Praetor's Excelsior (II) MSD

[Praetor]

Hi - it's been a long time since I've seen some of you, and this is the first time meeting others.

I've been reclusive on the board for a number of years. As one who has always been obsessed with the original Excelsior, it will probably be of no surprise that I was similarly smitten with the Excelsior (II) class as presented in Seasons Two and Three of "Star Trek: Picard." I was surprised to see that nobody has apparently created an MSD for the class design, so I took a stab at it myself. Hope you enjoy.

I was surprised to discover, while creating this, that information online about the design is surprisingly scant, particularly the secondary hull upper back recess. I started making full ortho drawings but quickly turned my attention to an MSD; I may return to the orthos eventually but if my incomplete work on the original Excelsior is any indicator I should avoid making any promises. Doug Drexler's ArtStation (an excellent gallery if you have not had a chance to browse) provided some of the best resources. Though there are definite differences between his design and the finished ship, it's got a lot of great views and shows a lot of intent. Please be advised that this is very much a V1 pending the release of additional information about the design.

I've also added a new chapter to my "Excelsior: Infinite Velocity" writeup over on my Starfleet Heritage and History Command page. It was a fun challenge to try to reconcile the dubiously low registry numbers of the Excelsior (II)s with their apparent new design. Feel free to give it a read if interested.

As always, any and all feedback welcomed and appreciated.

Happy Trekking,
Praetor

 

[blssdwlf]

The TOS nacelle inside the warp nacelle is a nice touch

 

[Michael]

@Praetor! You’re alive! What a blast from the past. Good to see you, my friend. Hope life has been treating you well.

This is seriously impressive work! Can you please direct me to the rubber ducky room?

 

[Dukhat]

Hey Praetor, welcome back.

How does this MSD compare size-wise to the original Excelsior? If I remember correctly, you were one of the proponents of the Excelsior being larger than the official stated size of 467 meters, yes?

 

[Firebird]

Amazing work, @Praetor!

I didn't realize the neck on the Excelsior II was so huge!

 

[DEWLine]

The recovery of incomplete hulls for modern goals makes sense to me, given a tendency to not want to throw away anything prematurely...

 

[Praetor]

@Praetor! You’re alive! What a blast from the past. Good to see you, my friend. Hope life has been treating you well.

This is seriously impressive work! Can you please direct me to the rubber ducky room?

Hello to you my old friend, happy to still see you around these parts. Doing well and I hope you are!

And, I think you've just found one of the things that I forgot to include. I'll have to go with a V1.1 soon.

The TOS nacelle inside the warp nacelle is a nice touch

Hey, good to see you. And thanks, but I can't take too much credit.

Most of the modern MSDs incorporate a little TOS nacelle rear end as the "off axis field controller" but E-II's nacelle shape yielded itself to a complete, right-side-up copy so I leaned into it a bit.

In-universe, it would be easy to think that the TOS nacelle design, while enclosed in a lot of ways, might have a characteristically unique exposed off-axis field controller.

Hey Praetor, welcome back.

How does this MSD compare size-wise to the original Excelsior? If I remember correctly, you were one of the proponents of the Excelsior being larger than the official stated size of 467 meters, yes?

Hey there, good to see you! Good memory on you, as I am definitely a proponent of the "real" E-1 being 622 meters long for reasons I won't go into here.

There is some fantastic production art that the team shared on Twitter which establishes that the E-II's are 588 meters (1929 feet) long. A decent chunk of this is, of course, the elongated saucer and nacelles.

Here's two of those pieces of art, along with a great painting by John Eaves.

Amazing work, @Praetor!

I didn't realize the neck on the Excelsior II was so huge!

Thanks! And yeah, that was surprising to me too. It's funny that the neck "greeblies" are incorporated into the E-II as well, even though I think their purpose is still rather dubious. They seem to appear and go away on the E-1 and the Ambassador and possibly other designs I'm forgetting, so it doesn't seem like an evolutionary thing.

My best guess is that they're some kind of go-to heat sink technology for excess heat on starship designs that "run hot." The Klingon BOP also has a similar design on the wing joints on its "shoulders" that you could easily say do the same thing.

The recovery of incomplete hulls for modern goals makes sense to me, given a tendency to not want to throw away anything prematurely...

Thanks! After many years of study I've reached the conclusion (as many of you no doubt have) that Starfleet registry numbers are purposefully consistently inconsistent, enabling the writers can do whatever they want with when a ship was launjched/refit/etc. and have it be internally plausible. It would be easy to say "oh, these were just some unused numbers that got used later" (and if we see other E-II class ships with similarly low registries we may have to reconsider) but I thought it'd be more fun to give it a narrative.

 

[Bernard Guignard]

Great work there

 

[TIN_MAN]

Yes, great work as always! And welcome back, you've been missed.
As you know I'm mostly a TOS guy, but I do like ST: Picard and this Excelsior design is an improvement on the original design IMHO. Glad to see you doing something interesting with it.

 

[killekatarn]

Amazing Work, i have searched an Excelsior II Msd since i saw the ship the first time in PIC. And now i found this great one :O
Hope i get your permission to use your MSD and you cen seand me one without a watermark
Sure i'll give you credits and show you the 3D model for what i wanna use it.

 

[SuricataFX]

Looks great! She is indeed a big ship! (Maybe not so big as her captain though?)

 

[Firebird]

Amazing Work, i have searched an Excelsior II Msd since i saw the ship the first time in PIC. And now i found this great one :O
Hope i get your permission to use your MSD and you cen seand me one without a watermark
Sure i'll give you credits and show you the 3D model for what i wanna use it.

Oh wow! I love the melding of the Picard aesthetic with that late-Berman era feel.