posted
If, as there's been some indication in the past, registries are assigned at a very early stage in an individual ship's development, then it stands to reason that the Enterprise might stay the 1701 even if it was delayed. Perhaps the Kelvin incident diverted resources away from the development of the Constitution-class, and towards smaller/easier-to-build/tried-and-tested designs; or perhaps they re-thought the design (well, obviously they re-thought the design, it's bloody different!) which caused delays - it's also a lot larger = longer to build? Or a combination of all those factors.
I find it easy to fit the Kelvin into the design lineage we all know. Well, it has to, doesn't it? It existed before the timeline change. I envisage it as a Colony ship, used to moving large populations around, hence the large complement and rather uninspired layout. Remaining in known space it wouldn't need the redundancy and speed that twin nacelles might offer an exploratory vessel.
posted
Colony ship. Ooh. That's good, Lee. I really like that. Also explains the number of shuttles. 800 lives was starting to bug me.
In gathering images for the Enterprise, I did get some potentially useful images for scaling the Kelvin. (also Nero fighting Klingons!) Will post if I come up with anything.
Registered: Sep 2000
| IP: Logged
posted
A colony ship is a nice idea, indeed, but the USS Kelvin was on its way to Earth, since Kirk was supposed to be born there.
Registered: Oct 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
I see the Kelvin as probably the best indicator that this was already an established alternate reality and not a modification of the Primeline.
Picard and the gang's adventures will continue in the Pocket Books novels and will address the destruction of the Romulans.
As to all those shuttles, I figure the Kelvin was built before transporter tech was efficent for moving large numbers of crew....
OR
The communications and sensors seem to really suck in this period- maybe the shuttles serve as advance scouts for the ship- relaying information and extending the ship's sensor baseline.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
Just a thought. The script says that Kirk saved eight hundred lives. That doesn't mean that there were eight hundred aboard: that's how many got away. Now applying that logic to the fact that they escaped via shuttlecraft; running the numbers, you'd need to have about sixteen people in each of fifty shuttles in order to get those eight hundred survivors, and that doesn't take into account any of the shuttles that were destroyed - we saw at least one shuttle getting clipped by the Kelvin's phasers.
To me, that sounds totally over-the-top. I didn't sit there counting in the cinema, but there can't have been that many shuttles flying away from the Kelvin at the end.
I can only think of two reasons, really. It could just be a script error - and lets face it, we should be used to Star Trek getting its facts squiffy by now! - that was in there to provide an impressive number of survivors. Alternatively, it could not refer to the crew of the Kelvin at all - maybe because of the time that Kirk bought through his actions, Starfleet managed to evacuate a nearby base that Nero later went on to attack, or something?
Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
posted
Well, if that secondary hull was nothing but a shuttlebay with a deflector st the front, I could see them having the (stated in dialogue) 35 shuttles, though they'd need to be stacked somehow to conserve space.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
posted
I'm still not sold, to be honest. Even with the 35 shuttles from dialogue, we're still looking at 20+ passengers each. While yeah, #37 may have been less crowded because it was a Medical Shuttle, I'm having a hard time believing that they actually managed to fit such a large number of people in such a tiny little ship. Even if it was standing room only, it'd be quite a squeeze.
Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
posted
Well...if the Kelvin were a colony ship, as suggested, or even the scout ship/cruiser protecting a convoy of colony ships...that could be where the 800 people figure comes from. The Kelvin busied the Narada long enough to not only allow her own crew to get away (possibly 200-300), but to allow the other ships in the convoy to clear the area. That "lightning storm in space" could have been reason enough to keep the other ships in a safe position away from the anomaly, while the Kelvin investigated, perhaps being the best armed and equipped ship in the convoy.
Also, that could explain how the rather slow moving shuttles (with no indication thus far that they have warp drive) escaped. With the Narada temporarily crippled, they went back to wherever the other ships were, were picked up, and the remainder of the convoy (now without a significant chunk of it's escort, assuming that the Kelvin was either the only escort ship, or the most powerful) warped back to Earth, or the nearest Starfleet base.
Following this explanation, and the Kelvin having a crew of only 200 or so, the 35 shuttles could have easily evacuated the crew.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged
posted
That makes more sense to me. Its kinda what I was getting at earlier; the fact that the 800 people that George Kirk saved doesn't necessarily *have* to be the crew of the Kelvin.
Just out of curiosity, have any nicknames for the tri-nacelle and the "four" nacelle ship emerged on the internet yet? Aside from them being equated to the Farragut and Hood earlier, o'course. Is it worth trying to equate the tri-nacelle to the Miranda-class for example, or are we just assuming that they're totally new with no bearing on the Prime reality at all?
Registered: May 2009
| IP: Logged
posted
Well, I can't speak for the rest of the internet, but so far, the only "names" I can find for the ships around here are (for the 3 nacelled ship) the "147" class (because in the chart a few pages back, those ships were labeled #1,#4, and #7), and the over-under ship is the "238" class (ships 2, 3, and 8), from the same screenshot. As for actual names...nada. I'm sure someone will coin a name before long though.
-------------------- "Kosh, I'd like to introduce you to our Resident schmuck and his side kick Kick Me."-Ritten
"Fighting for peace is like screwing for virginity". -George Carlin
Registered: Jul 2007
| IP: Logged
quote:That makes more sense to me. Its kinda what I was getting at earlier; the fact that the 800 people that George Kirk saved doesn't necessarily *have* to be the crew of the Kelvin.
It may make more sense, but that's not what the movie implied. It implied that the Kelvin had 800 crew members. I mean, c'mon...what convoy? Where? And I'm not entirely sure why people are so antsy about the ship having 800 people aboard. Honestly, that's really not all that many. I think people are just equating this number with the fact that the TOS Enterprise only had 430 crew, which was ridiculously small to begin with.
quote:Just out of curiosity, have any nicknames for the tri-nacelle and the "four" nacelle ship emerged on the internet yet? Aside from them being equated to the Farragut and Hood earlier, o'course. Is it worth trying to equate the tri-nacelle to the Miranda-class for example, or are we just assuming that they're totally new with no bearing on the Prime reality at all?
They're totally new, insofar as they're not meant to be representative of any class we've seen before. Were they built before 2233? Possibly, which would imply that they were also part of the prime timeline (i.e. this Farragut would have been the same ship Kirk would have served on in the prime timeline, etc.) And the names that that model builder put on the saucers were just his guesses, not based in reality. Actually, the large saucer the Enterprise swerves to avoid was the Farragut's saucer, which was one of the Kelvin-type saucers from the "146" class (see below).
quote:Well, I can't speak for the rest of the internet, but so far, the only "names" I can find for the ships around here are (for the 3 nacelled ship, of which there is only one) the "147" class (because in the chart a few pages back, those ships were labeled #1,#4, and #7), and the over-under ship is the "238" class (ships 2, 3, and 8), from the same screenshot. As for actual names...nada. I'm sure someone will coin a name before long though.
Actually, that's not right. The three types of classes are the "238" (for the two-nacelled, two-engineering hulled ships), the "7" (for the three-nacelled ship), and the "146" (for the Kelvin-type saucered ships with two nacelles under the saucer). The Farragut and the Mayflower belong to these class of ships.
Registered: Jun 2000
| IP: Logged
quote:Originally posted by Captain Untouchable: Just out of curiosity, have any nicknames for the tri-nacelle and the "four" nacelle ship emerged on the internet yet?
Over on Scifi-Meshes.com they've been dubbed the "trike" and "quad". Haven't heard any "Iceland" style names yet, though.
posted
First of all, I agree with Dukhat. I don't see why we have to invent some hypothetical convoy just to rationalise a weird, but conceivable, number of survivors. Those 800 (plus) were on the Kelvin.
Second, it can still be a colony ship, it wouldn't only have a full passenger manifest on outward journeys. There are all sorts of reasons why all those people might be on board: returning contracted workers, perhaps, going back home after building a Starbase somewhere. Do you think the average Starfleet officer knows how to install a toilet main? Or a failed colony was being evacuated.
Now, names for the other classes: The tri-nacelle, well, that's like a Miranda with a third nacelle slung in between its 'legs;' so call it another character from The Tempest! Prospero. . . No, Caliban! But Caliban-class seems a bit alliterative. Perhaps another male Shakespearian character. Oberon? Meh. I don't like themed naming schemes, I think I'll just rest on my (Icelandic) laurels on this front.
posted
Nope- I dont buy 800 plus crewmembers on the Kelvin- what would they be there for? That's like one window per every 50 crewmen. Where would they all sleep? I cant see the Federation "hotracking" crew for lack of bedspace.
...maybe the drive to attain a bridge position is that it's the only area of the ship thats not standing room only.
Could the Kelvin be some sort of cryo ship? Transporting 600 popsicles stacked in cryo-tubes...maybe even already in the shuttles, ready for transport to a planet? Biig stretch, I know.
Really, of course, it's just JJ and co. trying to give the movie a "bigger than thou" feel and not succeeding at all.
The more I see this movie, the more I'm ticked at the shitty BSG FTL effect- it's not Trek- On Trek they FUCKING GO TO WARP. It looks a certain way and it looks great. Same holds true with the phasers- the movie's battles would have been ten times better if the Enterprise and Kelvin had employed brilliant blue phaser beams- scoring the Narada's hull or impacting it's shields.
-------------------- Justice inclines her scales so that wisdom comes at the price of suffering. -Aeschylus, Agamemnon
Registered: Aug 2002
| IP: Logged
![[Embarrassed]](redface.gif)
I must have read the post a page back too fast.
Printer-friendly view of this topic