A lot of changes have happened in the first decade of the Ships of the Line calendar. If not all of Usenet, at least this group seems to have died. Discussion is spread across the World Wide Internet, but in some recompense, can include pictures, which can make discussion here (if any) easier than before for those who haven't yet picked up the calendar. See: http://trekmovie.com/2010/07/21/2011-star-trek-ships-of-the-line-cale...
Cover: The Enterprise-A entering Spacedock and approaching the Excelsior. Alas, the other ship, partially behind the pier, is not the Ralph McQuarrie study model, but a Miranda-class ship. That's a question: how about printing some film frames in the calendar? We've already had paintings by Andrew Probert and John Eaves (and we get one each this calendar). How would the resolution compare? I don't think Douglas Trumbull was a firm believer in 70mm film at the time of TMP.
We get a lot more detail here, by Mark Rademaker, who's been doing new ships for the last few calendars. We get even more detail, with technical blather, in the centerfold, where we find that the front part is called an "enviropod," but we don't find why it has a giant lens in the front. Really, it looks like a camcorder with built-in microphone, but interesting.
Might as well cover the center pages of the calendar, they have orthographic views of the ringship and the NX-01 with its refit of a secondary hull addition. I'd like them to revisit this arrangement, with this October's Aventine, or last year's Spirit.
February features the Kelvin, the first image from the new version of Trek. A second image features the New Enterprise in June, in one of its least unflattering angles, with the station and squadron of ships alas, too small, in the background.
Now, back to a chronological rundown.
March is a painting by Andrew Probert of his D'Deridex, three of them... cartwheeling through space? No, wait, the middle one is larger than the other two. Ah! It's his one nacelle up, one nacelle down bird he'd first designed. It is a large ship, each nacelle seems about twice the size of the D'Deridex's. Actually, perpective makes the closest ship seems twice as large as the furthest ship; the center ship, the one of interest, is not quite as wide as the others, but then, that is its shortest dimension! I think it's safe to say the thing is huge. And this month is designed to be hung vertically, in traditional calendar style. Too bad the hanging holes are only at the tops of the pages for hanging it the other way. For anyone wanting to hang their calendar "sideways," January's and February's images may work as their respective ships soaring upwards, but only April works really well.
April: The Enterprise vs. a Klingon vessel. The Klingon is the retro-D-7 designed by John Eaves for ENT, so I looked more closely at the Enterprise to see what "era" it was. The angle doesn't allow me to check if the size of the bridge module matches "The Cage", but the aft end of the nacelle has the later series blue globe on the end. Actually, the globe and the end of the nacelle look more complex than the series model. The more you look at, the more evident it becomes that it is an entirely different model. Compare to the ship in October; the impulse engine, the name on the back half of the saucer and shuttlebay apron, the nacelle struts are modified. The drexfiles blog linked above does explain that the artist, deg, did build both these models.
May: "Khan!" The Enterprise firing on the Reliant. I'm satisfied to check that the NCC-1701 does not have an A after it, and that the other ship is named Reliant and not Majestic or something. The fact that the chase is taking place over a blue-green world with a star and wispy nebula in the background does not bother me.
July: "Klingon Repair Dock" One of the Klingon ships from ENT surrounded by gantries, trusses, cranes and catwalks, a dense and somewhat claustrophobic image.
August: a closeup of the damage done to the Constellation from "The Doomsday Machine"
October's picture is titled "Amok Time", so the planet is presumably Vulcan. But the shuttle wasn't used in that episode, rather "Journey to Babel". Still, a nice postcard.
November will become perhaps the most controversial image of the year. It is the 1701-A leading a squadron of some of the uglies Frankenships since the Dominion wars. We can't even call these one-offs, since each is represented by at least two ships.
The main focus is the NCC-2707, USS John Glenn, an "upside-down Enterprise". Not quite a complete inversion, the nacelle struts in a horizontal line from the secondary hull, and the struts each have a photon torpedo bay matching that of the dorsal connector -- sorry, ventral connector -- between the primary and secondary hulls. The second is seen in the background above the Glenn, and seems to be renumbered, but I can't read the numbers.
Next comes the NCC-2530 Sun Tzu, a "Nebula-ized" Excelsior. The Excelsior saucer has the nacelles slung below, and an extension aft and possibly below the impulse engines to support the "AWACs" platform, which, in this era, is round -- quite possibly oval like the Phoenix version of the Nebula from TNG:"The Wounded". The second ship, under the November month grid, shows a secondary hull under the ship.
Finally, the Valley Forge, NCC-1778-A (yes, "A") an "Oberthized" Enterprise. The saucer blends into an extension that looks very much like a (larger) Oberth hull, with Enterprise nacelles attached directly. If the NCC-1878-A is the same class, there is a secondary hull with a blue deflector dish indentation below. Hmm... what I thought was a third example of this ship, just leaving the cresent of the planet, is a different ship, a one-off. Where on the other two the aft extension of the saucer meets the saucer at the level of its widest deck, this ship has a raised aft section like the Reliant, with the nacelles standing off from it on short struts. All three of these ships are firing green beams (disruptors? artistic effect?) while the Enterprise, Glenn, and Tzu are firing red beams, with red photorps from the Glenn and both Tzu-class ships.
December is a painting by John Eaves, the shuttlebay of the Enterprise-E. Along the starboard side are hung a series of Argo shuttles (from their personel access tubes?) the McCall, Yeager, Siouxsie, and Edwards. On the deck on the port side is a Type 11 ("Insurrection") shuttle; the image does not extend far enough along this shuttle to show whether a personel access tube is attached to the top. Entering the bay is, I think, another Argo, name not visible.
For the series scorecard: TOS 3 TFS 3 TNG 1 TGF 1 ENT 4 NEO 2
I didn't credit the Enterprise ringship to any series, rejected for TOS, background image in TMP and ENT. However, the total still comes to 14 because April causes a dual credit, the Klingon to ENT and the Ent to TOS.
Another note: I often mention that these ships of the line seem limited to the "star"ships of the shows. (With the total lack of DS9 and Voyager from this calendar, that means a subset of the ships named "Enterprise".) This year takes quite a step away from that, with four months of no ship that could even be mistaken for one of the stars, and of the remaining ten, six prominently "guest-star" another ship. What is a little troubling is that six of the other ships seen here (countng the NX-01 refit) are non-canon, made up (or, in the case of the previously rejected Romulan, detailed) for the calendar.
On the chance that anyone is reading this, I would like to say that there are still a lot of ships already in the computer waiting for their beauty shot: the Romulan Valdore and Reman Scimitar, the Son'a ships, the "Class of '96" ships from "First Contact", the Nova and Prometheus, ...something from DS9... the Bajoran solar sailor built by Sisko! the Xindi ships, the Class Y and Class J freighters, Mudd's Class J ship... there's an idea; gather a gaggle of civilian vessels, and have them threatened by the Orion pirate ship from the Remastered "Journey to Babel". Call it "Convoy Raiders". There are a host of obscure or non-canon ship that need to be built for the computer, starting with the McQuarrie and the other Phase II "almost-refits," to the Romulan Scout from TNG:"The Defector" or The Animated Series's Huron. But I can see the artists being more interested in creating their own designs.
On Sun, 10 Oct 2010, Jack Bohn <jackb...@bright.net> whistled in the darkness and called out into the void:
>A lot of changes have happened in the first decade of the Ships of the >Line calendar. If not all of Usenet, at least this group seems to >have died. >[...] >On the chance that anyone is reading this,
Yes, somebody is. There's been nothing much to talk about since Trek-2009 -- probably nothing that the half-dozen of us would've all seen/read and could therefore comment on. There's Treknological content in the ongoing novels and in the STO MMORPG.
But yes, I agree that the SOTL calendar continues to show a shortage of imagination. Why not just call it "Enterprise and Friends, The Calendar"?
Jack Bohn <jackb...@bright.net> writes: >A lot of changes have happened in the first decade of the Ships of the >Line calendar. If not all of Usenet, at least this group seems to >have died.
Alas. I was thinking of going week-by-week through some series, most likely either Original or Next Generation since I have those on DVD, to pick over the technical pieces and see what bones might not be so terribly chewed-over, but I just don't seem to find the time for it anymore. I still like the tech talk; I just don't know anything much to talk about.
> Discussion is spread across the World Wide Internet, but >in some recompense, can include pictures, which can make discussion >here (if any) easier than before for those who haven't yet picked up >the calendar. See: >http://trekmovie.com/2010/07/21/2011-star-trek-ships-of-the-line-cale...
And worth doing, since I haven't seen the calendar in stores yet (I'm trying very hard to ration my trips to book stores as I've got a lot of long books yet to finish reading.) Probably even if I had seen it I'd have forgot all but the most striking pictures anyway.
>Cover: The Enterprise-A entering Spacedock and approaching the >Excelsior. Alas, the other ship, partially behind the pier, is not >the Ralph McQuarrie study model, but a Miranda-class ship. That's a >question: how about printing some film frames in the calendar? We've >already had paintings by Andrew Probert and John Eaves (and we get one >each this calendar). How would the resolution compare? I don't think >Douglas Trumbull was a firm believer in 70mm film at the time of TMP.
I would *think* that film frames would print well enough at these sizes. Come to think of it the non-tech calendars would have stills from the movies or original-series episodes and those worked out just fine.
Original Series original effects, done as they were on leftover Edison Photo-Play Monopoly Trust 4mm film stock and processed by being kicked into puddles on the street in case any of them happened to have developing compounds, might not be suitable. Though if you matted it into an Original Series-style viewport and put in a title along the lines of ``Communications disruption'' it would all look suitably charming.
>January: We have a ship I saw last year, although on a different >calendar: the Enterprise CVX-33 the ringship from background art in >TMP and ENT. >http://www.starshipmodeler.biz/shop/index.cfm/product/1575_49/starshi... >We get a lot more detail here, by Mark Rademaker, who's been doing new >ships for the last few calendars. We get even more detail, with >technical blather, in the centerfold, where we find that the front >part is called an "enviropod," but we don't find why it has a giant >lens in the front. Really, it looks like a camcorder with built-in >microphone, but interesting.
The ringship seems to get a lot of attention in these Ship of the Line calendars, although I don't know the roster of previous year ships and finding them would require some Google-like engine designed for Usenet searching to be in place. I'm not sure how I feel about that, really. The ringship came into existence in that little stretch leading up to The Motion Picture of trying to re-establish all of the Trek Tech canon in what gets passed off as hard science fiction, which mostly put some amusing late-70s notions like, well, ringships into place and otherwise drained the imaginative-far-future out of things. On the other hand, it *is* something distinctively of its creative era and that's the one which had the least Trek brand theme product to show off.
>Might as well cover the center pages of the calendar, they have >orthographic views of the ringship and the NX-01 with its refit of a >secondary hull addition. I'd like them to revisit this arrangement, >with this October's Aventine, or last year's Spirit.
The orthographic-view breakdown of a ship is another of those pieces I'm undecided about. On the one hand it actually gives a fairly clear view of a ship and what it looks like, which seems like it should be essential for a 'Ships of the Line' review. On the other hand, only the Refit Enterprise of the movies actually looks good in side or top view, and to be an appealing calendar I'd really like to have at least a few beauty shots in there.
>February features the Kelvin, the first image from the new version of >Trek.
Another of those weird anomalies. I suppose it's easy enough to get this stuff contracted for years in advance and they wouldn't want advance copies of the calendars to mess with the marketing sooper-geniuses, but how did they not have any New Trek stuff for the 2010 calendar? It's not like anyone catching a glimpse of it way ahead of time in Barnes and Noble would be *less* likely to go to the movie.
>March is a painting by Andrew Probert of his D'Deridex, three of >them... cartwheeling through space? No, wait, the middle one is >larger than the other two. Ah! It's his one nacelle up, one nacelle >down bird he'd first designed. It is a large ship, each nacelle seems >about twice the size of the D'Deridex's. Actually, perpective makes >the closest ship seems twice as large as the furthest ship; the center >ship, the one of interest, is not quite as wide as the others, but >then, that is its shortest dimension! I think it's safe to say the >thing is huge.
Oh yeah, I remember that ship, or at least hearing about it. I suppose it's nice breaking up the orientation convention, though that's never been one of the things Trek does on-screen to drive me crazy.
>And this month is designed to be hung vertically, in traditional >calendar style. Too bad the hanging holes are only at the tops of the >pages for hanging it the other way. For anyone wanting to hang their >calendar "sideways," January's and February's images may work as >their respective ships soaring upwards, but only April works really >well.
That's a return to hanging-vertically for the Ships of the Line calendars, isn't it? I seem to remember them deciding the calendars needed to be un-hangable for a while there.
>April: The Enterprise vs. a Klingon vessel. The Klingon is the >retro-D-7 designed by John Eaves for ENT, so I looked more closely at >the Enterprise to see what "era" it was. The angle doesn't allow me >to check if the size of the bridge module matches "The Cage", but the >aft end of the nacelle has the later series blue globe on the end. >Actually, the globe and the end of the nacelle look more complex than >the series model. The more you look at, the more evident it becomes >that it is an entirely different model. Compare to the ship in >October; the impulse engine, the name on the back half of the saucer >and shuttlebay apron, the nacelle struts are modified. The drexfiles >blog linked above does explain that the artist, deg, did build both >these models.
Interesting decision. Is there any explanation to why there was a wholly new model built? Meant to suggest a refit between the era of 'The Cage' and 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', or maybe to give it the air of Robert April's starship Enterprise?
It occurs to me I can't think of examples of non-canon material like these calendars for the April Enterprise. This is because I'm overlooking the plain examples of $_OBVIOUS_EXAMPLE and $_OTHER_QUITE_ PAINFULLY_OBVIOUS_EXAMPLE, but for now I believe I'm perfectly right.
>May: "Khan!" >The Enterprise firing on the Reliant. I'm satisfied to check that the >NCC-1701 does not have an A after it, and that the other ship is named >Reliant and not Majestic or something. The fact that the chase is >taking place over a blue-green world with a star and wispy nebula in >the background does not bother me.
``Oh, man, we go searching for Spock, searching for Spock, and what turns up? Regenerated maniacally super-engineered madmen.''
... You know, I just now realized Khan, product of crazy super-scientists hoping to remake the world, was undone by Genesis, product of crazy super-scientists hoping to remake worlds generally. Dramatic irony or just you keep throwing crazy super-scientists in to whip up stories and you're going to get that sort of thing?
>July: "Klingon Repair Dock" >One of the Klingon ships from ENT surrounded by gantries, trusses, >cranes and catwalks, a dense and somewhat claustrophobic image.
Logical, since cramped and claustrophobic spaces make it easier to access items and repair them. This is why the Federation was able to keep the Klingon Empire at bay for two generations just by doing the ``got your skull bumps'' trick.
>August: a closeup of the damage done to the Constellation from "The >Doomsday Machine"
I have to figure deciding whether to include something from 'The Doomsday Machine' or 'The Tholian Web' is not the toughest choice the Ships of the Line calendar editor has to make.
>October's picture is titled "Amok Time", so the planet is presumably >Vulcan. But the shuttle wasn't used in that episode, rather "Journey >to Babel". Still, a nice postcard.
Hm. Does the Enterprise actually leave Vulcan by the end of the episode? It could be stuff which happens alongside the events of the show, although it's hard to see what point shuttles would serve there other than symbolic roles.
>November will become perhaps the most controversial image of the year. >It is the 1701-A leading a squadron of some of the uglies Frankenships >since the Dominion wars. We can't even call these one-offs, since >each is represented by at least two ships.
Oh, come now, is it possible to get Federation ships ugly enough to match *that* record?
>The main focus is the NCC-2707, USS John Glenn, an "upside-down >Enterprise". Not quite a complete inversion, the nacelle struts in a >horizontal line from the
On Oct 28, 7:19 am, nebu...@-rpi-.edu (Joseph Nebus) wrote:
> Jack Bohn <jackb...@bright.net> writes: > >A lot of changes have happened in the first decade of the Ships of the > >Line calendar. If not all of Usenet, at least this group seems to > >have died.
> >On the chance that anyone is reading this, I would like to say that > >there are still a lot of ships already in the computer waiting for > >their beauty shot: the Romulan Valdore and Reman Scimitar, the Son'a > >ships, the "Class of '96" ships from "First Contact", the Nova and > >Prometheus, ...something from DS9... the Bajoran solar sailor built by > >Sisko! the Xindi ships, the Class Y and Class J freighters, Mudd's > >Class J ship... there's an idea; gather a gaggle of civilian vessels, > >and have them threatened by the Orion pirate ship from the Remastered > >"Journey to Babel". Call it "Convoy Raiders". > >There are a host of obscure or non-canon ship that need to be built > >for the computer, starting with the McQuarrie and the other Phase II > >"almost-refits," to the Romulan Scout from TNG:"The Defector" or The > >Animated Series's Huron. But I can see the artists being more > >interested in creating their own designs.
> Certainly the artists should be expected to be more interested > in their own designs. You've got a point about the obscure ships, > though; some of them have to be such unloved-oddballs as to appeal to > someone in the calendar design process. And a good number of the > Original Series ships were originally shown as blobby light effects (eg, > the barely-seen Klingon thingy from 'Friday's Child') so that they could > be pretty near 'designed' for the first time by whoever got the calendar > assignment this time around.
If there were sufficient interest (for which read: a large enough market segment projection) specialized calendars showcasing small craft, alien craft, "pirate" craft and so on could be fun.
> I'm curious what the calendar-assignment process is like. Does > the editor go to a panel of likely artists with suggestions about eras > or ships to feature, or does the editor send out a request and everyone > put up cartoons or descriptions of what they think would be cool? That > is, if we wanted to get more Animated Series starships in line, who do > we have to subvert?
Hack Marketing's computers so they believe they can sell them. Sigh.
Phillip Thorne wrote: >But yes, I agree that the SOTL calendar continues to show a shortage >of imagination. Why not just call it "Enterprise and Friends, The >Calendar"?
I was surprised to read in The (late, lamented) Magazine that the calendar is one of their better sellers; I thought it was only me.
Popularity is a blessing, and a curse. I can't help feeling the ships are mostly kept to the recognized ones as part of an appeal to the casual fan. Certainly the cover needs to shout "I'm Star Trek! You want me!" to a shopper standing twenty feet away and not especially looking for it.
>>Might as well cover the center pages of the calendar, they have >>orthographic views of the ringship and the NX-01 with its refit of a >>secondary hull addition. I'd like them to revisit this arrangement, >>with this October's Aventine, or last year's Spirit.
> The orthographic-view breakdown of a ship is another of those >pieces I'm undecided about. On the one hand it actually gives a fairly >clear view of a ship and what it looks like, which seems like it should >be essential for a 'Ships of the Line' review. On the other hand, only >the Refit Enterprise of the movies actually looks good in side or top >view, and to be an appealing calendar I'd really like to have at least >a few beauty shots in there.
I'm conflicted, too. You can't beat a good composition for reminding you of the excitement of these ships. And there are nooks and crannies you otherwise might miss, like the too-arty-by-half 2002 calendar, where Mojo was fascinated by the way the refit nacelle struts connect to the stongback. But there are things I do want to know: How long is that secondary hull hidden under the primary? Is the saucer circular, or elongated fore-aft, or athwart? I'd be willing to sacrifice the centerfold each year. After all, it doesn't have the advantage of being twice the size of the monthly images, but it does have the advantage of not having a monthly grid, and so can accomodate text.
>>February features the Kelvin, the first image from the new version of >>Trek.
> Another of those weird anomalies. I suppose it's easy enough >to get this stuff contracted for years in advance and they wouldn't >want advance copies of the calendars to mess with the marketing >sooper-geniuses, but how did they not have any New Trek stuff for the >2010 calendar? It's not like anyone catching a glimpse of it way >ahead of time in Barnes and Noble would be *less* likely to go to the >movie.
The movie was, what? May? The calendar kiosk opens in the mall area where people are trying to walk late August at the earliest. The DVD came out last Christmas, and the Hallmark ornament is available this year (*was* available, I guess you had to go Christmas shopping on Labor Day) and I'm still waiting for the 1/2500 model (which would seem to be the size of the 1/1000 TOS and TMP kits, but that's another discussion). Yeah, I can see a physical artifact taking time, but these pictures are "just data." Hmm... I should pop in the DVD and see if they are "frames" from the movie...
>>March is a painting by Andrew Probert of ... >>his one nacelle up, one nacelle >>down bird he'd first designed.
>>And this month is designed to be hung vertically, in traditional >>calendar style. Too bad the hanging holes are only at the tops of the >>pages for hanging it the other way. For anyone wanting to hang their >>calendar "sideways," January's and February's images may work as >>their respective ships soaring upwards, but only April works really >>well.
> That's a return to hanging-vertically for the Ships of the Line >calendars, isn't it? I seem to remember them deciding the calendars >needed to be un-hangable for a while there.
Sorry, sometimes I miss the goal of being understandable without doing a lot of typing. Graham Kennedy, I think it was, who was always agitating for the traditional hang-it-from-one-hook and at-the-end-of-the-month-lift-up-the-bottom-of-the-page-and-slip-it-over-the -hook presentation. This calendar is still in the hang-it-from-two-hooks-and-don't-try-to-slip-a-page-off-one-hook-and-onto-t he-other,-you'll-rip-it style. And I can't help wishing they'd saved this picture for a special oriented vertically and designed-to-be-hung vertically year. Alas, the longest dimension of most Trek ships is along the direction of motion, which is across the "glass tabletop," so it'd seem like you'd have part of the ship cut off or a lot of empty space above and below it. Some images in the current format tilt the "tabletop" to diagonal corners, like this years April, and I point out when that would also work if hung vertically. That is, assuming we aren't going all the way to the traditional picture on one side of the page and the calendar grid on the other, so one could (*gasp*) mark on the dates.
>>April: The Enterprise vs. a Klingon vessel. >>The more you look at, the more evident it becomes >>that it is an entirely different model. Compare to the ship in >>October; the impulse engine, the name on the back half of the saucer >>and shuttlebay apron, the nacelle struts are modified. The drexfiles >>blog linked above does explain that the artist, deg, did build both >>these models.
> Interesting decision. Is there any explanation to why there >was a wholly new model built? Meant to suggest a refit between the >era of 'The Cage' and 'Where No Man Has Gone Before', or maybe to give >it the air of Robert April's starship Enterprise?
> ... You know, I just now realized Khan, product of crazy >super-scientists hoping to remake the world, was undone by Genesis, >product of crazy super-scientists hoping to remake worlds generally. >Dramatic irony or just you keep throwing crazy super-scientists in >to whip up stories and you're going to get that sort of thing?
As the Genesis Device started out as an Omega Bomb, and Khan replaced nigh-omnipotent aliens in the original ST II script, I'm guessing this is one of the happy accidents that happened all over the production of that movie.
>>October's picture is titled "Amok Time", so the planet is presumably >>Vulcan. But the shuttle wasn't used in that episode, rather "Journey >>to Babel". Still, a nice postcard.
> Hm. Does the Enterprise actually leave Vulcan by the end of >the episode?
I remember being told that Kirk's brushoff of the Guardian of Forever is the only time an episode didn't end on a shot of the Enterprise flying off into space. Of course, we could retcon anything except Spock talking with his father to fit between "In a pig's eye!" and the final shot.
>>November will become perhaps the most controversial image of the year. >>It is the 1701-A leading a squadron of some of the ugliest Frankenships >>since the Dominion wars. We can't even call these one-offs, since >>each is represented by at least two ships.
> Oh, come now, is it possible to get Federation ships ugly enough >to match *that* record?
Well, later eras had more parts in wildly different scales to combine, so comparisons with the "dead ball era" are always debatable.
>>The main focus is the NCC-2707, USS John Glenn, an "upside-down >>Enterprise". Not quite a complete inversion, the nacelle struts in a >>horizontal line from the secondary hull, and the struts each have a >>photon torpedo bay matching that of the dorsal connector -- sorry, >>ventral connector -- between the primary and secondary hulls. The >>second is seen in the background above the Glenn, and seems to be >>renumbered, but I can't read the numbers.
> Hm. Playing around with the old AMT/ERTL three-in-one starship >set I found that if you put the nacelle struts in upside-down and turned >the whole model upside-down again you got a starship which looked a bit >like a metal detector, but which looked pretty good for that. Putting >the nacelles out in line with the secondary hull I wouldn't have tried >and would have broke that model anyway, but, it might work, maybe.
Maybe if you stuffed an in-scale Reliant rollbar in there and put the nacelles in place of the "Megaphasers". The more I look at it, the more I wonder if that's what it is.
>>Next comes the NCC-2530 Sun Tzu, a "Nebula-ized" Excelsior. The >>Excelsior saucer has the nacelles slung below, and an extension aft >>and possibly below the impulse engines to support the "AWACs" >>platform, which, in this era, is round -- quite possibly oval like the >>Phoenix version of the Nebula from TNG:"The Wounded". The second >>ship, under the November month grid, shows a secondary hull under the >>ship.
> Bleah. I've never got into adding an air hockey puck above >a saucer, and the Excelsior design already has enough problems. >Maybe the Federation strategy is for visual contact with their fleet >to cause blindness and insanity in the invading Cthuloids.
It does look awkward, but then, the AWACs airplanes do, as well. The Excelsior -- it seems over the years I've gotten used to it.
>>Finally, the Valley Forge, NCC-1778-A (yes, "A") an "Oberthized" >>Enterprise.
> I stand by my support for suffixed NCC Numbers as a general >thing.
On general principles, or any reasoning you'd try to convince others with?
>>December is a painting by John Eaves, the shuttlebay of the >>Enterprise-E.
> The shuttlebay looks neat and clean, but awfully generic. From >the merchandise image I couldn't tell if it was supposed to be >Enterprise-E, Motion Picture, or maybe Star Wars. (I suppose Star Wars >would have had a bit empty pit of workplace safety inspectors.)
My clue was the nacelle seen out the hatch. (Then there was the Master Status Display with the giant "USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-E" on the far wall.)
I remember thinking this shuttlebay looked interesting from the outside, let me check. Ah. The deck above it, stepped in closer to the cente of the primary, has three docking rings and a group of windows around each corner. Now, if the camera were twice as far from the hatch as it is now, and if the whole area were open, so we could see a catwalk around the next level to the docking hatches...
