borg cube because the saucer's impulse engines gives the ship more power, so it's also not that the saucer is entirely dead-weight for the engineering section and makes the ship perform worse when joined.

 

More power and bigger phaser arrays with the saucer, but less maneuverability, and possibly weaker (larger) shields with the saucer. Then again, throughout the Dominion War the Galaxy class carried its saucer into battle too.