So, armed with a COPYRIGHTED design - nobody else had designed the ship but Mr. Sternbach - what did they do.
They completely change the design to an experiemental warship called the Defiant Pathfinder.
Now excuse me here. But that to me is the final nail the the coffin of Voyager.
I have to admit that season five is picking up a little, however this "Technical" lazyness that goes on there is getting depressing.
Trek has a long standing commitment to being fresh and innovative. Their technical prowess was the hallmark which set it apart from the other sci-fi shows out there.
I have said this to CC, however I will tell you all as well.
The Long awaited DS9 Technical manual was a half hearted attempt at a book designed purely because they thought they could make a buck out of it.
Compared to the TNG tech manual it was purile and limp - not a worthy sucessor at all.
Only a few weeks ago I had a rant about the Sal Paolo - I still think that name was lazyness.
This Nova Class situation is a turning point for the worst. In effect what the team at trek have done is take the best piece of work to come out of Star Trek, The TNG Technical Manual, and throw it kicking and screaming out of the window.
They are denoucing the Quality once held by Star Trek and claiming the new king as a childish half hearted excuse for a sucessor.
My message is simple - if the designers at trek think that they are wooing the fans with their "fun to be around" philosophy, they are wrong.
Very Wrong........
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---- AAARRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!----
I feel better now.
I mean, yes, the Nova-class design is rife with pitfalls because ever since they said in the TNG tech manual "one day the Galaxy will be replaced by the Nova" there have been so many designs. But to then ignore that and designate a rather uninteresting derivative little ship that maybe might replace the Oberth, as the Nova - that sucks.
In truth, neither show really holds up the standards that TOS and TNG set.
As far as the DS9TM is concerned, maybe you see it as puerile and limp because you're not that interested in the station as you are in starships such as the Ent-D. The Defiant and all the starships are merely support vehicles, like the Captain's Yacht or the shuttles, and not the core of the manual. In the TNGTM, these additional bits also contain mistakes by the mere virtue of not being that important, i.e. the dimensions of the Captain's Yacht or the Type-7 shuttle (it should be 7.5m not 8.5, if one measures the diagram).
I think the TNGTM only appears to be a little more consistent since the basic info (workings of transporters, etc) was there a long time before publication to be occassionally reaffirmed on the show. True, Rick Sternbach did know more about the TNG era info by the mere virtue of working on the show. I expect the Voyager tech manual to be the best of the lot for the same reason.
Boris
[This message was edited by Boris on May 23, 1999.]
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
It's probably safe to say that the TNG "Nova" became the TNG "Sovreign," and that somebody else just came along and used the Nova name later.
(And personally, I looked at the TNG Manual Nova-Class sketches and said "Ecch, I hope not!" -- but then again, I've never seen Mr. Kingsworth's design)
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You're just JEALOUS because the little voices talk to ME!
Boris
As far as the design for the USS Equinox, do we even know that it is going to be Nova Class? I don't know a lot about the Defiant Pathfinder, but pherhaps they decided they like the design, and they wanted to use it. They may get lazy sometimes (I acknowledge that) , but it doesn't mean that every time they don't live upto your expectations, it's because they are being lazy.
As for Voyager as a series, what did you think of the USS Prometheus, that was a pretty good design, except for the registry, they had some prettey good alien ships, the designs for the Species 8472 ships were ok, so Voyager isn't all bad, some of the stories were actually in the ok to good range!
They have some made some mistakes like, timeline mistakes (i.e. Relativity, how is that the bomb is there when Voyager is under construction, and the bomb was placed 2 years after those events accured? What about the registry of the Prometheus, it was very low for a new ship? How big is Malon space, it seems to be hugh, they still enountered them late in the season after their 10,000 light year jump? The Fight, in my opinion, was a pointless episode!
I just like looking at the good points of Trek not the mistakes, even tough there are a fair amount of mistakes!
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One silly, twice foolish. -Dr. Weaver, ER
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"The one, the only, THE 359!"
A.) He like the looks of it.
B.) The text implies that that design was used for other starships.
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"Don't call me at work again. Oh no, the boss still hates me. I'm just tired and I don't love you anymore, and there's a restaurant we should check out where the other nightmare people like to go...I mean nice people, baby wait, I didn't mean to say nightmare."
--
They Might Be Giants
And I know the TNGTM's Nova sketches didn't look all that great, but the one w/ the segmented saucer actually looks a lot better than you'd think. I hope someone has or can find MarkK's rendering of it...
Personally, I see no reason that they had to take the name Nova. There are plenty of other names that they could have chosen. By picking Nova, all they've done is invalidate that last section of the TNGTM, and I think that's pretty dumb.
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"There's always a bigger fish..."
-Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Nova was reserved for the Next generation of ship to follow the Galaxy's path.
Not for some crappy second rate ship which will only appear once with a bunch of psychos on board.
On the TNG tech Manual - It is not Canon?? Humm - its say Paramount on it - it has Gene endorsing it - it features the highest quality reference material - it was used extensively throughout TNG.
Okay then - its not official........
NOT!
While everyone can sit there and say that the Defiant is just a support vessel, I do have a questions - What blows up in the ending chapters?
DS9?
Over time the Defiant has become a more significant ship that just a "support vessel".
It deserved better in the Technical manual.
After all - how many Rio Grande A's have we seen?
How many episodes have featured the Captains Yacht? humm? How many have featured the Defiant?
Support vessel my bottom.
On the DS9 Technical Manual.
Okay - let me get this straight - DS9 logo - nice - professional.
Defiant and Danube - purile and cartoonish.
Information? Mostly good, but there is too little and it is not explained well enough.
Half Hearted effort on DS9, the Defiant and the Danube.
I have been told time and time again when Utopia II was open that our information was cleaner, crisper and more informative than the DS9 Tech Manual - and that was just a fan fic!!!
I did not beleive these comments until I read the book.
Nova Class to Sovereign Class? I think not.
The Nova was to be the replacement for the Galaxy.
The Galaxy class was an explorer.
The Sovereign Class is not an explorer.
Explain the lack of Families.........
If Nova was to replace the Galaxy, then it too would have been an Explorer hence any conclusions or comparisons drawn here are incorrect.
What all of this comes down to is lazyness.
The production team at Paramount really can't be bothered to think of anything new.
By using this "Nova" class, they have invalidated the TNG Technical Manual, invalidated the DS9 Technical Manual (why would the federation put an experiemental warship which was only a prototype into action as an exploration vessel? And then there is the fact that if this ship was the same breed as the Defiant the warp speed would be slow and its fuel capacity limited)
and generally made a laughing stock of themselves.
Station Master signing off.............
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---- AAARRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!----
I feel better now.
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
The TNG TM Nova class was a space filler. Nothing more than that. It was some preliminary designs for a ship to replace the Galaxy class in 100 years time. It has nothing to do with the Sovereign which (a) isn't a replacement for the Galaxy class and (b) is 95 years too early.
There is no reason why the name Nova can't be used for a totally different class of ship. Mike and Rick and so on have repeatedly said that anything in the tech manuals can be changed in later episodes. The idea that the books are as canon as the episodes is complete rubbish. The Canon-FAQ over on rast.tech calls them semi-canon.
As I've stated in Sternbach's newsgroup, I don't see why Starfleet couldn't have been working on two ships, one science orientated, one combat orientated, both based on a similar hull design/warp dynamic. The combat orientated design was substantially modified to become the Defiant whilst the science orientated one was largely unchanged and became the Nova. Perfectly reasonable.
There's nothing in this Nova class thing that invalidates the TNG or DS9 TMs. It merely alters one or two minor details. No need for people to act as if the world is coming to an end.
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-->Identity Crisis<--
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I did it! I did it all! And I'm damn proud of it too!
The point I am trying to make here though is simple.
One of the key points that attracted me to trek in the first place with their attention to detail and the innovative designs.
The further we get down the road though, the less they seem to care if something is accurate or not.
I am starting to feel that Star Trek is becoming more like Star Wars or B5.
No explanations - no thought....
"Hey - this is science fiction - who cares if it is possible or not!"
If Trek had taken that attitude during TNG or TOS, then it would not have inspired a new Generation of NASA scientists..........
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---- AAARRRRRRRRHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!----
I feel better now.
As far as the rest is concerned...what else can be said? We know how all the basic systems work, so Rick simply noted the modifications. The Danube section is clear enough, the Defiant section should not be read by anyone other than Defiant experts (you've gotta be real picky...), the DS9 section makes sense. I don't know if you have any specific examples to mention.
What Rick could have done is do something other than a tech manual - what would be more useful is a DS9 sketchbook, containing interviews with the model makers, construction info. I don't think we really want Rick to get involved with specs, because he will never get them completely right (by the mere virtue of not having enough time). What we really want is access to all the production information, which would allow us to arrive at better conclusions about tech.
Boris
Like it or not, they HAVE held up the TNGTM as being very accurate and representing what Starfleet 'thinks.' If the DP was originally created to be in the DS9TM, then its appearance on Voyager should have been handles better. If it was always going to be the ship o'psychos in Voyager, then it shouldn't have appeared as padding in the DS9TM.
And furthermore, there seems to be a double standard operating here. The appearance of the DP in the DS9TM is being held up as completely justified and not jeopardising its veracity in the slightest, while the mention of the Nova in the TNGTM is to be ignored because the TNGTM doesn't matter anymore.
This may be something to do with the same phenomenon seen when there was just TOS and TNG - the devaluing, even ridiculing, of the former for the benefit of the latter. Now we have a whole bunch of people holding up how wonderful DS9 is - after all, they have lots of cool battles where bad people get killed. . .
But I digress. The point is, there has to be more to the way they represent the technical side of things than just making sure it's of a certain class and it's registry is believeable! Heck, they can't even do THAT right! At this rate, they'll be at the level of SW, with its flash suppressors on laser guns. . .
Lee: What's your problem with flash suppressors? Would you want your firearm to blind you or what?
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
Voyager isn't any more inconsistent than DS9 or TNG and it's a whole load more consistent than TOS ever was.
What is wrong with this ship being called Nova class? It means that the name Nova can't be applied to the space filler sketches in the back of the TNG TM. Big deal.
What is wrong with this ship having very similar design to the Defiant Pathfinder? It means that two different ships were designed (but only one built) with the same spacaframe. Seems like a good thing to me, not a bad thing.
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-->Identity Crisis<--
And I think you misunderstand what flash suppressors are for. They're to conceal your position, not protect you from blindness. And if you have a bright energy beam connecting the target and the shooter, that rather becomes moot. There's no way you can adequately protect against blindness with any sort of weapon, unless yo close your eyes while you fire.
Plus, the flash suppressor on the laser ghun in question in the SW tech manual in question quite obviously wasn't a flash suppressor. It was a blatant example of them just making stuff up.
And Trek IS going that way. Have you seen the Fact Files? No new information, often the text is badly adapted from ploy synopses. . . yes, they do have good diagrams, but have you seen the labels they put on them?! "Ooh, look, it's a nacelle. And this hexagon thing is an escape pod. . ."
The Fact Files and the Star Trek: The Magazine are essentially identical-glossy publications with very fine drawings, sparsely written descriptions, and a lack of additional information. I don't know the currency rate on the Fact Files; however, the ST: TM is very expensive-about eight dollars for an issue. The average magazine price is between four and five dollars.
Lee: Plot isn't the only thing that matters, and no one has said otherwise. But we don't want extensive explanations of stuff in the show, because that will lead to inconsistencies more often than not, and is generally boring. I want to see something in use, not to hear about how it would work. How it works should come later.
And if there's a flash suppressor on the gun, it will still obscure the exact origin of the blast/beam/whatever unless you're looking directly at it.
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
It is only us (and the technical consultants who need to have some working numbers for model compositing etc) who care to work out details such as ship lengths. In the end, the only reason we know that the Enterprise-D is 2108' long is because somebody needs to know how many windows to install on the miniature. As I noted in the 'Cardie shuttle scale' thread, they could have just as well skipped this step and went on to scale the ship differently next to every ship, whichever size works best. Nobody would have noticed the difference, and maybe nobody really cared about the 2108' back in TNG, we've never checked this one, really.
True, Rick also likes to have fun and work out the rest of the details, but to him, this is a mere exercise and not a full-fledged hobby. Maybe the tech has degraded, but explanation was never a priority either. To conclude, we shouldn't expect much from the producers, and would be best off asking if they would kindly release as much production sketches and info as possible, so we can carry out the analysis to our satisfaction.
Boris
[This message was edited by Boris on May 24, 1999.]
[This message was edited by Trinculo on May 24, 1999.]
Hobbes
9905.24
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"If you prick me, do I not...leak" - Data.
[This message was edited by Hobbes on May 24, 1999.]
Trinculo: You don't want the producers to be creative?! What kind of statement is that?! What is the purpose of a television show, other than to present something creative each week?! If you don't want creativity, why don't they just make one episode and keep rerunning it every week for seven years?!
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"There's always a bigger fish..."
-Qui-Gon Jinn, Star Wars: Episode I - The Phantom Menace
Andrew
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"I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die, while you discuss this invasion in a committee" Queen Amidala - Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace
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"No, thanks. I've had enough. One more cup and I'll jump to warp." (Janeway, asked if she would like some coffee in "Once upon a Time")
www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/
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"I was not elected to watch my people suffer and die, while you discuss this invasion in a committee" Queen Amidala - Star Wars: Episode 1, The Phantom Menace
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-->Identity Crisis<--
The section on the Nova-class was just what ID says, filler. But it inspired countless fans to design their own versions of the ship, and thereby launched who knows how many of the 'careers' of some of the ship designers who'se work we've seen on the internet. There are so many names they could have used for the class of the Equinox (a name, in fact, that I had plans for, even if Adam did reject it for a member of his Eclipse-class as not a good name for a starship!). . . why use Nova?! THAT is what I object to.
Now, the Defiant Pathfinder. . . it's an interesting design, but to then reincarnate it as a science vessel barely six months after it appeared in the DS9TM seems clumsy. Apparently the Equinox doesn't have many crew on board, although this could be because there are very few surviving ones. But they could instead have said it was the Defiant prototype, brought back into action in the face of the Dominion threat and on its test flight (just as the Prometheus was, which also had very few crew). That might have worked better. I could see an experimental warship surviving a lot better in the Delta Quadrant than a next-generation Oberth.
But what strikes me above all else is how all of a sudden it only takes one new starship in Voyager to get us all talking again. It seems to me that all this episode will ever mean to any of you is another page to add to your website, another name on your list, and that saddens me. Trek used to be about more than that. . .
The Equinox couldn't be the Defiant prototype as the Defiant is the Defiant prototype. The pathfinder in the DS9 TM was never built. And as it's apparantly been in the Delta quad since about 2367 this class will actually predate the Defiant.
It seems more and more likely that the Defiant grew out of the Defiant pathfinder which grew out of the (probably brand new) Nova class science vessel. The DS9 TM mentions a four nacelled courier version of the Defiant Pathfinder, (despite my remembering and quoting Rick when he described a four nacelled Defiant) so this is obviously a rather successful design (just not suited for Borg fighting).
So they used the name Nova. Big deal. The Romulans had a Nova class back in the 2280s according to FASA. My own fictional (non-Trek) starship stories used a Nova class years before the TNG TM came out. It's a cool name. Of course they could have used another name. I'd like to see a Cosmos class, or a Starlight class (more ships from my non-Trek fiction). But hey, it's not worth all this griping.
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-->Identity Crisis<--
[This message was edited by Identity Crisis on May 25, 1999.]
I mean, they certainly KNEW about their own tech manual. And they certainly made First Contact LONG before anybody came up with the Defiant pathfinder, OR using a ship caled "Nova Class" on Voyager.
So, by this "The TNG Tech Manual is Canon, and MUST BE FOLLWED" reasoning, it was First Contact that is behind the downfall of Star Trek as we know it.
so :P
[Of course, "Sovreign" is a more impressive-sounding name than "Nova" anyway.
("No va" in spanish being "It doesn't go.")]
**irrelevant detail** - those of us who are fond of DC's "Elseworlds" comic stories will know that "Sovreign" has been used as an alternate-universe name for "Superman." This may be one of the reasons I prefer it.
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You're just JEALOUS because the little voices talk to ME!
That wouldn't surprise me, considering the quality of the ships section of said manual. I would blame the writers of the book, not the makers of the show.
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You're just JEALOUS because the little voices talk to ME!
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-->Identity Crisis<--
Year 1: Galaxy and Constellation.
Year 2. No starfleet vessels.
Year 3: Ambassador
Year 4: Nebula (and Wolf 359 kitbashes)
Year 5: no starfleet vessels.
Year 6: Sydney (if you count it) and Danube.
Year 7: No starfleet vessels.
Year 8: Defiant and Intrepid (and Excelsior variant).
Year 9: No starfleet vessels
Year 10: Sovereign, Akira, Steamrunner, Norway, Sabre, Yeager (if you count it)
Year 11: Prometheus, Centaur, Shelley,
Year 12: Nova.
With the Attack fighter first being seen in Year 7 and first seen in Starfleet service in year 10.
Apart from the glut of ships that First Contact gave us we've had an average of one ship a year.
Sometime our expectations are too high.
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-->Identity Crisis<--
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-->Identity Crisis<--
The Defiant Pathfinder wasn't the prototype for the Defiant, I know - a poor choice of words. Say a testbed, rather. . .
Yes, Nova is a good name. Maybe it's better to use it and contradict the TNGTM, I don't know. But there must be a lot of pissed off Nova designers out there. . .
Firsty, you're being facetious by saying that the existence of the Sovereign contradcits the TNGTM. The class isn't meant to replace the Galaxy, which is meant to have a service life of more than a hundred years. At 'this' stage, the Nova-class design project (as was - we must now assume it doesn't exist anymore) could only be in the concept stage, since the tech of a hundred years hence can only be guessed at.
Is it worth getting so het up about? No, but the fact remains: their willingness to invalidate yet another part of the TNGTM, long held up as being damn near canon and therefore being worth buying, is yet another example of the way older Trek is now slated by fans (who are notoriously fickle) and TPTB (who have always resented the "not as good as TNG" tag that DS9 continues to have). Plus, it's another nail in the coffin of the DS9TM, which was always regarded as substandard.
And I thought the rule was if it was not seen on the screen it was not considered cannon?>
I am sure they try to keep the inconsistences down to a miniumum but if consistences such as a ship name,verbal slip up or even some technical slip detracts from your enjoyment of the show than u are missing the show purpose of entertainment.
Is anyone going to walk out of a good show or movie they enjoy cause it is not consistent with what we see as cannon or as written in stone?.
And if they try to keep everything consistent, they would drive everyone on the production team as well as the writers mad trying to fit everything into the trek consistency. " Sorry u can't reuse that bridge set of the those ships because it was used as the USS Promethues and the NX Defiance and it can't be reused". "But we are shooting this epiisode tommorow and I got to start work on three others episodes!". "Sorry, u got to make new sets for the bridge of the Uss Nova".
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I did'nt do it.
Boris
[This message was edited by Boris on May 25, 1999.]
Okay, now back to the Nova. As Lee said, it's not the fact that they contradicted the TM that's the problem. They do that all the time when they need to make some piece of treknology work a certain way for a certain plot. However, npow they've gotten to the point where they (and appreantly a lot of people here) just don't care anymore. They say "Hey, it's just one page at the back of the book. Who cares what they wrote back then?". Pretty soon it'll be "Hey, it's just one episode. Who cares what they wrote back then?". Then "Hey, it's just one season...". "Hey, it's just one series...". Picking the name "Nova" had absolutely nothing to do w/ time constraints. I'm not even sure how that got into this conversation. All it means is that some writer liked the name and said "Screw the Tech Manual. I'm doing whatever I damn well please, and no-one can stop me.". That's the kind of attitude that's going to send Trek way downhill if it keeps up.
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"Although I'm so tired, I'll have another cigarette. And curse Sir Walter Raleigh; he was such a stupid git."
-the Beatles, "I'm So Tired"
If I missed others, let me know.
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Remember when we used to be explorers? - Capt. Jean-Luc Picard - Star Trek Insurrection
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Garak: "I do apologize. You must be incensed. In fact, if I were in your shoes, I'd... grab a bottle of champagne and shoot me." (DS9: "Our Man Bashir")
Boris: An upcoming upgrade to the UBB includes HTML page splitting. When it's released, I'll investigate porting. I'd do it myself but actually creating a working page-split routine is virtually impossible with static HTML pages, I'd need to create a dynamic generation system which would quickly cause the server to fall over.
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"Okay, so I'm not "SANE" so to speak, but uh... I'm the lovable kind of psycho"
http://solareclipse.net/
[This message was edited by Charles Capps on May 26, 1999.]
I'm not counting the Aeon or the Wells as they're more or less alien ships (if the past is another country then so is the future, right?).
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-->Identity Crisis<--
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
Perhaps I read the wrong page.
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You're just JEALOUS because the little voices talk to ME!
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
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"Although I'm so tired, I'll have another cigarette. And curse Sir Walter Raleigh; he was such a stupid git."
-the Beatles, "I'm So Tired"
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
Seems we're both not quite right.
The DESIGN LIFETIME of the Galaxy Class ships is supposed to be 100 years. This, however, does not mean that the ship would not be supplanted within a much shorter frame of time (Just as the Constitution Class saw the development of the Excelsior before its design lifetime ended, and the Excelsior saw the development of the Ambassador AND Galaxy Classes.)
The page that mentioned 20 years said that in 20 years, the Galaxy Class starships would be only 1/5 of the way into their operational lifetimes, but that eventually they would be superceded, and that designers were already working on a class incorporating the newest technologies and assumed advancements.
(Of course, these assumed advances were likely made irrelevant due to the other advances coming as a result of the Borg and Dominion incursions.)
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You're just JEALOUS because the little voices talk to ME!
The first (total lifespan) shows the period that the ship will be in service for, and can operate effectively.
The second (superscision)is just technological replacement. As your enemies get bigger stronger ships, so will you. Thus is a period of low hostility you'll replace/upgrade at a slower rate, whilst in a period of high hostility you will develop much faster. (As First stated).
So whilst the Galaxy will have a 100 year lifespan, it would not be a top of the line ship for that period. Not even close.
IDC is right (did I just say that? *L*), this vessel is in essence a space filler. So, if we are running on Chris's principle we'd have to go chasing after every shoddly designed and shown ship from TNG onwards. And there are a hell of a lot of those.
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"I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler.....If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourbale reference to the devil in the House of Commons".
-Winston Churchill
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"I have only one purpose, the destruction of Hitler.....If Hitler invaded hell I would make at least a favourbale reference to the devil in the House of Commons".
-Winston Churchill
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
If it had a registry, it wasn't visible.
And it had an EMH! I mean, why didn't the Enterprise-D have one, then? Although I suppose maybe they did, but never needed it...
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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid
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"I make fun of senior citizens, but obviously I aspire to be one of them, the alternative being what it is."
-Scott Adams, The Dilbert Future
Hobbes
9905.27
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I'll hold it open and you pull it out.
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U.S.S. Infiltrator NCC-75235
www.geocities.com/Area51/Quadrant/4930
"I like the carpet. I really do!"
-Julian Bashir
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"I make fun of senior citizens, but obviously I aspire to be one of them, the alternative being what it is."
-Scott Adams, The Dilbert Future