posted
Masao has been drawing up some of the TAS ships, and he just sent me some pics today that have dispersed some commonly-held myths about the Huron from the TAS episode "The Pirates of Orion".
1.) The prefix of 'S.S.' is commonly assigned to the freighter, but this is not so. It is clearly marked 'U.S.S. Huron' on the hull.
2.) The registry has been almost universally given as NCC-F1313, but it is in fact NCC-F1913.
posted
Well, the Huron *is* a butt-ugly ship. The only way it has any Federation-ness to it is the warp nacelles, a la the "Aurora" from TOS. Huron, though, looks kinda like a Nebulon-B frigate from Star Wars with warp drive attached.
G2k
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I've known this ship for as almost as long as I've watched Trek, so I've sort of accepted this design as typically Federation as much as the Constitution class itself. I admit it's not the greatest design, but it's one of only 3 onscreen Starfleet ships of the era (not counting those seen only on displays or small craft).
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Registered: Oct 1999
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posted
Ummmm, I can read F1913 in both pics... the F is pretty clear.
And does anyone thing that the white part at the front - the dome - with the little nacelles on the long 'wing' might be a slide-out module with it's own warp system!?! there is a black line at the front where the 'wing' reaches the main bulk of the hull - where the whole dome and wing contraption could slide out. The rest of the ship might be mostly inhabitable!?! Or there might be no room for a shuttle bay - so this this might be the only auxiallary craft available!?!
Andrew
[ January 10, 2002: Message edited by: AndrewR ]
-------------------- "Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica." - Jim Halpert. (The Office)
posted
Very interesting ideas, AndrewR. The ship could indeed split into parts along those seams. But I don't think a freighter really has a need for that sort of capability. And the aft part has plenty of lit windows and big doorlike things that make me believe the part is inhabitable and shuttle-accessible.
Personally, I feel that the big whiskers are not engines, but something typically freighterish: crane booms. Or their futuristic equivalent, tractor beam -based. This ship clearly isn't a "container ship" or "barge tug" kind of freighter, since we saw a big internal cargo hold. It seems this is an "integrated" design, without a modular separation between the cargo, crew, engine and utility compartments. And such a vessel would need versatile cargo handling gear.
I think the big boxy part the engine pylons stick out from is the main hold area, and most of the things protruding down from the ship have to do with loading and offloading. The big thing hanging from the belly, with a funnel-like cross section, distinctly reminds me of an ore or coal car of a train. I could see the ship dumping bulk cargo through that thing to a harbor receptable of some sort, or ingesting such cargo. The "crane booms" would assist.
The upper aft bubble IMHO is a big shuttle access area with clamshell doors sliding to port and starboard (the infamous blueprints erroneously have a big B/W landing target here instead of the bubble, but I like to think of those blueprints as depicting a variant - the more expensive model would have a covered, pressurized shuttle entrance, the cheaper one just a landing target). Or then the bubble does not open and there is no shuttle access. The big lighted area below it is obviously the impulse engine. Or a set of access doors...
Anyway, it's pretty clear the forward bubble is the bridge and crew area. Below that is an intensively windowed area, possibly passenger space (although the Huron clearly carried no passengers at the time). Probably there are two window rows per deck - the ship isn't so big IMHO that there could be a deck per each row. When a crewman looks down into the ransacked cargo hold from a catwalk, he's probably standing on the aft end of this windowed volume, looking aft into the the big boxy volume. You can see a curved roof, which probably is the front part of the aft bubble.
This results in a relatively logical internal arrangement. The odd thing is the failure to separate the engine room from the other spaces - IMHO, the nacelles should stick out from a small separate engineering section, and not from the greatest single compartment of the ship. Then again, TOS warp engines were supposed to be mostly confined to the nacelles anyway, at least by the interpretation of the day...
Or then the aftmost of the ventral protrusions is the engineering compartment. Sure, it seems there are windows on the sides, but there are similar windows on the *engine pylons* as well - perhaps these aren't windows, but some sort of plasma conduit things (like the squares on the pylons of TOS E-nil, the runabouts or Voyager shuttles). This would visually tie together the engines and the ventral protrusion.
(Finally, I think tMMoMIM just meant that Huron is NCC-F1913 instead of NCC-F1313, and made a minor typo. She was an unlucky ship in any case.)
posted
The first scan especially looks more like it came from a comic book than from an animated episode. But both of the piccies provide more detail about that ship than I've ever seen. Thanks!
posted
MMoM: I think you meant to say that the registry was "F1913," not "1913."
-------------------- "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
Yeah, sorry. It was just a typo. I've edited the post.
And about the source of the images, Masao scanned them from some cards which he thinks were released for the Trek 30th anniversary. What they appear to be are actual drawings/cells/whatever-you-call-ems from the animation used in the episodes. (That's why they're so clear, as opposed to the actual shots whose clarity is limited by the resolution of a TV set.)
-MMoM
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posted
MMoM: Could you give me the names and/or registry #'s of any other Starfleet/Federation ships in TAS? In the interest of completeness, I'm going to add them to my shiplist.
-------------------- "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
TAS takes the cake for the Fewest Starships-in-a-Series award.
U.S.S. Enterprise, NCC-1701 (Duh!) U.S.S. Potemkin, NCC-1657 ("The Pirates of Orion") U.S.S. Huron, NCC-F1913 ("The Pirates of Orion") S.S. Bonaventure, NCC-S2100 ("The Time Trap") S.S. Ariel ("The Eye of the Beholder") NCC-G1465 ("More Tribbles, More Troubles") NCC-G1495 ("More Tribbles, More Troubles")
Annotations:
1. Obviously, a Constitution-class vessel under the command of Captain James T. Kirk, finishing the final two years (2269-2270) of the 5-yr mission started in TOS (2266-2269).
2. The same ship as from TOS and TUC, mentioned but not seen.
3. A freighter under command of Captain O'Shea, carrying dilithium and medical supplies in 2270, attacked and raided by Orion pirates on SD 6334.1. (The whole point of this thread was to refute the commonly-held notions [presented in Bjo Trimble's Concordance, I believe] that this vessel had an 'S.S.' prefix, and an NCC-F1313 registry.)
4. An older Starfleet vessel, apparently a precursor to the Constitution-class, that was lost in the mysterious area of space called the Delta Triangle, and was discovered by the U.S.S. Enterprise on SD 5267.3. (The Bonaventure seems to have caused a lot of fuss for some people. In the episode, Scotty uttered the line "There's the old Bonaventure. She was the first ship to have warp drive installed!" Many people take this as a contradiction to the facts we now know about the beginnings of Earth's warp era. There is no reason, however, why Scotty could not have merely meant it was the first Federation vessel to have warp drive installed, or some other semantic explanation like that. [In fact, this would make sense, since the ship was clearly adorned with SF sinage of the same style as the 1701. Certainly no more difficult to circumvent than his line about Romulan warp drive in "Balance of Terror" [TOS]. The Bonaventure is commonly held to be of the Bonaventure-class, though where this originated I do not know. It is also accepted that the ship bears and S.S. prefix but, like the Huron, this may be erroneous. [On the other hand, it may make sense, considering that from ENT we're seeing that SF used that prefix in its early years.])
5. The crew of the science vessel Ariel went missing in 2270 while in orbit of Lactra VII and the Enterprise crew were dispatched to search for them on SD 5501.2. (Again, the 'S.S.' prefix may be incorrect, or it may not. The ship was never seen onscreen, and as it was a science vessel it may indeed properly have an S.S. prefix, however the crew was seen to wear SF uniforms.)
6. One of two unmanned SF robot cargo drone vessels escorted to Sherman's Planet by the Enterprise in 2269 on SD 5392.4. (No name was mentioned, but the NCC was readable off the hull.)
7. The other of the two vessels mentioned above.
Hope that helps.
-MMoM
[ January 12, 2002: Message edited by: The Mighty Monkey of Mim ]
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quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: (The whole point of this thread was to refute the commonly-held notions [presented in Bjo Trimble's Concordance, I believe] that this vessel had an 'S.S.' prefix, and an NCC-F1313 registry.)
Actually, the “S.S.” prefix and F1313 registry likely originated from the Geoffrey Mandel Blueprints published in ’77. (refer to link below)
As far as the internal arrangements are concerned, I have also provided a scan of the inboard profile as drafted by Mandel (refer to link below). Certainly, these plans are not canon, but you can take them for what they are worth.
Mandel’s plans (which are deck for deck, incidentally) show no traditional shuttle bay, but there is a “shuttle maintenance shop” on deck 6. Apparently, shuttles access the cargo hold(s) (and the maintenance shop) by means of a turntable elevator (as previously mentioned by Timo.
The plans are, no doubt, inaccurate when compared to the ship as seen in TAS, but then again, so are the Franz Joseph Enterprise plans when compared to the TOS filming model.
[ January 11, 2002: Message edited by: Commander Dan ]
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