Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[Challenger2090]

Ooh, good point. I like the Emmett Till design quite a bit myself, I forgot about it though. Eaglemoss has been promising a model of that thing for a couple of years now and we still haven't gotten it.

As far as Eaves's DSC designs I like, I agree with you on the Walker class, and I'm particularly fond of the Cardenas. I just wish it weren't so flat.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

I honestly like the Emmett Till from the What We Left Behind documentary more than the Zheng He or anything else from Picard and Discovery, barring the Walker class.

Walker class and Enterprise E stand out way above the rest.
My main issues are the amount of razor sharp angles especially on the nacelles but the redundant holes in the new ships is a criminal piece of nonsense

 

[Timo]

Oh, the more holes, the merrier - we now have to be consistent and recognize that holes are a thing of the future.

Plus it

a) makes it likelier for the enemy to miss, and
b) gives some legitimacy for the heroes to always take the turbolift, even when reaching one station requires walking through the entire existing corridor set first, and the same walk has to take place at the other end unless that end is the bridge; with all the holes, the long route is the only viable one, and you can't walk the whole way!

But yeah, go Emmett Till! A stablemate for the Sovereign, along with Curiosity class. That is, unless the Till is Curiosity class...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

If the logic behind making holes in your hull is to have your enemy miss you when they take a shot, then one would think they’d want to make holes in the engines, not the saucer. Holes in a saucer serve no inherent purpose unless you live in the 32nd century and can personally beam anywhere. This kind of thing is why John Eaves’s starship designs make very little sense to me.

 

[Timo]

Vulcans had the right idea all along: the smallest profile a Trek warship could present to the enemy would be that of thin spindle hulls. Great for the usual head-on confrontations and tail chases, and fairly good from all the sides, too. A saucer is already a compromise from head on and from two sides, but additionally suffers from every other side... Oh, well, at least it's better than a sphere there.

Having a saucer in the first place could stem from, oh, at least three reasons.

1) If it's floor area they want, then wide flat decks are better than narrow ones stacked atop each other; stacking 'em up into a sphere or a cube makes for more walls and corners, and makes the profile creep towards maximum. But having holes would be another way to add walls and corners and detract from the goal.

2) If it's a flying saucer they want, then holes might not mar the aerodynamics or warpdynamics or whateverdynamics much, and lightening up the structure could be a good idea. That is, a wing is better when it's long and broad and thin than when it's a brick.

3) If it's a shape that needs to fit within a space, either a shield or a warp field or whatever, then it's a poor showing overall. But perhaps a starship needs to stretch out to as far as she possibly can, to erect a bigger and better field? In that case, saucers with holes in them (or indeed pure rims with only as many spokes as the tech level of the day requires, this going down to zero eventually) would be fantastic.

But it's pennywise anyway: a starship is put together so as to waste space rather maximally, what with the fancy pylons and necks and the like. Holes in saucers or cigars or pylons don't matter much in comparison.

As for the decisive question of whether it looks cool... A ship with stars shining through is bound to lose character. We want to see more of the ship and less of the emptiness behind, damnit! But if it's now dark in space, we get to see nothing anyway, and Eaves might just as well stop delivering ships and start delivering lit-up pennants that glide through space.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Tuskin38]

That is, unless the Till is Curiosity class..

Eh I don't think so. Nacelles seem too thick and the saucer is missing the forward cutout.

It looks more like a sovereign with sideways nacelles to me.

This kind of thing is why John Eaves’s starship designs make very little sense to me.

Eaves didn't work on Discovery past Season 1, so you can't blame that on him.

None of his designs that have actually made it into canon have negative space, other than the Crossfield and the Connie's pylons. IIRC, he did designs of the Crossfield without it, but the higher ups liked the Negative space, so asked him to do more of that.

edit: Oh right, some of his Klingon and Jem'hadar designs do. I keep forgetting he did designs outside of Starfleet.

 

[WarpFactorZ]

I hope we see more ships -- exterior and interior -- in S2 of Picard. I suspect the Stargazer will feature prominently, and it will be interesting to see how they update the bridge. I think we can all pretend that what we saw in The Battle was "misremembered" by Picard... I doubt it will be a redress of Disco, since that would involve shuttling a lot of actors to Toronto.

 

[Challenger2090]

...I suspect the Stargazer will feature prominently, and it will be interesting to see how they update the bridge...

A little off topic (sorry) but why are you thinking the Stargazer will show up? I'll admit I haven't been keeping up on PIC news...I wasn't in love with S1 so I've been less than enthusiastic about following S2 production.

..I doubt it will be a redress of Disco, since that would involve shuttling a lot of actors to Toronto...

You never know, they shipped Jonathan Frakes to Toronto to shoot his Zheng He scenes on a redressed Discovery bridge.

 

[Timo]

Without spoiling much, the teaser trailer shows a beautiful and detailed Stargazer desktop model - but also hints at a time travel theme for the second season, FWIW, thus possibly returning Picard to his old bridge in some sense, be it a bona fide revisit, a transfer of Picard's consciousness (or at least the show's POV) into his younger self, or just a nostalgia moment achieved via the holotech of the Sirena.

We saw fairly little of that bridge in "The Battle", not so surprisingly considering it was just a partial rebuild of an existing set. Merely filling in the missing bits might suffice for a facelift, since the 1980s look for 2280s technology was considered good enough for many a revisit in the 1990s shows still...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[WarpFactorZ]

You never know, they shipped Jonathan Frakes to Toronto to shoot his Zheng He scenes on a redressed Discovery bridge.

Frakes was already in Toronto directing some episodes of Disco.

A little off topic (sorry) but why are you thinking the Stargazer will show up? ...

Aside from the comment above about the trailer, the Stargazer era is really one of the only eras of Picard's life that we know nothing about (apart from Jack Crusher and the Battle of Maxipad). And he spent, what, 20ish years on the ship? There are a lot of stories to tell, certainly some that Q would enjoy digging up as life lessons.

 

[DEWLine]

Yeah, the timing of Frakes' work with DSC was very good for PIC purposes. I'm happy with the results that way.

 

[NCC-73515]

I hope we see more ships -- exterior and interior -- in S2 of Picard. I suspect the Stargazer will feature prominently, and it will be interesting to see how they update the bridge. I think we can all pretend that what we saw in The Battle was "misremembered" by Picard... I doubt it will be a redress of Disco, since that would involve shuttling a lot of actors to Toronto.

Was it also misremembered by Data, Geordi, Beverly, Tasha, and Worf?

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

A little off topic (sorry) but why are you thinking the Stargazer will show up? I'll admit I haven't been keeping up on PIC news...I wasn't in love with S1 so I've been less than enthusiastic about following S2 production.



You never know, they shipped Jonathan Frakes to Toronto to shoot his Zheng He scenes on a redressed Discovery bridge.

Would it kill them to just do an accurate representation without Eavesing and lensflaring the s**t out of the ship

 

[Deks]

I think the problem really came down to the size of the fleet, not the number of ship variants. If each fleet was 20-30 ships instead of 100+, it would have been way more plausible overall and not really taken anything away from the scene. It was a mistake, but apparently someone really wanted to hit control V a bunch of times.

Why?
The Federation is comprised of over 150 alien species in late 24th century at the time of First Contact. More if you count Insurrection and the fact they admitted new members.
Each species solar system has its own shipyards... and if they are a fresh species (just achieved Warp travel), and admitted into the Federation, it stands to reason that Starfleet would bring those solar systems up to capacity in line with other solar systems ship-building capabilities).

SOL alone has what... hundreds or possibly thousands of drydocks (each capable of building a starship).
There are shipbuilding facilities in Earth's orbit, in orbit of Mars, in other parts of SOL... and the situation is likely the same in each/every member species native solar system (such as Vulcan, Andoria, Tellar, etc.).

With only 100 drydocks per each member species NATIVE solar system (and there's bound to be MUCH more than that), you can easily allocate 10 drydocks per solar system to build a given ship design.
And in a short span of time (a couple of weeks or less - thanks to transporters, replicators, tractor beams and automation), you'd end up with AT LEAST 1500 ships (if 150 systems were building ships) of a given design.

There were also 7000 active ships in the 23rd century Starfleet. That's with much less member planets/species.
By 2371, we've seen Voyager had a hull registry of 74656. It stands to reason this would indicate a number of ships in the fleet... or over 10x more ships than what SF had over 100 years earlier.

Its perfectly plausible.
Also if it takes a while to travel at Warp, you'd need more ships for patrol of existing Federation space, exploration, etc.

So, having 100+ ships of a given design would basically be 10% of a total number of ships of that class.

Not a big deal for an organization as big and advanced as the Federation.

 

[Deks]

Mm. I just counted like...18+ instances of unidentified Galaxy-class starships across dominion war photos on Memory Alpha. Frankly, some of those might be intended to be the same ships across these photos — but 10 or more were all in one singular fleet among several other starships at Starbase 375 ahead of Operation Return.

Exactly exactly. Makes for bad drama, as Mike Okuda said in that — I’m gonna cite it again — author’s note in the TNG Tech Manual.

Drama be damned.
Write a story that works with the technological setting and adapt the drama to that.

Besides, these ship construction facilities are located in solar systems with access to massive amount of solar radiation/energy which can be used for energy to matter replication of ships (or other things).
Its not a big deal for UFP level of technology.

 

[fireproof78]

Would it kill them to just do an accurate representation without Eavesing and lensflaring the s**t out of the ship

It might. They don't know for sure and are not willing to take the risk.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

It might. They don't know for sure and are not willing to take the risk.

The Stargazer will suddenly have a hole in the saucer, a fleet of vipers, the nacelles will spin like a windmill when it powers up the warp drive and Picard's ready room will be accessed via giant roller coaster inside the ship

 

[fireproof78]

The Stargazer will suddenly have a hole in the saucer, a fleet of vipers, the nacelles will spin like a windmill when it powers up the warp drive and Picard's ready room will be accessed via giant roller coaster inside the ship

Stupid wind powered warp engine.

 

[Dukhat]

Would it kill them to just do an accurate representation without Eavesing and lensflaring the s**t out of the ship

It might. They don't know for sure and are not willing to take the risk.

The Stargazer will suddenly have a hole in the saucer, a fleet of vipers, the nacelles will spin like a windmill when it powers up the warp drive and Picard's ready room will be accessed via giant roller coaster inside the ship

Considering they've shown that Stargazer desktop model several times, I doubt they'll change its outward appearance at all if they actually show it. The interior, however, will probably be another story.

 

[fireproof78]

The interior, however, will probably be another story.

Well of course. How else are they to piss off long time fans?