I am very interested in the technical side of Trek and found a lot of the threads here to be very interesting.
I am, at the moment, interviewing Ed Whitefire. He created the original Enterprise-D blueprints and worked closely with Andrew Probert, Rich Sternbach and Mike Okuda. They were never published due to licence problems with the publishing house. But, the Blueprints that were published draw very heavily on Ed's original work.
I was wondering if anyone would be interested in my posting the interview here?
Regards
Albertus
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
Sure! And, what's more, it sounds like it would be a cool addition to this page if you contacted the sitemaster.
Welcome aboard!
-MMoM Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
Unless, of course, they are the same plans.
Posted by Albertus (Member # 1635) on :
Hi MMoM, I have already contacted Phil Broad, the owner of the Cloudster site, and the interview is available to him if he wants to host it. I found Ed's plans on his site, through the Flare site, that's what started it all.
And yes, HerbShrump, they are the same blueprints.
The reason I asked about posting the interview here was to complete the circle. But more than that, I felt that Ed had been done an injustice. A great deal of the published plans are indistinguisable from the Whitefire blueprints, but Ed was given no recognition for his originating them or for contributing to the TV series in any way, shape or form. This just seemed wrong.
So I decided to try to redress the balance.
I was surprised that I had never heard of Ed Whitefire or his plans. I am a keen Trek scratchbuilder and spend a lot of time looking for reference material, when I came across Ed's work, it was like a bolt from the blue, like getting a look at the original Franz Joseph plans.
I guess, to some extent, I am on a crusade to get his work and contribution to Trek acknowledged, for this, I make no appologies.
Posted by Harry (Member # 265) on :
Never heard of him or his plans. In fact, I don't think I've ever seen blueprints of a Galaxy that weren't the Sternbach ones.
When were these blueprints done? Wasn't the Ent-D MSD (which looks quite different) already established early on in the series?
Look at these shuttles. The transport shuttle + warp sled looks surprisingly similar to a Danube-class runabout!
Posted by B.J. (Member # 858) on :
Not sure about the MSD, but these plans were created in the first few seasons of TNG, as evidenced by the lack of a Type 6 shuttlecraft. The text on Phil's site plus other stuff I remember hearing confirms that.
B.J.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by HerbShrump: Unless, of course, they are the same plans.
I meant the interview. DUH!
Posted by Albertus (Member # 1635) on :
The interview is entirely new and posted on this forum.
Posted by Bones McCoy (Member # 1480) on :
Welcome to the 24th century.
Posted by HerbShrump (Member # 1230) on :
Duh... my bad.
Posted by Albertus (Member # 1635) on :
Thanks for the welcome Bones.
Harry, I had never heard of the plans either, so it came as a shock find out that Ed's blueprints existed.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Those Blueprints are really cool. Infact I think I might like them better than Sternbach's - problem with his is... a lot of decks seem to be the same - and with not much for the thousand or so people to do on board. I like the idea of the 'mall' - i'm guessing a smaller version on the promenade. the 'town squares' and 'circles' - cause the ship is so large and everyone is packed in - I'm sure there are 'neighbourhoods' that start up.
Etc. Etc. I really don't think Ten-Forward is the only 'leisure' centre on board. Just thinking about it - one could say "oh but after seven years you'd think you'd see or here about such areas of the ship". Well maybe one could think about the show as being on a big starship that focuses on the goings on of it's Starfleet crew etc - not on the everyday population.
Posted by Zefram (Member # 1568) on :
One thing that always bothered me about the Enterprise-D was the vast numbers of non-essential crew aboard. Given how often the ship was menaced by Klingons, Romulans, Borg, superbeings of the week, alien virus, temporal paradoxes, etc., you would think that Starfleet would declare that it was simply a bad idea to put families with children aboard. Why should a ship that would be at the frontlines in the event of war waste valuable space and resources on people who are more of a liability than an asset?
It does seem that sometime after TNG Starfleet came to its senses, as evidenced by Voyager's and the Enterprise-E's smaller crews consisting only of Starfleet crew memembers.
Posted by Albertus (Member # 1635) on :
Zefram, Hi
I believe Roddenberry's thinking on the inclusion of families and such, was that the E-D was on a 30-year-mission not a 5 year one as seen in TOS.
To expect people to be away from family and loved ones for such a long time just seemed unreasonable.
Posted by Zefram (Member # 1568) on :
Given the danger associated with space exploration and the apparently high probability of death for the average Starfleet officer, I doubt any crewmembers would survive a thirty year tour.
I understand Roddenberry's reasoning, since as a pacifist he wanted Federation starships to be ships of peace and thus appropriate places for families. The changes made to the Star Trek universe after Roddenberry's death sure changed that, though.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Also though, in the Star Trek universe - apart from the Cardassian Border Wars and the Galen border conflicts with the Talarians there had been relative peace for about 53 years (since the Tomed incident) for the Federation. Plenty of time to establish major exploratory projects.
Posted by newark (Member # 888) on :
And the Tzinkithi War and the border conflicts with the Tholians.
Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
Frankly, the mid-24th century, when you take everything together, was made out to be about as unpeaceful as you can get.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Ok, yes Tholians AND Tzenkethi... err... ok no "fullscale" wars to the scale of the Dominion Wars.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
hmmm.....I dont know....most Federation citizens were probably never in any danger from those minor wars.
Consider that Picard was never involved with either war (running away once from Cardies in the Stargazer aside).
The Federation is large enough that a border war would not affect the majority of citizens in any way whatsoever- Particularly if the combat is mostly ship-to-ship.
A conflict lasting only few months might concievably be over before the residents of the opposite side of the Federation know it's started at all.
[ June 19, 2005, 04:15 AM: Message edited by: Jason Abbadon ]
Posted by AH_Solid_Snake (Member # 1624) on :
the thing you have to remember is that for the first few seasons where rodenberry was still contributing a great deal (before age and illness got the better of him i guess) that the enterprise never met truly credible threats to them.
Most of the early season 1 episodes were more based around enterprise being "the ultimate power in the universe" and picards moral dillema (let them kill wesley and uphold prime directive, sod it all and just beam him up).
Its only later on, mebe around about the borg introduction that the possibility of things that can take the enterprise on that becomes the new standard.
I agree however that families and kids is kind of a bone idea, you are risking a lot if the ship gets stuck in some kind of vortex that threatens the magnetic containment or whatever this week.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
Well, I felt it was another attempt to de-militarize Starfleet by making it as Khan said "one big happy fleet". Unfortunately phasering holes in a planets crust to prevent an earthquake isn't near as exciting as tossing Photon torpedoes at the ugly prosthetic of the week.
Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
The Edo "god" seemed to present more than an idle threat, as far as that example goes, though of course we never found out what it could have done, since it decided to do nothing.
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
Nothing - it was perving on the population on the planet below continually getting it on. What's a bet that whole 'station' thing was occupied by one adolescent boy. Posted by Jag2112 (Member # 1386) on :
This is the first time I've come across this "version" of the Enteprise-D...
Does anyone have additional information on these prints?
-John
Posted by Aban Rune (Member # 226) on :
No date on the drawings, but, like the site says, it looks like something someone did after seeing a sketch or a photo of the Ent D for a few seconds before the show came out.
Posted by PsyLiam (Member # 73) on :
It's odd that the RCS thruster is marked as part of the deflector grid, especially as those thrusters had been around since the first movie.
Also strange is that there are movie style phasers on top, but there's still a strip that looks like the normal phaser strip on the bottom part of the ship just behind the deflector.
Posted by WizArtist II (Member # 1425) on :
It's the "D" before Liposuction and augmentation.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
Seriously ugly as fuck.
The movie-style phasers would be four times as large as on the "A" so that means their turretts would be about ten meters tall.
They dont seem to cover very much of the ship either.
No sir, I dont like it.
Posted by Albertus (Member # 1635) on :
Just a long overdue update.
The Ed Whitefire interview is now hosted at http://trekplace.com/ ,if anybody wants to read it.
If you have any questions regarding it or you would like to ask Ed about something, let me know and I will post the answers here.
Regards
Albertus
Posted by Toadkiller (Member # 425) on :
There's a picture that comes to mind in situations like this....
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I've seen those Whitefire blueprints before. I can't really remember where. I think they were in PDF form and I got them off some P2P network or obscure Trek site.
Edit: What ep was it that Geordi mentioned the tursiops? I don't recall this.
[ April 30, 2008, 09:58 AM: Message edited by: Daniel Butler ]
Posted by Sean (Member # 2010) on :
I do like the shuttlebay design on that blueprint though I agree that the ship looks smushed. Looks like she tried to fly through the garbage compactor on the death star.
Posted by Daniel Butler (Member # 1689) on :
I've just finished the interview...thrust reversers on the impulse engines, hm? Interesting. I recall reading (in one of the tech manuals or encyclopedia or some other thing) that the impulse engines had drive coils to reduce the apparent mass of the ship, and that slowing down entailed discharging the coils and increasing the mass - using inertia to slow down, in other words. I wonder who came up with each idea (on the production/writing staff)? Too bad neither of those ideas were ever canonized.
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