This is topic Merchantman and Nenebek of Federation registry? in forum Starships & Technology at Flare Sci-Fi Forums.


To visit this topic, use this URL:
https://flare.solareclipse.net/ultimatebb.php/topic/6/762.html

Posted by Alpha Centauri (Member # 338) on :
 
Are the Merchantman cargo ship from ST3 and Dirgo's mining shuttle Nenebek of Federation origin?

------------------
"Alpha Centauri is a beautiful place to visit, you ought to see it" - Kirk to 1969 USAF officer Fellini, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS)
 


Posted by colin (Member # 217) on :
 
I believe that both ships have Federation registry.

------------------

takeoffs are optional; landings are mandatory
 


Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
The Nenebek had one of those N-prefixed registries that generally do tend to denote Federation ships. However, there was no registry painted on the Merchantman, nor any lettering (Latin or otherwise) to indicate nationality.

The crew of the Merchantman seemed human enough, but that is hardly proof of the ship's origin or allegiances. So far, this specific design has been used as a freighter by at least Klingons (DS9 "Rules of Engagement"), Cardassians (DS9 "The Maquis pt I") and the Altec, or was it the Straleb (TNG "The Outrageous Okona")? Other races use variants for other purposes.

One could argue that the design was probably created by the most advanced of these races and then sold to lesser races, which would probably make Klingons the original designers. OTOH, perhaps lesser races can compete on the freighter market as well, and sell to their superiors?

In any case, Federation cargo haulers have not used the design in any episode we know of. Unless, and this is a big unless, this model was used in the super-brief scene in the beginning of TNG "Legacy" where a Federation Deneva-class freighter explodes. Then we'd know for sure that it's a Fed design... But the pictures I have seen of that ep are beyond fuzzy.

Timo Saloniemi


 


Posted by Bernd (Member # 6) on :
 
The Nenebek is Federation, but not Starfleet. There should be millions of such shuttles, and it's only plausible that not all of them are tidy like SF shuttles.

The Merchantman could be anything. We don't even know the name of the ship. The only thing that makes it look Terran is the bridge structure, everything else is "alien". My suggestion is that the ship is originally Klingon, became outdated by the mid-24th century, and some of the ships were sold to the Cardasssians. Some ships also made it to lesser races.

------------------
"Species 5618, human. Warp-capable, origin grid 325, physiology inefficient, below average cranium capacity, minimum redundant systems, limited regenerative abilities."
Ex Astris Scientia
 


Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
A silly thought just struck me: What if the human-looking crew of the Merchantman were actually TOS smooth-head Klingons?

It would be a bit awkward for a ship of Klingon design to be in human civilian hands in that time of great hostility. OTOH, it would open up interesting story venues if smooth-headed Klingons by ST3 were put to demeaning labor like piloting these freighters...

Also, does it strike anybody as odd that the ship would look so small in ST3, yet hold hundreds of passengers in "Rules of Engagement"? I know you love these scaling paradoxes...

Timo Saloniemi
 


Posted by Alpha Centauri (Member # 338) on :
 
Your first point is NOT a silly thought! Actually, it's a very good point!

The scaling paradox, eh?
Perhaps the "Rules of Engagement" Merchantman is converted. The cargo hulls were fitted to be able to carry passengers. Anyone thoughts on that?

------------------
"Alpha Centauri is a beautiful place to visit, you ought to see it" - Kirk to 1969 USAF officer Fellini, "Tomorrow is Yesterday" (TOS)
 


Posted by The359 (Member # 37) on :
 
The Nenebek was NAR-2066 if my list is right...

------------------
"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

The 359 Webpage



 


Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
The thing is... it is assume that the smooth headers and the bumpy headers are the same 'race' or 'ethnic group' of Klingons. See Kor, Kang and Koloth + the Genetically engineered Emperor Kahless.

I think that the bumps were some sort of mutation or side effect probably from the praxis problem... sort of like a Chernobyl problem... Of course if the whole moon was to explode, it was probably pretty unstable for several years before that.

The Klingons are bitter enemies of the Romulans and they don't like speaking about the bumpy problem, And sometime after Star Trek VI Romulans started getting the bumpy brows too, maybe the reactors/facilities on Praxis were Romulan designs, obtained during their brief alliance.

The Klingons went on a rampage of revenge against the Romulans for what they did inflicting similar ecological problems on the Romulans, i.e. destroying these reactors etc.

(remember Klingons and Romulans have similar physiologies according to Dr. Crusher, thus similar manifestations...)

Thus with the Klingons over their campaign of revenge, the Romulans become isolationist dealing with this distaster that has befallen them - hence the problems that they were dealing with "The Neutral Zone"

The Klingons brought nearly to their knees, accept help from the Federation.

This would also explain why the klingons even by the time of 2365 were still using 100 year old Battle Cruisers and Birds of Prey.

Only by 2367 were the new K'Tinga's being produced and then finally the new Klingon Flagship by 2372.

Andrew

------------------
"chocolate cherries allamanda" - Datura, Tori Amos

 


Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
I still say the ridges were something the Klingons and Romulans did to each other intentionally...

------------------
"I know the whole bible! The New and Used Testaments!"
-Thurgood Stubbs, The PJs
 


Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Back to the scaling problem:

In ST3, when the BoP first decloaks, or when it swoops to destroy the Merchantman, the latter ship looks barely larger than the front pod of the BoP. Yet in the "crashing into SF bay" scene in ST4, we see that the front pod apparently consists of nothing more than the bridge on an upper deck and the torp tube on a lower one, and the BoP is a grand total of 60 meters long. So where did the crew aboard the Merchantman find leg room?

I guess we could assume that the Merchantman was at least 50 meters long (against a roughly 110m BoP), and the scenes where it looked tiny were because the BoP had turned on its cloak's "cat in a corner" mode that makes the ship look bigger... Still, fitting hundreds of people in a ship 50m long (half of which seems to be engines) would speak volumes of Klingon standards of passenger comfort.

Bigger Merchantmen were seen in some episodes, most notably in "The Maquis pt I".

Timo Saloniemi

Timo Saloniemi
 


Posted by Starship Freak (Member # 293) on :
 
Anyone got any pics of the tng "legacy" freighter?

------------------
"The Starships of the Federation are the physical, tangible manifestations of Humanity�s stubborn insistence that life does indeed mean something."
Spock to Leonard McCoy in "Final Frontier"

 


Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
 
Hang on, in III the Merchant man seemed to be little more than a bridge with a lot of Cargo room... and three crew.

------------------
"chocolate cherries allamanda" - Datura, Tori Amos

 


Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Something I just remembered about that ST3 Merchantman crew. They seemed confused after Kruge cut off his discussion with his agent/lover, apparently not realizing that Kruge was going to blast them all to pieces. ("When do we get paid?")

Does this mean they did not understand the language in which the conversation was held? This might mean they weren't Klingons after all (but even if they were human mercenaries, was their UT broken or something?). Or did they get the words but not the meaning? This might mean that they were "dishonorable" Klingons who would not understand the absolute necessity and honor of Kruge killing his lover. Or then they were stupid humans.

In any case, their confusion doesn't exactly support the idea that they were smooth-head Klingons...

Timo Saloniemi



 


Posted by Sol System (Member # 30) on :
 
I thought that the reason that Kruge and his lady friend were speaking in Klingon was to keep the shady merchant folk from realizing what was about to happen, which would strongly suggest that they were not themselves Klingon.

Though if one was strongly in favor of this interpretation, I suppose it would be reasonable to suggest that while they were speaking a Klingon language, it wasn't one that everyone was familiar with.

------------------
"Twentieth century go and sleep.
Really deep. We won't blink
Your eyes are burning holes through me.
I'm not scared I'm outta here.
I'm not scared. I'm outta here.
--
R.E.M.
****
Read chapter one of "Dirk Tungsten in...The Disappearing Planet"! Please?

 


Posted by Jim Phelps (Member # 102) on :
 
The Merchantman is 220 feet or 67 meters long according to the ILM scale charts from STIII.

Boris
 


Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
 
Thanks, Boris! I'v been doodling various ships and experimenting with scaling now, and it seems that things work best with a 150-200m Martok-style BoP and a 60-80m Kruge-style BoP, with the larger BoPs confined to the alternate universe. A 67m Merchantman would work just fine with a 80m Kruge BoP in some scenes, while other scenes have to be disregarded in any case... And 67m is IMHO (just barely) enough to accommodate the 441 Klingon passengers required by "Rules of Engagement", if we assume the engines do not take up too much room.

The idea that new Klingons would speek a language different from that of the old smooth-heads is also very intriguing...

Timo Saloniemi
 


Posted by TSN (Member # 31) on :
 
Well, the smooth and bumpy Klingons are the same, as evidenced by Kang, Kor, and Koloth. However, they can still have other languages. It'd be like if the Klingons in ST3 were Terrans, and Kruge & Mrs. Kruge spoke Mandarin Chinese to each other while everyone else on the ship only spoke Catalan...

------------------
"How many Libraries of Congress per second can your software handle?"
-Avery Brooks, IBM commercial
 


Posted by Aethelwer (Member # 36) on :
 
That's it! The Merchantman is from Andorra.

------------------
June is National Accordion Awareness Month.
"And as we all know, 454 Okudagrams equals an Okudapound." - Rick Sternbach
 




© 1999-2024 Charles Capps

Powered by UBB.classic™ 6.7.3