Miranda class vs. Saratoga class? One has a roll bar and one, um, doesn't.
The Saratoga is a Miranda class starship.
Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard
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The Saratoga is a Miranda class starship.
Ah so these two are different types of ships? Because of slightly different shape of exhaust?
I'm actually quite happy with that, conceptually speaking: obviously, Starfleet refitted a newish design with even newer warp engines! Just cap that with a repainting and the in-universe rationale is fine and well.
This doesn't excuse the failure to show actual different types, of course. Or the decision to use these ridiculous numbers of the one, take your pick.
Timo Saloniemi
Oh, that's changed. Or my memory is faulty. But, I remember reading the Micro Machines Description or the Trek Encyclopedia and calling one a Saratoga class and the other a Miranda...
But, now I'm seriously questioning my memory.
Yes! That's it. Thank you. I knew I was remembering something and mixing it up.
Oh, yes, and there's also the AWAX-dish Antares and the cargo-tug Bradford, etc., etc. I think there have been around 7 different variants, all built off the core Miranda spaceframe. There has always been debate if these were ever considered whole classes unto themselves, or if they are subclasses of the main heavy frigate/light cruiser line. The debate will rage until the sun explodes, I imagine.
And beyond.
There is precedence that some classes of ships have variants (but are still the same class) and then there are ships that have variants but are a different class. How Starfleet determines that a ship is a variant or a new class is a mystery.
I personally think Chabon is copping out about there being four classes of ships because he damn well knows they all look the same except for some minimal differences in nacelle shape because they didn’t have the time or the budget to create more designs. Just because he’s the showrunner doesn’t mean that he’s an infallible source of information. He’s also calling these new ships the Curiosity class when in an earlier tweet he gave that class name for the ibn Majid, the silhouette of which looks nothing like these ships. So what’s the right answer?
I personally think Chabon is copping out about there being four classes of ships because he damn well knows they all look the same except for some minimal differences in nacelle shape because they didn’t have the time or the budget to create more designs. Just because he’s the showrunner doesn’t mean that he’s an infallible source of information. He’s also calling these new ships the Curiosity class when in an earlier tweet he gave that class name for the ibn Majid, the silhouette of which looks nothing like these ships. So what’s the right answer?
Picard could be argued to be at the same level of "bad fan fiction". I would rank it as a lesser Pocket Book adventure. At this point all official Star Trek material has going for it is professional acting. I'm pretty sure fans will never get there.
The people at CBS are as good as any home user. They just don't have the time or budget. And, frankly, neither do the home users. There's no way anyone at home could have organized the amount of special effects needed for even just the finale. It would take them a decade.
Is there any chance we will get official specs on these ships soon?
Good point. I was still in Eaglemoss-land, where the artists render everything in Lightwave, so stuff like Tobias's Titan, or the Discovery ships, are converted from Maya. On the other hand, they had the Tobias Ricter model of the E-D from TNG-R, already in Maya, and they elected to make their own, weird-looking model for Picard. Maybe they have a not-invented-here thing going on at that studio that keeps them from using library assets (I remember something similar happening with Stargate Atlantis, where there were two or three versions of the city and Puddle Jumper, depending on which VFX house was doing that particular episode. Never found out why, though).
If they were going to film it on a green screen, it'd look better. Even if they were pressed for time, they could, for instance, put Riker on the Enterprise-E. Use a wide shot from one of the movies as an establisher, and greenscreen in new crew (a trick that was pulled on TATV), then for the closeups, they could use the 360° photos they took for the old Captain's Chair CD-ROM either straight-up, or to make a rough 3D model using photogrammetry software. It wouldn't be ideal, you couldn't move around very much or get close, and would probably require a lot of TLC from the compositing team, but out-of-focus, it'd be serviceable. Fan-serviceable, even. It certainly wouldn't be obviously-the-Discovery-bridge-and-chair.
I don't know, maybe all those pre-production delays on Discovery gave CBS an allergy to planning or something, but it's weird how seat-of-the-pants the production on these shows feels.
If you are short of materials, advanced spacdocks, and experienced crew to be trained, the same class of ship makes sense.
Great to see Riker in the center seat one more time.
Great to see Riker in the center seat one more time.
They look like evolutions from the Enterprise-E / Sovereign class. Of course, I thought that looked ugly too. Anyway, they're clearly identifiable as Starfleet vessels.Imagine having this stunning history of starship designs before you joined...
and this is what you come up with:
It really couldn't be.
This argument will go nowhere but down.
I wasn't trying to make a point about the writing; I was making a point about the ship design.
Sorry, I disagree. One of the greatest (IMHO) physical modelmakers was Gregory Jein, who worked on Star Trek productions from TNG onwards, who was a former fan who was lucky enough to be hired by the Star Trek producers professionally. He would consistently create models on time and under budget, or even when the script called for a movie model reuse, he was able to side-step that and build a new design. And this was when physical models were being used, not CGI.
PIC had a huge budget. How that money was allocated was not the fault of the VFX personnel, nor is it a reflection of their talent or time constraints. If the producers knew there was going to be this huge starship fleet scene, they should have given their VFX people the time needed to design it. Whether it was John Eaves or John Smith, they can only work within the parameters of what they are given. What I think is that the producers just didn't make this a top priority, not that they didn't have the time or budget.
I hope so.
Is he your cousin? I can’t understand all the sucking up?
And there are also Nebula-class variants that have different mission pods and hull attachments.
Did he kill your dog? I can't understand all the hate?Is he your cousin? I can’t understand all the sucking up?
