This was bugging me for some time, so I wanted to ask: When was the first time when we saw Excelsior with glowing nacelles? And, have we ever seen glow on other part than that horizontal strip around the nacelle?
I'm asking this becasue I witnessed many games and pictures featuring Excelsior class ships with top bit of nacelle glowing, so I want to make sure that these are wrong
I think it happened in DS9 - TNG Excelsior were the same single stock footage, if I recall correctly.
Posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov (Member # 742) on :
I think nacelles were always glowing since the end of TOS. When the E was at Warp you always had the blue glow coming from the nacelles. Furthermore, when you see the Excelsior in ST3 for the first time the nacelles were offline (non-glowing), IIRC. The thing that is far more annoying is the always-glowing TNG-nacelle (and I'm not speaking about the Galaxy or something from the 24th century but old Mirandas and Constellations). I think it became even worse with the beginning of CG-effects.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
Are you asking when the first time we saw an Excelsior class' nacelle glow while at sublight or while at warp? If you're asking about a nacelle glow at sublight, then we probably didn't see it until late TNG or early DS9. The earliest I can recall for certain is DS9's "Way of the Warrior." If you're asking about a nacelle glow while at warp, I want to say we first saw it on the Excelsior in The Undiscovered Country, but that's probably incorrect.
Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
IIRC, when they hauled ole Exy out for "Flashback" she had quite a noticable glow to her...and that was when they still used the physical model of her.
Posted by Siegfried (Member # 29) on :
Shoot. Yeah, I forgot about Voyager's cock-up with the Excelsior in "Flashback."
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
The ILM Excelsior model was not used for "Flashback". It was stuck in the E-B/Lakota configuration following "Generations"... A new, three-foot physical model was built for the episode.
Mark
Posted by Masao (Member # 232) on :
I've always wondered that if the original NX-2000 nacelles were for the failed transwarp drive, why did the non-transwarp nacelles on the NCC-2000 look the same.
Posted by aridas (Member # 1051) on :
That was the reason for the Ingram refit. Unfortunately the SFX people didn't get the memo.
As if they really could have followed it.
Ingram is so much more in keeping with the look of Trek ships. When Rick Sternbach says he wishes he could have used some of Todd Guenther's designs, I'm sure that is one of the ones he is thinking about.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
Eww! Rick musta been smoking that day. The original Excelsior was, and still is a great design. When introduced back in 1984, it was the first Federation design that was truly different from the established norm of the time; back then, people either embraced the new direction (as I did), or hated it - the latter was fueled strongly by the fans' loyalty to the good ol' E. The Ingram didn't help any IMO.
And I don't see why the nacelles had to change. True, they were a revolutionary design, but later Trek has established that transwarp can be incorporated by basically invisible modifications (even to a shuttle), by the addition of a comparatively tiny transwarp coil, or accessing an existant conduit. Furthermore, many fandom transwarp theories from pre-TNG typically involved something the ol' Enterprise had been through herself at some point or other - interphases, wormholes, etc. There was even a theory that the warp field being beamed ahead of the ship would cause the increase in speed. Regardless, NONE of them really necessitated a whole engine nacelle to do it. For all we know, and the evidence certainly suggested it, transwarp had little to do with what was in the Excelsior's monster (for its time) nacelles.
Mark
Posted by David Templar (Member # 580) on :
Oh god that's an ugly ship... Posted by Futurama Guy (Member # 968) on :
Im curious where this ''Ingram refit'' came from, I can't recall ever seeing that design before.
Posted by Mark Nguyen (Member # 469) on :
The short version is that it's a number of mid-80s Trek fans who didn't like the Excelsior, including Todd. A few publications were made of this fan ship's design, including blueprints, design histories, etc. The ship quickly passed into the pre-TNG fandom canon as "the next big thing", but was subsequently quashed when the E-D came along.
I think it was called something like a "Space Control Ship", back when the fandom was obsessed with long and generally redundant type designations.
Mark
Posted by AndrewR (Member # 44) on :
quote:Originally posted by Masao: I've always wondered that if the original NX-2000 nacelles were for the failed transwarp drive, why did the non-transwarp nacelles on the NCC-2000 look the same.
Well there is nothing to say that the nacelles for the Excelsior's transwarp project NEEDED to be any different for transwarp - and that they were just the next gen of nacelle types.
I'm guessing the 2281? version of "transwarp" was just a modification to the actual warp drive.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
My new Pet TheoryTM is that the Excelsior project was based upon transwarp technology recovered from the crash of the Borg sphere in 2152 ("Regeneration" [ENT]) and spirited away by Starfleet to a ultra-top-secret research facility where crack UFP scientists spend the next century trying to break it down and reproduce it. Only they never could get it quite right, and that's why it never worked...
Yay, f@nb0yi$hne$$!!!
-MMoM Posted by CaptainMike (Member # 709) on :
the first, unbastardized version of the Ingram was passable, except the nacelles were dinky lookin.. i actually like the structure of the saucer and secondary hull.. kind of looks like an evolutionary step between the two ships, Excelsior and Connie refit
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by aridas: Ingram is so much more in keeping with the look of Trek ships. When Rick Sternbach says he wishes he could have used some of Todd Guenther's designs, I'm sure that is one of the ones he is thinking about.
Ummm...no.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
quote:Originally posted by CaptainMike: the first, unbastardized version of the Ingram was passable, except the nacelles were dinky lookin.. i actually like the structure of the saucer and secondary hull.. kind of looks like an evolutionary step between the two ships, Excelsior and Connie refit
Version one is allright if the nacelles were thicker and that silly miranda rollbar that's serving as the nacelle pylons is replaced. It definitely looks lower tech than the standard Excelsior though. Version two is cool if the ship had Excelsior nacelles....VERY simmilar to my own USS Albion. Version three is idiotic: connie refit engines 200% larger is just a bad idea. Version four is an Excelsior amputee. Terrible. Best bet: just use the Merced class from ASDB with more detail instead as a stepping stone between the standard Excelsior and the Refit version. Posted by Kazeite (Member # 970) on :
Yes, I was asking when was the first time we saw an Excelsior class' nacelle glow while at sublight. Thank you for your information, Siegfried.
And yes, that always-glowing nacelles were weird. It was even more weird when it was estabilished in Peak Performance that warp-glow-on-sublight doesn't even require working warp core...
Oh, and I think that all Ingrams are ugly Posted by Darkwing (Member # 834) on :
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim:
quote:Originally posted by aridas: Ingram is so much more in keeping with the look of Trek ships. When Rick Sternbach says he wishes he could have used some of Todd Guenther's designs, I'm sure that is one of the ones he is thinking about.
Ummm...no.
No, as in "No, I know which ones he meant"? If so which? Or was that "No, I don't like that idea and hope that's not one of the ones he meant"? Personally, I liked the Ingram, particularly the enlarged aft shuttle bay, but did not agree with the idea that all Excelsiors would be refit to that configuration. And "Space Control Ship" seemed to me to be a very awkward way to say "Carrier".
Posted by Griffworks (Member # 1014) on :
The only one I really like is the "refit" version, as those different nacelles don't look so bad. Personally, I think she'd look better w/the Excelsior nacelles. Leave the rest as is, tho, as I kind of like the way the main hull components look.
quote:Originally posted by Darkwing:[b] And "Space Control Ship" seemed to me to be a very awkward way to say "Carrier". [/QB]
More like "amphibious assault ship" than "carrier". Something that can take a planetary base and likely hold it and the sky above was the definition in both sets of the Ingram class blueprints. Only thing you'd need is "Marines" (some sort of ground forces) and a fleshing out of any fighters she carries and you'd be good to go. If a one-word description must be used, I'd call her more of a battleship than a carrier.
Posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim (Member # 646) on :
quote:Originally posted by Darkwing: No, as in "No, I know which ones he meant"? If so which? Or was that "No, I don't like that idea and hope that's not one of the ones he meant"?
Actually it was more a response to the statement "Ingram is so much more in keeping with the look of Trek ships." But your second option works as well...
-MMoM Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
Darkwing & Griffworks both seem to be aiming at the same thing: the "Space Control Ship" designation ITRW stems from the then-topical "Sea Control Ship" concept that resulted in the Iwo Jima, Tarawa etc. etc. amphibious assault carriers.
However, even if this is what Guenther meant (and he did give the ship a rather pronounced shuttle hangar), it need not be true in the Trek universe. "Sea Control Ships" don't really control the sea - they control beaching areas. But Starfleet ideally would be more logical in inventing its designations, so a SCS should actually control space, not planets.
So I'd rather say that the SCS is a fancy future analogy to Air Superiority Fighter, a superb space combatant that can deny a certain area of space from enemy starships. Depending a bit on how one views the treknology of space superiority, one could also consider the SCS a future AEGIS, a multi-targeting interception system (hence the increased number of phaser banks).
In any case, my favorite Ingram is #2, with the thick customized nacelles and streamlined hangar, and without the silly pylon phaser cannon. Going by real-life naval analogy, multiple distinct types of ship-to-ship artillery became irrelevant when fire control increased to the point that battles were decided at the maximum practical range of the biggest cannon already, leaving nothing for the smaller ones to do. So a multi-cannon-type ship evokes feelings of the WWI era, while WWII probably is what one should aim at post-TOS. In fact, here's what I'd like to see:
ENT/pre-1600s: Random collection of nonstandardized guns aboard, with some pre-gun armaments (i.e. plasma cannon) still in use
pre-TOS/sailing ship heyday: Uniform rows of multiple yet poorly performing standard cannon
TOS/WWI: multiple types of high-performance cannon
post-TOS/WWII: one primary gun type merely supported by decidedly secondary other systems
TNG/late 20th century: very low numbers of very advanced "post-cannon" weapon installations (strip phasers)
post-TNG/cycle begins anew: mixed armaments when earlier state-of-the-art no longer is potent enough
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Topher (Member # 71) on :
It should be noted that only the first and fourth Ingram configurations were created by Guenther. The second and third were done by some guy on the internet.
Posted by Ace (Member # 389) on :
The nacelle glow changed with the appearance of the CGI Excelsior used for DS9. While it was normally the top blue part of the nacelle that glowed with the black sides remaining unlit, the new CGI model had the top blue remain unlit while the sides now emitted a blue glow. This is similar in nature to the change done to the Miranda's nacelles in CGI form. Now, as in the case with the USS Majestic, the nacelle's were lit on the inner sides.
Check out the DS9 screencaps at Pedro's Shiporama to see for yourself.
Posted by Dax (Member # 191) on :
As mentioned in a couple of earlier posts, the first Excelsior seen with always glowing nacelles was the new 3' miniature built for "Flashback". The same miniature was seen in DS9 as the Malinche and the Fredrickson (in "Favor the Bold"). The later CG Excelsiors had always on nacelles too.
It's been said that the original ILM miniature did have wired nacelles, but for some reason they chose to never make use of the ability. I actually prefer the look of the Excelsior with non-glowing nacelles too, although it might just be that the original miniature looks so much better than the later models.
Posted by Kazeite (Member # 970) on :
Thank you for your answers.
One more question: Ace, was there any Excelsior with the top part of nacelles glowing?
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