posted
Er...huh? they're nothing like each other- that comic-book Challenger is just a Constelation with a secondary hull instead of the lower pair of nacelles.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
Jason: I believe Mark was describing what the Caspian looked like, not the Challenger.
BTW, the Larson class is my favorite FASA design, mostly because the arrangement makes sense. I'm glad they used the design in the comic.
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Hmmm...the design sorta makes sense: Masswise, they'd be better off with one central pylon over the two-pylon arrangment they have, but it works great in a TMP-era refit version. Just place the starboard and port phaser banks on the nacelle pylons for twice the coverage. You have to add in two Miranda-style shuttlebays at the ship's rear as well- otherwise the extra space added is just wasted (and a smaller ship- a destroyer- sure does not need more crew capacity).
On the TOS (FASA) version, the pylons are like a big empty bilboard on the side of the ship- I can just picture Orion kids tagging it up at every civillian port...
I made a model of a "Lost Era" Larson class and posted it a while back- it had the central pylon and twin nacelles of a Constelation class with an updated Larson-ish hull (saucer-mounted torpedo launcher added as well).
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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posted
Incidentally, where does the name Trial comes from? My limited searching hasn't found a place called Trial; the only references mainly seem to come from various kinds of trial. If it's a trial as in a legal proceding, what other names might there be? The USS Deposition? Or maybe the USS Competition or the USS Let's Just toss A Coin?
Perhaps the full name of the ship is the USS Trial By Jury, opening up the possibility of there being a USS Law & Order, a USS Criminal Intent, and a USS Special Victims Unit!
Or maybe it's the USS (The) Trial, meaning there could be a USS Metamorphosis. Such literary precedents however mean there might be a USS Da Vinci Code or a USS Little Engine That Could, and eventually even a USS Vulcan Love Slave.
One interesting thing I did find was that a "trial" is an adjective for something of which there are three (like "dual" for two). Perhaps the ship was a pregenitor of the Prometheus multi-vector assault concept?
posted
Depends - ever encountered the use of the name Trial as a surname? I haven't, but that's not to say there aren't, or might not be in the future. But it makes me wonder, why they chose that name in the first place for a starship mentioned in dialogue, or in an Okudagram or however it cropped up. . .
quote:You have to add in two Miranda-style shuttlebays at the ship's rear as well- otherwise the extra space added is just wasted (and a smaller ship- a destroyer- sure does not need more crew capacity).
OTOH, these single-nacellers have traditionally suffered from the lack of a recognizable "engineering section", even though evidence from other ship types suggests that the warp powerplant generally warrants a whole "section"... Since the Larson pylons are razor-thin, they can't be argued to house this machinery like the Saladin fin might, so IMHO the aft hull extensions are the logical place for this stuff. (A shuttlebay or five can be added if need be, but since the Saladin makes do without one...)
As for USS Trial, how did we learn that such a ship existed? I mean, I trust it's not visible onscreen, so some backstage source must have been involved.
quote:Originally posted by Lee: Depends - ever encountered the use of the name Trial as a surname? I haven't, but that's not to say there aren't, or might not be in the future. But it makes me wonder, why they chose that name in the first place for a starship mentioned in dialogue, or in an Okudagram or however it cropped up. . .
posted
The funny thing about that picture from startrek.com, is that the GCS is most definitely the U.S.S. Venture, and the two Excelsiors (if they are the CGI versions) are most likely both labeled as whatever CGI Excelsior was previously used. Even if they were the physical model, it's doubtful that they'd be re-labeled for this shot.
The Miranda class ship (that coincidentally is cut out of the left side of that picture) has been identified as the Trial in the past, because someone once stated that it's a Reliant model kit, with the letters T, R, I, A, and L used from the original RELIANT. How true this staement is is anyone's guess.
Registered: Jun 2000
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posted
Those wouldn't likely be CGI Excelsiors - DS9 wasn't heavy into CG by that point, and all the other elements were physical models too. They must have been stock models, since the Excelsior model had by that point been converted into the Enterprise-B.
I think the first CGI Excelsior (after the rough one built for Generations, which wasn't used again) showed up the following year to complement the new 3-foot Excelsior model built for VOY "Flashback". That model showed up as the Malinche on DS9 the same year, and subsequently in mixed and then CGI shots for various fleet scenes in both series afterwards.
posted
The CGI Excelsiors were completed for the large space battles in DS9 which occured prior to the episode in question. They're not paerticularly accurate and have extremely chunky saucer sections.
posted
Yes, but it blows up nicely. Best (non-hero) ship deaths ever.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
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posted
But if we're talking about the "Way of the Warrior" shot with the Venture, two Excelsiors and a Miranda around DS9, that was done before any large-scale fleet battles on that show, at least any involving anything except the Defiant. The "really big space fights" in DS9 to that point were basically:
-The Wolf 359 prologue -runamouts versus "lightly armed" Maquis fighters -Odyssey + runabouts versus Jem'Hadar fighters -Defiant versus Jem'Hadar fighters -Defiant versus Cardassians -Defiant versus Cardassians + Romulans versus Jem'Hadar
Except for the first (which was the re-labelled 8-foot Excelsior model), I don't think any Excelsior class ships were ever really seen to that point on DS9. I'm not discounting a weak CG model standing in for that shot, but it does look unlikely.
posted
How many times was this scene shown? Obviously, the initial scene was at the end of "Way of the Warrior," but how many times and in which episodes was it used as stock footage?
P.S. If no CGI was used in "Way of the Warrior," then it's quite possible that plastic model kits or lo-rez background models were used. for this scene.
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