The Enterprise That Wasn't

[Arpy]

I think the first is too blue, aye. I've played around with terraforming Mars on my own and a lot of it would seemingly still be cold desert at best outside of the lakes, coasts, and very habitable river vallies such as Echus. But still, desert-bound or not, I don't think we ever saw any water on Mars in Star Trek beyond a few comets hitting it in ENT.

Yeah I don't remember any water, or any green for that matter, on Mars either. There was that scene in VOY of the Doctor and the Viddian parked in a convertible on Mars, but that doesn't mean the air is breathable. I'd like to imagine they made it breathable but chose against replicating Earth beyond that.

The design of Vulcan in TOS with its red desert land and red sky seemed to me to be a riff on the public interest in Mars and Martians. Wasn't there even talk early on of whether or not to make Spock an alien Martian? And it's disappointing to me how it's started to pick up oceans, green plants, and blue sky (and a Luna-sized moon) in more recent incarnations.

 

[Timo]

Vulcan has always had a big spatial companion - only, "always" here means it has always been only sometimes present, and mostly absent. A seasonally passing visitor would seem to fit the bill nicely, perhaps also accounting for the volcanism which is equally sporadic.

A red sky would appear at odds with the need to protect against bright light... Far more fun to think that the sometimes-redness is due to vast dust storms, much as at Mars. Especially as the history of Vulcan in Trek is one of globally changing color schemes anyway.

We’re any of the people outside Utopia Planitia on PIC human and not wearing environmental suits? Mars was still red, but was it terraformed at all?

From the distance, we can't readily tell whether all the red-clad figures "really" have Synth faces or not. In ENT, breathing masks were supposedly still a requirement; would things have degraded from that time, or improved? Would an industrial hot spot like the one shown require the use of breathing masks even if the atmosphere as such was 21% oxygen and 78% nitrogen at 1 atm pressure?

Might be the terraforming was dropped when it turned out it was so much cheaper to just pitch tents on Other Earths a few dozen lightyears away. Certainly the idea wasn't to "protect" or "preserve" Mars: there are insane gigastructures on the surface in PIC, both in Picard's admittedly dubious dream and in the actual footage of the Synth attack.

One of the things I liked about...wait...was it PIC or DSC...well, in one of them, we saw the moon all lit up with the lights of human settlements. In my head canon, Luna, Mars, and Venus are terraformed to varying degrees (I don’t want to see them all blue marbles), and they’re all part of the Human Memberworld. I think the number of Federation memberworlds would have ballooned into the thousands if every independent colony was its own world, especially from the long space-faring Vulcans. I mean, could you imagine the Andorians allowing Earth 5 votes in the council to their 1?

Kirk does say that "we" are on a thousand planets and spreading; he's hardly describing a diaspora or a dissolution of the human race. But perhaps one or two of the supposed 150-ish member states are separate human entities anyway.

"Past Tense" heavily implies there's ongoing terraforming at Venus in 2371, so apparently the "let's just settle on easy worlds lightyears away" policy isn't all-encompassing. Mars we have seen, and still can't tell. The Moon... is generally shown in full daylight, drowning out any possible light shows (especially when Riker boasts to Cochrane how different it would look in the future!). Any shots of the dark side would have to come from the two modern shows. I mean, ENT had some, but things may have changed since. And TNG had a brief close shot in "Conspiracy" that showed no urbanization, but there's room on Luna for wastelands.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[uniderth]

My theory is that the reason why Vulcan doesn't have a moon but has nearby companion bodies, is because Vulcan IS a moon. It's orbiting that larger planet seen in "The Motion Picture".

 

[Ronald Held]

I wonder if Cochrane was a theorist and Sloane the design and Engineering work?

 

[Timo]

My theory is that the reason why Vulcan doesn't have a moon but has nearby companion bodies, is because Vulcan IS a moon. It's orbiting that larger planet seen in "The Motion Picture".

I guess the big problem with that one is that the larger planet is only seen in TMP. And in TAS "Yesteryear". It is very conspicuously absent in all other shots of Vulcan in space, or of the Vulcan sky.

In any case, Vulcan has "months". I wonder what those are? (It also has "years" and "days", so it's not a fancy alternate name for those!)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

I wonder if Cochrane was a theorist and Sloane the design and Engineering work?

She certainly seemed to be the smarter of the two.

 

[Timo]

Doesn't mean Cochrane couldn't have been the idea man. Einstein married wisely, too... But was sort of elemental to the theories of relativity nevertheless.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[MAGolding]

Yeah I don't remember any water, or any green for that matter, on Mars either. There was that scene in VOY of the Doctor and the Viddian parked in a convertible on Mars, but that doesn't mean the air is breathable. I'd like to imagine they made it breathable but chose against replicating Earth beyond that.

The design of Vulcan in TOS with its red desert land and red sky seemed to me to be a riff on the public interest in Mars and Martians. Wasn't there even talk early on of whether or not to make Spock an alien Martian? And it's disappointing to me how it's started to pick up oceans, green plants, and blue sky (and a Luna-sized moon) in more recent incarnations.

My theory is that the reason why Vulcan doesn't have a moon but has nearby companion bodies, is because Vulcan IS a moon. It's orbiting that larger planet seen in "The Motion Picture".

I guess the big problem with that one is that the larger planet is only seen in TMP. And in TAS "Yesteryear". It is very conspicuously absent in all other shots of Vulcan in space, or of the Vulcan sky.

In any case, Vulcan has "months". I wonder what those are? (It also has "years" and "days", so it's not a fancy alternate name for those!)

Timo Saloniemi

As I remember, I wrote about the subject recently.

Yes, in my post # 36 here: https://www.trekbbs.com/threads/where-was-kirk-coming-from-amok-time.304020/page-2#post-13365311

 

[Timo]

...The Moon shot Imaus referred to, from DSC "Will You Take My Hand", certainly shows a lot of light pollution.

https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_0168.jpg

FWIW, it's utterly unrealistic in terms of scale, whatever that means with respect to the realism of the lighting. Also, space near Earth is littered with much more than just that vastly-too-close Luna - there seems to be so much assorted debris that navigating through it would appear flat out impossible. So is the density of lighting on the Moon and on Earth similarly exaggerated by artistic license, there actually being, oh, a million times fewer lights? Or just ten thousand times fewer?

https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_4146.jpg
https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_4650.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Henoch]

...The Moon shot Imaus referred to, from DSC "Will You Take My Hand", certainly shows a lot of light pollution.

https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_0168.jpg

FWIW, it's utterly unrealistic in terms of scale, whatever that means with respect to the realism of the lighting. Also, space near Earth is littered with much more than just that vastly-too-close Luna - there seems to be so much assorted debris that navigating through it would appear flat out impossible. So is the density of lighting on the Moon and on Earth similarly exaggerated by artistic license, there actually being, oh, a million times fewer lights? Or just ten thousand times fewer?

https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_4146.jpg
https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_4650.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

Starfleet needs to dredge out navigable space channels in near-Earth orbit...

 

[Arpy]

Though the ringship Enterprise sparked this thread, my alternate universe head-canon version of it would have been a little different. Something closer to the Babylon 5 explorer ships with ringship warp rings and maybe a The Martian heavy NASA look about it.

I picture a long spindle-like ship with different sections far apart for easy jettisoning in case of emergency and to guard from nuclear and warp radiation.

Deflector Assembly: this first iteration of the technology is a large and bulky spear at the tip of the ship. It serves double duty as the main communications array, and can be used by the adjacent lab section for research.

Labs: Zero-G, or a small ring of spinning ones.

Habitat: One or two large spinning rings including bridge, crew quarters, bathrooms, mess, gym, and maybe labs. Windows.

Shuttle bay: A small shuttle bay, maybe two shuttles, two work pods, and some EV suits.

Large Bio Storage: Food, water, air, toilet paper, etc.

Matter/Anti-Matter Reactor: Radiation suits all around. Maybe no one in it while in use.

FTL Engines: One or three large rings, maybe a glowing effect from them or energy effect in middle. Maybe absolutely nothing and they might as well look like more storage canisters.

Large Fuel Storage: Long tanks for FTL engines, follows by longer thanks for sublight engines.

Fusion Reactor: Engineering suits only.

Sublight Engines: early impulse engines look almost hot rod and oversized compared to streamlined later ones.

EDIT: forgot weapons. Weapons, if any this early on in space exploration, could be one large ship to ship laser, a couple of dorsal and ventral anti-ballistic little laser quad turrets, and some ballistic nukes where the labs used to be or in another section added to the long spindle structure. These would all be mostly add-ons once they discover, and have bad experiences with, the Kzinti or Orions or Nauusicans.

EDIT: forgot deflector! The earliest warp ships absolutely need deflector dishes. A separate Bussard Collector – independent of the warp ring assembly – I could go either way on.

 

[MAGolding]

...The Moon shot Imaus referred to, from DSC "Will You Take My Hand", certainly shows a lot of light pollution.

https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_0168.jpg

FWIW, it's utterly unrealistic in terms of scale, whatever that means with respect to the realism of the lighting. Also, space near Earth is littered with much more than just that vastly-too-close Luna - there seems to be so much assorted debris that navigating through it would appear flat out impossible. So is the density of lighting on the Moon and on Earth similarly exaggerated by artistic license, there actually being, oh, a million times fewer lights? Or just ten thousand times fewer?

https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_4146.jpg
https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_4650.jpg

Timo Saloniemi

What do you mean this is unrealistic in terms of scale? It is true that the distance between the Earth and the Moon is many times the diameter of either and many tiems the distance seen here. But that just means that either the Earth or the Moon is much closer to the camera than the other one is, and they are almost lined up in respect to the camera.And no doubt the scene would be filmed with a telescopic lense at a distance several times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

 

[Mytran]

...The Moon shot Imaus referred to, from DSC "Will You Take My Hand", certainly shows a lot of light pollution.

https://dsc.star-trek.info/albums/S...TrekDiscovery_1x15-WillYouTakeMyHand_0168.jpg

FWIW, it's utterly unrealistic in terms of scale, whatever that means with respect to the realism of the lighting.

Scale inaccuracy is off the charts with that scene anyway: It's where we zoom in from the Klingon invasion fleet on the edge of the solar system, past Jupiter (at which point Mars and Earth are visible in the distance), past Mars (at which point Earth is practically bumping shoulders!) and onto the Earth itself, along with the unrealistic large moon.

What do you mean this is unrealistic in terms of scale? It is true that the distance between the Earth and the Moon is many times the diameter of either and many tiems the distance seen here. But that just means that either the Earth or the Moon is much closer to the camera than the other one is, and they are almost lined up in respect to the camera. And no doubt the scene would be filmed with a telescopic lense at a distance several times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Due to the above mentioned zooming that wouldn't really work as there's just too much camera movement for the moon to be a foreground object.
TBH it looks like they just took a correctly scaled moon and plonked it down way too close to the Earth!
https://www.sciencesource.com/archive/Earth-and-Moon-Size-Comparison-SS2575830.html

 

[SCE2Aux]

It looks like they saw this image taken from a distant Lagrange point:
https://www.universetoday.com/12173...ngly-epic-view-from-1-million-miles-away/amp/
... and misinterpreted the flattened perspective to mean the Moon was closer than it is. As has been said, the zoom rules out the moon being a foreground object, but the scale seems more or less accurate. Of course, the artists might just have wanted the Moon in that position for compositional reasons - taking artistic license with reality.

I've always found the ring ship very intriguing. The designers in Enterprise were very clever in making the Vulcan ships have ringed warp drives, and it makes perfect sense that Human engineers would want to emulate the more advanced Vulcan designs at first. I've been working on fleshing out an XCV style ring ship myself, trying to bridge the technology gap between the Phoenix/Conestoga design philosophies, and the XCV/Vulcan designs:

When it's done, there should be some recognisably NASA era features, a Project Daedalus style pre-impulse sublight drive, and a few TOS era features, hopefully tying in all the different early human spaceflight design aesthetics.

 

[Timo]

Yup, one can always take a still like the one shown (which then establishes that Spacedock actually orbits the Moon, not Earth); one just can't do the camera run.

Which would have been recognized for utter artistic license anyway, because the episode opened with a similar run that "established" that Earth is actually Qo'noS...

The zoom-in from the edge of Sol to the rainy square in Paris can be considered art all right. But the shot of the Discovery departing, with so many Starbase-type stations visible that they'd have to build much larger ones in order to properly stencil "SB 391275698" or whatever onto them, is not supposed to be that: it's just a departing-from-orbit scene where the camera slavishly follows the ship.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[publiusr]

I've always found the ring ship very intriguing.

That deserves a model kit.

I love Sternbach’s timeline where there was no real WWIII—which would allow for a gradual transition, with nacelles coming later.

In FIRST CONTACT the Earth seemed more devastated—but maybe there was some temporal meddling which allowed a jump start over what we saw in the novel FEDERATION, which splits the difference.

 

[Arpy]

That deserves a model kit.

I love Sternbach’s timeline where there was no real WWIII—which would allow for a gradual transition, with nacelles coming later.

In FIRST CONTACT the Earth seemed more devastated—but maybe there was some temporal meddling which allowed a jump start over what we saw in the novel FEDERATION, which splits the difference.

What’s Sternbach’s timeline?

 

[publiusr]

The Spaceflight Chronology

 

[Arpy]

The Spaceflight Chronology

Drat, I never read this one. It's probably where a lot of the stuff I pieced together from the canon, fanon, and online came from I made a note to order it when my library opens up again.

I do have Star Trek Chronology (and a couple dozen others) upstairs

There's a question: what are some books one could look at on this subject?

 

[Timo]

Alternate Trek timelines from before / in defiance of the Okuda/Sternbach effort? Besides the Spaceflight Chronology (a Goldstein timeline, really, Rick only did the artwork), the FASA and SFB companions to the RPGs might be of interest. And of course you have to read through James Dixon and study his list of references.

Timo Saloniemi