You have yet to give one example of a ship in the first two seasons with either obvious warp nacelles or explicitly-stated warp drive that lacks line of sight or has an odd number of engines.
No, I don't. I'm just calling bullshit on your claim that "all the early TNG alien ships obeyed the rule". The rule simply does not apply at all to the early TNG alien ships, save for the Warbird, so your use of "all" makes your statement maliciously false.
Beyond that, all the ship models seen in the first two seasons were capable of quick interstellar flight, even (and especially) those that were quoted to be sublight only. The models either did double duty within said seasons already, or were observed going interstellar in later episodes. Did any of them have nacelles? The Straleb ship sorta did, even if without any "warp glow", the port one invisible to the starboard one. The
Batris had three big cylinders in the aft hull, the middle one obscuring the others from each other even if internal machinery didn't already do that job. On the others, podding the engines was apparently not mandatory, putting a lie to the line-of-sight thing in general (and never mind what "rules" would govern the plague ship, say).
Andrew Probert says he designed that ship, and that it DOES have line of sight
Perhaps he wanted to, but was thwarted by modelmaking reality? Having an actual observable attempt at line-of-sight may have depended on a variable geometry feature that was not built into the model, the couple of variable geometries included already proving too complex for practical use and hogging too much space inside the model.
The end result has line-of-sight in the same sense as a
Nebula class has line-of-sight: the warp field goes outboard from one nacelle, circles around Titan, sips some raktajino, returns via Vulcan, and then hits the other nacelle. Which is apparently fine for warp fields. Indeed, I'd love to see symmetry to this thing: the Marauder hull bulges upward, while the warp bubble bulges downward thanks to arching from one downward-pointing "field window" to another.
There's a clear intent in the
original original Type 7 (with the full-length side windows etc) to have the nacelles fully clear the belly. The eventual version has the inboard field windows (other than their flared-out forward ends) obscured, as best evidenced from rear shots. The Type 6 doesn't even
have inboard field windows, but if it did, those would be obscured, as seen from the side view. It's not until the Type 8, never built in prop form, that there's actual line of sight.
As for the hideous
Sakharov partial prop, we should be thankful that it did not have a doorway built in. The heroes in "Unnatural Selection" and "The Host" are never quite seen boarding, then, just walking around the bow (in a way that makes it clear they're not using Probert's intended bow door!) or the stern. And the latter episode does a pretty good job at hiding the worst parts of the prop.
So perhaps Data and Pulaski in "Unnatural Selection" walked into the Type 7 shuttle that was parked behind the Type 4½
Sakharov, while Ensign Nowan revved up the
Sakharov and backed the monster out of the way to the rear of the bay so that the Type 7 could leave?
Timo Saloniemi
