posted
I dropped an email to Mike Okuda about the subject; specifically, if any influence with registry or conjectural class descriptions went into the kitbashes. Here's what he had to say:
"Those kitbashes were pretty much built and labeled at random. The VFX department put in a lot of extra time and effort into assembling those models, and they had a little fun with the names. (A few of us from the art department even lent a hand.) Some of the ships had authentic-sounding names, but most of them had gag names. One might reasonably argue that Starfleet might have named a bunch of their ships after historic figures whose names happened to be the same as several of the Star Trek visual effects department staff members. On the other hand, some of the ships had rather impolite names that Starfleet would (probably) not have approved on any of its ships. In any case, everyone worked so hard that I felt it would not be appropriate to attempt to impose "authentic" names or numbering, especially since there was no chance that any of it would be legible on screen."
-Mike
So it looks like the Centaur and the Curry do not, and will never have, official class designations, so my hypothesis about the Rennaissance and Mediterranean classes may be as good as anyone else's ideas. I am curious, though, as to what those impolite names were for some of the ships...
He also said that the ship drawings in the DS9TM were based on some of the models. ------------------ "Although I do not know how World War III will be fought, I do know how World War IV will be fought - with rocks and clubs." -Albert Einstein
[This message has been edited by Dukhat (edited January 02, 2001).]
posted
Also on the other hand, TPTB probably have no intention of ever making new ship models to represent any of the conjectural classes in the Encyclopedia. Therefore, any model made without an official class (such as these kitbashes or the Excelsior studies) could then unofficially represent classes like the Rennaissance or Hokule'a.
------------------ "Although I do not know how World War III will be fought, I do know how World War IV will be fought - with rocks and clubs." -Albert Einstein
posted
Maybe the next time you contact him, you could ask if he could run the class naming idea past the guys who built the models. I'd think they'd be cool with it it'd be nice to have some old blanks filled in. Besides, most of the wolf 359 ship models are listed as conjectoral designs, I think that only the Nebula design was made official. So whats the harm in assuming that the Centaur is a conjectoral design for the Rennesance and the Curry is likewise for the Mediterranean, at least until we see otherwise.
------------------ We attack tommorow, under cover of daylight!
quote:Maybe the next time you contact him, you could ask if he could run the class naming idea past the guys who built the models.
Good idea, but my inference from Okuda's reply is that he's not really in contact with the former DS9 VFX crew anymore. Even if he or any of us were able to contact them, they probably wouldn't know what we were talking about, or care. These models will probably remain classless, but at least we have some registry numbers to help determine our own hypotheses as to their possible unofficial classes.
------------------ "Although I do not know how World War III will be fought, I do know how World War IV will be fought - with rocks and clubs." -Albert Einstein
quote:Personally my ship list is no longer going to call these ships
Um, Reverend, did you forget to finish your sentence?
quote:And what's this about having registries? What registries?
The registries for the Centaur and the Curry. ------------------ "Although I do not know how World War III will be fought, I do know how World War IV will be fought - with rocks and clubs." -Albert Einstein
[This message has been edited by Dukhat (edited January 06, 2001).]
posted
Well, we have two choices about what we can do. We can accept that we're never going to find a more satisfactory piece of information than what was given in the FF - no registry is visible on the ship, Okuda can't remember/won't tell/knows that none was assigned, and the FX people are off trying to get jobs at ILM. If, miraculously, sometime in the future we DO find out the truth, then it's all to the good. Until then, we draw a line under it all, and move on.
Or, we can just discount the FF info for no other reason than that, just because there's nothing found yet to contradict it, doesn't mean there ISN'T anything to contradict it. We go on saying it must be so-and-so class because of the registry in one post, and in another saying the registry is wrong anyway.
Personally, I prefer the first option. Just to discount the registry because it shares some digits in common with the Melbourne isn't enough.
Also, I'd say the old registry of the ship pretty much proves that it's a member of a class and not a new war-built kitbash, wouldn't you?
------------------ Luke Ford: "What's it like having a dick in your ass?"
Zoe: "Imagine taking your bottom lip and pulling it over the top of your head. You get used to it but it does hurt."
posted
I agree with that last bit certainly. You are right in saying that there is no way of confirming these class names unless it appears in published material.
BTW, does anyone know how ships whos names were only mentioned in diologue end up in the encyclopedia with class names and registeries?
sorry about that last post, my brain fell out and tried to make a break for it so of course I had to chase it down.
------------------ We attack tommorow, under cover of daylight!
posted
I'd assume that shps mentioned in dialogue are considered "important" enough for the tech guys to work out registries and possible classes for them, whereas the "background filler" ships are just, well, filler, and don't really matter.
------------------ "And Mojo was hurt and I would have kissed his little boo boo but then I realized he was a BAD monkey so I KICKED HIM IN HIS FACE!" -Bubbles
posted
The registry for the Centaur probably WAS made up by the FF, but then again so was almost every other registry in Okuda's Encyclopedia. The clincher was when Okuda stated that the "important" ships (the ones with legitimate names) did have registry, so it's more of a possibility that the Centaur's rego is genuine than made-up. That's why I like the FF more than the Magazine; it gives the lesser-known ship information that the Magazine has been sorely lacking lately.
My shiplist contains four pages. The first is the ship names, the second is the class names, the third is all the known info or descriptions about the conjectural classes, and the fourth is all the ships in order of registry number. If anyone ever makes a list like page four, you'll see that Okuda does have some rhyme & reason to the ship classes and regos. Most of the time, a single ship class has four or five ships in a row (like the Apollo). That's how I got the idea in the first place of classing the kitbashes based on chronological registry. There's some other things too, but I'll not waste space in this thread for unrelated topics.
------------------ "Although I do not know how World War III will be fought, I do know how World War IV will be fought - with rocks and clubs." -Albert Einstein
posted
Most of the classes and registries in the encyclopedia that weren't mentioned on screen were on various computer readouts and such. They weren't just made up to fill in space in the book.
------------------ My new year's resolution is the same as last year's: 1024x768.
posted
That's not 100% true, TSN. The rego of the USS Antares was never mentioned or seen on screen, and it's highly unlikely they bothered much with NCCs in early TOS, and yet, Okuda says it's NCC-501 (or something similar)
posted
I've asked that Okuda a few weeks ago. Here his answer:
quote:During TNG and DS9, I (or others in my department) occasionally made up a number of Starfleet operations status charts for use on background computer display screens. One such chart was often seen on one of the large screens in the Enterprise-D briefing room during the sixth and seventh seasons. Anyway, I populated those display graphics with lists of ships that had (mostly) been mentioned in episodes, and added registry numbers and class designations that seemed consistent with whatever we knew about the ship. Those charts were a source of a lot of the info in the Encyclopedia.
(For whateve it's worth, I have been doing this a lot less of late, simply because the last few seasons of DS9 introduced so many new ships that it became nearly impossible to keep track of them all.)
This 501-registry is interesting. The next closest registry is 595 of the Revere and according to the Starfleet TM the Revere was a Hermes-class-vessel. So maybe the Antares was a Hermes too. Then we have a USS Antares - Hermes-class and a USS Hermes - Antares-class
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