This also brings up another question, is it standard practice to attch runabout to larger ships now. I think it's probably a good idea although with the advent of the new super shuttles from insurrection, they may not be needed all that much longer.
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"Resolve and thou art free."
--Baloo
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"It is required of every man," the Ghost returned, "that the spirit within him should walk abroad among his fellowmen, and travel far and wide; and if that spirit goes not forth in life, it is condemned to do so after death. It is doomed to wander through the world -- oh, woe is me! -- and witness what it cannot share, but might have shared on earth, and turned to happiness!"
-- Jacob Marley's Ghost (A Christmas Carol -- Charles Dickens)
http://members.tripod.com/~Bob_Baloo/index.htm
Somehow I question this, because even a glipse of a number would probably show the difference between either NCC-7xxxx or NCC-1701-D.
I think the new 'super shuttle' is most probably a Runabout equivalant for Starship use. Larger than the average shuttle, but smaller than a Runabout.
I'll also remind you there is still a debate going whether or not the Insurrection Scout (which is the same size as a Runabout) is a solo ship or Starship based.
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Life on Earth is expensive, but it does include a free annual trip around the sun!
=\V/=
And I believe the ep was called "Timeless".
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"Is he live or dead? Has he thoughts within his head?"
-Black Sabbath, "Iron Man"
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Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")
I'm sure if we could see the number on Picard's runabout it would be an NCC number and not a NCC-1701-D/ something. All the DS9 runabouts have their own number not "DS9/2"
I hadn't heard the debate about the Scoutship having a mothership. It might explain the fact that it has no given name or class. The registry on ther hull may be the mothership's.
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"Resolve and thou art free."
I still do.
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Calvin: "I'm a man of few words."
Hobbes: "Maybe if you read more, you'd have a larger vocabulary."
Federation Starship Datalink - Starship site of the new millennium.
Boris
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"Wrong again. Although we want to be scientifically accurate, we've found that selection of [Photon Energy Plasma Scientifically Inaccurate as a major Star Trek format error] usually indicates a preoccupation with science and gadgetry over people and story."
---a Writers' Test from the Original Series Writer's Guide
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Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")
And "Timscape", you say? Er... Uh... That's, ah... That's what I said. You must have misheard me...
*sees his own words printed there on the screen*
D'oh!
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"Is he live or dead? Has he thoughts within his head?"
-Black Sabbath, "Iron Man"
I don't know why they bothered to eliminate the registries. But AFAIK all the shots of the runabout in "Timescape" were custom shots instead of DS9 footage, so perhaps the model people wanted to give the photographers greater freedom in setting up their shots. They didn't have to avoid embarrassing close-ups this way. And nobody in either team felt he had the authority to make up a number, and Okuda was out shopping or something.
Personally, I think that since Sisko gets to name his own runabouts, Picard also intended to name this one (recently aquired at the starbase) when he got back to his ship. The same logic would explain the missing name of Data's scout in "Insurrection" - the admiral was supposed to name it, but never had the time.
Timo Saloniemi
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"Naomi Wildman, sub-unit of Ensign Samantha Wildman, state your intentions." (VOY: "Infinite Regress")
Ex Astris Scientia
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Calvin: "I'm a man of few words."
Hobbes: "Maybe if you read more, you'd have a larger vocabulary."
Federation Starship Datalink - Starship site of the new millennium.
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"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK
Andrew
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"Its a CLOCK!" - Sisko, "Dramatis Personae" DS9.
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Elim Garak: "Oh, it's just Garak. Plain, simple Garak. Now, good day to you, Doctor. I'm so glad to have made such an... interesting new friend today." (DS9: "Past Prologue")
Boris
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"Wrong again. Although we want to be scientifically accurate, we've found that selection of [Photon Energy Plasma Scientifically Inaccurate as a major Star Trek format error] usually indicates a preoccupation with science and gadgetry over people and story."
---a Writers' Test from the Original Series Writer's Guide
And there were a fair few DS9 shots used in that ep. As far as I can tell, nearly all the model shots of the runabout in DS9 (as oppossed to CGI) are filmed in such a way as to make the registry numbers in shadow or otherwise unreadable. I think the registry number on the runabout miniture is the Rio Grande's number, and they've just never bothered to change it, as it would take too much effort.
It would also explain the Rio Grande's near mutant-indestructibility.
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*gasp* "The pictures...they're...coming...alive!"
-Abe Simpson, on the miracle of the moving image
The runabouts must be able to fit in the Galaxy-class main shuttlebay. After all, the Ent-D did bring the original 3 to DS9 in "Emissary".
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"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK
[This message has been edited by Dax (edited November 30, 1999).]
I'd think the captains or possibly some lower-ranking officers get to name all the shuttles, and even decide on the numbers they receive. That way, the shuttle Sakharov /01 can easily be a type 7 in early TNG and type 6 in later eps, or the El-Baz can be /05 or /03 as needed. And the /13 can be a type 7 in "Coming of Age", but what seems like a TNG-era runabout in "Skin of Evil".
And I bet the workbees are named by the deck crew. And Paramount simply won't allow any of those names to be reproduced in print in any book with their logo on the back, for obvious reasons...
Timo Saloniemi
Also, runabouts were still fairly new at this point. Consider the possibility that IF the practice of supplying some starships with runabouts was being implemented, Picard was bringing the runabout to the Ent D for the first time. They did intend to rejoin the ship so the runabout would have had to stay on board for a while at least. However, if this is the case, how did the group get to wherever they were coming back from in the first place? Did the Ent D drop them off and then leave? It wouldn't be the first time.
I also think that the hull is blank with regards to the name and rego. I watched it frame by frame and couldn't see anything.
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"Resolve and thou art free."
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Quark-"Stop. Or I'll disintigrate this hostage."
20th Century General-"With Your Finger?"
Quark-"With my death ray."
20th Century General-"Looks alot like a finger to me."
Rewatching (ugh!) "Skin of Evil", I was intrigued by the shuttle there. You remember "shuttle 13" crashing into a rock face, with Troi aboard? The wreck exterior was portrayed by a model or prop that clearly wasn't supposed to look at all like the then standard type 7 shuttle. It had a very large stern window, a long and narrow hull, a cockpit area separated from the rest of the craft by a bulkhead and a door (admittedly, some type 7s had this as well), and two very large nacelles apparently mounted on long pylons instead of being bolted to the hull. All features that are mirrored in the Danube design.
To boot, this was one of the extremely few TNG shuttles that was in true deep-space interstellar transit, as opposed to ferrying somebody from a nearby star system to the ship or vice versa. (the only other one that comes to mind would be the type 7 in "Chain of Command", really. Or perhaps Scotty's "gift".)
This relates to two nits:
1. A legitimate difference in warp performace wrt shuttles => consistency in the way these craft are operated. It would make sense for the E-D to have one or two "runabouts" on board, since shuttles as portrayed in the TNG TM cannot go interstellar, not at warp two max.
2. (And this is really obscure!) Remember that SWDAO on "Second Sight", about the Potemkin looking like an Ambassador on the E-D monitor readout? Well, this shuttle looks like a type 7 on the monitor, even though the model never attempts to look like one. So we can now say all such screen representations are just symbolical, and the Potemkin is really an Excelsior.
Timo Saloniemi
There seem to be three standard practices of letting people make planetside trips:
-Fly the ship in, usually at impulse, use transporters to move the people down and back up, warp out. (Normal practice for TOS, DS9 and late TNG)
-Warp the ship to the outskirts of the system, launch a shuttle, warp out, later warp back and pick up the shuttle. The shuttle usually travels at impulse. (This is used in TAS and most of early TNG)
-Send a shuttle out, crash it on a planet, fly the ship in and try to transport the people up, land the ship when this fails, take off and warp out. (This is the method preferred by VOY)
One could combine these if the target planet has a Federation presence: since shuttles are consumer goods anyway, starbases could lend them to people so that they can method-two themselves back to their ship. Or the people could leave their shuttles behind and method-one out.
I guess it all depends on how tight the schedule of the ship is. Almost invariably, ships are forced to go to impulse when entering star systems. To avoid this, the method two seems like a good idea, unless the planet is a high-risk unexplored one. And even if people were delivered by method one, it is a good idea to switch over to method two for the return trip if at all possible, to save the ship the tedious hours of impulse-crawling.
Timo Saloniemi
Timo: I will have to respectfully disagree with you about the differences between runabouts and shuttles. The difference in exterior design may be slight. In shape and style, yes, Danubes are big shuttles. However, in purpose and abilities, they far exceed shuttlecraft. They have swappable mission pods and those rollbar pods which give the Danubes something not found on shuttles: mission adaptablility. Shuttles are pretty much shuttles. Yes they can be adapted for specific tasks as they did in "The Outcast" to search for the missing ship. But just think how much better and safer and more efficient it would have been if Riker and the alien chickkie would have had all the resources of a small starship at their disposal.
Danubes are also designed to operate for extended periods independant of any sort of mothership. True we have never seen them as independant commands, they seem to always be attached to a starbase or (if we believe my arguement) other starships. In every way IMHO, Danubes seem to be designed as Starships, very different from shuttles in purpose.
Now I agree that Runabouts have probably been around in some form for a little while at least. However, I take Sisko's line in "Emissary" that the Enterprise had offloaded "three Runabout Class vessels" instead of Danube class, to show his unfamiliarity with this type of ship.
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"Resolve and thou art free."
------------------
Quark-"Stop. Or I'll disintigrate this hostage."
20th Century General-"With Your Finger?"
Quark-"With my death ray."
20th Century General-"Looks alot like a finger to me."
However, couldn't the new Enterprise-E shuttle be classified as a runabout by those criteria, despite the fact that it was labeled "shuttle" in Eaves' drawings? It did have
-(aft) torpedoes
-twin transporter pads
-internal bulkheads and corridors
-those nifty docking hatches
-out-of-proportion engines
and could have had swappable modules, too, to account for the oversized exterior and cramped interiors.
Was it ever *called* a shuttle in the movie? I won't have my tape of "Insurrection" until, you guessed, the 25th (or late 24th).
Timo Saloniemi
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"Resolve and thou art free."
------------------
Quark-"Stop. Or I'll disintigrate this hostage."
20th Century General-"With Your Finger?"
Quark-"With my death ray."
20th Century General-"Looks alot like a finger to me."
1) The "Shuttlecraft" is never refered to as such.
2) The shuttlecraft has no aft access ways visible from the cockpit. It appears the docking mechanism is actually built into the roof of the cockpit.
3) The Scout Ship has 2 decks (!!!). If you look at the scene where Worf enters the Cockpit, you can see he climbed up a ladder. My thought is that there is a sub-deck below the cockpit where you can store equipment and crew. The back of the ship appears to have plenty of room to fit a bunk or two. Also, the cockpit appears to be rather large, allowing it also to handle crewmembers. As I thought about it, it appeared that the scout ship might actually be the only Fed ship used (with exception of the holoship). This left me with 4 possiblities:
A) The Scout Ship carried all the Duck Blind Officers and Admiral Daughtery to the Briar Patch, where the Son'a Command Ship took over the operation
B) The Scout Ship was assigned to the holoship (since it most likely has a small shuttlebay somehwere), and Daughtery and co. came onboard here
C) The Scout Ship came in a shuttle bay of the Son'a Command Ship. This is possible, since Admiral Doughtery was always on the Son'a Ship. It's possible the Son'a Ship was the only ship there (again, with exception of the holoship)
D) The unknown and unseen "USS Ticonderoga", which was dilly dallying somewhere around, just dropped off Daughtery and co. with the Scout Ship
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"The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey
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"The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey
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Calvin: "I'm a man of few words."
Hobbes: "Maybe if you read more, you'd have a larger vocabulary."
Federation Starship Datalink - Starship site of the new millennium.
I don't like the idea that the holoship had a shuttlebay. It's just a box with a bridge and warp nacelles. I don't even think Starfleet has made more than a couple.
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"Resolve and thou art free."
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"I wish that everything went just as I wish everything would go."
--
John Linnell
Timo Saloniemi
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"Naomi Wildman, sub-unit of Ensign Samantha Wildman, state your intentions." (VOY: "Infinite Regress")
Ex Astris Scientia
Bernd: I agree with you regarding the fully operational nature of the scoutship. My guess is this:
The Son'a arrived outside the Briar Patch in their ships and the Starfleet crew aboard the Ticonderoga (I haven't actually read that this ship was there, but I'll trust whoever posted that it was). Some of the SF crew transferred to the Son'a ship and some to the Scoutship which either came on its own or aboard the Ticonderoga. They go to Bak'u in these two ships and the holoship. The Tic. leaves and is never heard from throught the whole movie.
I also wonder how Data got to the planet. I doubt the Enterprise took him anywhere. It's more likely that he took a shuttle or (to return ever so briefly to the topic) a runabout.
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"Resolve and thou art free."
------------------
Calvin: "I'm a man of few words."
Hobbes: "Maybe if you read more, you'd have a larger vocabulary."
Federation Starship Datalink - Starship site of the new millennium.
------------------
"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK
------------------
Quark-"Stop. Or I'll disintigrate this hostage."
20th Century General-"With Your Finger?"
Quark-"With my death ray."
20th Century General-"Looks alot like a finger to me."
[This message has been edited by Black Knight (edited December 10, 1999).]
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"Resolve and thou art free."
The Ency says that "the Ticonderoga reported to the Ba'ku homeworld in 2375 to facilitate the planet becoming a Federation protectorate." This sounds a bit odd to me. The Federation were hardly trying to "protect" the Ba'ku in Insurrection (other than Picard's rebel group). Maybe the Ticonderoga was meant to arrive after the Ent-E left at the end of the movie.
The book "Secrets of ST:Insurrection" has a early sketch of the holoship featuring a more traditional starship look (instead of a box). The thing that grabs my attention is that it has a rego NX-75115. Could this mean that the final holoship has the same rego? It would also mean that the scout can't belong to the holoship.
Anyway, there's my thoughts for the moment.
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"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK
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"The things hollow--it goes on forever--and--oh my God!--it's full of stars!" -David Bowman's last transmission back to Earth, 2001: A Space Odyssey
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"Resolve and thou art free."
It's a shame the Ent-E doesn't have a spare core like Voyager.
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"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK
I still don't have my video of Insurrection (the 25th
is approaching, though), but I hope it will feature at least some of the scenes cut from the theatrical release. The theater version of the ending was far superior to the original version, though - hooray for preview audiences and last-ditch rewrites!
As for Voyager's spare core: perhaps Intrepids in general are supposed to have one, which is why the MSD has one - but the Voyager specifically does not carry one, explaining the instances where plots hinge on just a single core being available. Perhaps Janeway opted to sail out without one, as delivery was delayed? Or then she had to eject before reaching DS9? In any case, the core should have been lost before "Caretaker", where Janeway chooses to repair the primary core even though this risks the whole ship.
Timo Saloniemi
"We don't have one."
"Why not?"
"It was supposed to arrive... on Tuesday."
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Give a man a fish, and you feed him for a day. Teach him to use the 'net, and he won't bother you for weeks.
[This message has been edited by TSN (edited December 13, 1999).]
"Captain, magnetic constrictor segments 3 through 10 are starting to go bad. We can't replicate more."
"Well, take some from the spare warp core."
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"I wish that everything went just as I wish everything would go."
--
John Linnell
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"Science has a simple faith, which transcends utility. "
Vannevar Bush (1890�1974), U.S. electrical engineer, physicist.
'Thirty Days' Season 5,'Riddlers' in season 6, and 'One Small Step' in season 6. If anyone remembers any others...
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Quark-"Stop. Or I'll disintigrate this hostage."
20th Century General-"With Your Finger?"
Quark-"With my death ray."
20th Century General-"Looks alot like a finger to me."
Also, Ironhorse, just a thought, but you may get more answers to your question if you post your own thread on the topic in the Starships & Tech section. That way everybody can see it and share their wisdom :-)
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"Resolve and thou art free."