I've been digging through some of my old correspondence from the 1990's, back when I used to send and receive snail-mail drawings with several people across the U.S. about Star Trek and Star Trek art.
One of my favorite pen pals was Mr. Michael Alexander, a aerospace worker by day and d/b/a Solaris Designs in his free time. Mike is a brilliant artist and probably has as much 3D and military/industrial design smarts as anyone on forums like this one. I'm guessing that somewhere around June of 1992 (possibly earlier) I sent a pencil drawing of a design idea to Mike that I could not get out of my head. The idea was for a Klingon-designed TNG era Federation starship to replace the Ambassador-class heavy cruiser. I called the design K'Verlin.
Here is a set of sketches Mike made, based directly on the pencil drawing I submitted to him:
As you can see from the largest drawing in the bunch (very close to my original), my original concept for K'Verlin was a ship with very strong resemblence in design cues to that of the TNG Galaxy-class.
Mike was not satisfied with stopping there. He drawing even more images of K'Verlin, which he renamed the Garrett-class. Mike's Garrett took on a more exotic, curvier look. In retrospect, the shapes of his Garrett remind me of the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E:
My K'Verlin concept arose from some dissatisfaction I had with TNG. When the show first came out, it was promoted as depicting characters in a 24th century Federation where humans and Klingons were already realizing the Organian prophecy of friendship and working together. I expected Worf to be one of many Klingons serving aboard Federation starships. When "Heart of Glory" came out, my hopes were dashed. The Klingons were still hostile, seemingly reduced to a second-rate enemy status like some silly caricature that amounted to a cross between a biker gang and General Urko's goon squad from the old Planet of the Apes TV show from the 1970's.
I was also bummed because I liked my K'Verlin much more than the Sovereign-class. K'Verlin would've made a much nicer Enterprise-E, don't you think?
I was even more bummed in the years that followed when the end of the Cold War upended Mike's career. He was forced to relocate. I last corresponded with him about 3 years ago.
I cannot find any of my original K'Verlin drawings, but I thought I could share the two above sets of images with you to show that not everything in Trek is just saucers and cigars.
One of my favorite pen pals was Mr. Michael Alexander, a aerospace worker by day and d/b/a Solaris Designs in his free time. Mike is a brilliant artist and probably has as much 3D and military/industrial design smarts as anyone on forums like this one. I'm guessing that somewhere around June of 1992 (possibly earlier) I sent a pencil drawing of a design idea to Mike that I could not get out of my head. The idea was for a Klingon-designed TNG era Federation starship to replace the Ambassador-class heavy cruiser. I called the design K'Verlin.
Here is a set of sketches Mike made, based directly on the pencil drawing I submitted to him:
As you can see from the largest drawing in the bunch (very close to my original), my original concept for K'Verlin was a ship with very strong resemblence in design cues to that of the TNG Galaxy-class.
Mike was not satisfied with stopping there. He drawing even more images of K'Verlin, which he renamed the Garrett-class. Mike's Garrett took on a more exotic, curvier look. In retrospect, the shapes of his Garrett remind me of the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E:
My K'Verlin concept arose from some dissatisfaction I had with TNG. When the show first came out, it was promoted as depicting characters in a 24th century Federation where humans and Klingons were already realizing the Organian prophecy of friendship and working together. I expected Worf to be one of many Klingons serving aboard Federation starships. When "Heart of Glory" came out, my hopes were dashed. The Klingons were still hostile, seemingly reduced to a second-rate enemy status like some silly caricature that amounted to a cross between a biker gang and General Urko's goon squad from the old Planet of the Apes TV show from the 1970's.
I was also bummed because I liked my K'Verlin much more than the Sovereign-class. K'Verlin would've made a much nicer Enterprise-E, don't you think?
I was even more bummed in the years that followed when the end of the Cold War upended Mike's career. He was forced to relocate. I last corresponded with him about 3 years ago.
I cannot find any of my original K'Verlin drawings, but I thought I could share the two above sets of images with you to show that not everything in Trek is just saucers and cigars.
