Starships larger than heavy cruisers?

[Darkwing]

Timo, re Diane Duane's 8-km limit:
IIRC, in The Wounded Sky and My Enemy, My Ally, she refers to 5 km as the minimum distance starships are required to maintain from all other ships during normal maneuvering. The Defender/Deneb design, being so much larger, is required to maintain an 8km separation.

 

[Timo]

Makes good sense. Although if the distances are directly proportional to ship sizes, then the Deneb/Defender isn't really 1/4 mi wide - or alternately Kirk's ship is much larger in Duane's books than in general fan opinion or in those latter-day episodes of TOS-R or ENT where we can finally get a direct estimate of scale.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[T'Girl]

Or maybe the Defender/Deneb is a pig when it comes to maneuvering, and so requires
addition clearance space around it.

And wasn't the multiple kilometer clearance also so that the various ships warp fields
wouldn't interact or "brush" each other?

 

[Darkwing]

Or maybe the Defender/Deneb is a pig when it comes to maneuvering, and so requires
addition clearance space around it.

And wasn't the multiple kilometer clearance also so that the various ships warp fields
wouldn't interact or "brush" each other?

Cpt Rihaul made an en passant shot on Battlequeen, so I don't think it's maneuverability suffers in comparison to other ships. I don't specifically recall mention of warp field interaction as part of the rationale, but it would make sense that you'd want to carefully handle them when closing on another ship. What would happen if a Runabout ran up it's warp field and scrammed when a battleship was about to dock with it? My thoughts: if their shields are down and they don't have at least a static warp shell running, the runabout's warp field might experience a lot of drag as it took some pieces of the BB with it.

 

[Timo]

The ENT "Divergence" spacewalk from one warping starship to another suggests that the warp fields can be merged (because the two ships come to close contact) and that they are fairly compact overall (because when the connecting cable is lost, it seems to hit a field boundary pretty fast. The accompanying display graphics also suggest a compact field, as do the visuals of the warp field "hiccuping". So, instead of kilometers, we seem to be talking dozens of meters only.

That's with special precautions, though. Ships that do not attempt to be courteous to other proximal ships may have more widely flung fields, and ships aiming for deliberate harm can probably play dirty tricks with the fringes of their warp fields. But it doesn't appear to be particularly difficult to disrupt a warp field with weapons fire and thus bring the target ship out of warp; dirty tricks may end up backfiring in like manner.

en passant shot on Battlequeen

That wouldn't necessarily call for maneuvering, but simply for flying straight past the enemy and firing phasers sideways. Perhaps the Defenders are particularly good at that, flying very fast so that the enemy is hard pressed to score a hit even though the Federation ship cannot turn much? Simple high speed passes seemed to protect the Orions from Starfleet phasers in "Journey to Babel"...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I had an idea for an extragalactic ubership in a Last Trek miniseries, that looked like a Federation version of the Romulan warbird but with the aft cut away, so that a smaller saucer craft could be expelled out of the recess by a ship generated soliton wave. An end of Trek story would have three storylines. The prologue begins with the Barzan wormhole having been captured and tamed by the subspace catapault in the Delta Quadrant. Empok Nor is moved to this location. The make the wormhole active, it has to be turned inside out.

This will create a one time warp bubble of immense power, enough to fling a huge ship to another galaxy. This ship fires a disk out of its aft on a soliton wave between its two pairs of ultrawarp nacelles. Two port, two starboard. This meets a soliton wave from the Argus array which allows the station craft to be stopped between two galaxies midway station style. This houses an iconion doorway. The station is near a rogue planet and beaming to the galaxy is now possible from there as well. Plot C

The rest of the "Warbird" separates and the upper section housing a wide shuttlebay forms a huge arch. This eventually forms a gate-way to the third galaxy over. Many fighters engage the Vong from the SW galaxies far side. Plot B

They beam back to the midway type station, where a device that is the hybrid of the Omega generator and something like the Otero device strands the Vong.

The remaining ship's return is plot A

The remaining ship sheds its secondary hull, which explodes, but not before also opening a onetime portal via deflector dish fed through the overload.

The saucer moves through after rescuing everyone. Warp drive is impossible for the next 1000 years, but hyperspace secrets and iconion doorways bridge the cosmos.

 

[Patrin-Zero]

Mind not as well versed in Trek strategy and tactics as others here but would like to offer my unsolicited two cents.

My understanding about a battleship-dreadnought classed vessel would be it's main function which would be to bring to bear on a target weapon systems-ordnance much too large for deployment on 'standard' sized vessels.

Essentially one is speaking of a spinal-mounted weapon where the ship is built-designed around such to act as a mobile firebase and-or transporter for said system.

This is where the uber-weapons become engaged in an offensive action, think of the Paris Guns of WWI brought up to whichever Trek setting one is applying this concept to. Had the Federation had such big guns online and deployable, perhaps such would have seen action against the Doomsday Machine in the the TOS era or even (ineffectively) applied against V'ger in the ST:TMP era.

Again, not speaking of anything with aesthetic design in mind but a single task intended weapon of mass destruction.

 

[publiusr]

I think there was this anti-proton Wolf class or something similar...

 

[trekkist]

Regarding the "947' is big enough" to accomodate depicted sets, I disagree. To begin with quarters, the 14-odd redresses of Kirk's we saw included Yeoman Rand's and Ensign Garrovick's. How much lower than their ranks would one need to go before reaching the hypothetical "6 bunk to a room" accomodations introduced in ST VI? Or to put it differently, of the 430 crew, how many are at or above yeoman and/or Ensign?

Too, I consider the aformentioned bunkroom a retcon, if not in fact an error outright. Roddenberry is on record in Making of ST as saying he considered the barracks-style accomodations of contemporary military services demeaning, and believing that aboard Enterprise, ALL had rooms of their own. Making's "official biography of a ship" section goes so far as to cite two-person quarters...but NOT bunkrooms. When and why did that standard practice change?

Arguments along the lines of "that's too much/wasted space" miss the point of what's being discussed. Trek isn't our universe, its ships naval, its mores or construction practices necessarily in line with what we would consider efficient or desirable. Starfleet personnel are of a population whose psychological and behavorial standards and practices we must assume to reflect 300 odd years of social change. A mere fifty years ago, America considered interracial marriage anathema, same-sex marriage inconceivable. 300 years ago, the only good "Indian" was a dead one. Three centuries hence, is it unreasonable to imagine service personnel both receive and expect (as a matter of course) the dignity of personal quarters?

TOS seems to suggest a ship offering generous-sized private quarters for all aboard. If 947' doesn't permit space for 430 of these (plus accomodations for over a hundred "guests," as in "Journey to Babel"), AND ten foot wide-and-high corridors (as depicted), well then 947' is wrong...regardless of its provenance.

And I'm not even going to mention the apparent size of the big-enough-to-walk-upright-in shuttlecraft vs. the hangar bay (noticably and radically shrunken -- so's to fit into a 947' ship -- in the Remastereds).

 

[Timo]

Three centuries hence, is it unreasonable to imagine service personnel both receive and expect (as a matter of course) the dignity of personal quarters?

Not in the slightest.

OTOH, Kirk's ship was starved for accommodation space, so badly indeed that Kirk's closest officers had to relinquish their cabins for use by visiting dignitaries. Quite possibly Kirk himself had to leave his cabin as well in "Journey to Babel", because his residence on Deck 5 is a one-off occurrence and contradicts other references.

One would thus think the ship wasn't built with the comfort of 430 people in mind. Either Starfleet built her for 210, "The Cage" style, and then overstaffed her for the five-year mission, or then Starfleet does not build ships according to accommodation criteria at all.

In many ways, the 2260s reflect the 1960s - plenty of "injuns" there, plenty of opposition to interracial interaction. And crewmen (and -women) are still a raunchy bunch of misfits who jeopardize the success of the mission unless regularly whipped or at least hand-walked through the necessary actions, beginning with "Man Trap" and ending with "Turnabout Intruder". Why not lock them up in barracks accommodation between the mindless drills?

If there's a futuristic element to TOS, it might be that people no longer consider three-high bunking undignified.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Remember that in the 1960s, as rediculous as it is, they couldn't show more than one person sharing quarters under any circumstances (aside from marriage) on TV. A six-man bunking would be right out. Even MASH had to have privacy barriers in the Swamp between the bunks.

Married couples had the added stupidity of requiring two beds in a room, even for newlyweds... because somewhere, someone MIGHT think that there's some sex going on between a young married couple. Heaven forbid.

The lack of 'bunk rooms' shown on TOS should be taken as one of those extremely anachronistic issues of television.

 

[trekkist]

Yeah, except for Roddenberry's being on record (in Making) as thinking barracks undignified, and the ship's being on record (in Making) as having NO MORE THAN two to a quarter.

And of course, all depicted quarters down to those of a Yeoman's being single-occupancy.

I'm sensing a real "but I don't LIKE that" tone to y'all's counter-arguments. That, and the decades-later bunkroom of Trek VI don't add up to much in the face of -- what's that phrase? -- "original intent."

 

[Timo]

What's the point of ignoring half the evidence? We've seen people down to Ensign and the Captain's personal Yeoman in stateroom accommodation (TOS), and enlisteds in bunk beds (ST6) - where's the great controversy?

Roddenberry spoke of going beyond bunk beds. Then again, he also spoke of going beyond enlisteds, yet even some episodes written by himself featured characters in the enlisted slot. TOS certainly debunked the idea of no ensigns; there's nothing wrong with a later movie debunking the idea of de-bunking.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[trekkist]

I'd call the ST VI bunks an example of "retconning without retconning" (i.e., something being presented that differed from the Trek universe as established) save for the fact (recently brought to my attention) that Making cited officers' quarters, as opposed to those of "crewmen." On that basis, I'm open to the possibility the TOS E had lower ranks in bunks.

Otherwise, I see no reason NOT to ignore "half the evidence" if the latter half is based on some director ignorant to an established Trek practice saying, in effect, "let's have a bunkroom scene, just like in the Navy."

I've watched every episode of every series, each of which (series, not episode) I've enjoyed. I've my take on good and bad films, but enjoyed them all as well. But social practice (private rooms for all) going backward (to bunkrooms) doesn't make sense to me in sociological or fictional terms. Similarly, we see nary a cigarette in TOS, but can read a sign saying "No smoking on the bridge" in TWOK. Should we retcon TOS to include smoking based on Nick Meyer's saying, in effect, "No smoking AT ALL? That's just silly"? I'm dubious.

It's not that I hold TOS up as the "real thing," the others as johnnys-come-lately. It's simply that I hold accidental (inattentive) violations of TOS canon to be due less respect than TOS canon itself...an argument little different, in effect, than those applied to ST IX (though in fact different in principle, being as how ST IX is in fact a retcon, pure, simple, deliberate, and absolute).

 

[Timo]

Otherwise, I see no reason NOT to ignore "half the evidence" if the latter half is based on some director ignorant to an established Trek practice saying, in effect, "let's have a bunkroom scene, just like in the Navy."

But didn't a parallel discussion in this group establish that you want to hold every bit of onscreen material true without exception?

Or does the seeing of bunk beds come under "visuals" which can then be ignored as erroneous? Can we ignore Chekov's hair color because it's not explicated as dark in dialogue? Or Uhura's uniform color? Or Spock's rank braid? (Some of those would help in simplifying TOS continuity...)

..social practice going backward..

TOS is all about social practice going backward, or at least has been ever since the initial 1960s airings. Why worry about specific details when the general trend indicates cyclic practices and returning to the old 250 years from now?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Vance]

Yeah, except for Roddenberry's being on record (in Making) as thinking barracks undignified, and the ship's being on record (in Making) as having NO MORE THAN two to a quarter.

Roddenberry had a habit of being a dumbass at times. Remember he ALSO said that the Enterprise ONLY had officers, despite their being chiefs and crewmen explicitly stated on the show more than once.

And of course, all depicted quarters down to those of a Yeoman's being single-occupancy.

Set redress, as stated before. Rand should have at least been in a double cabin for officers.

I'm sensing a real "but I don't LIKE that" tone to y'all's counter-arguments. That, and the decades-later bunkroom of Trek VI don't add up to much in the face of -- what's that phrase? -- "original intent."

Yeah, very cute. We also know that Roddenberry liked to retcon reasons for things that didn't make sense, then boast about how clever he was for it. The reason we don't see other quarters is that they're ALL redresses of the Kirk's quarters set. Period.

 

[Darkwing]

Yeoman is an enlisted rate, not a rank. She would've been in an open-bay berthing if the TOS E had had them. That, with Roddenberry's assertion that Starfleet was the military done right, treating it's folks better than today, tells me everyone had staterooms. That would also be important when on a 5-year mission, as opposed to in and nout of port on a regular patrol schedule.
My take is that the ship had refits every so often. When they refit her as a training ship and downgraded her between V and VI, the junior officers and enlisted that were not permanent party ship's company (i.e. the trainees) and maybe even the more junior ship's company, lost their staterooms to make room for simulators and classrooms. Since they aren't Boldly Going anywhere except the exercise areas, and won't be living there for years at a time, Starfleet sees no issue with reducing their living space in those conditions.

 

[Timo]

The Captain's personal yeoman should be rightly quartered right next to the Captain, or right next to to his office. And indeed in the early half of the first season, Rand is quartered on Deck 12 ("The Enemy Within"), just like Kirk in "Mudd's Women", while later she's on Deck 3 ("Charlie X"), again just like McCoy and supposedly also Kirk (Spock is on Deck 3 in ST2 at any rate).

Perks of the position, rather than of the rank...

Timo Saloniemi