posted
STO isn’t canon. Only the four new ship designs they used are.
-------------------- "A film made in 2008 isn't going to look like a TV series from 1966 if it wants to make any money. As long as the characters act the same way, and the spirit of the story remains the same then it's "real" Star Trek. Everything else is window dressing." -StCoop
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posted
Seems like almost all Sovereigns are named after, well, sovereigns.
Okuda - the king of starships Pachacuti - Incan emperor Gilgamesh - Mythological Sumerian king Hutchinson - the king of small talk Hrothgar - Mythological Danish king Arsinoe - several Egyptian queens
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
Ugh, themed names & sequential numbers. All of this is what happens when you let dipshits make decisions.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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posted
Video of the STO designer guy whose ships got used. It's a "hometown dork makes good" story (I say that with love), with ship 360s starting circa 10:30.
Hate to say, they're all super-derivative. It's a Diet Nebula, a Sovvied Miranda, an ungainly Diet Galaxy, and a Discofleet Redux, with little detail, if any, in common between them or the in-house designs.
EDIT: Oh, the "Diet" Nebula and Galaxy are actually longer than the originals, because of course they are. Starship design seems to follow the planned obsolescence schedules of the Honda Accord design team.
That said, they aren't immediately offensive, so that's improvement.
That stretch-limo Excelsior (hardly a slouch in stretchedness) is foul. It is bad and Doug should feel bad being part of this, though I am pleased he's getting paid.
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posted
Given the registries, the length (75-100m longer than the range of accepted lengths of the original) and the obvious elongation which can be used to account for it, the “Excelsior II” can only realistically be a refit. The most extensive one since the Constitution.
Of course if we were to ask them about it they’d say no. Because, on a fundamental level I’m not sure they really “get” it. Sure that sounds like me gatekeeping, but there are plenty of examples in nuTrek where little easily-avoidable mistakes have been made.
Do I care about the overly sequential registries? Not really. The idea of thematic naming hasn’t been overused, at least. The insistence of the STO class ships having VERY round numbers is stupid and just emblematic of the lack of getting-it on that regard.
They also seem to have abandoned the NX designation. Do I care about that? Not really. It always seemed a bit nonsensical. Of the… four? … classes we ever saw onscreen, two were later changed to normal NCCs (Excelsior & Galaxy; I always rationalised this as, once the class is tried & tested & in production, it’s no longer really experimental, is it?), one was at least a true one-of-its-kind prototype (Prometheus) and… well, the Defiant stayed a NX so they could re-use stock footage, and continued to do so even after the São Paulo was renamed. So THAT exception to the rule can fuck right off.
But what about the Stargazer being a brand new ship but called Sagan-class? It’s the Crossfield-class Discovery (and Glenn) all over again. Maybe the class ships in those examples were lost. Or retained as testbeds for further development. The new Stargazer - a new ship and a refit according to dialogue (FML), well, I reckon it’s a refit of a slight-older ship presumably with all that Borg tech added (which is a rant for another day!).
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000: Hate to say, they're all super-derivative. It's a Diet Nebula, a Sovvied Miranda, an ungainly Diet Galaxy, and a Discofleet Redux, with little detail, if any, in common between them or the in-house designs.
They were meant to be derivative. All four were meant to be 25th Century skins for the T6 versions of the originals.
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quote:Originally posted by Lee: Given the registries, the length (75-100m longer than the range of accepted lengths of the original) and the obvious elongation which can be used to account for it, the “Excelsior II” can only realistically be a refit. The most extensive one since the Constitution.
Of course if we were to ask them about it they’d say no. Because, on a fundamental level I’m not sure they really “get” it. Sure that sounds like me gatekeeping, but there are plenty of examples in nuTrek where little easily-avoidable mistakes have been made.
That's just it, though: Doug Drexler does 'get it,' and this new Excelsior he designed would be marginally fine (even though I don't like this new trend of making new ships that resemble old ships), if he hadn't made the registries 420XX. That makes ZERO sense. That would mean either:
1. The ship was built at the same time as other older-style Excelsiors were being built, but for some reason is a newer design. So then why the hell would they continue making the older design along with the newer one?
2. The ship is new as of 2400 or thereabouts, but for some strange reason has a low 4XXXX registry.
3. The ship is a refit of the older Excelsior, which makes the most sense but that Drexler is seeming to imply is not the case.
Honestly though, I find these 'updates' to old designs to be dull and boring. The STO ships get a pass because they were just meant to be in the background. But this Excelsior and the Obena class from Lower Decks are just screaming with unoriginality.
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posted
The 42XXX-range was where Starfleet experimented with the Excelsior-class. You have the Centaur, Curry, and Raging Queen in that era. I guess Starfleet wasn't entirely satisfied with the Ambassador and the next generation was still on the drawing board. So they built a couple of beefed up Excelsiors. The hull and neck are pretty much that of a Standard Excelsior. The saucer looks a bit sleeker and has phaser stripes. The nacelles must be part of a post-2370s refit. Probably wasn't a success either so they reverted back to building the originals.
Maybe I'm a bit too cynical, but the Excelsior is a fan favourite so the only reason for the Excelsior II and Obena seems to be so that EM can sell a truckload of new models.
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Phoenix launched 5 Apr 2063 on display at the Smithsonian
USS Constellation NCC-1017 Constitution class in service 2245-2267 Commodore Matthew Decker
USS Reliant NCC-1864 Miranda class in service 2264-2285 Captain Clark Terrel
USS Excelsior NCC-2000 Excelsior class in service 2285-2320 Captain Hikaru Sulu
USS Leondegrance NCC-2176 Lancelot class in service 2288-2336 Captain Nyota Uhura 2301-2305 five-year mission to the Lesser Magellanic Cloud (sic). Became a training vessel in 2317. On display in the Fleet Museum
USS Stargazer NCC-2893 Constellation class in service 2326-2355 Captain Jean-Luc Picard on display in the Fleet Museum
USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D Galaxy class in service 2363-2371 Capt. Jean-Luc Picard saucer section on display in the Fleet Museum
USS Voyager NCC-74656 Intrepid class in service 2371-2378 Capt. Kathryn Janeway
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
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posted
My beef with the STO ships is that not only are they just skins for older ships, they're also totally unnecessary in my opinion as we already had suitable late 24th century successors:
Nebula>Luna Galaxy>Sovereign Reliant>Parliament
The Gagarin is ok (but then again the Shepard already looked like a late 24th century design).
-------------------- "Never give up. And never, under any circumstances, no matter what - never face the facts." - Ruth Gordon
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posted
Nitpick of the morning: While it’s awesome that Uhura became captain of a ship, the Lesser (Small) Magellanic Cloud is outside our galaxy. (Whoops!)
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
If only that was the only glaring discrepancy.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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posted
The original USS Reliant must have been utterly awesome, this legendary ship of its time, to be so memorialised. Because “Had its captain and first and/or science officer brainwashed, allowed to be hijacked and then the crew marooned, then used to attack another ship causing dozens of deaths, many of the en very young, before being used as the delivery system for a WMD” doesn’t really scream “really notable ship,” not in a good way anyway.
posted
I was thinking something similar. Don’t forget to include “couldn’t count the number of planets in a star system” in that list.
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