posted
The ship - Antares - that Charlie X boarded the Enterprise from is spoken of but not seen. My question is this:
What can we know about this ship from canon sources that someone could build on who might be, oh say, interested in drawing a new version of, might draw some accuracy?
Was it a freighter? A Starfleet ship? A civilian ship? Local police? etc.
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Registered: Dec 2003
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posted
Well, offhand, I recall it was called Antares, the crew wore "The Cage"-style SF uniforms, and it had a "baffle plate". I'm not sure if anything else was actually established in the episode.
Registered: Mar 1999
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(And Charlie said it was an older ship, which, I mean, what does he know, but on the other hand nobody corrected him.)
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Awhile I go I found these images on the net; I don't remember exactly where. They're loosely based on a sketch Bjo Trimble did for the Concordance back in the 70s.
posted
Yeah, I think Reverend did those for the ASDB site. He did a TOS version and then imagined what a TMP-era refit might have looked like. To me, that makes it look too much like a large Starfleet ship. I wonder if it might ought to look more simple and less greebly?
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posted
Looks like, at the beginning, it's called a "cargo vessel", then a "transport ship". Those could be the same thing, if we assume they're talking about transporting stuff, rather than people.
Later on, it's a "science probe vessel", then a "survey ship". Which, again, are pretty much the same thing.
Unfortunately, that still leaves us with two conflicting descriptions. From the context, the best I can come up with is that maybe it was officially a science vessel, but, for some reason, it was being used as a cargo transport at that particular time. Perhaps "science probe vessel" was the ship's "class" (like Enterprise' was "starship").
Registered: Mar 1999
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quote:Originally posted by Irishman: Yeah, I think Reverend did those for the ASDB site. He did a TOS version and then imagined what a TMP-era refit might have looked like. To me, that makes it look too much like a large Starfleet ship. I wonder if it might ought to look more simple and less greebly?
Correct. This one took allot of figuring out on the part of the ASDB team since it presents such a perculiar problem. To reconcile all the conflicting descriptions, we decided to adapt the concordence sketch into a sort of "surveyor transport", which is basically a surveyor equipped to handle reletivly large cargo loads for long journeys and/or to resupply distant outposts with new sensor systems, probes, whathave you. Primerally though, it was meant to be a surveyor. image 1 regarding the size, it's actually smaller than you might think. As can be seen in this here scale chart. image 2 As for the refit, the thinking there was to kill two birds with one stone and have this Antares be the prototype for the Antares-Class, of which the Hermes was a later version of. It seamed to fit ok, what with the Redemption fleet being a bit rag-tag and past it, an old surveyor would fit in there nicely.
posted
OTOH, it could also be that the ship was solely a freight mover, and "Science Probe Vessel" (note capitals) is similar to "United Starship" or "Her Majesty's Ship". That is, the "Science Probe" thing is merely a partial spelling-out of UESPA, the operating organization of that vessel. The Enterprise would also be a Science Probe vessel in that sense, at least in "Charlie X" and "Tomorrow is Yesterday"...
That would only leave the "surveyor" part, which might mean the ship was sent on a survey errand - for which she was apparently ill equipped, failing to note the Thasians or anything.
Not that I'd consider her an Antares class transport anyway. That would be way too much of a coincidence!
posted
Since the crew weren't wearing current Starfleet uniforms, but rather uniforms of some type, is it possible they held some sort of semi-official status? Starfleet (or Federation) Merchant Marine, perhaps?
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Registered: Aug 2001
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posted
I'd rather not "disqualify" the "Where No Man.." uniforms that way. There's no way an "unofficial" service would be allowed to wear outdated Starfleet uniforms and their rank insignia aboard a Starfleet ship - Kirk would surely have arrested Ramart for the offense! So Ramart's tunic would have to be non-Starfleet, meaning "WNMHGB" never happened.
Instead, I'd go the other way and try and minimize any discontinuities between the two uniform styles. The presence of two uniform styles would be no different from the presence of two styles in TNG seasons 3-4 or DS9 and VOY. I'd even go as far as saying that the rank braid schemes are identical... Both Captain Kirk in "WNMHGB" and Captain Ramart in "Charlie X" would hold the rank of Commander. (Incidentally, that would make Ramart Kirk's junior, as is proper, while Ramart in all likelihood should have superiority by service years if they both were Captains)
posted
I tend to agree with Timo's suggestion (possibly not about the rank scheme, but about the uniform's in general).
If it took 2 years for the flagship of the Federation to get enough collar-equipped uniforms to clothe the entire crew, I can see a old falling apart ship taking even longer in the 23rd century to get the latest duds.
(Even then, I tend to assume that the with-collar jumpsuit and the with collar two piece uniforms were really the same thing, as it's the only way to explain Wesley and O'Brien having them. But that's another topic.)
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Registered: Mar 1999
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Amasov Prime
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posted
I always assumed the Antares from TOS could have been the prototype of the often mentioned Antares-class (those triangular Alien-of-the-week-ships). It would make sense that races like the Bajorans buy some old Starfleet cargo vessels after the occupation and create a merchant fleet. Take the triangular ship and replace the boxy nacelles with old TOS nacelles, adjust the color a bit and you have a good old-fashioned Starfleet transport. Furthermore, the Aurora was of a (somewhat) triangular shape so the idea isn't too far-fetched.
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Registered: Nov 2001
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posted
But do we really want to say that every USS Foobar we see is the flagship of Foobar class?
That goes against the wisdom that whenever you introduce a ship with cool name A, you have the ship be of a class that has a cool name B, so you get two cool names with the price of one...
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