• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Spoilers ST Prodigy - StarShips & Technology Season 1 Discussion

With "Prodigy"'s first season, part two coming soon (?), let's catch up with what the prducers have revealed of the new USS Dauntless:

https://trekmovie.com/2022/06/08/st...es-details-on-admiral-janeways-uss-dauntless/

While certain things (like the bridge design) seem a little pointless to copy from Arturis' ship (though I'll repeat that IMO it could've been a standard-ish Starfleet design that he adapted from Voyager's records), others feel comfy enough for Starfleet to simply reverse engineer a hull and engine design that obviously worked for someone else. I'm sure in the 32nd century she'll be sitting in the Fleet museum, next to the USS Osler in the "Starfleet ships that ARE Starfleet despite not LOOKING at all Starfleet" wing.

Mark
 
I love the original Dauntless and I am happy that Starfleet putting the ship - good design despite ill intent - to use both in canon (ENT: "Azati Prime" and Prodigy) and expanded universe (STO).

An Eaglemoss model of it - and perhaps the XL of the NX-01-A? - will be worth the wait.
 
I like parts of the original Dauntless, but even in my head canon for the 26th century, it's slightly redesigned.

I don't see why it wouldn't be.
The original fake design was from the late 24th century.
It stands to reason that once SF had its own Dauntless in operation, the hull design would have been vastly improved in the next 200 years... along with efficiency (and possibly speed)... not to mention that the decaying Benamite crystal issue would have been (realistically) solved well before that time frame.
 
I don't see why it wouldn't be.
The original fake design was from the late 24th century.
It stands to reason that once SF had its own Dauntless in operation, the hull design would have been vastly improved in the next 200 years... along with efficiency (and possibly speed)... not to mention that the decaying Benamite crystal issue would have been (realistically) solved well before that time frame.
In my head canon, the decaying Benamite Crystal isn't a "issue" but part of the way that it's used and is considered a "consumable" for advanced QSS.

Just like how Dilithium Crystals decay over time with use but you slow it down via recrystalization.

Regular QSS works just fine without any Benamite Crystals.

Advanced QSS w/ Benamite Crystal is for when you want to cross distances that span between Galaxies in a short time.

Just incase you get lost in another galaxy for whatever reason.

It's not like there isn't precedence for a Federation Starship to be flung to another Galaxy!
 
In my head canon, the decaying Benamite Crystal isn't a "issue" but part of the way that it's used and is considered a "consumable" for advanced QSS.

Just like how Dilithium Crystals decay over time with use but you slow it down via recrystalization.

Regular QSS works just fine without any Benamite Crystals.

Advanced QSS w/ Benamite Crystal is for when you want to cross distances that span between Galaxies in a short time.

Just incase you get lost in another galaxy for whatever reason.

It's not like there isn't precedence for a Federation Starship to be flung to another Galaxy!

I know.
That's why the original QS v1 was rated at 300 Ly's per hour at maximum which can't be sustained for very long (though sustainable cruise velocity was lower at around 27.7 Ly's per hour - to cross 60 000 Ly's in 3 months that is).

The QS V2 was rated at 10 000 Ly's per minute, and needed Benamite crystals as a consumable... I would also surmise that in addition to receystalization, the UFP would NOT encounter problems like they have with dilithium depletion, because Benamite crystals are synthetically made... and this process would have radically been improved upon by the 26th century to reduce the needed time to make the crystals from years to days, or maybe even hours or less.
 
I know.
That's why the original QS v1 was rated at 300 Ly's per hour at maximum which can't be sustained for very long (though sustainable cruise velocity was lower at around 27.7 Ly's per hour - to cross 60 000 Ly's in 3 months that is).
QS v1 is regularly used in my 26th Century Head Canon.

The QS V2 was rated at 10 000 Ly's per minute, and needed Benamite crystals as a consumable... I would also surmise that in addition to receystalization, the UFP would NOT encounter problems like they have with dilithium depletion, because Benamite crystals are synthetically made... and this process would have radically been improved upon by the 26th century to reduce the needed time to make the crystals from years to days, or maybe even hours or less.
QS v2 is a emergency tool due to the limited use of Benamite Crystals since they take years to manufacture at a industrial scale and can't be replicated. So the value of Benamite Crystals is very high and limited to emergency use to get back if you get shunted or flung far away for whatever reason.
No process allows you to manufacture the Benamite Crystals faster, but it has allowed mass production.
 
2lWV8Q9.png


zB3LZqZ.png
 
Design trends after the TNG era went all over the place, really. But historically, it takes a time for design trends to settle into something that sticks, based on the technology used to make it. On Earth, it took a good decade between the first flight and the use of fighter planes in First World War, by which time a LOT of really weird looking plane designs were tried out and even put into actual production. Plenty of them didn’t work out over time, and technology advanced in the meantime.

By the end of WWI, there were TONS of advances that allowed a certain new design trend for aircraft to take over and from there slowly evolve until the WWII, which saw another round of weird and crazy designs come up. Propeller planes basically got to where it is now following that conflict, but that in turn ushered in the jet age and a subsequent plethora of weird designs until they settled out again to a slower pace of evolution that continues to this day.

Applying this to Starfleet, IMO in the post-TNG era were coming out of a galactic scale conflict that probably outpaces everything that came before. While we didn’t see many new designs as a direct result of the conflict, it stands to reason that following the Dominion War there would be a great reason to buckle down and let Starfleet try new things based on all the stuff they’d seen. Rebuilding a fleet after a protracted war is a great opportunity to let imaginations go wild.

This COULD be a reasonable excuse to explain all the crazy different starship designs in shows like PIC, LDS and PROD. Maybe one of these will settle out as the ultimate winner for a uniform set of ship design types that will carry them through a protracted era of peace. Or not. Who knows?

Mark
 
The aft view looks a bit funny. That black opening reminds me of a slipper and the navdef (?) looks like the primary hull has a turkey neck.
 
Can't wait to see more of it!
Regarding tech in general, the upcoming Supernova game appears to reveal more about the Tars Lamoran watchers.
 
I've noticed that the Dauntless seems capable of communicating with cranky Starfleet Admirals on Earth live, from wherever they are at the time of the episode - presumably in the Delta Quadrant, but in practice they're almost certainly tens of thousands of light years from home. Are we to presume this new Dauntless has some manner of hyper-subspace comms like Voyager used towards the end of their journey? The Protostar presumably doesn't have that capacity, or else they'd have speed-dialed up Starfleet by now.

Glad to have this show back this week. :)

Mark
 
Are we to presume this new Dauntless has some manner of hyper-subspace comms like Voyager used towards the end of their journey? The Protostar presumably doesn't have that capacity, or else they'd have speed-dialed up Starfleet by now.
* Perhaps the use the same method employed by Project Pathfinder and Voyager.
* To paraphrase EAS: hyper-subspace = upper/lower space = normal space?
 
I need a model of that ship.

GIF showing a giant USS Dauntless appear in front of a small USS Protostar.
Link: https://twitter.com/TheTrekCentral/status/1567979265718722562?s=20&t=0wS1e8Sc__5JN7YRaIraFQ
I had assumed they're about the same size, until now.
Hmm... Looks like they've artificially upscaled the Dauntless for dramatic purposes in this one specific scene without downscaling the windows. Don't get me wrong, it's a cool scene, but after a few seconds of rewatching it, the relative scales of these two ships definitely look off.

Update: If we look at the window sizes relative to the overall sizes of the two hulls in these pics, I would say that MAYBE the Dauntless might only be a tiny bit bigger than the Protostar. There was definitely some scale-fudging going on there.
something.jpg
daunt.png
 
Last edited:
I wonder, did Starfleet change the design details of the Dauntless because they couldn't replicate Species 116's technology closely, or are they deliberate changes because now its a "real" Starfleet ship?
 
My guess is that the changes made were consistent with Starfleet's ability to replicate 116's tech, but with SF's tech as a baseline, necessarily imposing what we would interpret as cosmetic differences. I suspect there are also "mission needs" in the SF version that weren't taken into account by the original. The Dauntless' bridge, however, also looks damn near identical to the original, right down to the carpet patterns, console layouts and bumpy headrest on the captain's chair.
bridge.png
I think I find 116's version more appealing aesthetically (on the exterior). I'm really not liking that absurdly large opening (shuttlebay?) in the rear of the primary hull. It's quite an overpowering design element. All the other views look pretty good to me, though.
 
Last edited:
I think I find 116's version more appealing aesthetically (on the exterior). I'm really not liking that absurdly large opening (shuttlebay?) in the rear of the primary hull. It's quite an overpowering design element. All the other views look pretty good to me, though.
I don't like because it looks like an organic, giant, dark hole. Like a scar from a former growth.
 
There's apparently some scientific basis for this - a thing called "trypophobia". Several studies have been done regarding human aversion to "holes". Here's one: Aversion to holes driven by disgust, not fear, study finds: Psychologists reveal neural underpinnings of trypophobia -- ScienceDaily. I really hate assigning the whole "phobia" term to yet something else (it's been way too overused in recent years and often incorrectly) but this really does seem to be a thing - despite the fact this one is "driven by disgust, not fear", really not a "phobia", but I digress...

I remember first hearing about this phenomenon when Apple brought out some new iPhone a couple of generations back with multiple camera lenses that looked like hole clusters which a lot of people were really put off by. Come to find out there is a ancient, deep, visceral and almost caveman reaction humans have to clusters of holes that subconsciously register as "dangerous" to us, invoking subliminal thoughts of spider eyes, snake scales or honeycombs. Of course, some psychiatrists have to wrap it into pedantic psychobabble to make us all sound like we all have irreversible mental problems for thinking such things, but it is a common affliction. I'm kind of weirded out by it too.

Now, I don't know if that's what's happening here to me in the case of the Neo-Dauntless, but that open back-end definitely seems really "off" to me. And yes, it doesn't at all help matters any that the whole ship looks like it's been organically grown, as opposed to built by conventional means.
 
Last edited:
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top