Question for Rick Sternbach Re: Qo'Nos One Size

[137th Gebirg]

Mr. Sternbach:

Another conversation surfaced over at the Starship Modeler discussion thread about the size of the Kronos One as compared to the standard K'T'inga battlecruiser. Apparently (and I don't have the book in front of me right now, but) the Haynes Klingon Bird of Prey manual shows Kronos One to be around 349 meters in length, whereas the standard K'T'inga is supposed to be 214m (awfully small by comparison). One poster cited the shot with K1 flying along side the Enterprise in ST6, looking considerably larger than the E-A (305m), but others feel this is an optical illusion with the K1 being "closer to the camera", as it were.

I personally always thought the K1 was simply a souped-up KT'inga, with a new paint job and enhanced engine/weapons systems (by modifying the original TMP filming miniature). However, if the book mentions different dimensions for that one ship, I was wondering if this was for real or (for lack of a better word) a typo.

I did mention on the other site that there is canonical evidence that Klingons liked to resize similar designs based on mission needs, as shown by the amazing morphing Bird of Prey. In fact, IIRC, in one of the old FASA sourcebooks (I think it was the Klingon Ship Recognition Manual) they mentioned that once the Klingons procured the design for the BoP, the Romulans became rather irritated that they started seeing larger (K'Vort) versions flying near their shared border.

I just figured I'd drop you a line to see if you could shed some light on this, when you get the opportunity.

Thanks very much for your time.

 

[Unicron]

^ You're correct about the FASA source. The original Romulan version is a small scout ship that's only 88m long, by FASA scaling, and the Klingons weren't supposed to make any alterations to technology traded between the two powers. They did so anyway and scaled up the scout sized unit to larger cruiser and frigate hulls, and the Romulans promptly got a form of revenge by directly copying the L-42 frigate design for their own fleet. Even those scaled up versions weren't too much larger than the Constitution/Enterprise type cruisers, and would have been perhaps evenly matched.

But we all know how fun scaling and continuity can be...

 

[Rick Sternbach]

Mr. Sternbach:

Another conversation surfaced over at the Starship Modeler discussion thread about the size of the Kronos One as compared to the standard K'T'inga battlecruiser. Apparently (and I don't have the book in front of me right now, but) the Haynes Klingon Bird of Prey manual shows Kronos One to be around 349 meters in length, whereas the standard K'T'inga is supposed to be 214m (awfully small by comparison).

I must confess I didn't have a lot to do with the other ships shown in the KBOP manual; most of my time was spent with the Bird-of-Prey. I think in a lot of cases I was given a length, and I calculated the proportional heights and widths. Since we posited that Klingon ships could be scaled "on the fly" as it were in the shipyards, some similar looking vessels might have different lengths. A cheat, I know, and hopefully the discussions will continue.

Rick

 

[137th Gebirg]

Fair enough - thanks very much for the response. Much appreciated.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

It's an old error from the DS9 tech manual. This article explains it.

 

[137th Gebirg]

^^^ Interesting. Looks like an old error that eventually got retconned into reality by a later effort. Thanks for the link - that does seem to explain the provenance of the alternate length number.

 

[Boris Skrbic]

The K’t’inga isn’t as vaguely detailed as the BoP, so I wouldn’t be so quick to rationalize that as rescaling (not that I’m a fan of the BoP theory either — though I generally like the BOPTM, it would’ve been better to pretend the large BoPs were actually slightly different designs, and simply treat that part of the show as a “blooper” or VFX limitation). The DS9TM and BOPTM aside, it’s been sized at 214.3m fairly consistently across publications, going back to David Kimble’s official TMP blueprints of 1980. Given their accuracy with the other TMP ships, I’m fairly sure the number comes from a production source, and I haven’t really seen anyone dispute that size. Andrew Probert fitted it out with the TMP bridge (at the very least), so he might have more info.