Spoilers ST Lower Decks - Starships and Technology Season One Discusssion
- Thread starter Mark_Nguyen
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We don't need to believe in originality or individuality much, either. Earth has "Earth Colonies"; perhaps some Klingon names likewise simply state "Mine" (in all senses of the word), or "Farm", or "Fortress"? Or "First", "Second" and so forth, only again in some archaic version of the lingo where they actually go "Eeny", "Meeny", "Miney" and "Mo".
Some of the (admittedly offscreen) DSC Klingon ship class names are less than inspired, but that doesn't mean they would be implausible. Perhaps Klingons don't value inspiration much?
Timo Saloniemi
Some of the (admittedly offscreen) DSC Klingon ship class names are less than inspired, but that doesn't mean they would be implausible. Perhaps Klingons don't value inspiration much?
Timo Saloniemi
Indeed, we don't know if they have multiple names for their ship classes for honorific purposes. Maybe it's "D-12" on paper, but "B'rel" to folks of this house, and "K'vort" to folks of that caste.
Mark
Mark
We see what appear to be blue worms in Undiscovered Country
We may well speculate on whether Klingons believe in the concept of "class name". Ol' Soviets didn't; Russia sort of does, on occasion, to appeal to Western tastes, for the purposes of export markets - but not really.
A Soviet ship class would have a Project designation which has an arousing name and a boring number. Individual ships would have names, unrelated to the Project name - or then not, depending on size and political climate and so forth. A Russian class might additionally be called by the name of the inaugural ship, even in Russian press and sales brochures; a Soviet class would be called by a made-up NATO name unrelated to the names of the ships or the Project. Sometimes a Project would result in several distinct classes, with the same name but a slightly different number.
With the Klingons our designated Space Soviets, the above would already cover all the bases, really. Now add the Space Viking Biker Samurai stuff for some individualist flair and you can play ball with bases not yet even invented...
Timo Saloniemi
Lots of rim windows again. And those dorsal vanes!
Very businesslike otherwise, with no dangling bits. Or a deflector dish. Or color coding. Sort of Akira-sized. The lack of bridge detail is a bit jarring, when the rest is full of portholes and devoid of an armored feel.
Timo Saloniemi
Very businesslike otherwise, with no dangling bits. Or a deflector dish. Or color coding. Sort of Akira-sized. The lack of bridge detail is a bit jarring, when the rest is full of portholes and devoid of an armored feel.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, Kirk's ship meets those criteria, too, as defined by his saucer.
Apart from two or three slits next to a docking port in the Galaxy / Nebula pylon, no, I don't think we have seen signs of habitation in those. Unless one counts the thing that connects the saucer to the single nacelle in the onscreen Freedom and the background-graphics-only Hermes, that is. And, if one does, also the thing that connects the saucer to the two pairs of nacelles in the Cheyenne (although not in the Constellation). Thin structures and portholes are no strangers in Trek; it's just a matter of definition.
Nothing thin about the Vancouver pylons! One probably doesn't even need to tilt the deck gravity in there to make the portholes practicably serve the cabins.
Timo Saloniemi
Apart from two or three slits next to a docking port in the Galaxy / Nebula pylon, no, I don't think we have seen signs of habitation in those. Unless one counts the thing that connects the saucer to the single nacelle in the onscreen Freedom and the background-graphics-only Hermes, that is. And, if one does, also the thing that connects the saucer to the two pairs of nacelles in the Cheyenne (although not in the Constellation). Thin structures and portholes are no strangers in Trek; it's just a matter of definition.
Nothing thin about the Vancouver pylons! One probably doesn't even need to tilt the deck gravity in there to make the portholes practicably serve the cabins.
Timo Saloniemi
Holy Chandley-class, Cap-man! One of my favourite FASA designs. Wouldn’t be surprising if it was an influence.
Mark
Mark
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This one is pretty! 
USS Vancouver coming next week!
The similarities to the California class and this ship’s low registry number is more evidence that the California class is at least older than the Galaxy class from 2363.
It would be cool to associate the square cross section marker-pen nacelles on both of these ships with those on the Miarecki models that blend Galaxy influences with blockier structures and lower registries... Perhaps the hulls changed from Excelsiorish/Ambassadorish to Galaxyish first, and the engines only later on. (In which case the New Orleans got an engine refit at some point.)
Timo Saloniemi
Timo Saloniemi
I'll be doing more on 1x04 shortly. But until then:
USS Vancouver NCC-70492
USS Cerritos NCC-75567
and...
USS Merced NCC-87075!
The highest known Starship reg in official works yet. And a Pandora's Box of speculation in terms of sequential NCC numbers! To say nothing of what happened to all the Merced-class starships, the only one we know of being the USS Trieste NCC-37124, which Data described as being "too small, too slow" back in 2263, though she was fast enough to keep up with a Starfleet blockade task force in '68.
Mark
USS Vancouver NCC-70492
USS Cerritos NCC-75567
and...
USS Merced NCC-87075!
The highest known Starship reg in official works yet. And a Pandora's Box of speculation in terms of sequential NCC numbers! To say nothing of what happened to all the Merced-class starships, the only one we know of being the USS Trieste NCC-37124, which Data described as being "too small, too slow" back in 2263, though she was fast enough to keep up with a Starfleet blockade task force in '68.
Mark
Every single one of a design from "the 30000s era" gruesomely dying before the 2370s roll doesn't sound that implausible to me.
What I find curious is that there are so few 80000+ registry ships in evidence. A steady rate of increase would have Starfleet add 10k numbers each decade, starting at 10000 or so after the four-digit ones of the 23rd century; TNG would be "the 70000s era" and VOY "the 80000s era", with the obvious excuse of the camera being at Delta most of the time. DS9 is the odd one out here...
Then again, we got significantly fewer registries in that show than in TNG, what with there not being Okudagrams for the purpose, just that one unchanging Casualty List. A sufficient excuse for not spotting the 80ks that "really" were flying there in all the big fleets?
Basically, here we have a repeat of the USS Constellation reference from DS9 "The Abandoned": is that the relic from the 2280s or so, or did the very last of those relics finally crock it, allowing Starfleet to apply the name to individual ships of other classes without contradiction? But we never saw the Constellation there. We did see the Merced.
Timo Saloniemi
What I find curious is that there are so few 80000+ registry ships in evidence. A steady rate of increase would have Starfleet add 10k numbers each decade, starting at 10000 or so after the four-digit ones of the 23rd century; TNG would be "the 70000s era" and VOY "the 80000s era", with the obvious excuse of the camera being at Delta most of the time. DS9 is the odd one out here...
Then again, we got significantly fewer registries in that show than in TNG, what with there not being Okudagrams for the purpose, just that one unchanging Casualty List. A sufficient excuse for not spotting the 80ks that "really" were flying there in all the big fleets?
Basically, here we have a repeat of the USS Constellation reference from DS9 "The Abandoned": is that the relic from the 2280s or so, or did the very last of those relics finally crock it, allowing Starfleet to apply the name to individual ships of other classes without contradiction? But we never saw the Constellation there. We did see the Merced.
Timo Saloniemi
Is it remotely possible that Starfleet Intelligence is messing with enemies of the Federation by not keeping hull registries at all consistent, so they have no fucking clue how many ships Starfleet actually has or which are the most advanced designs?
Cardassian captain: That ship has an 80000-registry, it's one of their latest designs!!
USS PizzaDeliveryShip: *Snort*
Cardassian captain: That ship has an 80000-registry, it's one of their latest designs!!
USS PizzaDeliveryShip: *Snort*
Well, y'know, this is not without precedence IRL. US Navy submarines often scrub their numbers from the main sail, particularly before going on long dark missions.
I don't think the writers of Trek have put that much thought into it, though, not to mention Trektech fanboi's heads exploding if they ever actually did put that much thought into it! Decades of registry canon research would effectively be thrown into the bit-bucket.
I don't think the writers of Trek have put that much thought into it, though, not to mention Trektech fanboi's heads exploding if they ever actually did put that much thought into it! Decades of registry canon research would effectively be thrown into the bit-bucket.
Further speculation before I settle in to properly watch the episode:
The USS Merced, following the nomenclature logic in this show, is named for the City of Merced in California, presumably along the same lines as the City of Cerritos, CA getting a namesake for our shows. Both are California-class. But does this mean there that the actual USS California is named for the state, or the eponymous city some 100 miles north of Los Angeles?
And what does this mean in turn for the USS Illinois, aboard which Freeman and Durango both served together in (counts fingers) 2365? Are we implying she's the class ship, or a ship named for the actual City of Illinois that resides in the same state? And again, would the USS Vancouver be part of a British Columbia-class, or perhaps a Washington-class despite living in the shadow of the much better-known centre of Canadian arts, enterprise, and cannabis culture?
The closest analogy we have here are the DS9 runabouts, which are all named for Earth rivers, but the class vessel is named after a river herself. Thoughts?
Mark
PS - 2365, eh? Now looking forward to fanart of Freeman and/or Durango sporting TNG Season 1-2 uniforms.
The USS Merced, following the nomenclature logic in this show, is named for the City of Merced in California, presumably along the same lines as the City of Cerritos, CA getting a namesake for our shows. Both are California-class. But does this mean there that the actual USS California is named for the state, or the eponymous city some 100 miles north of Los Angeles?
And what does this mean in turn for the USS Illinois, aboard which Freeman and Durango both served together in (counts fingers) 2365? Are we implying she's the class ship, or a ship named for the actual City of Illinois that resides in the same state? And again, would the USS Vancouver be part of a British Columbia-class, or perhaps a Washington-class despite living in the shadow of the much better-known centre of Canadian arts, enterprise, and cannabis culture?
The closest analogy we have here are the DS9 runabouts, which are all named for Earth rivers, but the class vessel is named after a river herself. Thoughts?
Mark
PS - 2365, eh? Now looking forward to fanart of Freeman and/or Durango sporting TNG Season 1-2 uniforms.
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