Not in-universe there isn't.
The Excelsior - uncovering the design
- Thread starter yotsuya
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Only if you invoke fictional physics like the subspace compression anomaly from “One Little Ship”.
If a warp nacelle works at shuttle size and starship size, it'll work at any size they choose to make it.
It’s not the exact same nacelle down to the exact same warp coils, only reduced in scale.
And who says the Raging Queen's nacelles are 100% identical internally to the Constitution's? Only that they look the same, but are bigger.
Has anybody actually overlaid the Type-7 and Galaxy nacelles to prove they were designed to be identical externally?
Those of the Excelsior/Constitution-class starship variant are in fact identical but also not supposed to be seen in a closeup, which makes it possible to interpret them as something along the lines of that architecture, similar to the way a K’vort-class battlecruiser wouldn’t be the Bounty design down to every last greeble scaled up.
While I see your point, I also think there’s a difference between a shuttlecraft having faux nacelles to mimic its mothership for aesthetic reasons (remember that the shuttles weren’t warp capable) and a TMP Constitution-type nacelle that’s twice as long as a Constitution class ship itself. That would imply that there was a TMP-era ship that was three or four times as large as the TMP Enterprise, which defeats the purpose of the awe that the Enterprise crew had in STIII that the Excelsior was so large to them.
Shuttles are warp capable though, and have been since the Discovery-era. "The Menagerie" had the Enterprise at warp being pursued by shuttle, and TNG technical manuals give warp 2-point-something as the top speed for their shuttles. Voyager's shuttle went at warp 10. No idea where they kept the warp cores, though....
And a large nacelle doesn't necessarily mean a large ship, merely the potential for one. Which Excelsior and others fulfilled, and the Kelvinverse version of the Connie.
I don't think the Kelvinverse ships were originally meant to be as large as they ended up being. As you can probably tell, I'm not a huge fan of upscaling ships to silly proportions (mostly because it was done to save budget money on building a new filming model.)
The thing is, when we see the Centaur in the dogfight with the stolen Jem'Hadar bug, the ship appears to be that small in comparison to the other ship. That's why I think Buckner added the TMP Enterprise bridge dome, to give it a sense of smaller scale. The windows though, as you say, are problematic, unless that saucer is only one or two decks thick and the windows are actually on the ceiling of the deck/decks. Perhaps he started with a larger ship but then added the bridge dome later to scale it down for the scene?
https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ds9tm/centaur-miranda.jpg
I've always had a secret obsession with the Centaur, but its mismatched scale parts always threw me for a loop.
The original Buckner configuration had a Miranda-sized bridge on an Excelsior primary hull possessing big windows that were in scale with that bridge. The additional use of that big Miranda-scale photon pod underneath added to that headache. This makes it super tiny, maybe less than half of the internal volume of a Miranda.
Later iterations, I think originally started by the Star Trek Fact Files, later perpetuated by Eaglemoss' Official starships collection (which were really a lot of the same people from STFF), gave the Centaur an Excelsior-scale bridge, making it a little more believable in-universe and fully solidifying the larger scale into the Excelsior generation of ships.
Scale issues aside, I always loved the design. Turning the Reliant rollbar into warp engine pylon "wings" was, IMO, a stroke of genius, and made for one of the more (relatively) well-rounded designs in the DS9 kitbash Frankenfleet. Simple but effective and quite bad-ass looking from various angles. I do wish we had seen more of them flying around out there.
The thing is, when we see the Centaur in the dogfight with the stolen Jem'Hadar bug, the ship appears to be that small in comparison to the other ship. That's why I think Buckner added the TMP Enterprise bridge dome, to give it a sense of smaller scale. The windows though, as you say, are problematic, unless that saucer is only one or two decks thick and the windows are actually on the ceiling of the deck/decks. Perhaps he started with a larger ship but then added the bridge dome later to scale it down for the scene?
https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ds9tm/centaur-miranda.jpg
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https://i.imgur.com/A9KgxBr.jpeg
Looks pretty good to me (for 1987 on a standard definition 13-inch TV)
I tend to agree with Sternbach. When you mix scales you usually come up with nonsense. The Centaur is a rare example of when it actually works because the roll bar and bridge don't carry the scale weight that the Excelsior parts do. The ideal kitbash uses the identifiable pieces from the same scale. But most of them I've seen are from the hodgepodge of scales that AMT made. They might look good in the background, but you don't want to look too close. They are not intended to be hero ship models. The only ones I feel are absolutely canon are the hero ship models. The rest of the designs are interesting, but not definitive.
Well, we certainly agree on this. But I solve the whole problem by just ignoring the Kelvinverse entirely. I don't like the Enterprise and the only thing I like about the Kelvin itself is that it has one warp nacelle. Not too keen on the Franklin.
The thing is, when we see the Centaur in the dogfight with the stolen Jem'Hadar bug, the ship appears to be that small in comparison to the other ship. That's why I think Buckner added the TMP Enterprise bridge dome, to give it a sense of smaller scale. The windows though, as you say, are problematic, unless that saucer is only one or two decks thick and the windows are actually on the ceiling of the deck/decks. Perhaps he started with a larger ship but then added the bridge dome later to scale it down for the scene?
https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ds9tm/centaur-miranda.jpg[/QUOTE]
The bridge is muddled with greebles. I just call the upper dome the bridge dome and the rest an extension of the hanger. the docking port on the back of the bridge is from the AMT kit and that part is totally wrong so it creates a port of the right scale for the Excelsior saucer and then has windows the size of TNG Ent D windows. So I go by the Excelsior parts for the scale. That seems to be what they intended when finishing the model. What the FX people do after that is another story.
It might look good in a static image, but not a moving one. You can tell when something isn't moving and it should be.https://i.imgur.com/A9KgxBr.jpeg
Looks pretty good to me (for 1987 on a standard definition 13-inch TV)
There were plenty of times still photos were used for background ships up through the 80s and 90s. I expect there were probably several examples in TNG. Offhand, I can remember it happening many times in TMP and ESB. Not everyone was so obvious as 2001 putting a still shot in extreme close-up.
The one that immediately springs to mind is the stock footage of the BoP from STIII used as the Pagh in the first establishing shot of the ship from “A Matter of Honor”:
https://tng.trekcore.com/gallery/albums/s2/2x08/amatterofhonor093.jpg
I fail to see how that shot looks any better than what I posted.
I don't think we disagree here. I agree with you that there is no way that the DS9TM ships are in-universe kitbahes, especially not from salvage after battles or new-old-stock parts. If Starfleet was doing that there is a lot of Trek tech that just would not work. I also agree with you that the "Curry" and "Raging Queen" are unique classes (or maybe two variants of the same class) that were designed to be what they are. I just meant that maybe each was the only one like it because they were unsuccessful prototypes.
Everything I said above in this posts assumes that the Constitution nacelles on the two ships I mentioned are not accurate. One DS9TM ship combines TMP nacelles with Intrepid parts, and that really seems un-doable in universe to me. I think in both cases we are meant to assume that they are some other kind of nacelle that is "rectangular" more that "round," but not specifically the TMP parts.
As an alternative to what I wrote above, we could assume the SCALE of the nacelles on the "Curry" and "Raging Queen" are wrong, but that the "real" ship would have regular size TMP nacelles with newer "guts" in them. I think there are diagrams at Ex Astris Scientia that show the ships with this change. Believe it or not, this improves the looks of those ships...a bit. The Mirandas on DS9 seem to have different illumination in their nacelles, so maybe there is a precedence for TMP nacelles with newer-style equipment inside.
I think that this is a good point. The Centaur looks like the Excelsior-era version of the Miranda/Nebula class. The torpedo launcher could be bigger/smaller/not-the-same as the Miranda's in our minds easily, despite the fact that we know it is the same part.
The Excelsior is supposedly all-new in ST:III and I like the idea that the modules are all-new and not compatible with TMP/refit era modules for new ship designs. If that were true it forces to to believe the nacelles on the "Curry" and "Raging Queen" are something different than what they appear to be.
I like the explanation that the ships we see on screen are approximations. Due to how far in the distance they are, some of the oddities we can see close up are not intended.
I do not think Nacelles would be scaled up. Down maybe, but not up. We've seen down plenty of times as with the shuttles.
And I think that Sternbach's description of Starfleet kitbashing with damaged ships makes sense. I've seen it with planes and cars. Some well used designs were done like that where they reused the design elements of a military craft for a civilian purpose or visa versa. I see Starfleet ships as 3 distinct pieces. The warp core, the nacelles, and the saucer. You can swap them out. In the cases where they used very mismatched parts, we can imagine that the most eggregious errors (the Connie refit nacelles on other things) are a standin for something more logical that would have been done if the model were intended to be filmed closer and in more detail. DS9 is SD resolution it doesn't look likely that we will ever see and HD remaster due to all the CG elements so the visual details in the episodes are not as clear as the photos of the models. We are discussing the photos when we should be discussing the final FX shots.
I do not think Nacelles would be scaled up. Down maybe, but not up. We've seen down plenty of times as with the shuttles.
And I think that Sternbach's description of Starfleet kitbashing with damaged ships makes sense. I've seen it with planes and cars. Some well used designs were done like that where they reused the design elements of a military craft for a civilian purpose or visa versa. I see Starfleet ships as 3 distinct pieces. The warp core, the nacelles, and the saucer. You can swap them out. In the cases where they used very mismatched parts, we can imagine that the most eggregious errors (the Connie refit nacelles on other things) are a standin for something more logical that would have been done if the model were intended to be filmed closer and in more detail. DS9 is SD resolution it doesn't look likely that we will ever see and HD remaster due to all the CG elements so the visual details in the episodes are not as clear as the photos of the models. We are discussing the photos when we should be discussing the final FX shots.
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RichT
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Given that the entire Galaxy class is powered by a warp core less than 3m in diameter, shuttle warp cores could believably be tiny. The Danube class runabout warp core is barely 1m in diameter and is designed to be flat, so shuttles could easily have something similar but scaled down, and most likely contained in the floor.
That's a valid point, but I'd assume the frame of reference only matters if the kitbash is meant to be seen with say a protagonist ship and not mainly in the background (which is more typical). Even then, there's no guarantee the visible scale would make a degree of rational sense, as models like the BOP and the Defiant prove in many episodes.
If however we're talking about a ship of the week that only gets a detailed view on a view screen, I'm more cool with that.
Scale is something that a lot of the FX shots in Star Trek really get wrong. So scale is not an exact science. I mean the Klingon Bird of Prey has been seen with quite a number of other ships and in various scales. I personally think that there is only one scale for it - the one that can hold two 40' humpback wales in its hold. For that the ship would have to be of sufficient size that it could accommodate all the interior shots we see. And if it has a marine attachment, the crew of such a ship could be quite large. The Klingon crew of the Bounty was in a ship that was largely empty. We only explore 1, maybe 2 decks. the room for the whales allows for all the space needed to house larger crews in the TNG era and for what seems like a spacious ship to be crowded. The ship appears in multiple scales in both TSFS and TVH. For the given interior, the ship appears in the correct scale (about 4 times wider than the whaling ship is long) toward the end of TVH, which agrees with the exterior in the water after they land back in the future. That also matches when it was facing the Enterprise in TSFS. But from there it gets wild the way the series FX shots were composited. And remember that the space dock first seen in TSFS seemed barely wide enough for the Enterprise, but the Excelsior fit and later they made the Enterprise D fit as well. So scale was not a key thought for FX in the Trek series. They did better when they adopted CG.
So being in the background, coupled with a low level of detail, brief appearance, and the scale an even the scale of the components of the ships can be called into question. The kitbashing and FX scaling for me falls in line with the needs of TV shooting in TOS that led to 10 foot walls and in TMP a short rec deck. It is a Hollywood approximation to create the illusion. A reality where these things fit together in a proper scale requires some adjustments. The rec deck in TMP would be a lot longer, extending until the next deck up could overlook the inner area, with a floor that arches up most of the lower deck, and windows and an outer edge that fit the 1000' established length. The corridors on the TOS Enterprise would have a ceiling of 9 foot or less (the only ceiling we ever see can be measured to be at 9 foot in The Day of the Dove). There is no corridor going forward from engineering in the TMP enterprise. That was just a convenient joining of two parts of the set. So there are lots of things we see that are part of the design and are intended and a lot of things that are just a consequence of doing these things on a budget so they can make money. Even James Cameron couldn't build a 1:1 scale Titanic set for his movie. So you can take things as you see them on screen, or you can extrapolate what we see and what it would look like in the real ships or locations. I prefer to do that later as that usually is a more logical approach.
Doing that with the kit bashes and some of the other background ship designs leads to some adjustments that make these things fit better with. That Planet of the Titans model might be the TOS/TMP visual of the Crossfield Class. The Excelsior study models actually fit with the Oberth class design so they could exits, but likely as one off ships that never saw real service, except in an emergency.
So being in the background, coupled with a low level of detail, brief appearance, and the scale an even the scale of the components of the ships can be called into question. The kitbashing and FX scaling for me falls in line with the needs of TV shooting in TOS that led to 10 foot walls and in TMP a short rec deck. It is a Hollywood approximation to create the illusion. A reality where these things fit together in a proper scale requires some adjustments. The rec deck in TMP would be a lot longer, extending until the next deck up could overlook the inner area, with a floor that arches up most of the lower deck, and windows and an outer edge that fit the 1000' established length. The corridors on the TOS Enterprise would have a ceiling of 9 foot or less (the only ceiling we ever see can be measured to be at 9 foot in The Day of the Dove). There is no corridor going forward from engineering in the TMP enterprise. That was just a convenient joining of two parts of the set. So there are lots of things we see that are part of the design and are intended and a lot of things that are just a consequence of doing these things on a budget so they can make money. Even James Cameron couldn't build a 1:1 scale Titanic set for his movie. So you can take things as you see them on screen, or you can extrapolate what we see and what it would look like in the real ships or locations. I prefer to do that later as that usually is a more logical approach.
Doing that with the kit bashes and some of the other background ship designs leads to some adjustments that make these things fit better with. That Planet of the Titans model might be the TOS/TMP visual of the Crossfield Class. The Excelsior study models actually fit with the Oberth class design so they could exits, but likely as one off ships that never saw real service, except in an emergency.
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