So, armed with a COPYRIGHTED design - nobody else had designed the ship but Mr. Sternbach - what did they do.

They completely change the design to an experiemental warship called the Defiant Pathfinder.

Now excuse me here. But that to me is the final nail the the coffin of Voyager.
I have to admit that season five is picking up a little, however this "Technical" lazyness that goes on there is getting depressing.
Trek has a long standing commitment to being fresh and innovative. Their technical prowess was the hallmark which set it apart from the other sci-fi shows out there.
I have said this to CC, however I will tell you all as well.

The Long awaited DS9 Technical manual was a half hearted attempt at a book designed purely because they thought they could make a buck out of it.

Compared to the TNG tech manual it was purile and limp - not a worthy sucessor at all.
Only a few weeks ago I had a rant about the Sal Paolo - I still think that name was lazyness.

This Nova Class situation is a turning point for the worst. In effect what the team at trek have done is take the best piece of work to come out of Star Trek, The TNG Technical Manual, and throw it kicking and screaming out of the window.

They are denoucing the Quality once held by Star Trek and claiming the new king as a childish half hearted excuse for a sucessor.

My message is simple - if the designers at trek think that they are wooing the fans with their "fun to be around" philosophy, they are wrong.

Very Wrong........

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I mean, yes, the Nova-class design is rife with pitfalls because ever since they said in the TNG tech manual "one day the Galaxy will be replaced by the Nova" there have been so many designs. But to then ignore that and designate a rather uninteresting derivative little ship that maybe might replace the Oberth, as the Nova - that sucks.

As far as the DS9TM is concerned, maybe you see it as puerile and limp because you're not that interested in the station as you are in starships such as the Ent-D. The Defiant and all the starships are merely support vehicles, like the Captain's Yacht or the shuttles, and not the core of the manual. In the TNGTM, these additional bits also contain mistakes by the mere virtue of not being that important, i.e. the dimensions of the Captain's Yacht or the Type-7 shuttle (it should be 7.5m not 8.5, if one measures the diagram).

I think the TNGTM only appears to be a little more consistent since the basic info (workings of transporters, etc) was there a long time before publication to be occassionally reaffirmed on the show. True, Rick Sternbach did know more about the TNG era info by the mere virtue of working on the show. I expect the Voyager tech manual to be the best of the lot for the same reason.

Boris

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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid

It's probably safe to say that the TNG "Nova" became the TNG "Sovreign," and that somebody else just came along and used the Nova name later.

(And personally, I looked at the TNG Manual Nova-Class sketches and said "Ecch, I hope not!" -- but then again, I've never seen Mr. Kingsworth's design)

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You're just JEALOUS because the little voices talk to ME!

As far as the design for the USS Equinox, do we even know that it is going to be Nova Class? I don't know a lot about the Defiant Pathfinder, but pherhaps they decided they like the design, and they wanted to use it. They may get lazy sometimes (I acknowledge that) , but it doesn't mean that every time they don't live upto your expectations, it's because they are being lazy.

As for Voyager as a series, what did you think of the USS Prometheus, that was a pretty good design, except for the registry, they had some prettey good alien ships, the designs for the Species 8472 ships were ok, so Voyager isn't all bad, some of the stories were actually in the ok to good range!

They have some made some mistakes like, timeline mistakes (i.e. Relativity, how is that the bomb is there when Voyager is under construction, and the bomb was placed 2 years after those events accured? What about the registry of the Prometheus, it was very low for a new ship? How big is Malon space, it seems to be hugh, they still enountered them late in the season after their 10,000 light year jump? The Fight, in my opinion, was a pointless episode!

I just like looking at the good points of Trek not the mistakes, even tough there are a fair amount of mistakes!

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One silly, twice foolish. -Dr. Weaver, ER

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"The one, the only, THE 359!"

A.) He like the looks of it.

B.) The text implies that that design was used for other starships.

And I know the TNGTM's Nova sketches didn't look all that great, but the one w/ the segmented saucer actually looks a lot better than you'd think. I hope someone has or can find MarkK's rendering of it...

Personally, I see no reason that they had to take the name Nova. There are plenty of other names that they could have chosen. By picking Nova, all they've done is invalidate that last section of the TNGTM, and I think that's pretty dumb.

Nova was reserved for the Next generation of ship to follow the Galaxy's path.
Not for some crappy second rate ship which will only appear once with a bunch of psychos on board.

On the TNG tech Manual - It is not Canon?? Humm - its say Paramount on it - it has Gene endorsing it - it features the highest quality reference material - it was used extensively throughout TNG.
Okay then - its not official........

NOT!

While everyone can sit there and say that the Defiant is just a support vessel, I do have a questions - What blows up in the ending chapters?

DS9?

Over time the Defiant has become a more significant ship that just a "support vessel".
It deserved better in the Technical manual.
After all - how many Rio Grande A's have we seen?
How many episodes have featured the Captains Yacht? humm? How many have featured the Defiant?

Support vessel my bottom.

On the DS9 Technical Manual.
Okay - let me get this straight - DS9 logo - nice - professional.
Defiant and Danube - purile and cartoonish.
Information? Mostly good, but there is too little and it is not explained well enough.
Half Hearted effort on DS9, the Defiant and the Danube.
I have been told time and time again when Utopia II was open that our information was cleaner, crisper and more informative than the DS9 Tech Manual - and that was just a fan fic!!!
I did not beleive these comments until I read the book.

Nova Class to Sovereign Class? I think not.

The Nova was to be the replacement for the Galaxy.
The Galaxy class was an explorer.
The Sovereign Class is not an explorer.
Explain the lack of Families.........

If Nova was to replace the Galaxy, then it too would have been an Explorer hence any conclusions or comparisons drawn here are incorrect.

What all of this comes down to is lazyness.
The production team at Paramount really can't be bothered to think of anything new.

By using this "Nova" class, they have invalidated the TNG Technical Manual, invalidated the DS9 Technical Manual (why would the federation put an experiemental warship which was only a prototype into action as an exploration vessel? And then there is the fact that if this ship was the same breed as the Defiant the warp speed would be slow and its fuel capacity limited)
and generally made a laughing stock of themselves.

Station Master signing off.............

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http://frankg.dgne.com/
"CORUSCANT...DOES NOT COMPUTE...I mean, uh, you're under arrest." - Anonymous battle droid

The TNG TM Nova class was a space filler. Nothing more than that. It was some preliminary designs for a ship to replace the Galaxy class in 100 years time. It has nothing to do with the Sovereign which (a) isn't a replacement for the Galaxy class and (b) is 95 years too early.

There is no reason why the name Nova can't be used for a totally different class of ship. Mike and Rick and so on have repeatedly said that anything in the tech manuals can be changed in later episodes. The idea that the books are as canon as the episodes is complete rubbish. The Canon-FAQ over on rast.tech calls them semi-canon.

As I've stated in Sternbach's newsgroup, I don't see why Starfleet couldn't have been working on two ships, one science orientated, one combat orientated, both based on a similar hull design/warp dynamic. The combat orientated design was substantially modified to become the Defiant whilst the science orientated one was largely unchanged and became the Nova. Perfectly reasonable.

There's nothing in this Nova class thing that invalidates the TNG or DS9 TMs. It merely alters one or two minor details. No need for people to act as if the world is coming to an end.

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-->Identity Crisis<--