U.S.S. Curry - WTF?

[Arpy]

U.S.S. Curry

3D model you can rotate and explore.

First seen in the opening shot of DS9's Season 6 premier "A Time to Stand,” it’s a ship that immediately inspires a W, TF, is that(?!) reaction. Despite it needing a lot of work, it’s stayed with me over the years because its unique configuration.

(Diverse configurations of Starfleet ships are part of their strange appeal and curious mystique. It can be a delight to be introduced to a new configuration, and there have been many — like those of the Miranda, Oberth, Stargazer, Sydney, Pasteur, Prometheus, Voyager, Voyager, New Orleans, Centaur, NX, Altair, John Glenn, Declaration Class, Saber, Akira, Norway, Kelvin, Newton, Armstrong, Franklin, and many of the new Discovery Ships.)

Versions of the Curry have appeared in games like Armada II with the saucer placed further back on the secondary hull (which suits it better) and in other games with it placed toward the middle.

Some have speculated that the ship is a shuttle or fighter carrier ship — Fighter 1, Fighter 2.
This lineup of shuttles on deck looks cool like aircraft carrier, but it doesn’t sit quite right remembering the vacuum of space. I don’t really like the idea of fighters in Trek, but what really sinks the Curry as a carrier for me is that it’s no larger than any other Excelsior cruiser. It could maybe work if they increased the size of the secondary hull, but mostly I find myself lamenting the missed opportunity for something different, unique, and ambitious for a carrier.

There’s an amazing mesh of the Curry on this page that may have been commissioned by Eaglemoss for the toy.

There are also entries for it in both Memory Alpha and Memory Beta, and there’s an article in Ex Astris Scientia discussing some issues with scale, given its use of parts from mismatched models of both the Constitution Refit and the Excelsior. In my head canon, I like to imagine it with more appropriate/ly scaled Excelsior Era nacelles.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

The oddest of the odd duck kitbashes we've seen over the years. It'd be interesting to hear an in-universe explanation for this one.

 

[Arpy]

Please let me know if any of the links don’t work.

 

[Amaris]

It looks like a freighter, if I were to apply the whole "starships are just regular water ships but in space" mindset.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

I think it would be alright if they moved the saucer/nacelles to the front of the Excelsior secondary hull.

 

[Arpy]

It looks like a freighter, if I were to apply the whole "starships are just regular water ships but in space" mindset.

Yeah, it reminds me of like a freighter or tanker, with the bridge set high in the aft of the ship overlooking the expanse of ship/cargo laid out in front of it.

I don’t think it’s is an actual freighter because it’s still basically a cruiser in tech and volume. It’s a mysterious ship.

I think it would be alright if they moved the saucer/nacelles to the front of the Excelsior secondary hull.

Is that a joke, making it look like an Exelsior, or legit an idea? With the nacelles attached to the saucer as they are, it would actually make it yet another curious new configuration, reminiscent of “Voyager” linked above.

 

[Ricky Spanish]

Is that a joke, making it look like an Exelsior, or legit an idea?

Not a joke. I think it would look better with the saucer/nacelles leading as opposed to being at the tail of the ship.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

It looks like a freighter, if I were to apply the whole "starships are just regular water ships but in space" mindset.

I could buy this. The secondary hull could be detached like with the Federation Tug, only the "ship" is at the back and multiple pods might not work.

 

[Timo]

Or the secondary hull could be the grapple for the pod, or a long train thereof, in full Ptolemy style. It has this deep undercut, perfect for embracing a dome-capped cylinder...

Like the Ptolemy, she would be very military, bristling with weapons and using standard starship parts. At the Miranda rather than Excelsior scale, that is.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Though, with 2-4 hangars (depending on the rendering), @Arpy could be onto something with the carrier idea.

At the very least, lots of shuttles and lots of settlers could make it something to be dropped off in orbit of a new colony, then picked up when empty.

 

[Timo]

Putting even one shuttlebay aboard is a chore, though, regardless of scale. Why make it extra hard for the poor things to launch, when you could just as well give them a direct path out of the bowels of a suitably spacious hull?

I'm not convinced there is even a single bay on the ship. The curvy shiny bit facing forward could be a deflector, much as with the supposedly tiny Centaur...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

Putting even one shuttlebay aboard is a chore, though, regardless of scale. Why make it extra hard for the poor things to launch, when you could just as well give them a direct path out of the bowels of a suitably spacious hull?

I'm not convinced there is even a single bay on the ship. The curvy shiny bit facing forward could be a deflector, much as with the supposedly tiny Centaur...

Timo Saloniemi

The 3D model seems to have one on top at the front and one on top at the rear, of the secondary hull, both rear facing.

There have also been some renderings that indicate that big cutout area on the bottom could be another hangar.

Then this version seems to add one on top, facing the front. . Remember the original

If it were a colony ship, once the main ship was gone, it could easily launch shuttles from anywhere.

Of course, the original "cookie cutter" really was more suited to being a proper carrier.

 

[Arpy]

The 3D model seems to have one on top at the front and one on top at the rear, of the secondary hull...

Yeah, different models have different rears. And different necks.

There have also been some renderings that indicate that big cutout area on the bottom could be another hangar.

On the Excelsior itself I think that's a cargo bay (and/or second shutlebay) and that works for me.

Re carrier ships, I like it whenever they introduce us to something new and uniform in Trek. I like to think that science ships largely follow the Oberth configuration, medical ships use Pasteur-like spheres, and transports are boxier and look like the Sydney or this starliner. So I think it would be interesting if when it came to carriers they could come up with something distinctively carrier-esque. I haven't given too much thought to what that might be, but a couple thoughts that do come to mind for this discussion anyway:

1) It might be interesting to do away with saucers for carriers. Maybe carriers could be boxy, like their transport cousins, or the Typhon linked above. Saucers I associate with cruisers that are away for years and need to give the crew a more interesting living environment than giant boxes. Smaller ships like corvettes don't even need saucers, the space of the stardrive being sufficient for their briefer tours away from civilization. Carriers just haul shuttles/fighters/colonists/troops/cargo from point a-to-b. They're not really long-term homes and can be more mundane in form -- while for our creative enjoyment distinct in appearance.

2) Strangely enough (and opposite everything I just said) the Kobayashi Maru might actually make for an interesting fighter carrier. I envisioned a "fuel tanker" to look very different from what it's subsequently appeared as over the years. Again, why does a tanker (possibly civilian) look like a high-tech Starfleet cruiser? And why is so much of it dedicated to all the typical cruiser layout and tech with only a modest couple of attachments for cargo? We've seen starships tractor far larger ships/asteroids -- you'd think they could haul more boxes.

But the catamaran-like attachments on these versions of the Kobayashi Maru remind me of the flight decks of the Battlestar Galactica. You could spit out fighters at high speed from the sides of the Maru like on Galactica, and house the pilots in the comforts of the saucer.

Also, earlier on, the Kobayashi Maru sported a square-like primary hull that made it instantly recognizable as something other than the Enterprise or what have you. Maybe carriers, if they're going to use large fanned-out primary hulls like cruisers, could sport square-ish ones.

 

[Arpy]

Ideally, I think my version/variant of the Curry would include:

• All Excelsior Era parts.
• The pylons attached to the neck or other part of the stardrive, not the saucer, to allow for classic saucer separation and a less Byzantine layout of power transfer conduits from the core to the nacelles.
• The neck attached to the rear of the saucer as on the Excelsior — I don't like how on the 3D model I linked above it's attached to the center of the saucer.
• A slightly higher neck so that the saucer doesn’t hang so chaffingly close to the stardrive, instead jutting out gracefully high above.
• A longer stardrive so that in profile the saucer ends where the stardrive starts to slope down.
• A custom shuttlebay to fit more properly on the front of the stardrive, not one kitbashed from the differently-shaped back of it. Points to the 3D version though for making the back more interesting than the Eaglmoss CG.
• I’d move the torpedo bays from the neck (now too recessed to be safe to fire from) to just above the deflector on the front of the ship.

I think these overall would give the ship a less squished and kitbashed elegance, grace, and verisimilitude, without changing whatever its mysterious purpose might be.

What do you think?

 

[blssdwlf]

What's the scale of The Curry? Is the saucer the same as the Excelsior's or the nacelles the same as the Reliant's?

 

[Arpy]

What's the scale of The Curry? Is the saucer the same as the Excelsior's or the nacelles the same as the Reliant's?

The saucer/stardrive must be the normal scale and the nacelles messed up, I think.

 

[Dr. San Guinary]

I've always suspected that the Curry is a Starfleet Marine troop transport.

The ship would arrive at wherever the Marines needed to be, whereupon the forward (secondary) hull would detach and remain behind as a troop barracks. Perhaps the rest of the ship could serve as a handy support vessel from orbit?

And I'm liking the idea that the Curry is of the "Shelley class" - that being a reference to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. Which would seem to apply, given the general aesthetics of the ship.

 

[Albertese]

Or the secondary hull could be the grapple for the pod, or a long train thereof, in full Ptolemy style. It has this deep undercut, perfect for embracing a dome-capped cylinder...

Like the Ptolemy, she would be very military, bristling with weapons and using standard starship parts. At the Miranda rather than Excelsior scale, that is.

Timo Saloniemi

This is my favorite explanation yet for this goofy ship.. I quite like it.

I would argue that this ship (and the Centaur for what it's worth) are both scaled to their Reliant parts, and what looks like Excelsior parts are scaled down. Also I'd place both of these ships in the Lost Era of the early 24th Century, just prior to the Ambassador period.

Though, were I to build a model of this ship, I'd use one of the new Excelsior kits which has the options to build the NX-2000 impulse deck rather than the NCC-2000 version. I think the single larger crystal would better suit the smaller scale.

(I'm already collecting the kits to build a studio scaled Centaur... looks like I'll need yet *another* Excelsior!)

--Alex

 

[137th Gebirg]

I always got the impression that both the Curry and Raging a Queen were thru-deck carriers for Peregrine and Maquis-style Raiders. They had no visible forward nav deflector and one view of the Curry looks like there is a forward-facing shuttle bay where the sensor should be.

 

[Arpy]

I've always suspected that the Curry is a Starfleet Marine troop transport.

The ship would arrive at wherever the Marines needed to be, whereupon the forward (secondary) hull would detach and remain behind as a troop barracks. Perhaps the rest of the ship could serve as a handy support vessel from orbit?

And I'm liking the idea that the Curry is of the "Shelley class" - that being a reference to Mary Shelley, author of Frankenstein. Which would seem to apply, given the general aesthetics of the ship.

This is interesting. I don’t like the idea of Starfleet Marines...come to think of it, if there even were such a branch, I don’t think that’s what it’d be called...but I’m intrigued by the dropship idea. It would explain why the nacelles are attached to the saucer, not where you think the core is. It could be a small outpost or colony or disaster relief facility in peacetime.

I wonder if it has Voyager legs. It would look pretty striking, architecturally, with the tail jutting back.

@Albertese why would you scale everything else about it smaller not the one mechanical part that’s of another era anyway? All the windows, torpedo tubes, etc would be mis-scaled even if you cut down the number of internal decks. Never mind the weirdness of a 60% ship that looks like an Exelsior and others, just smaller. It’d be weird to walk in.

@Timo wouldn't it be weird if all Starfleet ships could grapple pods behind them? Like the part of the truck that magically appears behind Optimus Prime when he transforms into an 18-wheeler lol. Maybe they attach Ptolemy containers to ships during wartime to double as troop transports — it could take hundreds of thousands or more to fully take a well-populated planet...everyone has to do their part lol.