Dreadnought Question

[WendellM]

what indication is there that the FJ version has its bridge buried deep inside the saucer? The graphics seem to portray a dome at the very top of the saucer, not really different from the cruisers or destroyers.

For me, it was because the Technical Manual drawings explicitly labeled the bridge at the top for all classes except the dreadnought:

Also there's no turbolift bump at the back of the dome (on the top plans) like on all other classes. Later, when Allie Peed's blueprint set was produced, it made sense that the bridge was shown as being deep in the middle of the saucer.

 

[Dukhat]

First of all, let me make a few things clear. The depiction of the Star Empire on the cover of "Dreadnought" was not "Diane Carey's design." It was drawn by Boris Vallejo, who was doing most of the Star Trek novel cover art at the time. It was Vallejo's refitted interpretation of the FJ design, so if anything, it should be called Vallejo's design.

Second, the diagram of the Star Empire in this thread, although drawn by the esteemed Captain Mike, does not do the ship justice at all. The ship in the cover art is 100 times more elegant than what you see here. Just Google "Dreadnought Diane Carey" and you'll see what I mean.

Finally, going along with the above, the Star Empire's saucer isn't supposed to be an octagon. It's supposed to be a hexagon, which would make the ship look much better in that top view than how it looks now.

 

[Timo]

Hmm... Granted that Vallejo did the final artwork, but Carey's description of the vessel is also explicit, and apparently precedes the visual interpretation: she uses the FJ terminology and specs (although she doubles the number of torpedo tubes), specifies the three nacelles and that one is attached to the primary hull, and then modifies the results with the hexagonal saucer design.

I'd thus insist that the ship really is a "Carey design" - or perhaps something like Jeffries 40%, FJ 35%, Carey 15%, Vallejo 10%, considering the entire chain of basing of the design on preexisting designs.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Sure, that's fine. My point was, rather, that I didn't want people thinking that the design on the cover was 100% the brainchild of Diane Carey.

Interestingly enough, I seem to recall another ship referred to as a dreadnought in the Diane Duane book 'My Enemy, My Ally." If I'm remembering correctly, the ship was about three times the size of the Enterprise, and had four nacelles, two above and below the secondary hull, and two to port and starboard. The thing I found unique (which is one of the unique things Duane always did in her books with regards to characters) was to have the dreadnought's captain be a completely non-humanoid alien.

*EDIT* After doing some research, the name of the ship was the Inaieu NCC-2003, and she was a destroyer, not a dreadnought. She also had a mile-long secondary hull, which kind of stretches the imagination for the mid 23rd century starship designs.

 

[Timo]

I'd rather argue that, despite his fascination with 19th century United States, Kirk had not quite mastered the antiquated unit of length "mile", being more used to metric measures... Duane's secondary hull was said to be quarter of a mile wide, which means wider than the primary one if we stick to the "three times the Enterprise" saucer idea. That sort of starship aesthetics just plain don't work!

Also, the Inaieu again pops up in Duane's The Wounded Sky, this time being dubbed "battleship". I'd thus like to ignore the earlier reference to "destroyer", perhaps reading it as a figurative description of her capabilities rather than a rigorous Starfleet designation. OTOH, MEMA also uses the expression "defender-class", which sounds like cool future naval jargon - a starship larger than dreadnought...

FWIW, here's an old doodle of what the Inaieu might have looked like, with a saucer thrice the volume of Kirk's, with the cruciform nacelles twice the length of Kirk's, and with the "multihulled" configuration specified in The Wounded Sky:



Timo Saloniemi

 

[Plecostomus]

Hey Timo? I have a friend who does 3D renders can I have permission to pass that along to him for 3-D-ifing?

I've always wanted to see that ship as a model, 3D would be just as good.



So maybe the Dreadnought was more of a multi-role ultra-long-term explorer while the Battleship/Destroyer was the big-gun platform. Maybe the Dreadnought was intended for really long-term deep exploration, hence the layout shown in the blueprints with the garden/park deck and all that.

 

[Timo]

By all means three-dimensionalize that monster! Note that the deflector dishes are being held in two side-by-side tertiary hulls; each nacelle has two swept pylons instead of one broad; and the neck structure joining the primary, secondary and tertiary hulls together is a bit ill-defined and up to the artistic choices of the renderer...

Which dreadnought blueprints would those be? The Allie Peed ones? Not exactly what I'd have done, perhaps, but the garden section there on Deck 9 could easily fit within the Deneb class vessels, too. Indeed, just as with the hero ship of TNG, the big problem is with finding enough stuff to put inside these giant ships!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Plecostomus]

Thanks Timo. He's got a full plate right now but he'll poke it when he gets some time.

 

[Dukhat]

I'd rather argue that, despite his fascination with 19th century United States, Kirk had not quite mastered the antiquated unit of length "mile", being more used to metric measures... Duane's secondary hull was said to be quarter of a mile wide, which means wider than the primary one if we stick to the "three times the Enterprise" saucer idea. That sort of starship aesthetics just plain don't work!

Plus the fact that the Inaieu's secondary hull would be almost three times as long as the ENTIRE Enterprise-D if it truly were a mile long, it kinda makes Picard's Enterprise puny by comparison...

 

[Mysterion]

Inaieu always sounded interesting to me, and I love the drawing that was linked up-thread.

My favorite TOS/Movie -era mega ship has still gotta be the Ingram variant of the Excelsior class that Todd Guenther did.

Here's a comparison of Ingram with Enterprise:

http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/excelsior-blueprints-sheet-6.jpg
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/blueprints/excelsior-blueprints-sheet-7.jpg
Check out how Ingram's warp nacelles are longer than Enterprise in it's entirety. And the top-view really shows off the size of the saucer. In any case, this is much better looking starship than the Excelsiors were, IMO.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

I like the Ingram-Class and the Excelsior-Class designs.


CuttingEdge100

 

[Dukhat]

I like the Ingram-Class and the Excelsior-Class designs.

I liked the Excelsior when it was first shown in 1984. Now, if I never see another Excelsior ever again (especially after seeing a million of them in DS9), I don't think I'd ever miss it.

The above also applies to Mirandas and Klingon Birds of Prey.

 

[FalTorPan]

The innards of Franz Joseph's dreadnought are a mystery. His Star Fleet Technical Manual suggests that most or all of the inner compartments that he drew were common to most Class I starships -- which would include the dreadnought. On the other hand, the dreadnought's saucer design is very different from the design which is common to the other Class I starships.

The fan-made dreadnought blueprints from 1980 did not have any input or approval from Franz Joseph, which makes them "non-canon" from a Franz Joseph Designs perspective.

I tend to imagine that the dreadnought's main bridge is near the vertical axis of the saucer, positioned somewhere above or within the saucer rim. I don't imagine it being at the very top of the saucer, though, for some of the same reasons mentioned elsewhere in this thread.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Dukhat,

I liked the Excelsior when it was first shown in 1984. Now, if I never see another Excelsior ever again (especially after seeing a million of them in DS9), I don't think I'd ever miss it.

Well, I really don't like the fact that they took out the dome shaped glowing thingie in front of the shuttlebay on the prototype Excelsior and replaced it with that trapezoidal boxy thing in TUC.

That's really one of my biggest gripes with the Excelsior


CuttingEdge100

 

[Wingsley]

First of all, let me make a few things clear. The depiction of the Star Empire on the cover of "Dreadnought" was not "Diane Carey's design." It was drawn by Boris Vallejo, who was doing most of the Star Trek novel cover art at the time. It was Vallejo's refitted interpretation of the FJ design, so if anything, it should be called Vallejo's design.

Second, the diagram of the Star Empire in this thread, although drawn by the esteemed Captain Mike, does not do the ship justice at all. The ship in the cover art is 100 times more elegant than what you see here. Just Google "Dreadnought Diane Carey" and you'll see what I mean.

Funny, but the Captain Mike artwork and the novel's cover art look pretty much the same to me.

 

[Dukhat]

Yes, well, I know they're the same ship. My point was that Vallejo's painting was much more elegant and eye-pleasing than the simple black-and-white computer line drawing.

 

[WendellM]

Vallejo's painting was much more elegant and eye-pleasing than the simple black-and-white computer line drawing.

Agreed. A scan/paste for ease of comparison:



To me, Boris' painting looks like a decent ship - not quite canon/FJ Trek in nature, but nice. The line drawing looks like a good fan production, or about equal to TAS Bonaventure art in quality. Just MHO.

 

[Cary L. Brown]

There was a novel called "Dreadnought" which featured a 320 meter, 3-nacelled Federation-Class Starship.

I noticed it had no visible bridge, just a sensor dome up-top. Was that to avoid a visible bridge that could easily be blown-away? (The bridge I assume was buried deep inside the ship)

Also, with the third nacelle mounted on top of the saucer section, I would assume after a seperation, the saucer itself could go to warp?


CuttingEdge100

The novel "Dreadnought" borrowed, liberally, from the Franz Joseph design concepts (see the "Star Trek Technical Manual," etc) but tried to make it more of an experimental concept and less of a "real part of starfleet" (perhaps to explain why this was never really mentioned on-screen?). It seemed to treat the idea of a dreadnought as sort of anathema to the "official Roddenberrian" line he started putting forward late in his life about Starfleet not being military.

Personally, when I read the novel I accepted that what I was looking at was the FJ design. The novel wasn't terribly great, but it was enjoyable light reading... ie, I don't accept it as canon anyway. As far as I'm concerned, the "real" FJ ships were really there, and were used in pretty much the way that the 70s/80s fan works postulated (ie, as fleet flagships which were permanently assigned to a support role to each starbase during peacetime).

One of FJ's ideas with this ship was to put the bridge into a more practical (ie, safer) location... not out in the open where it's the most obvious target on the ship. So he replaced the topside bridge dome with another sensor dome just like on the underside, and stated that the bridge was in the very center of the primary hull.

The later fan-works (including a really nice set of blueprint which I also have, like a few other folks here) established this. Of course, there's a lot of question now as to whether or not any of that is "official canon" anymore... I prefer that to most of what I've seen in the later "official" works, so if I had to choose, I'd say that the dreadnoughts are part of the "real" Trek history, just as FJ drew them up initially.

EDIT: For more info on this design, check this link out.
http://www.cygnus-x1.net/links/lcars/uss-federation-class-dreadnought.php

 

[Dukhat]

Of course, there's a lot of question now as to whether or not any of that is "official canon" anymore... I prefer that to most of what I've seen in the later "official" works, so if I had to choose, I'd say that the dreadnoughts are part of the "real" Trek history, just as FJ drew them up initially.

Yes. The Saladin/Hermes class diagram, the Ptolemy class diagram, and the cylindrical cargo container/starliner appeared on computer screens in the second and third Trek movies. The name and registry numbers of two Hermes class scouts and one of the dreadnoughts was heard in radio chatter in TMP. The outline (if not the actual diagram) of the Federation class dreadnought was also seen on a computer screen in one of the films. At the time, the intentions were that these were the same ships in FJ's tech manual. Just because Roddenberry and FJ had a falling out later means nothing. Those ships were shown on screen and were supposed to be the FJ ships, so they are canon.