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Starship design history in light of Discovery

pst said:
it’s a “medical frigate”.
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...Surprisingly apt here if by frigate they mean a small escortish vessel - the underlying/scale-establishing Malachowski certainly is small in comparison with the other DSC ships.

Perhaps you get a medical frigate by cutting up a "frigate" and then inserting a "medical", that is, a boxy hospital module?

It's too bad they couldn't properly portray the broken-back nature of the wreck through the interior sets/locations. Then again, with artificial gravity and gravity anomalies from the asteroid... It's not bad as far as guest starships go. In fact, it's probably the most impressive example on screen, on par with the Kelvin on a much bigger screen!

Timo Saloniemi
 
DEWLine said:
I still consider "medical frigate" to be an oxymoron.
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Frigate seems to have changed meanings for ships historically more than just about anything else. Most hospital ships now are purpose built, or converted commercial ships (the Chinese navy has a cruise ship re-purposed as well. Spain used to use a converted mine-layer, that's ironic. )

I think in that context it would just mean a small escort ship, smaller than the normal ships of the line, able to do quick medical work in an engagement, the MASH unit of space. I have to imagine they used "medical frigate" as a fun easter egg for Return of the Jedi. They could have said medical ship or medical corvette.
 
XCV330 said:
I think in that context it would just mean a small escort ship, smaller than the normal ships of the line, able to do quick medical work in an engagement, the MASH unit of space. I have to imagine they used "medical frigate" as a fun easter egg for Return of the Jedi. They could have said medical ship or medical corvette.
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Well canonically the Medical Frigate in ROTJ was a converted combat ship, it had weapons on it.
 
The Federation Starfleet is certainly subject to rules laid down in documents that would serve as successors to the Hague Conventions.
 
For an obligatory obscure anecdote, the Littoral Navy of our very own mad king (aka enlightened sovereign) Gustav III of Sweden (French Revolution era) featured a prominent medical frigate. That is, the shipwright in charge, one af Chapman, created a major force of modern littoral vessels that could outsail conventional galleys and outfight them with heavy gun armament, even if not quite out-row them. These included full sailing frigates equipped with oars and then fine-tuned to allow for meaningful propulsion by muscle power. One of these was customized as the mad king's personal war yacht and command ship Amphion - an acknowledged folly that was nevertheless also intended to have a practical function, as a hospital ship in times of actual conflict.

Instead of an oxymoron, this medical frigate was the epitome of logic: no littoral ship smaller than a frigate could hope to accommodate medical facilities, while OTOH little would be gained by omitting the frigate functionality from this vessel, in a conflict where command or hospital services actually were not in that much demand (and in fact would backfire badly - letting the mad king command anything on the spot spelled disaster, while trying to heal the wounded resulted in the spreading of diseases that immobilized the fleet). Yet the medical frigate concept lay at the heart of the concept of an enlightened sovereign, allowing the supposed top mind of the realm to both brilliantly control his master plan and benevolently and rationally care for his soldiers... I could well see parallels to the ideals of the Federation there!

(Reading up on the Swedish archipelago fleet really is like diving in to the world of science fiction - af Chapman's technical marvels feel like starships in comparison with the standards of the day. Sprinkle some of this into standard Horatio Hornblower or Aubrey/Maturin naval adventures, and you significantly enhance the Star Trek experience of that age-of-sail setting...)

Timo Saloniemi
 
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And of course, the technologies of transporters and shuttlecraft and advanced multi-species medicine of the Trek adventures might actually stand a chance of making a "medical frigate" more workable...?
 
I really always liked the idea of "hospital ships" in the Star Trek universe, especially ever since the appereance of the USS Passteur in "All good things". It just makes so much sense.
 
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