Starbuck "Replicate some marmalade, Commander - helm control is toast!"
Member # 153
posted
Um... If you ask me, Mastercom's "Ships of the Star Fleet" was on the right lines... Mike Rupprecht duplicated this style in his USS Avenger deckplans - using numbered labels and clear outboard views.
So now we're into the Nineties, and we can do even more of the same, just better! How 'bout we all pool our resources to make an expandable set of, say, PDF or MS Publisher files that people can print off as they wish, containing as much info as we can find? The nice thing about it being a fan production is that it will be more accurate than an official one and we can clear up all those pesky SWDAOs, put in conjectural ships, and blueprint all the known variants - as well as our own creations! All in favour of starting this as a project??
------------------ WARNING: Storing semtex in the microwave may be hazardous to your health!
posted
Blatantly advertising my pet-theory-of-the-afternoon, currently also running on the design/artwork/creativity sub-forum thread titled "chart":
Perhaps it WOULD be possible for the Niagara to exist as portrayed in the Fact Files. The key issue is, where did TPTB find an Ambassador secondary hull when there were no AMT kits to go by during the filming of "BoBW"? And one at first ridiculous-sounding possibility is that they actually used the Ambassador photographic model.
Hold that thought (and that mean-looking fist!) for a while and let me finish. We know the secondary hull of the Ent-C model got an extensive revamping after its initial appearance, for some truly mysterious reason. Simple repairing of "battle damage" would certainly not have necessitated all the changes - least of all the recontouring of the aft hull, something that is difficult to do with just gluing on pieces of plastic. But if the original secondary hull was lost at some point between "Yesterday's Enterprise" and the appearance of the "Yamaguchi version" of the ship, then the differently shaped secondary hull and all the trouble in "re-"mounting it to the saucer would be explained.
Perhaps the reason the original secondary hull was lost was that it was used as raw material for creating the Niagara? That would require the existence of correctly sized Galaxy nacelles, but not much else. The saucer is some sort of a scratchbuild anyway, if we believe the FF (and their Freedom, sharing the saucer, seems halfway credible at least). Could the nacelles come from the 1/1400 Enterprise-D? The real size of the E-C model is hard to judge, but it *seems* to be in the very upper limit of the ballpark.
The modelmakers themselves might have been so unsatisfied with the results that the Niagara never got a prominent showing in "BoBW". Or then it simply was a tie between the various kitbashes, and Freedom, proto-Nebula and that Excelsior study model won the screen spot.
Okay, stop holding the thought (and the fist), and let fly.
The First One
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed
Member # 35
posted
Hmm. But not in a common sense universe! "Gee," they said, "the Ambassador is a really good model and people like it, but I'm sure we'll not need to use it again. Let's rip the saucer off and use it for a dodgy kitbash. . ." Two months later: "D'Oh! we need the Ambassador again! Better build another saucer." One year later: "Bugger! Dropped the model. Oh, well, we'll get round to fixing it one day, it's too good to leave lying around. . ." Seven years later. . .
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
I'd gather they would store the secondary hull and the saucer separately to begin with, judging by how the neck structure seems to be a "weak point" (the saucer of the "Zuhkov" is badly twisted wrt the secondary hull in the photos). They could then pillage their closets for parts to be used in "BoBW" and stumble on this. "Greg, remember what this was for?" "No idea. Seems to be a secondary hull or something. It's all charred and the pylon's broke." "I just did a nifty new saucer to go with the single nacelle - might fit on this one as well." "Okay, let's give it a shot!"...
The First One
A lovely little thinker, but a bugger when he's pissed
Member # 35
posted
Not necessarily. Models of a certain size seem to be stored in one piece. The Ambassador nodel looks to be about three foot long in the photo I remember. . . and yet when they dropped it it's the nacelle that went. I'd expect the neck to be pretty strong overall.
------------------ Remo Williams: "Chiun, you're amazing!" Chiun: "No! I am BETTER than that!"
TSN: Just speculation. If the Niagara looks like in the FF, the model and all possibly existing photos should be eradicated. Krenim, do your job!
Austin: Welcome to the Forum. Actually, I have stolen the Curry from our resident but often absent Curry God. Only the Wurst is indigenous.
------------------ "When diplomacy fails, there's only one alternative - violence. Force must be applied without apology. It's the Starfleet way." A somewhat different Janeway in VOY: "Living Witness" Ex Astris Scientia
Anyway, I sort of like the Niagara saucer/secondary hull configuration. Of course the nacelles jar badly, and the pylons are quite unlike anything we have seen before or after. So if the Niagara (or the Rigel) looks anything like the FF but with a Constitution secondary hull, then what little good qualities it has are lost.
It is very difficult to do a good-looking three-naceller without making it look out of balance. If you put the third one atop the ship, the thing just gets top-heavy. If you put it down below, it looks as if you took a normal starship and grafted something to it that doesn't belong. And putting two to port and one to starboard isn't going to help, either
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There may not be a real technical law behind it, but GR's rule "nacelles in pairs" still rules. I mean many of us don't like the odd-nacelled ships not only because we are used to even nacelle numbers, but because they are unbalanced in the way Timo described it. Unless the ship has a 120 degree instead of 180 degree symmetry: http://www.uni-siegen.de/~ihe/bs/startrek/sfmuseum/wasp.htm
Registered: Mar 1999
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posted
Incidentally, the person I assume one would contact about a ships book would be Margaret Clark, who is in charge of editing and such for Star Trek reference books.
For those of you who may not know that, at the simon and schuster star trek web page, (simonandschuster.com/startrek) there is a link to the editors' logs, on which messages and comments to the editors can be left. They make an effort to answer all the messages they get there. Margaret Clark and John Ordover each have their own page.
More useless(?) info: the current book publishing schedule (through 2000, and some beyond) can be found on psiphi's page (psiphi.org)
------------------ Calvin: "No efficiency, no accountability... I tell you, Hobbes, it's a lousy way to run a Universe." -- Bill Watterson
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So who is gonna go over there and tell em to get there asses over here - if not to post but to lurk...
------------------ Ralph: Um, Miss Hoover? There's a dog in the vent. Hoover: Ralph, remember the time you said Snagglepuss was outside? Ralph: He was going to the bathroom.
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In the November issue of Star Trek: The Magazine, Magaret Clark, the non-fiction editor for Pocket Books, said that there will be a millenium art book called "Starship Enterprise", by the Okudas and Drexler - "Every Enterprise - from no letters to E, and all its cousins in between." Is this the one that's being discussed here? or something else?
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and we can clear up all those pesky SWDAOs, put in conjectural ships, and blueprint all the known variants - as well as our own creations!
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