Foundation, however, abandoned B5 in pursuit of profits at Voyager, leaving Tim Earls and Netter Digital to keep going. However, Tim Earls *also* left for Voyager to work as Rick Sternbach's assistant of sorts.

However, B5 still has JMS. And even if its effects regressed to the level of TOS, B5 would still have better writing than *any* Star Trek show! So there.

[ November 04, 2001: Message edited by: Phelps ]

Tim: Mojo Jojo is the Evil Lord, I think. And he has picked a stunning name to use. I salute him.

Hmm. I haven't seen this book over here yet.

This action almost put Foundation out of business - fortunately, Star Trek was experiencing CG growing pains and came and asked us to do a show for them (Basics, part 1). Luckily, they were pleased with our work and kept a relationship with us.

I mean, seriously - why would we tell B5 to shove off in favor of Trek when we could have easily done BOTH??

I was sad to see the show go.

Alex and Jon handled deciding which specs would be kept. When there was a contradiction or discrepancy, they used the dimensions of the physical models at Paramount as a basis of measurement.

That seemed about as official as we could get...

It's preferable to maintain consistency with previous specs when the previous specs are right. It's fabulous that you kept the original and refit Constitution specs, the K'tinga specs, the Enterprise-E specs, the Voyager specs, etc.

However, watch this:

Doug Drexler made an alien ship size comparison chart for the Encyclopedia. Although he ordered the ships by size, Doug did not intend them to be to scale. Nevertheless, most ships were to scale, except for an oversized Vor'cha and another ship I can't remember.

Along comes Rick Sternbach, who's fabulous in everything Voyager and TNG, but does not know DS9 as well because he didn't work there. He's making the DS9 Tech Manual, and needs some specs. He looks at the Encyclopedia charts, misinterprets them as being to scale, and takes the worst ship imaginable as the scale reference: the Vor'cha.

So we get a K'tinga at 340m instead of 214m, a Bird of Prey at 157m instead of 110m, etc. These absolutely nonsensical specs are published and republished in the Magazine, and other books. Your book comes along and corrects a lot of that, because we finally have people with some sense looking at them.

But, there are still places where the original Encyclopedia charts themselves were wrong, and where Rick Sternbach accidentally corrected the specs so that they are good enough for you to keep them. Jem'Hadar fighter was about 45m long according to the Encyclopedia, which is absolutely nonsensical, yet Rick accidentally scaled it up to 68m. That's a bit closer to the probable value of 100m.

It is more an overal look at the events that have shaped the Star Trek universe, as if it were told by the pages of National Geographic. Incidents such as the launching of the NX-01, the Doomsday Machine, the battle at Wolf 359, Voyager's defeat of the Borg and more will be looked at as history through pictures, with an eye for the dramatic.

In large part, the book will be new renders of special effects imagery (some seen before, some not), but it will also be filled in with live-action pictures from Star Trek - after all, history is not just made by space ships! A lot of time is going to be spent looking through Paramount's photo archive, picking images that are dramatic, tell the story and have not been seen before.

In addition, the plan is to have several of the chapters open with blank-backed gatefolds, suitable for framing!

Masao: "Unseen Fronteir" will be about unseen parts of Trek history, not (correct me if I'm wrong, Mojo) necessarily only about ships. There will be such things as Wolf 359 (a chapter!), Voyager's disappearance, etc.

Or, you can visit the "Unseen Article" threads in the Creativity forum.

If it's the latter, wow, wouldn't that be cool! I mean, imagine seeing a picture of the signing of the Khitomer accords? Or a picture of a Captain sitting on the bridge of a starship as her ship is torn apart by Cardassian weapons? As you said, it's not just about spaceships... But it's not just about the relatively few number of people on those spaceships either.

Plus, it'd be cool to see you guys flex your muscles on CGI backgrounds and interior sets. Like bridges, for example. I'm sure whatever you guys come up with will rock, though. Just don't pull another "New Worlds, New Civilizations" artbook, which is only found in the bargain bins of most bookstores these days. Did anyone buy that, BTW..? I fully credit the artists in that book for some good work, but the presentation and subject matter of that book just didn't work...