posted
What is it about Trek ships, designs, registry numbers, histories and so on that so enthralls and occupies the spare time of your average Trekkie?
There are many cinematic, television and even literary "universes" (with a small u) that have defined a frame of reference for their technology and applied these in a consistent manner to the design of spacecraft and other machines. There are just as many fictional organisations that are in many ways analogous or similar to Starfleet as well.
Why is it that Star Trek appears to generate twice the interest of it's next nearest rival among individuals whom I shall loosely term sci-fi-ship-spotting-anoraks?
Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
posted
Star Trek universe starships are MACs while other universe's ships are PCs. Granted I don't like MACs, but that's how I feel.
Registered: Feb 2005
| IP: Logged
posted
Because Matt Jeffries hit one out of the park with his design for the Enterprise, and we technogeeks want to explore every facet of that ship. No other universe that I know of has quite the same combination of elements. I love the Yamato and the SDF-1, but there isn't as much of the hint of a larger fleet structure to grok in either of those properties. Star Wars has a lot of neat ships, but the approach is more haphazard and random, which implies a lot more work if you want to wring consistency out of it. If more Star Destroyers were explicitly named and numbered, we might have a contest on here to see who could finish a full ship registry first.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
WizArtist II
"How can you have a yellow alert in Spacedock? "
Member # 1425
posted
Star Destroyers Registry:
Vassal 1 Vassal 2 Vassal 3
etc.
-------------------- There are 10 types of people in the world...those that understand Binary and those that don't.
Registered: Nov 2004
| IP: Logged
So essentially, it's the notion of a larger overall governing structure which is left sufficiently vague to tease our imaginations and whet our appetites for seeing more, whilst providing just enough information for the fans to have fun daydreaming how it might all work because we are all armchair admirals at heart; the ship design is intriguing and counter-intuitive whilst clearly still embodying some sort of technical rationale rather than being weird for weirds sake; the whole registry aspect appeals to the control freak train-spotter in us, a facet of our personalities that is intrinsically linked to a sort of obsessive preoccupation with teasing out the meaningless minutiae of a subject.
Good answer, Peregrinus.
I like the Apple Mac analogy too!
Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
Member # 343
posted
No, "Brain & brain..what is BRAIN?!?"
:::blinks::: Are you writing a psych paper? Are we your test elements? YOU'RE USING US!!
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: Wiki exists for a reason. Grok it.
Yes. In my experience, it exists to propagate fiction as fact.
quote:Originally posted by Peregrinus: But there was no hint of something like "ISD-6691" to give us specific holes to fill in. --Jonah
Ah! The heart of the matter! By the simple inclusion of a made-up number, the creators imply the existence of a historical context and associated stories as yet untold, giving the story instant depth!
Registered: Jul 2006
| IP: Logged
posted
Something like that. That and other references to a structured fleet lurking off-camera. Especially the seven other Constitutions we saw in TOS. They all had some dramatic reason to be there, so we started wondering about the rest.
The only real hints in, say, Star Wars are behind-the-scenes. I can't remember where the first reference to Vader's fleet in Empire being dubbed the "Death Squadron" was, but it definitely wasn't the movie. And the implications of a score of Star Destroyers and an Executor-class Command Ship being a squadron are kind of scary...
--Jonah
P.S. Oh, and Wiki got it right in this case.
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
Registered: Feb 2001
| IP: Logged
posted
As I see it, Star Trek has (to date) created the most complete and internally self-consistant technological base/worlds/society seen in fiction. A true fan can not only immerse himself (through the power of suspended dis-belief), he can go a step farther and create new works within this framework called the Star Trek Universe, and if he was paying attention it will ring true.
posted
Yes, but the idea of that technological base has only really taken hold fairly recently. It developed very slowly. . .
First, you had TOS. Very little expansion on what Starfleet was actually like - just that they had maybe twelve Constitution-class ships, and, seemingly, little else.
Second, during the 70's interregnum, you had all the Franz Josef/FASA bollocks which elaborated on the idea of Starfleet. But apart from slightly influencing things at the start of the TNG era. it had little to do with what actually then developed, and was largely ignored by the non-ultra-hardcore fans.
Third, you then had the TNG era, which was almost a combination of the first two - ships seen were existing (film-era) models - Oberths, Mirandas, Excelsiors - plus a lot of mentioned-but-not-seen-onscreen other ship classes a la FASA.
It was really only First Contact that brought us to where we've been ever since. This board we're posted on evolved from one that got a lot of members who wanted to know what all those new ships we saw were. The impact of those few minutes packed with new ships (probably enhanced by our memories of the recycled-stock-footage ships of the movie trailer) should never be ignored.
![[Big Grin]](biggrin.gif)
Printer-friendly view of this topic
