Hypothetical - Where should the Fed Flag go on a Starship?

[FatherRob]

So I am getting ready to dive into several model kits, and I am doing my own variant on Federation livery standards for it. One thing I have never found terribly authentic about starships on Trek is that they never displayed the Federation flag on the outside of the ship.

You would think that a space fleet of a nation with so many other obvious Terran-rooted customs (down to colors of running lights) would display a flag.

I realize some might say that the pennants on the Nacelles and Secondary Hull qualify (depending on the ship), but they are service insignia, not national insignia.

Does anyone have any suggestions on where to place the Federation flag on TOS/TMP era starships?

Right my, my thoughts tend to favor:
TOS Era: Aft of the 'turbolift' tube on the superstructure - single flag
TMP Era: Port and Starboard on the 'flat' sides of the bridge module or directly aft of the superstructure, above the small ship name and number behind the lounge.

Rob+

 

[Albertese]

I'm working on a similar project myself. I've been playing around with the idea of having the UFP flag displayed on the outboard nacelles, just aft of the registration.

Another idea I was playing with has to do with how I see the UFP organized in the 23rd Century. By the time of TNG, it seems like all the Federation planets are more or less on the same page, as if all the members have surrendered a lot of the their sovereignty to operate under a common federal authority much like the fifty states of the USA. Sure, the states have their own rights and can pursue certain things in their own fashion, but very where you go, there's no doubt that you're in the United States. But it seems to me that things were much much looser during the TOS era. Member worlds very much had their own autonomy and the UFP membership seemed to be more of a common defense and interstellar commerce agreement. They would go to member worlds like, say Ardana and Argelius (I think this was a UFp world, I might remember wrong though...), and even Vulcan and we get the impression that they are defiantly doing their own thing. Kirk and company have little authority and are subject to the local, sometimes baffling laws. They frequently don't have the full picture of what's going on (like on Ardana, with the division between the Stratos dwellers and the Troglytes.) The UFP of TOS seemed to function much more like a UN than the USA. Also, the Enterprise was repeatedly referred to as an Earth ship.

My point of going through all that was to provide context for this idea: in addition to the UFP flag, ships would also display the flag of whatever world they are registered to. So Enterprise would have the UFP flag on it's nacelles and the Earth flag (a.k.a. the UN flag) on either side of the shuttlebay. And both flags would be displayed together (though much smaller) next to boarding hatches and docking ports, though not necessarily next to utilitarian service hatches.

That's the direction I'm gonna go anyway...

--Alex

 

[Blip]

Personally I don't see the need to draw parallels with current usages - it is several hundred years in the future, after all.

Since there are so many races signed up to Starfleet, and most vessels are apparently at least partly multi-species, it makes sense to have a more unified logo system to signify that they are part of the same fleet. There may be exceptions (I imagine such as the all-Vulcan USS Intrepid from TOS, which may have displayed a Vulcan IDIC as well as the usual fleet arrowhead), but otherwise they would all share this common scheme, which signifies particularly that they are all naval vessels.

For mixed usage (eg science vessels with NAR registries, etc; or Starfleet-1 acting as the Presidential starship) I imagine the UFP and other logos would be displayed as and where necessary. The latter I expect would use royal blue "go-faster" stripes coupled with the usual arrowhead, prominent blue livery and UFP logo(s).

YMMV, of course.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Well, historically speaking, there's Sean Tourangeau's Federation One:

And there's John Payne's Grand Alliance:

 

[Blip]

Starfleet-1 would be more apt IMO.

 

[T'Girl]

I've wondered if the "boomerang" symbol we saw on the engineering hull might have been a political emblem. We saw it in court rooms and behind Admirals during video calls, just the same way you might see a modern day national flag.

 

[Albertese]

I've always assumed that the boomerang was in fact the Starfleet logo of the 2260's. The Enterprise arrowhead was sometimes seen on people from other ships, which makes me think it's for a sub-fleet that Enterprise was part of, but, while different sub-fleets get different badge designs, the whole fleet combined was under the boomerang as it's the only thing you see consistently in lots of places.

YMMV

--Alex

 

[bullethead]

Well, in the final novel of the New Earth mini-series, Diane Carey put a Federation flag on the neck of the Challenger, the ship that was going to be representing the Federation out in a remote sector.

 

[lewisniven]

I'd say that tbh, there'd be less exterior markings than there are now, because if you think about it, hardly anyone would ever see the exterior of the ship...

 

[Albertese]

I expect that the markings are there primarily for the benefit of people who see it docked at a base somewhere. Much like the markings on the tail of a jet, they're not really there for looking pretty in flight...

--Alex