do freighters look like SF ships? are they alien because they don't?
Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter pst
- Start date
Hell, the S.S. Woden in the Remastered edit of "The Ultimate Computer(TOS)" is a reuse of the Antares CGI model from "Charlie X(TOS)" and even has Enterprise-like warp nacelles and a deflector dish similar to the NCC-1701. And the Woden isn't a Starfleet ship so far as we know.
Trek is notoriously inconsistent in what looks "Starfleet" and what doesn't look like it.
Trek is notoriously inconsistent in what looks "Starfleet" and what doesn't look like it.
Some freighters are decommissioned SF ships?
At least they didn't reuse the CGI model of the Botany Bay like the original 1968 episode reused the shooting model from "Space Seed(TOS)." I can never, ever buy that sleeper ships from the 1990s and the early 21st century were still being used in the late 23rd century.
The original (or later?) Antares and the Merchantman have no SF design cues to them. The Bajoran freighter or the Xosa/Batris either.
I don't know that I particularly like the La Sirena design, but I don't dislike it, either. And I do like the fact that it is such a departure from the Starfleet aesthetic -- appropriate for a civilian freighter.
In fairness, I think the designers of La Sirena faced a really hard challenge -- they had to come up with a small civilian freighter design that looks good (and possibly even low-key heroic) but doesn't remind the audience of the Millennium Falcon from SW or Serenity from Firefly, probably the two biggest examples of fandom-beloved civilian freighters in space opera shows. That's honestly a challenge -- Serenity has this bird-like shape to it, so that rules out most shapes that evoke birds; and the Falcon has this boxy, flat pancake shape, so that rules out designs that are too flat or round. That leaves you with either boxey/rectangular shapes, or shapes that are less bird-in-flight evocative, or other weird shapes that honestly may be kind of ugly. La Sirena, with its enveloping front wings and inward bridge window, is probably a pretty good compromise, though I think it evokes the Cylon raiders from BSG unintentionally.
With Mr. Chabon having described La Sirena as having been built at Kaplan Schiffbau on the Hatzeplatz Colony?
Not alien, at least not exclusively so.
Not alien, at least not exclusively so.
La Sirena is very "ship of the week" which makes sense from the point of view of it being a kind of generic cargo ship, and its hull form and paint job fit that nicely as "not Starfleet." It is also bad because like other ships of the week it substitutes meaningful details with greebles. What La Sirena needs is purposeful detailing like the Enterprise-D, Voyager, and NX-01.
Imagine La Sirena with RCS thrusters, long range nav sensor, short range sensors, fuel ports, one distinct impulse engine color, visible weapons, a transporter transceiver array, distinct warp engine glow color, distinct Bussard collector color, maybe some navigation lights and a registry number. There is no reason those features can't be Federation standard features instead of distinctly Starfleet, and the ship could keep its hull shape and paint job which show it is definitely not of Starfleet.
That would make the ship look like it had work done on it, which isn't fair because looking at the untextured model shows it has a lot of work done on it which is invisible in most scenes.
The ship is supposed to resemble Eddie Van Halen's guitar. Not the most practical shape for a space freighter:
https://i.imgflip.com/3otxzo.jpg
https://i.imgflip.com/3otxzo.jpg
Well, it certainly is...
...unique.
...unique.
Tell that to Eddie Van Halen.
Who?Tell that to Eddie Van Halen.
Valerie Bertinelli's ex-husband.
Oohhh...thanks.
I did prefer the design of the Icarus from the fan film Renegades, but that's got the backstory of being a stolen Starfleet fighter.
La Sirena looks a little too "generic sci-fi" to me but truth told, so does every civilian guest ship in Trek (to the extent the Batris and Cassidy Yates' ship were redresses of a ship from the old V miniseries)
Which always puzzled me, as (to my eye) it's got a lot more Klingon design queues in the overall hull layout than Starfleet.
