Sovereign-Class Starship at Chin 'Toka?

Before we get into this too deeply, I have to confess to not having watched much DS9. That being said, I believe I have seen this episode before, albeit a long time ago. Today I discovered an image which seems to depict a Sovereign-class starship, possibly even the Enterprise-E, at Chin 'Toka.



It is also possible this is just another Excelsior-class starship, but having owned models of both ships, it looks much more like the Sovereign-class than the Excelsior-class (the wider saucer and flat profile is what gives it away). Thoughts and opinions are welcome!

 

It looks like an Excelsior-class ship to me.

The squares in the middle atop the saucer look like the impulse engines that jut out right there in an Excelsior-class vessel (the Soverign-class has them on the sides away from the connecting neck).

And the warp naceles don't look like the buldge at the front and taper off at the ends like a Soverign-class ship's naceles do.

Plus it just makes sense. I seriously doubt they'd have th budget to make up and toss in a Soverign-class model shot or create a computer-generated rendering. They already had those for the Excelsior-class.

 

IDK, The saucer section in that pic looks too sloped (like a Sovy or Intrepid) on top for an Excelsior.

Though, I think we would have seen a Sovereign in more than one shot if it was in there, unless someone just snuck one in for that shot.

 

The scene in question. Start a shortly after 14:09:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EDLjtp2Ummw


As you start to see the other Excelsior-class vessels head that way, it looks to me like that's what they'll look like further out.

 

Yeah, compared to the closer Excelsior, they look the same. Strange angle.

Still a shame they didn't have any Sovy's in there. It was an all out war after all.

They had dozens of Galaxy's that must have been coming out of a giant replicator fully finished. Reliants, Excelsiors and about every other ship type.

 

That is an Excelsior Class Starship.

The producers of DS9 confirmed that the Sovereign Class was not permitted to be used by the production during any scenes of DS9. The Sovereign was intended as a movie only vessel at that time.

It took them a great deal of time and effort to get approval to use the Intrepid Class for even one episode.

 

ILM provided their digital models of the Akira, Steamrunner etc to the DS9 & VOY SFX teams, who I think (I read somewhere) actually improved the quality of them.

 

Looks like an Excelsior - in the same episode I believe there is one shot where an Excelsior looks a bit squished and looks a lot like an Ambassador class, but they never had a CGI model of that one at all (shame really).

 

They revised the Akira twice since it first appeared in 'First Contact'. Tom Sasser had all three meshes and compared them.
The Akira was adjusted one final time for it's rendering for use in the Eaglemoss Magazine that accompanied the replica.

 

I assume you mean external shots? I seem to remember a sovereign class being included as internal shots either something to do with Bashir admiral Ross and maybe the romulans?? I can't really remember too well.

 

It's an Excelsior. Warp engine connecting pylons are out-and-up, angled at 90 degrees, whereas a Sovereign's would have been at a single upward angle at approx. 20-30 degrees. You can clearly see it on the starboard side. IIRC, the DS9 VFX team was specifically told by the suits to keep the E-E (and, by association, any of her sister ships) out of the Dominion War sequences.

 

The mess hall set of the Voyager was used to portray another Intrepid class ship, the Bellerophon, on a diplomatic mission to Romulus in "Inter Arma Enim Silent Leges". There were exterior shots of a suitably relabeled model to match. No other episode featured an Intrepid, though, as there again the writers and VFX people supposedly had orders not to step on the toes of their VOY colleagues.

(Funnily, it was the Voyager set - even though it was established in the pilot episode of VOY that the Captain normally has her or his own dining room, and this was converted to Neelix' kitchen. Nope, there wasn't a Talaxian kitchen in evidence in the DS9 episode, but there was the space for it, rather than a wall of replicators separating the Captain's Dining Room.)

Timo Saloniemi

 

The nacelles look a bit too big to be from an Excelsior. Although it could just be the angle of the shot.

 

Yes, the model looks drastically foreshortened through perspective distortion at that angle. The only real give-away there is definitely the engine pylons.

 

It really the impulse engines that gives it away.

 

This,

and this.

Plus, for comparison, here is the closest angle I could find for a Sovereign

 

That was the Intrepid Class USS Bellerophon, flagship of Admiral Ross at the time. There was a lot that the production had to go through to get permission to use the Intrepid for those scenes. The Executives were afraid that people would confuse the Bellerophon for the Voyager and they almost weren't allowed to use the ship (at the last minute they got approval). As for confusing them it probably didn't help that stock footage of Voyager was used several times in the episode including a shot where you can clearly make out Voyager's registry number.

Surprisingly the Constitution Class also fell into this trap for the entirety of the 24th Century Treks. That's why there are other designs from the 23rd Century, but not the famous Constitution (you know because people would clearly think any Constitution Class ship on screen was the Enterprise). The Stargazer was initially meant to be a Constitution Class ship.

The Sovereign Class was refused for production for the same reason. They didn't want people to think Picard was there and that Sisko was giving Picard orders and vice versa. To help the original poster I can understand your confusion about the images. The designers stated that the Sovereign is based on the Excelsior.

 

^Someone upthread mentioned how "they" forgot hard to have the Intrepid in a single episode. Yet the Defiant class appeared more than once on Voyager...Message in the Bottle and Endgame (more than one in both of them).

 

Ah it was an intrepid class, why did I think it was Sovereign class its been a while since I have seen DS9 in full. I really need to get back to my re-watch I started Series 3.

 

I briefly though the OP image might have been a Ambassador class, like the Enterprise Cee, the pylons are similar. But the impulse engine is wrong.