posted
I thought "technology unchained" refered to the idea that the tech shouldn't intrude on humans lives. Also that it should be used to enhance the quality of life, and guff. I didn't think it had anything to do with tracing the design lineage.
To be fair, it is gtting harder and harder to design Federation ships. When they did the first non-Enterprise ship, they basically removed the engineering section. The Reliant looked Starfleet, because it had almost all the same components as the Enterprise, yet it had a radically different sillouete.
While the Ambassador, Galaxy, New Orleans, and so on, all look "Starfleet", they also create a problem for the producers. Casual fans can't tell them apart. When I first saw "Yesterdays Enterprise", I thought the ship was the Enterprise-A.
The Nebula was eventually built because TPTB needed a comtempry ship of the Ent-D that looked different to the casual fan. The First Contact ships are going even further along that design. They were not they main point of the movie. They will likely never be the main focus of a movie, or even episode. So let's make them look as different from current Starfleet ships as possible, so that when we see them in fleet shots, we KNOW they're different. You might mistake an Excelsior for a Sovereign from a distance, but you'd never mix up a Galaxy and Steamrunner.
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posted
OK, Just thinking about the actual phrase "technology unchained" - it probably hasn't got anything to do with design lineage - but I'm sure from one of the many 'making of' books that Gene wanted to see how one ship could be seen as being a logical next step from the ships before it. The problem with the FC ships, is that they look NOTHING like what has come before. Yeah, it can have a different configuration, but I'm talking about the actual components - the nacelles, the deflector dish etc. The Federation has a look, that has evolved over the years - and we can see it when we look at ships like the E-D, Nebula, Cheyenne, New Orleans, Danube, Defiant and Voyager. The designs can be linked. Then we get the FC ships with their nacelles and their deflectors and their hull markings that look NOTHING like the others. Then they plonk them in the 5xxxx's or the 6xxxx's and say that they've been around all along.
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posted
And the TOS and TMP Enterprises had such similar deflectors, eh?
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posted
I for one see a subtle - yet real design philosophy in common with almost every Starfleet vessel yet-seen - and I include FC vessel in the mix. _______________
Use inverse logic: look at ships from non-Federation races (Turd-head (I mean Kazon), Klingon, Romulan, Cardassian, Dominion, Borg, etc.
Modern Federation vessels rarely have "sharp edges", and normally have blended-in modularized hulls (as opposed to discreet/angular modules). The hulls are off-white [I would LOVE to get a consensus (for my deck plans) on the actual PMS color used] with externalized grills and grids. Right from the start, even TOS vessels showed some differentiation (remember the Aurora?) - but these details remained constant.
"Technology Unchained" as it pertains to exterior topology of Starfleet Vessels would seem to have to do with the gradual rounding-off of angularization, etc: which would draw me to the hypothesis that the more streamlined a vessel-class is, the newer it is. I have not yet done a shape vs. NCC # comparison yet.
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posted
Yeah well why does it need to be streamlined? There is no friction in space to make it be that way. Could it be possible that the Steamrunner, Sabre and the Norway are non-human designs? Vulcan is a major member, even a 'co-manager' of the UFP. Couldn't they have a say design their own ships perhaps in conjunction with Starfleet engineers? These ships have different hull color, design, and ect. so why can't these ships be non-human designed?
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posted
Who's saying that the others ARE human designed? I imagine a mix of races worked on them.
------------------ You know, when Comedy Central asked us to do a Thanksgiving episode, the first thought that went through my mind was, "Boy, I'd like to have sex with Jennifer Aniston." -Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park
posted
Exactly - in fact it would seem the greatest strength SF has is the array of species-viewpoints to draw from for ship design. We've seen that various "alien" species have wildly different hull shapes, so obviously there are different answers to the same questions (compared to blue water navies whose ships all look more or less alike).
posted
Except those blue water navies are not large batteships/aircraft carriers. On Earth, especially before WWII, navies had their own design philosophy, German ships look different from American etc. Japanese ships definately do not look like any other contemporary.
I'm sure that ships are designed from all kinds of races, but those three ships of the Sabre, Steamrunner and the Norway look different from the normal line of Starfleet ships. Either it could be a new design philosophy or it could be a different culture design philosophy.
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Sabre, Steamrunner and Norway look different because they were not designed by Paramount/Star Trek insiders. They were in fact designed by Industrial Light and Magic' Alex Jaeger. The Akira also belonged to this list, so it's really four ships. As a matter of fact, it was ILM, who also designed the Klingon Bird of Prey, which is still quite non-Trekkish in look.
posted
Er, didn't ILM also design the Miranda and Excelsior?
------------------ You know, when Comedy Central asked us to do a Thanksgiving episode, the first thought that went through my mind was, "Boy, I'd like to have sex with Jennifer Aniston." -Trey Parker, co-creator of South Park
posted
So what if ILM designed the ships or not, so what if aliens designed the ships or not... I'm sure with names like "Akira, Norway, Sabre" etc. as the class names, that they couldn't be solely alien built...
They just don't look to FOLLOW the progression of Federation tech at the time... Why did the Sovvie go back to the itty bitty nav/deflector dish? When most ships like the E-D, Nebbie, Vger etc were on the path of 'large-ass' dishes...
The Excy and the Miri and the Dock etc. LOOK Federation, but, well it wasn't hard to do back then, when there wasn't a backlog of 30 or so starships to compare them to.
I think maybe it comes down to, why do they have to have a NEW Starship EVERY MOVIE... can't they recycle some of the older ships... that haven't been seen much.
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posted
I think the sovvie dish fits better with the overall design, borrowed from the Excelsior. And it glows nicely. The galaxy and intrepid dishes look like play dough. And the galaxy dish shapes like a vagina, heh.
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[This message has been edited by Nimrod (edited April 27, 2001).]
Anyway, if anyone looks at the four ILM Alex Jaeger designed ships (Akira, Steamrunner, Norway, Sabre classes), he certainly has a different train of thought and basically out of synch with the rest of the starship designers.
There was a clear trend towards triangular hulls (Prometheus, Intrepid, Nova, Sovereign, Dauntless), perhaps molded by what they feel are dictated by the physics of sustained Warp 9.9 flight. With the exception of the Norway, which does have a triangular hull, the other three ships reversed that design trend. Note that the Jaeger ships tend to have a single flat hull, a structure extending from the back, downward pylons or wings. I would believe that the Miranda may be ILM designed, but not the Excelsior.
quote:I don't know if ILM did the Miranda and the Excelsior.
Yes, they did.
Although the front and rear views of that pre-Miranda look kinda cool, the side view clearly shows that any phasers or photon torpedoes shot from the weapons pod would instantaneously blow away the lower sensor dome on the saucer section, unless the turrets had some sort of rotating ability.
In my opinion, this predesign is just a rumor.
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