The gears are turning, folks. I’ve got an idea for the Denevan ship that flew into the sun from “Operation—Annihilate.” And, yeah, it’ll look like something cobbled together in the workshop.
While fleshing out my idea for the Denevan ship I also revisited some of Jefferies’ early sketches. Hmm…seems I might have a kernel of an idea for the cruiser Aurora down the road when I get to the third season. Certainly won’t be reusing the Tholian webspinner.
Per dialog, it was a one-man ship suggesting it could be smaller than the Aurora: SPOCK: The ship is a one-man vessel of Denevan configuration, Captain. I wonder what is "Denevan" configuration?
I suspect it would have been a better bit of dialogue for him to say "The ship is a one-man vessel of Denevan registry, captain."
A "one-man vessel" can be interpreted different ways. Later we will hear of Cyrano Jones' one-man scoutship, which suggests to me a craft that can support a single person for extended periods. As such it could still be reasonably sizable. This is different than a small craft akin to a one-man aircraft thats meant to carry one person for rather brief flights.
A glimpse of a Denevan ship. I tried not to over think it. I tried to mentally use the idea of fashioning something from scrap pieces of wood or whatever lying around. I want to add a couple of other small things.
That’s actually close to how I imagined it. Big windows. I am thinking that the pilot was compelled to travel and help spread the parasite and noticed the effect by accident…then took action.
This one is great. I wonder if this model would’ve been mounted on a stand, or rigged on wires for the blue screen shoot…
As always trying to resist adding too much detail for something that would likely have been barely seen onscreen. Then again this could be repurposed for a later episode.
In these pics the ship looms large, but if actually filmed I would shoot it further away to create a more effective sense of smaller size. It's difficult to say how large this miniature would end up being, but I approached it as a static miniature with no internal lighting whatsoever. Believe it or not the end of a wooden broom handle is what got me started on the design.
So this is what remains of Season 1. “Return Of The Archons” - The way the episode is structured there is no real opportunity to catch even a glimpse if what the Archon could have looked like. And it’s not really necessary to the story. But we can still speculate. “Errand Of Mercy” - A small scout class vessel two years before we get to see the Klingon D7. What could this possibly look like? “A Taste Of Armageddon” - A Federation starship predating the Enterprise by some decades.
If the Archon was a contemporary to the Horizon, perhaps it also had landing capabilities too. How else would it have gotten destroyed? It's not like Landru had the ability to shoot at orbiting spacecraft from the planet's surface. My best guess was that someone took the top half of a 1960's Soviet tank model kit and added a post-production green-yellow glow to it. Unfortunately I have no idea about this one.
I'd go back and look at MJ's concept sketches for the Klingon battle cruiser. lots of possibilities there.
I'll just add that it can't be too small. They were able to establish a full-size Klingon garrison planetside. Complete with a munitions dump.
You're thinking of "Friday's Child". I agree with @FormerLurker, the Klingon ship(s) in "Errand of Mercy" were probably more equivalent to a modern day amphibious assault ship. I sort of imagine they'd look like fat D7s. Trefayne said eight Klingon ships arrived in orbit. I think it was maybe six assault ships with a couple of regular D7s as escort.
Oops, you are correct; I was thinking of ‘Friday’s Child’ because Warped9 mentioned a scout ship. In that case, I’m not sure why anyone wouldn’t assume that Kor’s fleet consisted of D7s even before they were introduced on screen. That would have been my first assumption. To my knowledge, there was no dialogue indicating what kind of ships they were. How did ‘small scout ship’ come into the discussion?
Okay, stepping out of the strictly 1965-1969 TOS framework for a moment. Franz Joseph gave us a scout class Starfleet vessel that was still quite sizeable given it used a same/similar saucer main hull as the Constitution-class. That suggests a scout class vessel could still be sizeable at least in Starfleet’s eyes. So I’ve been mulling over a Klingon design that could be roughly equivalent in size to the Enterprise’s saucer hull, albeit shaped quite differently. Challenge: the D7 design, to the best of my knowledge, wasn’t yet contemplated in 1966-67. So within the framework I set out for this project I shouldn’t even be considering the D7 as an influence. However, since we know Jefferies will eventually design it it might be safe to aim for something somewhat evolutionary, a design that could be interpreted as a stepping stone toward a full size warship design, the eventual D7. While I will go back over Jefferies’ early sketches for reference to his thinking I already have a vague idea in mind.
You probably don't want to influence your thought process, but for everyone else, ECHenry did his version of this ship on his YouTube channel about a year ago.