Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[Tuskin38]

Tadeodoria.com has some great starship bridge renders of the Galaxy and other significant starship classes, they did a lot of custom commisions for roleplayers and gamers with updated Galaxy class bridges, but as of right now I think they have been taken off the website to be redone in a new format.

Tadeo has also contributed to the Roddenberry Archive. I think he also worked on Stage 9? I'm not sure.

He made a Ross Class bridge as well. Which basically looks like you'd expect, a Galaxy class bridge in the style of the Sovereign class.
https://tadeodoria.com/projects/mqGNAe?album_id=8263872

 

[fireproof78]

Tadeodoria.com has some great starship bridge renders of the Galaxy and other significant starship classes, they did a lot of custom commisions for roleplayers and gamers with updated Galaxy class bridges, but as of right now I think they have been taken off the website to be redone in a new format.

That's a nice resource.

 

[Macintosh]

Is that the canon launch date of the Galaxy? Is it seen or mentioned onscreen anywhere?

It's mentioned in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual.

I didn't say they were all destroyed in the Dominion War, just that I was glad that a few did survive.

They all survived going on screen evidence.

Yes but Kirk's ship had undergone a major rebuild and there is no evidence this was done to the Galaxy Class.

No evidence it wasn't either, since we don't see any current Galaxy-class ships after 2379. The TNG TM says that Galaxy-class ships were designed to have minor refits every five years and major refits every twenty, with a maximum lifespan of one hundred years.

If there are still Galaxys are around in 2401, they would at least have to be extensively refurbished and updated internally and at least have some slight external modifications to keep up with the advance in Federation tech.

Nobody is saying that the Galaxy-class was frozen in aspic in its 2360s configuration for all time. In fact there is some minor on-screen evidence that the Galaxy-class did receive some sort of class-wide refit at some point because the Syracuse's Bussard collectors are obviously different to any previous Galaxy-class, and of course there's some other minor variations visible on some Galaxy-class ships in the Dominion war.

And why keep the Galaxy Class around when the newer Ross Class exists,

Why retire perfectly good ships that are still fully operational and are clearly some of the most successful and capable ships in the fleet? There's Excelsiors and Mirandas everywhere up until the 2370s despite them being almost 100 years old.

without the need for a resource costly "refit" to keep them in service and the Odyssey likely suceeded the Galaxy Class, fulfilling the same mission profiles with greater efficiency. If on the off-chance there are updated Galaxys still in service, then I would actually be very excited to see them, as its my favourite Starfleet ship design!

It's entirely possible that Ross-class ships are just retrofitted Galaxy-class ships. Though I bloody hope not because the Ross-class is disgusting. Yes, let's combine the worst aesthetic aspects of the Galaxy-class with the worst aesthetics aspects of the Sovereign-class, yuck.

 

[Macintosh]

He made a Ross Class bridge as well. Which basically looks like you'd expect, a Galaxy class bridge in the style of the Sovereign class.
https://tadeodoria.com/projects/mqGNAe?album_id=8263872

That's what the Enterprise-E bridge should have been...

 

[Tuskin38]

IIRC in the designer's head canon at least, the Ross Class didn't replace the Galaxy, it was essentially a test bed for future tech.

 

[USS Artorius]

IIRC in the designer's head canon at least, the Ross Class didn't replace the Galaxy, it was essentially a test bed for future tech.

Yeah I read that on twitter, and I didn't say the Ross Class replaced the Galaxy Class, I said that most likely the Odyssey Class did, to a degree.

 

[USS Artorius]

Nobody is saying that the Galaxy-class was frozen in aspic in its 2360s configuration for all time.

That would be awesome though!

 

[USS Artorius]

In fact there is some minor on-screen evidence that the Galaxy-class did receive some sort of class-wide refit at some point because the Syracuse's Bussard collectors are obviously different to any previous Galaxy-class

Oh I thought they looked identical to the E-Ds bussards, but the original D was a physical model and the new CG one is not 100% accurate anyway.

It's mentioned in the Star Trek: The Next Generation Technical Manual.

Is that canon?? I thought only what is shown onscreen is to be considered canon. No books, no novels, just the movies and TV shows. I could be wrong...

Just because we don't see any other active Galaxy-class ships in PIC doesn't mean there aren't any.

Shroedinger's Starship?

 

[David cgc]

Oh I thought they looked identical to the E-Ds bussards, but the original D was a physical model and the new CG one is not 100% accurate anyway.

The PIC model (not just the Syra-prise, but the Enterprise-D in Picard's dream in the series premiere) have three lights inside the collectors instead of two. The innermost blue ring on the deflector is also rectangular where the original was more bowed. The original Enterprise-D model, for comparison.

 

[Tuskin38]

I wonder if they just altered the season 1 model then.

I also remember an analysis video, which I can't find now that showed there were at least 3 different CG models used in the last 2 episodes.

Which is not uncommon for shows these days, lower detail model will be used at far distances, more detailed closer up etc. Saves on rendering time.

 

[David cgc]

Which is not uncommon for shows these days, lower detail model will be used at far distances, more detailed closer up etc. Saves on rendering time.

Also, different VFX studios will either modify the model they get for their own needs, or sometimes have to built their own assets from scratch.

 

[Macintosh]

Oh I thought they looked identical to the E-Ds bussards, but the original D was a physical model and the new CG one is not 100% accurate anyway.

Since there were four physical models of the Enterprise-D used on screen and they all differed from each other too... I tend to regard the six-footer as being the definitive one since it is the one closest to Andrew Probert's original design documents.

Is that canon?? I thought only what is shown onscreen is to be considered canon. No books, no novels, just the movies and TV shows. I could be wrong...

Since it was written by the TNG production team based on internal production documentation that was used to ensure technical details in scripts etc were consistent I regard it as "canon until contradicted". It certainly shows the production team's intent. Compare with something like Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, which was not written by any show or movie production team and contains a lot of information which has since been contradicted.

Shroedinger's Starship?

It's not really Schrödinger's Uncertainty Principle. It's an aphorism often attributed to Carl Sagan, though he popularised it rather than originated it.

We know from SNW that Starfleet had 7000 active ships in the 2250s, and it seems unlikely that the fleet in the 2400s would be smaller than this; that would mean the 300-odd ships we see at Earth for Frontier Day are barely 5% of Starfleet's full forces. Given that there may be fewer than 20 Galaxy-class ships ever constructed based on the numbers we see in TNG and DS9, the surviving ones could all easily be elsewhere.

 

[fireproof78]

Is that canon?? I thought only what is shown onscreen is to be considered canon. No books, no novels, just the movies and TV shows. I could be wrong...

It is not.

 

[Praetor]

I think we're overlooking a possibility when it comes to why we aren't seeing the Galaxy class in this era...

Maybe the Galaxy class ships finally got to go on their deep-space long range missions after the Dominion War? The Ross class ships would be new and still close to home, as the Galaxy class was in the TNG/DS9/VGR era.

I imagine that the far-flung Ambassadors also finally made it home after the war, in time to be retired.

We know from SNW that Starfleet had 7000 active ships in the 2250s, and it seems unlikely that the fleet in the 2400s would be smaller than this; that would mean the 300-odd ships we see at Earth for Frontier Day are barely 5% of Starfleet's full forces. Given that there may be fewer than 20 Galaxy-class ships ever constructed based on the numbers we see in TNG and DS9, the surviving ones could all easily be elsewhere.

I call shenanigans on that 7,000 number. It must include outposts, auxiliary craft and small craft and perhaps even ships in mothballs. I don't think a 7,000 strong Starfleet in the 2250s is particularly plausible or desirable.

 

[cooleddie74]

Yeah, in my head the total number includes every spacefaring ship with a warp drive and not just starships. 7,000 just sounds wrong for this era even if we can retcon a head canon reason why.

 

[Macintosh]

I think we're overlooking a possibility when it comes to why we aren't seeing the Galaxy class in this era...

Maybe the Galaxy class ships finally got to go on their deep-space long range missions after the Dominion War? The Ross class ships would be new and still close to home, as the Galaxy class was in the TNG/DS9/VGR era.

I imagine that the far-flung Ambassadors also finally made it home after the war, in time to be retired.

I like this idea.

I call shenanigans on that 7,000 number. It must include outposts, auxiliary craft and small craft and perhaps even ships in mothballs. I don't think a 7,000 strong Starfleet in the 2250s is particularly plausible or desirable.

The line as delivered is: "There are 7000 active ships in Starfleet, all reliant on the chain of command." I'm not sure how much wiggle room that gives us. Runabouts have their own NCC numbers after all, so their 23rd century ancestors would likely count... but shuttles? I'm not sure we can include outposts or starbases even with a generous interpretation of "ships".

Then again, Ronald D Moore said that he thought Starfleet had "30 000 ships or so" in the 2370s, so maybe 7000 in the 2250s isn't unreasonable. If we interpret Picard's line in Star Trek: First Contact of the Federation being "spread across 8000 lightyears" as meaning the volume of Federation space is 8000 cubic lightyears in the 2370s, that's still fewer than four starships per cubic lightyear.

 

[Quantum21]

Since there were four physical models of the Enterprise-D used on screen and they all differed from each other too... I tend to regard the six-footer as being the definitive one since it is the one closest to Andrew Probert's original design documents.



Since it was written by the TNG production team based on internal production documentation that was used to ensure technical details in scripts etc were consistent I regard it as "canon until contradicted". It certainly shows the production team's intent. Compare with something like Mr Scott's Guide to the Enterprise, which was not written by any show or movie production team and contains a lot of information which has since been contradicted.



It's not really Schrödinger's Uncertainty Principle. It's an aphorism often attributed to Carl Sagan, though he popularised it rather than originated it.

We know from SNW that Starfleet had 7000 active ships in the 2250s, and it seems unlikely that the fleet in the 2400s would be smaller than this; that would mean the 300-odd ships we see at Earth for Frontier Day are barely 5% of Starfleet's full forces. Given that there may be fewer than 20 Galaxy-class ships ever constructed based on the numbers we see in TNG and DS9, the surviving ones could all easily be elsewhere.

Yeah, 300 has to be the most "local" fleet.

There are several thousand ships on earth right now, I'm sure 150 planets could come up with a few more than that.

 

[David cgc]

Not to open the other big can of worms, but my big pause with that line was how could there be 7,000 ships with less than 2000 registry numbers between them, which had started to be allocated out over a hundred years earlier and a large fraction of which would be out of service by that point.

And PIC ruled out one easy solution, showing that not only NX and NCC numbers, but also NAR numbers all come from the same sequence. Maybe there are some FJ-style oddball registries that can make up the difference, mixing in letters and numbers. Well, more than some, the vast majority.

Or maybe the Kelvin-verse has the answer, and NCC-514 and NCC-0514 are two different ships. That’ll give us another 1,100 potential numbers.

 

[Praetor]

The line as delivered is: "There are 7000 active ships in Starfleet, all reliant on the chain of command." I'm not sure how much wiggle room that gives us. Runabouts have their own NCC numbers after all, so their 23rd century ancestors would likely count... but shuttles? I'm not sure we can include outposts or starbases even with a generous interpretation of "ships".

Then again, Ronald D Moore said that he thought Starfleet had "30 000 ships or so" in the 2370s, so maybe 7000 in the 2250s isn't unreasonable. If we interpret Picard's line in Star Trek: First Contact of the Federation being "spread across 8000 lightyears" as meaning the volume of Federation space is 8000 cubic lightyears in the 2370s, that's still fewer than four starships per cubic lightyear.

Good points... I didn't remember how annoyingly specific that line was.

Yeah, 300 has to be the most "local" fleet.

There are several thousand ships on earth right now, I'm sure 150 planets could come up with a few more than that.

Agreed, Geordi's lines about "gathering the whole fleet" must be leaving out some qualifier like "gathering the whole home fleet" or something along these lines.

Not to open the other big can of worms, but my big pause with that line was how could there be 7,000 ships with less than 2000 registry numbers between them, which had started to be allocated out over a hundred years earlier and a large fraction of which would be out of service by that point.

And PIC ruled out one easy solution, showing that not only NX and NCC numbers, but also NAR numbers all come from the same sequence. Maybe there are some FJ-style oddball registries that can make up the difference, mixing in letters and numbers. Well, more than some, the vast majority.

Or maybe the Kelvin-verse has the answer, and NCC-514 and NCC-0514 are two different ships. That’ll give us another 1,100 potential numbers.

That was exactly why I disliked that 7,000 line; the registries just aren't high enough. It would also probably presuppose every ship ever registered (and then some) were in service at the same time. I mean we all know Starfleet registry numbers can't be sequential and purposefully seem to support lots of oddities, but still...

Possible that in the DSC era different classes, types or fleets had different registry prefixes and they were all renumbered at some point during the early TOS era?

Some examples:

• Registry Prefix by Type: Cruisers would still be NCC-XXXX while a frigate might be NCF-XXXX.
• Registry Letter by Type: Cruisers would be NCC-XXXX, survey ships would be NCC-SXXX, freighters would be NCC-FXXXX (which we did see on TAS) and so on.
• Registry Prefix by Fleet: First Fleet was registered NCA-XXXX, the Second Fleet NCB-XXXX, the Third Fleet NCC-XXXX... and we mostly saw ships from the Third Fleet.

The mental gymnastics to accommodate such a large number of ships gets quickly annoying and suffers from a general lack of onscreen evidence, and indeed, evidence to the contrary. Ignoring the Kelvin for a moment, what we do see is a bunch of NCC-XXXX registry ships as early as the 2250s with numbers that are around 1700 and below.

 

[Tiran O'Saurus]

In TAS, we saw some robot freighters with mixed letters and numbers in their registries. Those might be counted.