I understand that the original drawing of Reliant showed her inverted with respect to the final design. That is, the nacelles were "on top" and the torpedo pod and fly-over bridge beneath the saucer, mirroring the basic layout established by the Enterprise.
I'm basing this off the "making of" documentary. Apparently the director/producer (I've forgotten who exactly) was mailed the drawings and viewed them upside down. When they were returned to the modellers they realised that the signature of approval was written upside down! They surmised what had happened and decided to go with it, rather than resubmit the design.
Well, anyway, does anyone know of any images, models, drawings etc. that someone might have made of the Reliant as she was originally intended? That is, upside down, but with the hull details corrected for this?
Cheers
Posted by Johnny (Member # 878) on :
Not sure where this came from(could be the Magazine, judging from the faint text leaking through), but it may very well be the original submitted sketch. I just found it in my folder of Miranda Class pics.
Posted by Mars Needs Women (Member # 1505) on :
It is from the Magazine, I have the issue. I never heard that story Lurker but I do know at one point the Reliant was going to be another Constitution class but the idea was dropped since having two of the same class of ship would be confusing to the audience. They wouldn't be able to tell which ship would be the Reliant and which would be the Enterprise.
Posted by bX (Member # 419) on :
I have some others but they aren't really any clearer than what Johnny uploaded. It does have the story about the flip printed right alongside. From what I recall it wasn't so much a desperation move or an accident so much as a "hey, you know what might be even cooler?' moment.
Posted by Jason Abbadon (Member # 882) on :
I always liked the notion of dual torpedo pods. I made this ship before the Reliant sketches were published:
It's made from a updated TOS Surya class ship.
I'll see if I can dig up any pics of the Miranda in the "naceles up" configuration- several of my fellow modelers have tried it already.
quote:at one point the Reliant was going to be another Constitution class but the idea was dropped since having two of the same class of ship would be confusing to the audience. They wouldn't be able to tell which ship would be the Reliant and which would be the Enterprise.
That's probably why the Reliant suddenly develops red running lights once Kahn is in command. It's EVIL! EVIL! Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
These are very interesting. Cheers, guys.
On the subject of torpedo pods, it did occur to me once that if you replaced Reliants pod with a compact deflector, you could stick two smaller, single tube torpedo pods in the locations of both of the "mega" phasers that reliant has on the fly over bridge corners. This might make for a cleaner, better balanced design and would solve Reliants deflector problem (as in, the apparent lack of one). It would also have had advantages in filming, as every time you saw a single tube with a piece of structure coming out of it above and below, you'd know it was a close up of Reliants tubes, not Enterprises. Then, if you kept this arrangement inverted, you've nicely mirrored Enterprises basic layout (deflector and torpedos below the saucer) without making it hard to distinguish one from the other.
Having said that, I appreciated the idea that Reliant is armed with two great honking big phasers. It seemed to suggest that while Enterprise is your prestige deep space explorer, Reliant is more of a combat oriented, backbone-of-the-fleet type with it's smaller silhouette and bigger guns. However, in battle they didn't seem to do much more damage than Enterprises saucer mounted versions. Reliant also had saucer mounted versions, but never used them.
Re: red running lights: yes, I liked that touch too! Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Well, back in the day, sensor and deflector duties were split. They didn't merge until TNG (well, the Ambassador, but that came later in the real world). The big dish was the main sensor. The three little raised boxes flaning it (on the Constitution) were the navigational deflectors. And you notice the Reliant has two on the saucer and one on the torp pod. The Excelsior's are the two inset greebly panels on the neck.
--Jonah
Posted by Captain Boh (Member # 1282) on :
According to the Enterprise-B MSD, the neck greebles are torpedo launchers.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
But according to the actual model, and the VFX shots from TUC, the torpedo launchers are the two holes set on either side of the upper forward secondary hull.
--Jonah
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
But that doesn't negate the neck greeblies from being torpedo launchers.
Posted by Peregrinus (Member # 504) on :
Well, aside from the fact that I never saw anythiing like launch tubes there...
--Jonah
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
...And that those neck things couldn't fire dead ahead without hitting the saucer, in which case it would be a bit odd to place them on the forward surface of the neck to begin with.
Let's face it, before Sternbach, there was no starship as we know it. Nobody knew what elements were vital to a ship's operations, and nobody could agree on which parts of the engine systems did what to move the ship.
Modern views call for deflector dishes, but they might not be any more "vital" to older ships than radars or cockpit canopies were to the first aircraft (or to light aircraft today). Perhaps the only real use for a dish is to deflect objects so large that a 23rd century starship would typically choose to dodge those rather than try to push them aside?
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Captain Boh (Member # 1282) on :
In this image it looks to me like both the upper and lower details could be torpedo launchers. They also look close in design to the aft launchers, but I don't have my images on this system.
I don't have an accurite head-on view of the ship so I can't tell if they'd be able to fire forward or not
Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
Timo, that's a very astute comment about deflectors. I shall try to bear that in mind in future.
Regarding the Excelsior torpedo launchers, I always thought the launchers were square holes in the black, corrugated neck section. I'm pretty sure that in ST:VI we see Excelsior launching torpedoes from this area, but the difference is that the launch ports are lower down the neck and the neck appears to be larger and more prominent, which keeps the saucer out of the way.
I remember noticing the tube shaped, nozzle ended launchers mounted in the white part of the hull below the neck at the beginning of Generations (see Boh's image) but I thought they might be an artefact of the Excelsior refit and that the original launchers would remain in use... unless... we're looking at an early Quantum torpedo development with their separate launchers?
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
It's quite possible that the ship would have different "calibers" of launchers, yes.
However, the only place from which torpedoes have emerged on an Excelsior is the pair of round holes on the uppermost level of the secondary hull bow, in ST6:TUC. Neither the neck things nor the fantail things have ever fired anything. And all the other shots of Excelsiors firing have involved phasers only.
The E-B MSD in ST:GEN shows rather blatant torpedo launchers in the neck holes and in the big hole beneath the fantail. One could argue that these are "light" secondary launchers that complement the "heavy" main launchers on the secondary hull upper level and on the fantail. Or then one could disregard that MSD, which seems to show a ship much bigger than the exterior VFX indicates...
"Light" and "heavy" launchers might be present on the Constitution and Miranda as well. The presence of light torp tubes concealed somewhere within the saucer (perhaps behind some of those ventral hatches) would explain the ST2 scenes of a mysterious "Torp Deck 4", and the fact that the Saratoga in DS9 "Emissary" was able to arm torpedoes despite lacking the standard torpedo pod. Indeed, one could say that the "light" tubes are the originals, as witnessed in action in TOS, and that the visible tubes are "heavy" additions that typically see the most action.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
This light and heavy torp tube idea could help with the "LOL MY SHIP HAS 900 TORPS AND 10 LAUNCHERS" nonsense.
Some tubes are designed for launching small sounding rockets and probes and the larger ones are for launching bigger dedicated mission probes and warheads for combat.
In a pinch warheads could be fired from modified casings from the smaller launchers giving additional firepower in a battle situation.
Also, apply this logic to the AKIRA many-tube launcher-wank that was floating around awhile ago. Different tubes for different payloads.... launch quantums from one tube, photons from another, combat-dedicated probes from another and tri-cobalt devices from yet another set.
...wouldn't want to run into THAT in a dark ally.
Posted by Lurker Emeritus (Member # 1888) on :
This has relevance in the real world. Once again, we come back to naval technology... Vertical Launch Systems.
The USN predominantly uses the Mk. 41 VLS which can fire about half a dozen varieties of anti air missiles, the Tomohawk land attack missile and, when it was available, ASROC.
So, the Mk. 41 is the big VLS (over 3 metres deep) that can fire everything. Then there is the Mk. 48, a cut down version that only fires standard AAW missiles, but is too short to accomodate the long range missiles like Tomohawk.
Then there are dozens of varieties of Russian and Chinese VLS systems, many of which only fire one or two missile types each, leading to the proliferation is different sizes and types of VLS that you can see on these ships. Then there is the Seawolf lightweight vertical launcher favoured by many navies for use on small ships, and the Sylver VLS and so on. Each fires a different type and design of missile and in many cases there are only one or two missile loads that are compatible with the launcher. So it's not unreasonable to imagine the same situation on the larger Starfleet ships.
In addition to that, however, it's not only a question of providing a VLS compatible with a particular missile, or a torpedo launcher compatible with a particular type of probe or rocket. It's also whether your ships design can accomodate a large VLS/torpedo tube in a particular location. The Mk. 48 is very much shorter and lighter than the Mk. 41, so light in fact that the Canadians mount their Mk. 48 launchers above the main deck as part of the superstructure. The Mk. 41 is far too heavy for this and to carry a large number of them requires a larger ship with a huge amount of it's internal volume devoted to the VLS launchers alone. So, Starfleet ships have a set of big torpedo launchers in the traditional location, perhaps an ancillary set of big quantum launchers as on Sovereign, but can find space and weight here and there elsewhere on the ship to mount smaller launchers... and now I'm just repeating Timo and Styrofoaman.
This not only explains the Akira but also the dozens of new tubes on the Sovereign in Nemesis, most of them in very unlikely places.
Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
Sort of a plug-in torp launcher system... each launcher holding pre-loaded/pre-armed torps ready to fire?
Could also explain why they ran out so soon in the battle... they didn't have the full loadout, just what was in the plug-in launchers plus a few in the main bay. It was supposed to be a diplomatic mission after all.
Posted by Timo (Member # 245) on :
To be sure, we don't know what sort of a mission it was supposed to be. It seemed that Picard was just giving the future Mr and Mrs Troi a taxi ride to Betazed, but that doesn't sound realistic. More probably, Betazed was just a convenient stop on the way to future adventures, for which a full torpedo loadout may or may not have been aboard.
The addition of small "box" launchers might be a response to the poor performance of phasers against Dominion small craft in "Jem'Hadar" and afterwards - a defensive system of somewhat experimental nature, ill suited for offensive use against capital ships. Some modern submarines have an almost perfect analogy for this feature aboard: they have 21 in or even 400 mm tubes for half-length sub-to-sub torpedoes that are extremely ill suited for sinking ships, and then separate 650 mm supersize tubes for big ship-killing torps or cruise missiles.
Timo Saloniemi
Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
Russian subs if I recall had that design, Amercian ones being limitied to whatever could be stuffed through a standard 21" torp tube.
Later some of the LA-class boats were fitted with proper VLS tubes for cruise-missiles.
Posted by Mirror-Amasov (Member # 742) on :
quote:Originally posted by Timo: The addition of small "box" launchers might be a response to the poor performance of phasers against Dominion small craft in "Jem'Hadar" and afterwards - a defensive system of somewhat experimental nature, ill suited for offensive use against capital ships.
The problem here is not that they were ineffective against the Scimitar but that they simply didn't hit the target (especially the aft firing torpedos didn't even come close to Shinzon's ship). How are they supposed to hit even smaller and far more agile ships with them? Besides, the "standard" torpedos are supposed to have a target tracking mode, even though we rarely see that. No matter how big the ship is, they should be able to hit it. And the Defiant also ran out of torpedos before. IIRC, Worf was the tactical officer on that mission, too. Maybe they should have replaced that trigger-happy Klingon with Lt. Daniels. They never ran out of ammo against the Borg or the Son'a... Posted by Styrofoaman (Member # 706) on :
"Set tactical sensors to Dramatic Mode..."
Posted by Manticore (Member # 1227) on :
Wasn't the Scimitar cloaked at the time though?
Posted by Dat (Member # 302) on :
Yes she was and if Shinzon was smart enough, he would know to fire and immediately change position.
Posted by Mikey T (Member # 144) on :
He somewhat did but decided to play cat and mouse with Picard.
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