posted
Did Bill George build this model as a personal project and then loan it to the studio or was there a different story behind it. I can't remember...
posted
I believe that was the case, yes. IIRC, the script called for the Pasteur to be a medical ship, and George's already-built model was exactly the type of design TPTB were looking for.
-------------------- "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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Amasov Prime
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That's it. At least the story reported by the TNG companion.The question is: what's the deal with the Olympic/Hope mess-up? George gives them the model. Okuda creates a dedication plaque. Okuda decides to redesign the plaque or - for some other reason - comes up with the idea that 'Olympic-class' might sound cooler. So he changes it. Then there's this registry-error (from the Encyclopedia).
I like the idea of the Olympic being some sort of sub-class medical variant of the Hope class cruiser or frigate or something like that. But can anyone tell us the real story about it?
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I thought that Olympic was Bill George's name for it, but Okuda's dedication plaque (seen on an art department computer in the "Journey's End" Making-of-AGT... docu) said Hope (which is what was adopted initially in fan circles as the name for it), and that it then got switched back to Olympic for the Encyclopedia 2.0, prompting the online confusion that has existed ever since.
[ July 08, 2002, 12:45: Message edited by: The_Tom ]
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^ I always assumed that as well. Hope did make sense as a class name... nice homage to the WWII hospital ship. Okuda must've found out George's original name after AGT and had a change of heart. Now I'm wondering if the model was originally labeled something else before it became the Pasteur.
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Amasov Prime
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quote:Originally posted by USSMillennium74754: Now I'm wondering if the model was originally labeled something else before it became the Pasteur.
posted
My non-animated response to that would be "Most likely yes." USS Pasteur was probably specified in the script before they managed (though a spate of luck, IIRC) to hear about this model of Mr. George's. The most likely name for the model to bear before then would be USS Olympic, methinks.
Indeed, the relevant scenes in All Good Things... may well have been filmed before the inside of the Pasteur was matched to an appropriate outside. If that was the case, then "Hope class" would have been printed onto the bridge plaque with the intent that they'd use a brand-new model. It would only have been later on that they discovered they could use Bill George's ship that he'd already dubbed Olympic and just paint on the name and registry of the Pasteur and (if George hadn't put them there already) the medical icons as well.
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quote:The most likely name for the model to bear before then would be USS Olympic, methinks.
I'm never really gotten into shiplist threads, but this brings a question to mind. If Bill George did have the model originally labeled something else (for instance, The_Tom's USS Olympic example), does that mean it also originally had a different registry?
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I'm guessing it was probably a.) originally marked with the Pasteur's registry (unlikely unless George knew about Okuda's numbering system), b.) originally with a much lower or simpler registry (i.e. NCC-10000 or something, which is very likely), or c.) didn't have a registry at all (also possible, since it was just a "spare" model and may have just sat around without decals until needed).
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quote:Originally posted by Cpt. Kyle Amasov: I like the idea of the Olympic being some sort of sub-class medical variant of the Hope class cruiser or frigate or something like that. But can anyone tell us the real story about it?
From a historical sense it would be a medical variant of a passenger liner or a freighter (the current USN h-ships are converted tankers for instance). Basically the usefulness issues I would see are speed, useful internal space, low resource cost - pick two.
[ July 09, 2002, 00:56: Message edited by: Toadkiller ]
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Amasov Prime
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I don't even want to think about the possibility of another name for the ship. But the low registry could indicate that this was the original registry for the vessel (USS Olympic or whatever), just the name was changed for the show.
How comes no one wants to do the next step and present a ship with an 80,000+ registry. Think about it; every time we saw future ships (I don't think Relativity does count) it had a registry lower than 80,000. And TNG-timeline (Voyager) did never reach the 80,000, either.
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My guess is that they were doing that on purpose. TPTB didn't want to show a new Starfleet vessel from 20+ years in the future because they didn't want to spend money building a model that would only be used in one episode. They compensated for not having newer ships by giving the older ships lower registries for their time, making it seem that older ships were still being used in the 25th century (which is kind of far-fetched; TPTB are basically saying that there will be no advances in starship propulsion, other than that silly "warp 13" throwaway line). But I see your point. I would have liked to have seen newer, more advanced ships in the future sequences of "All Good Things," "The Visitor," "Timeless," "Endgame," and the like.
-------------------- "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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Amasov Prime
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But think of Harry's Nova, for example. The Excelsior was in use for a century, with registries from 2000 up to 62000. It wouldn't be that far-fetched if starfleet still builds ships of that class (relatively new during Voyager) twenty years later.
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Let's not forget... the Constitution Class, some 30-40 years old at the time of the Excelsior Project was being refit so that it would have technology similar to the Excelsior and be easily modified with Transwarp [as some have pointed out to me, the Enterprise did have consoles that said Transwarp].
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