posted
I understand that the original drawing of Reliant showed her inverted with respect to the final design. That is, the nacelles were "on top" and the torpedo pod and fly-over bridge beneath the saucer, mirroring the basic layout established by the Enterprise.
I'm basing this off the "making of" documentary. Apparently the director/producer (I've forgotten who exactly) was mailed the drawings and viewed them upside down. When they were returned to the modellers they realised that the signature of approval was written upside down! They surmised what had happened and decided to go with it, rather than resubmit the design.
Well, anyway, does anyone know of any images, models, drawings etc. that someone might have made of the Reliant as she was originally intended? That is, upside down, but with the hull details corrected for this?
posted
Not sure where this came from(could be the Magazine, judging from the faint text leaking through), but it may very well be the original submitted sketch. I just found it in my folder of Miranda Class pics.
posted
It is from the Magazine, I have the issue. I never heard that story Lurker but I do know at one point the Reliant was going to be another Constitution class but the idea was dropped since having two of the same class of ship would be confusing to the audience. They wouldn't be able to tell which ship would be the Reliant and which would be the Enterprise.
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I have some others but they aren't really any clearer than what Johnny uploaded. It does have the story about the flip printed right alongside. From what I recall it wasn't so much a desperation move or an accident so much as a "hey, you know what might be even cooler?' moment.
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posted
I always liked the notion of dual torpedo pods. I made this ship before the Reliant sketches were published:
It's made from a updated TOS Surya class ship.
I'll see if I can dig up any pics of the Miranda in the "naceles up" configuration- several of my fellow modelers have tried it already.
quote:at one point the Reliant was going to be another Constitution class but the idea was dropped since having two of the same class of ship would be confusing to the audience. They wouldn't be able to tell which ship would be the Reliant and which would be the Enterprise.
That's probably why the Reliant suddenly develops red running lights once Kahn is in command. It's EVIL! EVIL!
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
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On the subject of torpedo pods, it did occur to me once that if you replaced Reliants pod with a compact deflector, you could stick two smaller, single tube torpedo pods in the locations of both of the "mega" phasers that reliant has on the fly over bridge corners. This might make for a cleaner, better balanced design and would solve Reliants deflector problem (as in, the apparent lack of one). It would also have had advantages in filming, as every time you saw a single tube with a piece of structure coming out of it above and below, you'd know it was a close up of Reliants tubes, not Enterprises. Then, if you kept this arrangement inverted, you've nicely mirrored Enterprises basic layout (deflector and torpedos below the saucer) without making it hard to distinguish one from the other.
Having said that, I appreciated the idea that Reliant is armed with two great honking big phasers. It seemed to suggest that while Enterprise is your prestige deep space explorer, Reliant is more of a combat oriented, backbone-of-the-fleet type with it's smaller silhouette and bigger guns. However, in battle they didn't seem to do much more damage than Enterprises saucer mounted versions. Reliant also had saucer mounted versions, but never used them.
Re: red running lights: yes, I liked that touch too!
Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
Well, back in the day, sensor and deflector duties were split. They didn't merge until TNG (well, the Ambassador, but that came later in the real world). The big dish was the main sensor. The three little raised boxes flaning it (on the Constitution) were the navigational deflectors. And you notice the Reliant has two on the saucer and one on the torp pod. The Excelsior's are the two inset greebly panels on the neck.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
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posted
But according to the actual model, and the VFX shots from TUC, the torpedo launchers are the two holes set on either side of the upper forward secondary hull.
--Jonah
-------------------- "That's what I like about these high school girls, I keep getting older, they stay the same age."
--David "Woody" Wooderson, Dazed and Confused
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posted
...And that those neck things couldn't fire dead ahead without hitting the saucer, in which case it would be a bit odd to place them on the forward surface of the neck to begin with.
Let's face it, before Sternbach, there was no starship as we know it. Nobody knew what elements were vital to a ship's operations, and nobody could agree on which parts of the engine systems did what to move the ship.
Modern views call for deflector dishes, but they might not be any more "vital" to older ships than radars or cockpit canopies were to the first aircraft (or to light aircraft today). Perhaps the only real use for a dish is to deflect objects so large that a 23rd century starship would typically choose to dodge those rather than try to push them aside?
posted
In this image it looks to me like both the upper and lower details could be torpedo launchers. They also look close in design to the aft launchers, but I don't have my images on this system.
I don't have an accurite head-on view of the ship so I can't tell if they'd be able to fire forward or not
Registered: Mar 2004
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posted
Timo, that's a very astute comment about deflectors. I shall try to bear that in mind in future.
Regarding the Excelsior torpedo launchers, I always thought the launchers were square holes in the black, corrugated neck section. I'm pretty sure that in ST:VI we see Excelsior launching torpedoes from this area, but the difference is that the launch ports are lower down the neck and the neck appears to be larger and more prominent, which keeps the saucer out of the way.
I remember noticing the tube shaped, nozzle ended launchers mounted in the white part of the hull below the neck at the beginning of Generations (see Boh's image) but I thought they might be an artefact of the Excelsior refit and that the original launchers would remain in use... unless... we're looking at an early Quantum torpedo development with their separate launchers?
Registered: Jul 2006
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posted
It's quite possible that the ship would have different "calibers" of launchers, yes.
However, the only place from which torpedoes have emerged on an Excelsior is the pair of round holes on the uppermost level of the secondary hull bow, in ST6:TUC. Neither the neck things nor the fantail things have ever fired anything. And all the other shots of Excelsiors firing have involved phasers only.
The E-B MSD in ST:GEN shows rather blatant torpedo launchers in the neck holes and in the big hole beneath the fantail. One could argue that these are "light" secondary launchers that complement the "heavy" main launchers on the secondary hull upper level and on the fantail. Or then one could disregard that MSD, which seems to show a ship much bigger than the exterior VFX indicates...
"Light" and "heavy" launchers might be present on the Constitution and Miranda as well. The presence of light torp tubes concealed somewhere within the saucer (perhaps behind some of those ventral hatches) would explain the ST2 scenes of a mysterious "Torp Deck 4", and the fact that the Saratoga in DS9 "Emissary" was able to arm torpedoes despite lacking the standard torpedo pod. Indeed, one could say that the "light" tubes are the originals, as witnessed in action in TOS, and that the visible tubes are "heavy" additions that typically see the most action.
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