USS Reliant - was it a big deal in 1982?

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Rewinding back to 1982: We only had TOS, TAS, TMP, and now... Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan. We'd seen other Constitution-class ships in TOS, but was this movie the first time we saw a Starfleet ship that was another class? Dialogue and light blobs don't count.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

It was Kewl-Factor 10 seeing another SF ship, even if it was a kind of Franz Joseph type reuse of existing parts.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

It was Kewl-Factor 10 seeing another SF ship, even if it was a kind of Franz Joseph type reuse of existing parts.

I actually loved that it used the same designs as Kirk's ship, but more compact, and I loved that they used the same sets, but cheated with camera angles and whatever else they did. It made the two ships feel very much like two ship designs in the same Starfleet in the same time period.

 

[FredH]

It was Kewl-Factor 10 seeing another SF ship, even if it was a kind of Franz Joseph type reuse of existing parts.

I don’t know about fandom-wide, but I certainly knew other teenage Trek fans who liked the Reliant’s look very much.

 

[CoveTom]

I actually loved that it used the same designs as Kirk's ship, but more compact, and I loved that they used the same sets, but cheated with camera angles and whatever else they did. It made the two ships feel very much like two ship designs in the same Starfleet in the same time period.

I agree. In TOS, due to budgetary constraints, pretty much any other Starfleet ship we saw was a Constitution class, and if they went on board, it was using Enterprise sets. Some may not like that, but I think it's logical that Starfleet would have consistency to their ship designs. Even though the Reliant looked similar to the Enterprise and utilized the same sets, just redressed, I thought it made perfect sense and worked very well.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

I don’t know about fandom-wide, but I certainly knew other teenage Trek fans who liked the Reliant’s look very much.

It was a long time ago, and all we had were original TOS fans, and us younger TOS fans that watched the reruns. It wasn't the same fandom we have now for sure.

And of course all we had for spoilers was Starlog magazine

 

[FredH]

It was a long time ago, and all we had were original TOS fans, and us younger TOS fans that watched the reruns. It wasn't the same fandom we have now for sure.

And of course all we had for spoilers was Starlog magazine

Sure. Trek fandom was smaller, and arguably more focused, because what we now call TOS simply was Star Trek. I think people forget now, but a big focus of Trek fandom in the 1970s was to Bring The Show Back — not to create new series set in the same universe, the way it works now, but to bring new seasons of the actual original series about Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise (or a direct sequel starring them) back to television. It wasn’t until 1987 and the advent of TNG that that changed, and of course there were plenty of “TNG isn’t real Trek!” reactions, just like every subsequent series up through today.

(Regarding the Reliant, I imagine a certain chunk of fandom also liked the apparent visual confirmation of the Tech Manual assumption of different starship classes using mixups of much the same components in different configurations. There’d been plenty of “blueprint fandom” stuff like that by then, but TWOK was the first time we actually saw it onscreen directly, and not via either a quick shot of a schematic or a verbal reference.)

 

[drt]

I think people forget now, but a big focus of Trek fandom in the 1970s was to Bring The Show Back — not to create new series set in the same universe, the way it works now, but to bring new seasons of the actual original series about Kirk, Spock and the Enterprise (or a direct sequel starring them) back to television. It wasn’t until 1987 and the advent of TNG that that changed, and of course there were plenty of “TNG isn’t real Trek!” reactions, just like every subsequent series up through today.

It's interesting to consider if the TOS movies had ended prior to the next Trek TV production, if they would have still done a "next generation" or instead rebooted the original concept with a younger cast.