posted
I learned from postings on another board that the Klingon ship in "Unexpected" is a D-7 Class Battlecruiser. If this is true, then this is very disappointing.
CGI is supposed to allow for the development and exhibition of new ship designs by being cheaper and less time intensive than building a model.
Since the show began, I have seen variations of the Cardassian freighter, the Breen ship, and, now if correct, the Klingon D-7 battlecruiser.
My question, what is the use of CGI if you don't use it to expand upon your existing designs?
posted
Now that I've actually seen pics of the "FoF" vessels, I report in for minority duty. Nothing Breen-like in the vampire vessel. There is a slight resemblance, OTOH, to an early design for a Jem'Hadar warship, one built out of interwoven diamond-shaped metal plates.
Apparently, CGI still isn't cheap enough for new designs to be created for every need. Or then the CGI houses need to be kept on a shorter leash. VOY had plenty of novel CGI designs towards the end, yet these designs were reused where it hurt the most. For example, "Drive" had a nice line-up of all-new "racer" ships, and a not-so-nice line-up of "support ships" for the racing teams, with designs associated with the Ocampa vicinity or even the Gamma quadrant.
posted
Assuming that this Klingon ship is more inline with being a revised D7 rather than a reuse of the K'tinga, than this would seem to make the D7 the "Excelsior" or "Miranda" of the Klingon fleet. Incredibly long service life, apparently.
However, this does seem to cause problems with something said in an episode of Deep Space Nine. I can't remember where it was said or who said it (heck, for that matter I may be completing misremembering), but it was said that Kor (or Kang or Koloth) used to command a D5 around the time of TOS. Assuming a sequentialness to the D# typenames, then the D5's would be really past their prime by TOS.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
posted
The episode is "Once More Unto the Breach". Kor is telling a battle story to the crew of the Ch'Tang. He sets the story up by saying that the events occured aboard the Klothos, a D-5 cruiser, in the days before the introduction of the cloaking device.
I had hoped to see a ship that is a DY-1 to DY-5, not a DY-7.
I am almost afraid to hear what Bernd has to say on this topic.
I like 'Enterprise'; however, I am forming doubts as to the level of creativity on this show.
[ October 17, 2001: Message edited by: targetemployee ]
posted
We did know that Klingon ship designs live long and prosper, but THIS long? Well, possibly. If the Klingons aren't very inventive by themselves, they might not develop any new tech until challenged by aliens. And the ENT Klingons might not have been challenged yet. Silly in any case for TPTB not to use a "new old" design, so to say.
I trust that the D-7-lookalike seen in the episode is closer to K't'inga in appearance than to the smooth TOS vessel. Which would be just plain annoying. But as for this D-5 thing, it seems to be a reference to TAS, and there the ship was indeed shown to be nearly identical to D-7 externally (just with the minor modifications stemming from the erroneous scale model on which TAS pictures were based).
Was the ship in "Unexpected" called a D-7, or did it just look like that? It could be a D-5 (or what CGI people think the TAS ship "really" looked like) for all we know...
posted
I don't think the Klingons look at ship building the same way "we" do ... they seem to like designs, and continuely improve them over the decades. Look at the Bird-Of-Prey ... they are what, five or six different size variations? And they've been in service since at least Star Trek II (given the short space of time between II and III, it's reasonable to assume the BoP was in service during STII, possibly during TMP).
Maybe it has something to do with "honor" ... the Klingons might not believe in scrapping their ships. They keep a ship in service until it is destroyed ...
Even with the BoP in Generations, which was "retired from service", it seems that even though the military might stop buying a certain class of ship, it doesn't destroy the defective BoPs: it gives them out to the Houses of prominent Klingons for their own personal use.
Which, of course, brings us to another discussion: the organization of the Klingon Military, which seems to be sort of like Federal (under control of the High Council) and Reservists (under the control of Houses).
posted
Using the same hull design for centuries isn't too big of a deal. I highly doubt that they use the same ships over centuries, but if they found a design they like, why change it? If new, modern components fit into a hull design that has proven itself for a hundred years, why make a new one? The Klingons are warriors, not engineers.
posted
Still, I would have liked to have seen a new ship.
-------------------- "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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They're clearly engineers among their ranks. I think, though, that Klingons are "warriors first!" and then engineers, scientists, etecetra. It's like the US Marine Corps: the pilots, lawyers, doctors, anyone who wears the uniform of a U.S. Marine -- no matter their job -- is an infantryman first and foremost.
posted
Since I'm watching the Klingon ship scenes now in "Unexpected," this definitely looks like a bridge between the TOS Klingon D7 and the TMP K'tinga ships. It has a textured surface, but it's not as radically done as the K'tingas are. The only designation given to this ship so far is "Klingon Battlecruiser," though.
-------------------- The philosopher's stone. Those who possess it are no longer bound by the laws of equivalent exchange in alchemy. They gain without sacrifice and create without equal exchange. We searched for it, and we found it.
Registered: Mar 1999
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MIB
Ex-Member
posted
Siegfried is correct. I was gonna say the same thing, but he beat me to it. It does look like a cross between the D7 and the K'tingas. More textures than the D7s, less textured than the K'tingas. Sooooo.....Are the Klingon battle cruisers in TOS originally supposed to look like this or what?
P.S. To me, the butcher ship from FoF didn't look a thing like a Breen vessel.
posted
Maybe it's because the execs think Trekkies are too stupid recognize any other design. Y'know like, "We'll use the old D-7 design so fans know it's a Klingon ship."
-------------------- I'm slightly annoyed at Hobbes' rather rude decision to be much more attractive than me though. That's just rude. - PsyLiam, Oct 27, 2005.
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capped
I WAS IN THE FUTURE, IT WAS TOO LATE TO RSVP
Member # 709
posted
The model Jein built for Trials & Tribble-ations was the design from TOS, except with hull gridding and detailing similar to the K't'inga class, yet nowhere near as severe. His intention was to create a model which looked realistic as a starship, but featured no obvious differences from the D7 seen in TOS. Basically, if you took the more detailed D7 and photographed it with TOS techniques (and ended up with the low quality film of it like we saw in the episodes) it would be indistinguishable from that ship, and therefore is simply a clarification of how that fuzzy ship must have really looked before the image was fuzzy.
Of course, I have no idea where the 'Unexpected' ship falls into this. But the Voyager episode that originally used the 'medium detail-D7' CGI model already established that Klingons prior to TOS were using that ship, which is more detailed than the D7 ship that is used after it.
[ October 17, 2001: Message edited by: CaptainMike ]
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