Andrew

------------------
"Its a CLOCK!" - Sisko, "Dramatis Personae" DS9.

Boris

------------------
"Wrong again. Although we want to be scientifically accurate, we've found that selection of [Photon Energy Plasma Scientifically Inaccurate as a major Star Trek format error] usually indicates a preoccupation with science and gadgetry over people and story."

---a Writers' Test from the Original Series Writer's Guide

And there were a fair few DS9 shots used in that ep. As far as I can tell, nearly all the model shots of the runabout in DS9 (as oppossed to CGI) are filmed in such a way as to make the registry numbers in shadow or otherwise unreadable. I think the registry number on the runabout miniture is the Rio Grande's number, and they've just never bothered to change it, as it would take too much effort.

It would also explain the Rio Grande's near mutant-indestructibility.

------------------
*gasp* "The pictures...they're...coming...alive!"
-Abe Simpson, on the miracle of the moving image

The runabouts must be able to fit in the Galaxy-class main shuttlebay. After all, the Ent-D did bring the original 3 to DS9 in "Emissary".

------------------
"Forgive me if I don't share your euphoria!" (Weyoun to Dukat, Tears of the Prophets)
Dax's Ships of STAR TREK

I'd think the captains or possibly some lower-ranking officers get to name all the shuttles, and even decide on the numbers they receive. That way, the shuttle Sakharov /01 can easily be a type 7 in early TNG and type 6 in later eps, or the El-Baz can be /05 or /03 as needed. And the /13 can be a type 7 in "Coming of Age", but what seems like a TNG-era runabout in "Skin of Evil".

And I bet the workbees are named by the deck crew. And Paramount simply won't allow any of those names to be reproduced in print in any book with their logo on the back, for obvious reasons...

Also, runabouts were still fairly new at this point. Consider the possibility that IF the practice of supplying some starships with runabouts was being implemented, Picard was bringing the runabout to the Ent D for the first time. They did intend to rejoin the ship so the runabout would have had to stay on board for a while at least. However, if this is the case, how did the group get to wherever they were coming back from in the first place? Did the Ent D drop them off and then leave? It wouldn't be the first time.

I also think that the hull is blank with regards to the name and rego. I watched it frame by frame and couldn't see anything.

Rewatching (ugh!) "Skin of Evil", I was intrigued by the shuttle there. You remember "shuttle 13" crashing into a rock face, with Troi aboard? The wreck exterior was portrayed by a model or prop that clearly wasn't supposed to look at all like the then standard type 7 shuttle. It had a very large stern window, a long and narrow hull, a cockpit area separated from the rest of the craft by a bulkhead and a door (admittedly, some type 7s had this as well), and two very large nacelles apparently mounted on long pylons instead of being bolted to the hull. All features that are mirrored in the Danube design.

To boot, this was one of the extremely few TNG shuttles that was in true deep-space interstellar transit, as opposed to ferrying somebody from a nearby star system to the ship or vice versa. (the only other one that comes to mind would be the type 7 in "Chain of Command", really. Or perhaps Scotty's "gift".)

This relates to two nits:

1. A legitimate difference in warp performace wrt shuttles => consistency in the way these craft are operated. It would make sense for the E-D to have one or two "runabouts" on board, since shuttles as portrayed in the TNG TM cannot go interstellar, not at warp two max.

2. (And this is really obscure!) Remember that SWDAO on "Second Sight", about the Potemkin looking like an Ambassador on the E-D monitor readout? Well, this shuttle looks like a type 7 on the monitor, even though the model never attempts to look like one. So we can now say all such screen representations are just symbolical, and the Potemkin is really an Excelsior.

There seem to be three standard practices of letting people make planetside trips:

-Fly the ship in, usually at impulse, use transporters to move the people down and back up, warp out. (Normal practice for TOS, DS9 and late TNG)

-Warp the ship to the outskirts of the system, launch a shuttle, warp out, later warp back and pick up the shuttle. The shuttle usually travels at impulse. (This is used in TAS and most of early TNG)

-Send a shuttle out, crash it on a planet, fly the ship in and try to transport the people up, land the ship when this fails, take off and warp out. (This is the method preferred by VOY)

One could combine these if the target planet has a Federation presence: since shuttles are consumer goods anyway, starbases could lend them to people so that they can method-two themselves back to their ship. Or the people could leave their shuttles behind and method-one out.

I guess it all depends on how tight the schedule of the ship is. Almost invariably, ships are forced to go to impulse when entering star systems. To avoid this, the method two seems like a good idea, unless the planet is a high-risk unexplored one. And even if people were delivered by method one, it is a good idea to switch over to method two for the return trip if at all possible, to save the ship the tedious hours of impulse-crawling.

Timo Saloniemi

Timo: I will have to respectfully disagree with you about the differences between runabouts and shuttles. The difference in exterior design may be slight. In shape and style, yes, Danubes are big shuttles. However, in purpose and abilities, they far exceed shuttlecraft. They have swappable mission pods and those rollbar pods which give the Danubes something not found on shuttles: mission adaptablility. Shuttles are pretty much shuttles. Yes they can be adapted for specific tasks as they did in "The Outcast" to search for the missing ship. But just think how much better and safer and more efficient it would have been if Riker and the alien chickkie would have had all the resources of a small starship at their disposal.

Danubes are also designed to operate for extended periods independant of any sort of mothership. True we have never seen them as independant commands, they seem to always be attached to a starbase or (if we believe my arguement) other starships. In every way IMHO, Danubes seem to be designed as Starships, very different from shuttles in purpose.

Now I agree that Runabouts have probably been around in some form for a little while at least. However, I take Sisko's line in "Emissary" that the Enterprise had offloaded "three Runabout Class vessels" instead of Danube class, to show his unfamiliarity with this type of ship.

However, couldn't the new Enterprise-E shuttle be classified as a runabout by those criteria, despite the fact that it was labeled "shuttle" in Eaves' drawings? It did have
-(aft) torpedoes
-twin transporter pads
-internal bulkheads and corridors
-those nifty docking hatches
-out-of-proportion engines
and could have had swappable modules, too, to account for the oversized exterior and cramped interiors.

Was it ever *called* a shuttle in the movie? I won't have my tape of "Insurrection" until, you guessed, the 25th (or late 24th).