Picard's Space Station.

[T'Girl]

In Captain Picard's ready room there is a model of the USS Stargazer, Picard's first command. Above the couch in the ready room there is a oil painting of the Enterprise D, his current command. And in Picard's living quarters, behind his desk there is another oil painting, a large space station, perhaps a starbase. Between the time that the Stargazer was lost and Picard assumed command of the Enterprise D several years past. Outside of novels this time is unaccounted for.

Is this large space station one of Picard's commands? Is that why he displays the painting? And what is the station, is it a starbase or just a repair and supply depot. Maybe a half star fleet-half civilian facility like DS9.

What do you think?

 

[Michael]

Nice catch and an interesting theory. I wondered about that painting, too. I don't, however, think that it necessarily portrays one of Picard's previous commands. By that logic Sisko once commanded a Daedalus-class starship.

Just so that we all know what we are talking about, here's the painting in question:

 

[Lor'Vela]

I think I remember reading in the ENT forum once where one guy theorised it might be one of Starfleet's first deep space outposts. There was one episode late in season 4 where the NX-01 was scouting local space for possible locations of such bases. Who knows, that image might have been it, for it certainly looks like an earlier version of that mushroom-shaped starbase.

 

[Praetor]

I think I remember reading that it was a reuse of a painting one of the staff had previously done, where they rationalized that it was an early solar system space station.

 

[T'Girl]

here's the painting in question:

Thanks for the image, kind of looks like a Robert McCall.

 

[Christopher]

^It's probably a Rick Sternbach. It does seem to be in his style.

 

[Praetor]

^I think it is.

 

[trevanian]

It's probably a zero-gee winery, just to spite his brother and the family ways.

 

[RapidNadion]

It's probably a zero-gee winery, just to spite his brother and the family ways.

LoL. Now that's a series I'd watch and enjoy.

OP, good question. I tend toward the "not-personally-related-to-Picard-but-just-a-general-historically-important-installation" theory. It would seem to be located outside the Sol system, based on how many close planetoids there are.

 

[Timo]

To nitpick, not even that Constellation class model there is necessarily related to Picard in any way. After all, it's not the Stargazer, but a slightly differently shaped ship without a name, and with the registry NCC-7100.

Similarly, the ships on the wall of the Observation Lounge don't appear to be Enterprises all. There's a regular Excelsior shape there, and no Enterprise ever looked like that. There's also what looks like FASA's Alaska class cruiser there, instead of the Enterprise-C. And the aircraft carrier doesn't look anything like the Enterprise, CVN-65, that we saw in ST4:TVH.

It's an odd collection of vehicles and vessels, to be sure. Perhaps the common feature on all of them is that they were named Galaxy? Or Stargazer? Or were commanded by Picards? But none of that really works too well, because both names would be quite unlikely for a USN aircraft carrier (then again, so was Shangri-La!), and because Jean-Luc was supposedly the first-ever Picard to leave Earth in a professional sense.

Alternately, it could all be random art. Perhaps Picard's Ready Room is full of things of personal interest to him, but the Observation Lounge has a piece of art that was actually meant to be significant for Captain Thomas Halloway (ships commanded by Halloways, that is), and Picard never had it removed?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Finn]

Who's Thomas Halloway?

 

[Ryan Thomas Riddle]

Who's Thomas Halloway?

The captain of the Enterprise in the alternate reality in "Tapestry". He has also been featured in several tie-in works. According to those works, Halloway oversaw the construction of the D and was originally tapped to be her commanding officer.

 

[T'Girl]

The carrier on the wall has a very square island.

 

[Timo]

...And is also depicted on Archer's ready room wall. It's the outline of the real CVN-65, the real world's first nuclear carrier, and the square island belies the outlines of a long-outdated radar system typical of that vessel.

The thing is, in the Trek universe, CVN-65 was played by another carrier, the conventional CV-61 Ranger, which has a completely different-looking island. It was never played "live" by the real nuclear carrier.

So we can basically do three things:

1) Yell "Yet Another Trek Inconsistency!", which is a bit boring.
2) Say that the Trek universe featured at least two different nuclear carriers named Enterprise, one with a cubical-looking island and one with a conventional island, which is only half a solution because artwork depicting the cube-island ship has featured the lettering 65; there shouldn't be two different carriers with the same number painted on the flight deck!
3) Say that the nuclear carrier CVN-65 was refitted during her service life, either from having a cubical island to having a conventional one, or vice versa. The other external differences between the real Enterprise and the Ranger are minimal, after all, and could be covered by a rather minor refit.

Since most commemorative artwork depicts the cube-island ship, one might assume that this was the final configuration of the vessel. OTOH, it may have been the more famous configuration; perhaps the Trek CVN-65 fought her best and bravest battles in that configuration, before being refitted?

Similarly, the NX-01 is depicted in her TV show guise in the commemorative artwork of ST:NEM - but that doesn't necessarily preclude the idea of a major refit in 2155, as many fans would appreciate (because there were some plans to do such a refit for the fifth season of the TV show, before it became clear there'd be no fifth season)... We might simply argue that the artwork commemorates the configuration in which NX-01 saved the Earth from the Xindi.

How this might relate to Picard's space station is uncertain. The subject of the painting might be important to him, even if such a structure was never quite built in that configuration, or was quickly modified to some other configuration (say, the particle fountain of "Quality of Life" which is the closest thing to that painting we can find in aired Star Trek). Then again, the painting itself might be the important thing. Perhaps Picard himself painted it? Perhaps a friend or relative of his did? Perhaps it's a hideous generic commercial piece of work, but the person who gave it to Picard was special to him, and he wants to remember that person through the gift?

Picard didn't write Shakespeare's works, and AFAWK didn't pursue an active career in acting, either. He still has the Bard's collected works in his Ready Room. The rest of the decoration might be similarly detached from his person.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

^ Option 3 is actually true. CVN-65 did have a different island earlier in her lifespan, a more squarish one. Then after one of the more major refits, it looked closer to one on a Nimitz class.

 

[Trekker4747]

To nitpick, not even that Constellation class model there is necessarily related to Picard in any way. After all, it's not the Stargazer, but a slightly differently shaped ship without a name, and with the registry NCC-7100.

Similarly, the ships on the wall of the Observation Lounge don't appear to be Enterprises all. There's a regular Excelsior shape there, and no Enterprise ever looked like that. There's also what looks like FASA's Alaska class cruiser there, instead of the Enterprise-C. And the aircraft carrier doesn't look anything like the Enterprise, CVN-65, that we saw in ST4:TVH.

That's all being needlessly nitpicky.

The wall-model of the Ent-C was designed long before the physical filming model was, the Constellation-class model in the ready room was designed well before the filming model was and the Ent-B Excelsior model was put there long before the Excelsior variant was built (so they could "damage" it without hurting the actual model) well after that wall was. The aircraft carrier I've nothing for other than maybe over the course of 400 years they forgot what the ship looked like or there was a more notable Enterprise carrier that was built after the 1987 one.

The models are fully intended to be the Enterprise in her various forms, the model in the ready room is intended to be the Stargazer that production of movies and episodes after these things were built changed minor details is just being nitty.

 

[Christopher]

The ship models on the E-D's obs lounge wall were stylized enough that it was easy to chalk any discrepancies up to artistic license. Indeed, I'm sure that was the point, since they hadn't locked down the designs to the B or C at the time the ship models were introduced. I'm sure they deliberately made their contours vague and impressionistic.

 

[Timo]

The thing is, the lines of CVN-65 or NCC-1701-nil aren't vague at all. Even NCC-1701-D has fine detail on the nacelle front end, plus perfectly acceptable silhouette overall. The purpoted NCC-1701-C is a gross exception from that norm...

The models are fully intended to be the Enterprise in her various forms, the model in the ready room is intended to be the Stargazer that production of movies and episodes after these things were built changed minor details is just being nitty.

Why should we care about designer intent one iota? It was never expressed in the Trek universe.

And the desktop model does have a registry that's different from what was used in "The Battle" - both before and after that episode, it seems. They could have changed it if they really cared. As matters now stand, it's far more interesting to think of this as something else than the Stargazer, something that expands the Trek universe.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Trekker4747]

The purpoted NCC-1701-C is a gross exception from that norm...

The -C wall model was designed by (I believe) Probert as a bridged design to suggest the evolution between the Excelsior-Class and the Galaxy class. When that wall was designed the show's creators probably had no intent of ever showing the Ent-C.

So when it was decided to do a story with the -C they had to build the model for it and they went off Probert's sketches and designs, unfortuantly Probert's design was too ambitious to be cheaply built as a physical model to be used once for one episode so the design was castrated down to something more simple and cheaper to build.

As for the Stargazer model, all I can do is shrug. It's supposed to be the stargazer, simple as that. Why didn't they change the registry on it after we saw the actual ship? It could be something as simple as they just couldn't be bothered for a tiny detail no one would ever likely catch since we rarely saw the number on the thing anyway. (I recall one scene where we see the number on it from a camera shot right over it.)

This is just a TV show that had to operate on a budget and time restrictions, something as simple as changing the decal on a plastic model sitting on the set that's rarely shown close enough for that decal to be seen is a very expensive prospect. With things like this you have to take the behind the scenes guys word for it. The Ready Room model is the Stargazer, the models on the Observation Lounge wall are previous ships named Enterprise.

 

[Start Wreck]

At what point was it decided that the Excelsior class ship would be the new Enterprise (B)? I always thought the C was designed as a bridge between the A and the D, as it looks like almost a complete half-and-half of the two, and nothing like the B at all; but if the B was already conceived prior to that, then the design makes less sense. I can't say I noticed the wall models in any great detail. At what point in the series were they added?