They should have just called them Romulan battlecruisers even though it was stock footage of Klingon ships from TMP.
Unseen TOS....
- Thread starter Warped9
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They should have just called them Romulan battlecruisers even though it was stock footage of Klingon ships from TMP.
And since that time there’s been so much flip-flopping between the two empires and what kind of ships they use that it got ridiculously convoluted by ENT, having the Klingons have BoPs in the 2150’s for no good reason other than John Eaves being completely incapable of designing anything that didn’t look like it came from the late 24th century.
Part of what bothered me about ENT is that it never felt or looked remotely like a pre TOS era. It was really a TNG/VOY wannabe with different names and set in a different era, partly for the reasons you cite.
SNW is even worse as it and DSC simply didn’t even try to pretend they were supposed to be in the same continuity universe as TOS. There is no way whatsoever the SNW 1701 is going to be refitted to resemble the TOS E. And thats just hardware. Never mind all the character, alien species and historical backstory contradictions.
Since we have information from MJ on what he was thinking when he designed the Klingon battlecruiser by 1967 it would make more sense to just lean into that "future" design thinking.
There are 26 episodes before "Errand of Mercy" and looking at all the alien and non-Enterprise ships (excluding shuttle Galileo) created during that period there was only one ship design that had nacelles: the impulse-driven Romulan warship. Mudd's Class-J, Lazarus' ship, the Fesarius and the Botany Bay all lacked nacelles.
If the series was pressed to come up with a Klingon or Gorn ship in Season One I kinda doubt they would have had nacelles based on what came out during that time. YMMV.
There are 26 episodes before "Errand of Mercy" and looking at all the alien and non-Enterprise ships (excluding shuttle Galileo) created during that period there was only one ship design that had nacelles: the impulse-driven Romulan warship. Mudd's Class-J, Lazarus' ship, the Fesarius and the Botany Bay all lacked nacelles.
If the series was pressed to come up with a Klingon or Gorn ship in Season One I kinda doubt they would have had nacelles based on what came out during that time. YMMV.
Note how I sidestepped the familiar twin nacelle arrangement of my Gorn design. Yeah, it has a nacelle, but from a distance and certain angles it could be hard to tell.
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What's the other design?
it’s more triangular as seen from above. The support pylons and main hull are all of one piece.
Given what Jefferies said about the purpose and nature of nacelles, I doubt any faster than light warship meant to be taken seriously, but also on something of a roughly equal technological footing as Enterprise, would NOT have had nacelles. It would have had nacelles, and they’d be far removed from the inhabited areas of the ship.
We are never told the Romulan bird of prey is limited to impulse.
Kirk: ”Can we engage them with a reasonable possibility of victory?
Scott: No question. Their power is simple impulse.”
Kirk: Meaning we can outrun them?
Scott says the POWER is simple impulse. Kirk is left questioning whether that means their SPEED is less than Enterprise. And that question is never answered because Stiles goes off on a rant. Plus, we don’t know if any observed limitations to the bird of prey are confined to how it operates under cloak. Spock says as much when he describes how the cloak would work - “Invisibility is theoretically possible, Captain, with selective bending of light. But the power cost is enormous.”
From the designer’s perspective, we know those are nacelles. They look like Enterprise’s nacelles, and for good reason. The script said the bird of prey was a stolen design. The designer would have designed to the requirements of the script.
As for Mudd’s ship, what was seen was a blob without discernible form. Lazarus’ craft is a tiny, one man, interdimensional pod. We don’t even know if it travels in real space or instead gets from place to place through a dimensional void. Botany Bay is “launched”, “atomic” powered, and dates from 1996. And Fesarius is shown in every way to be alien and almost incomprehensibly different. In other words, there is no opportunity to show a ship design before “Errand of Mercy” with nacelles other than the bird of prey. One is out of viewing range, one is not even a spaceship, one is wildly old and primitive, and one is wildly alien.
As for the TSFS mess up over their “bird of prey”, with a Romulan design being fitted with a head and boom to make it look Klingon, it may have had precedent. The back half of the D7 does - sort of - look like the original, Wah-built, Romulan bird of prey, turned upside down and backwards. It’s possible Jefferies designed the Romulan ship as well, with this “manta” look in mind, and we just have never seen his sketches.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c7/b2/cd/c7b2cdec33091ee481b368499781a260--ishigaki-manta-ray.jpg
As for your design Warped, you might want to give it a very subtly discernible “head” by just barely slimming the “neck” to imply something of a boom. That would be a little hint while not being overt - implying an evolution in Jefferies’ thinking was at work.
We are never told the Romulan bird of prey is limited to impulse.
Kirk: ”Can we engage them with a reasonable possibility of victory?
Scott: No question. Their power is simple impulse.”
Kirk: Meaning we can outrun them?
Scott says the POWER is simple impulse. Kirk is left questioning whether that means their SPEED is less than Enterprise. And that question is never answered because Stiles goes off on a rant. Plus, we don’t know if any observed limitations to the bird of prey are confined to how it operates under cloak. Spock says as much when he describes how the cloak would work - “Invisibility is theoretically possible, Captain, with selective bending of light. But the power cost is enormous.”
From the designer’s perspective, we know those are nacelles. They look like Enterprise’s nacelles, and for good reason. The script said the bird of prey was a stolen design. The designer would have designed to the requirements of the script.
As for Mudd’s ship, what was seen was a blob without discernible form. Lazarus’ craft is a tiny, one man, interdimensional pod. We don’t even know if it travels in real space or instead gets from place to place through a dimensional void. Botany Bay is “launched”, “atomic” powered, and dates from 1996. And Fesarius is shown in every way to be alien and almost incomprehensibly different. In other words, there is no opportunity to show a ship design before “Errand of Mercy” with nacelles other than the bird of prey. One is out of viewing range, one is not even a spaceship, one is wildly old and primitive, and one is wildly alien.
As for the TSFS mess up over their “bird of prey”, with a Romulan design being fitted with a head and boom to make it look Klingon, it may have had precedent. The back half of the D7 does - sort of - look like the original, Wah-built, Romulan bird of prey, turned upside down and backwards. It’s possible Jefferies designed the Romulan ship as well, with this “manta” look in mind, and we just have never seen his sketches.
https://i.pinimg.com/736x/c7/b2/cd/c7b2cdec33091ee481b368499781a260--ishigaki-manta-ray.jpg
As for your design Warped, you might want to give it a very subtly discernible “head” by just barely slimming the “neck” to imply something of a boom. That would be a little hint while not being overt - implying an evolution in Jefferies’ thinking was at work.
Given that "the designer would have designed to the requirements of the script" and the script originally was supposed to have the Romulan warship be a copy of a Federation ship then it would make sense that the Romulan warship in "Balance of Terror" would have nacelles.
The same line of thought could then be applied to the Mudd's Class-J which actually has a discernible form and clearly lacks nacelles. It was an interstellar ship that didn't need to have nacelles if we go by this script logic.
The Botany Bay I'll agree as being primitive and unlikely to have nacelles although we see a descendant, the Woden, being used as a contemporary automated ship and she doesn't have nacelles.
As to the Fesarius being an alien ship then should not that thinking apply to the Klingons? Especially since Warped9's premise is to only consider what has been shown up to that point in Season 1?
It's a good thing that we have quotes from Jefferies to know what his future line of thinking was for the Klingon battlecruiser. I say just apply that design thinking to the "Errand of Mercy" Klingon ship(s) and don't worry about being subtle or out-thinking MJ. YMMV.
Also, this shape/angle of a Manta Ray is where I think MJ was getting his idea of the Klingon Battlecruiser. All, IMHO.
The same line of thought could then be applied to the Mudd's Class-J which actually has a discernible form and clearly lacks nacelles. It was an interstellar ship that didn't need to have nacelles if we go by this script logic.
The Botany Bay I'll agree as being primitive and unlikely to have nacelles although we see a descendant, the Woden, being used as a contemporary automated ship and she doesn't have nacelles.
As to the Fesarius being an alien ship then should not that thinking apply to the Klingons? Especially since Warped9's premise is to only consider what has been shown up to that point in Season 1?
It's a good thing that we have quotes from Jefferies to know what his future line of thinking was for the Klingon battlecruiser. I say just apply that design thinking to the "Errand of Mercy" Klingon ship(s) and don't worry about being subtle or out-thinking MJ. YMMV.
Also, this shape/angle of a Manta Ray is where I think MJ was getting his idea of the Klingon Battlecruiser. All, IMHO.
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For the record I won’t be deviating too much from this overall concept. At this stage of the series no one has any idea of what Klingon design will eventually be. So I’m aiming for something with clues or echoes of what we’ll see later that can tie this concept into a familiarity we’ll see later, but I want to resist overt retconning of later ideas that don’t exist yet.
This is a smaller and more compact class of vessel. It can also be seen as something of a first draft of what comes later.
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@Warped9 Gonna be honest. When I saw that, my first thought was the scout from TNG's The Defector:
https://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x10/the_defector_hd_107.jpg
So maybe play with the proportions or something?
https://tng.trekcore.com/hd/albums/3x10/the_defector_hd_107.jpg
So maybe play with the proportions or something?
As I pointed out, Fesarius was not just an alien ship. It was portrayed as a huge, wildly alien ship that could appear larger than it measured and exhibited other technologies difficult for the Enterprise crew to fully understand. If it had been designed with nacelles, it would have signalled just the opposite to the viewer - similar technology.
And the fact Botany Bay was later used for Woden has no bearing on why the ship was originally designed the way it was. It was designed for the “Space Seed” script, not the “Ultimate Computer” script.
Mudd’s ship does not have a discernible form. I could create a ship either with or without nacelles that would perfectly match this purposely ambiguous shape:
https://www.neutralzone.de/database/Federation/CivilianShip/LClass-JCargoShip.jpg
If you look at the sketches on the right at the link below, labeled “scout ship” it looks like Jefferies was thinking about how a - possibly Klingon - scout ship would appear. It might be something he was developing for the Leif Ericson, or he might have been designing it for the “Friday’s Child” script. Impossible to be sure without more information, but it shares the design cues he starts and ends with for the D7. He might have worked on it for “Friday’s Child” and then reused what he came up with for Leif Ericson.
https://graphic-engine.swarthmore.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Lief-Ericson-1.jpg
And the fact Botany Bay was later used for Woden has no bearing on why the ship was originally designed the way it was. It was designed for the “Space Seed” script, not the “Ultimate Computer” script.
Mudd’s ship does not have a discernible form. I could create a ship either with or without nacelles that would perfectly match this purposely ambiguous shape:
https://www.neutralzone.de/database/Federation/CivilianShip/LClass-JCargoShip.jpg
If you look at the sketches on the right at the link below, labeled “scout ship” it looks like Jefferies was thinking about how a - possibly Klingon - scout ship would appear. It might be something he was developing for the Leif Ericson, or he might have been designing it for the “Friday’s Child” script. Impossible to be sure without more information, but it shares the design cues he starts and ends with for the D7. He might have worked on it for “Friday’s Child” and then reused what he came up with for Leif Ericson.
https://graphic-engine.swarthmore.edu/wp-content/uploads/2015/06/Lief-Ericson-1.jpg
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A narrow fuselage and broad flat 'wing' tipped with a nacelle reminded me of another ship of similar proportions with a narrow fuselage and broad flat 'wing' tipped with a nacelle.
Of course.
Since the Fesarius is meant to be an alien ship and lacked nacelles then the alien Klingons in this first season could easily have lacked nacelles. Size doesn't dictate the necessity or lack of nacelles and it doesn't have any bearing on technology. TOS has presented small and powerful vehicles and also giant but archaic vehicles.
As I mentioned earlier, I agree the Botany Bay was meant to be primitive but a later but similar type of ship doesn't have nacelles and is in service during TOS. Again, not all ships appearing in TOS have nacelles.
As for Mudd's Class-J. I can easily create a nacelle-less back-half of the ship because that is what is discernible from the episode. You could pretend there are nacelles on the nose and in a visual blind spot to get around the discernible form we are shown. Or you could pretend that the ship has been flying sideways the entire time and what we are seeing is the ship's port and starboard sides and add nacelles that way. But if you're doing that it seems that you really, really, really want to retroactively add nacelles to everything. Why must ships have nacelles?
As I mentioned earlier, I agree the Botany Bay was meant to be primitive but a later but similar type of ship doesn't have nacelles and is in service during TOS. Again, not all ships appearing in TOS have nacelles.
As for Mudd's Class-J. I can easily create a nacelle-less back-half of the ship because that is what is discernible from the episode. You could pretend there are nacelles on the nose and in a visual blind spot to get around the discernible form we are shown. Or you could pretend that the ship has been flying sideways the entire time and what we are seeing is the ship's port and starboard sides and add nacelles that way. But if you're doing that it seems that you really, really, really want to retroactively add nacelles to everything. Why must ships have nacelles?
You can just make your original point again or address my rebuttal. The fact is, no giant alien ship in TOS or TAS was ever portrayed with nacelles. Size was used to show advanced technology. Every ship similar in size to Enterprise was shown with nacelles. Similar size was shown to infer similar technology. You can choose to conflate the two, but you are then debating yourself and not what I wrote.
Again, Botany Bay was designed without nacelles for Space Seed because it was meant to fulfill the requirements of a script saying it was launched from a launch pad 25 years after the show was being broadcast and when the United States was using rockets and not ships with nacelles. The SFX from Space Seed were reused for economy’s sake, not because they fulfilled the needs of the script. How do we know this? Because we are told as much, and that even the DY-500 is considered ancient and barely recognizable by the time of TOS, while the ship in Ultimate Computer is described as an ore freighter that has been fully automated with modern technology. Even if we are to believe the original ore ship was a 1996 Earth-launched, pre-Zefram Cochrane transport, nothing was done to portray the changes stated in the script. It by all appearances is still a simple, atomic powered, transport capable of travel within the inner Solar System. So, it doesn’t have nacelles because the SFX were reused, and/or the needs of the script - portraying it as utterly helpless and incapable of escaping - wouldn’t have demanded it have warp drive.
As for Mudd's Class-J. I can easily create a nacelle-less back-half of the ship because that is what is discernible from the episode. You could pretend there are nacelles on the nose and in a visual blind spot to get around the discernible form we are shown. Or you could pretend that the ship has been flying sideways the entire time and what we are seeing is the ship's port and starboard sides and add nacelles that way. But if you're doing that it seems that you really, really, really want to retroactively add nacelles to everything. Why must ships have nacelles?
I put the image there for people to decide for themselves whether it is a definite shape as you claim, or a blob that can be read any number of ways. Your eyes may see it as a definite shape, but if it were meant to be a definite shape, I’m pretty sure a model would have been built and not a knife scratching some film stock.
“Why must ships have nacelles?” Since I am discussing Jefferies opinions, I will let the man speak for himself.
“I felt that if he was going to get this sort of fantastic performance out of the thing, there would have to be very powerful engines of some kind or other, even to the point they might be dangerous to be around. I said, "Well, we better get ‘em away from the main hull." The other thing is what we called during war a Quick Change Unit. By having the engines out there, if anything is wrong, you can just quickly unhook it and put another in its place.”
This was his thinking. There was an aircraft logic to why the ships were designed the way they were, and if an alien was being shown to be on an even keel with Starfleet - and not so powerful it could destroy the Enterprise with a mere nod and a breath - it would be portrayed with similar logic. If it wasn’t, unnecessary questions about capability would be raised in a viewer’s mind, and the job of a production designer is to help visualize the story being told. This might not comport with your thinking, but you have the luxury of not having to visualize the story for others. You just have to imagine it for yourself, in anyway that makes sense to you. I don’t think that is what Warped9 is trying to achieve here - to make a story make sense to you. He is, if I understand him correctly, trying to visualize what Matt Jefferies, with his job description, would have done had he had more time and money.
Why do you keep insisting on substituting your own preferences for what he is trying to do, when he has already said what he is trying to do?
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