Ships of the Line 2013: TNG Anniversary Part 2

[jack....@gmail.com]

The 25th anniversary of the premier was noted on September of the 2012
calendar, but this is the 25th anniversary of some episodes, and
they've got a cool TNG25 logo for this year's back cover, and a lot of
Remastered Blu-rays to sell, so we get:

Cover:
The E-D from TNG:"Encounter at Farpoint" in front of the force wall
generated by Q.
Is this a frame from the Remastered version, up-rezzed? My memory is
that the bars and spheres of the wall were proportionally thicker,
similar to the borders of the LCARS screens, but I can understand HD
wanting to show off finer lines. It could just be the calendar
showing its resolution can show finer lines.


January: Convoy Duty
Mainly showing off the Enterprise as it cruises past three DY-100s
pressed into service as robot freighters. Oddly, for a
high-resolution picture, its background nebula-whatever is pixilated.
If it weren't off-axis to any of the ships' travel, I might think it a
new try to represent warp space.


February: Cargo Bay Matte Painting from Star Trek the Motion Picture
August: Copernicus Out
Two paintings by Andrew Probert!
The first seems to be exactly what it says; the second a view of the
smaller shuttlebay 2 of the E-D.

This will probably be the biggest version of the matte painting I'll
see, and still new stuff to notice; (in addition to all the old "how
is THAT supposed to work?"stuff;) the workbee entrance from the other
side of a wall (presumably suitably airlocked) is clear, but
elsewhere, red lit in the port side of shuttle storage, is a boxy
shape, very long, fairly wide, but only knee-high; what is it? One of
those "customizing pieces" sketched out to clamp onto the bottom of
the shuttle?

E_D Shuttlebay 2 might sound boring in comparison; it being
represented in the show by a cleared area of soundstage floor.
Fortunately, Probert fills the frame with his shuttle, Copernicus. In
the background is his Sphinx workpod, crew figures in a looser style
than those of the matte painting, and high up, out of sight of the TV
cameras, a windowed wall with folks looking into the bay from the deck
beyond. It looks like they are in a lounge area rather than any
control space. Outside, on the hull, is what looks like a
landing guidance light bar, clear for much of its length, red on the
ends. I just pulled out the old blueprints, and, yeah, one is called
out.


March: Pathfinders
December: Asteroid Mapping
New ships.
Newish. Mark Rademaker, who's showcased new designs for the last five
years, pairs the Aventine from 2010 with the Enterprise ringship from
2011 for a symbolic image. The exhaust of the Enterprise, a glowing
line with bright pulses, is prominent.

Dan Uyeno reconfigures the Constitution-class to have the nacelle
struts extend horizontally from the side of the engineering hull. That
hull is TOS styled, maybe fatter, the saucer is TMPish, but painted
TOS. Add to that the round nacelles have a slight bulge instead of
being tapered cylinders, and call this a side stream of treknology, if
not a side universe. (Incidentally, if you look closely at the blue
line running along the nacelle support struts, you'll see it outlines
a series of vents. It is not, as I first thought, the plasma conduit
ran outside.)


April & May
Might as well cover them two at a time, two images from ST:Enterprise.

ENT:"Storm Front" might take a place alongside TOS:"Tomorrow Was
Yesterday" for calendar pin-up images. You've got a starship in the
atmosphere, which is always different, and here Mustangs are firing
their machine guns, a bit more retro than an F-104 with nuclear-tipped
missiles.

The next is a "Task Force" of three NX-class ships. (One is just seen
as the extreme forward edge of the saucer, it could be another type.)
I want to say that the high contrast on the paneling makes me want to
compare it to a Vincent di Fate painting, but I can't find the
specific painting. Instead I'll go very nonspecific and say it looks
like a painting in acrylics. I was going to specifically mention the
scrubbed brushwork look to the cloudy background... but look, under
the center NX's saucer, you can see an artist's name painted. I
suppose it would be easier and faster to actually paint out the look
you want rather than create a virtual cloud tank to drop
computer-simulated dyes into a computer-simulated saline solution and
see what results develop. Nice of them to give credit where due, too.


June: A Tall Ship
July: A Star to Steer Her By
Heh. Normally wouldn't have noticed that, with the centerfold
dividing the two.

The one's a recreation of my favorite shot of ST5:The Final Frontier
for TOS: the Enterprise against a full moon with the Galileo
approaching; the other the refit Enterprise in a mirror image of the
first's orientation and against a red nebula. Beautiful images, but
not much treknological to say.
At least until I read that Douglas E. Graves is the deg of a "TOS.5"
image from the 2011 calendar. Indeed, this TOS E has spotlights for
the number on the nacelle, and the underside of the saucer, and for
the "Enterprise" added to the rear quarter of the saucer. With that
clue I looked to the shuttlecraft; it, too has a small spotlight on
the wing to light up its number, and a red running light in the
forward corner of the wing. The rear landing strut is retracted; one
of the Remastered episodes showed the shuttlecraft doing so on
launching.


The centerfold drops the technical data of the last two years in favor
of another image, "Temporal Intersect." Picard's [first] Enterprise
meets Kirk's [first] Enterprise in (or just above) Earth's
atmosphere. (Is time travel now a visual excuse to put starships in a
blue sky?) Every image in this calendar has the same dimensions, but
some are more "widescreen" than the others. Also impresses on me the
fact that the planet is huge.


September
Voyager in a drydock, with two ships of those space-polluting aliens
steaming past.
Wait, the secondary hull has the "winglet" shape of the Galaxy-class.
Is an Intrepid getting a sort of NX-200-to-Enterprise-B makeover? The
nacelle struts are bent up at the hinge, putting the nacelles parallel
rather than at an angle to each other... wait, again, those are
Galaxy-style nacelles, and with the title, "United Starship," is that
supposed to be a Sovereign saucer frankensteined onto a Galaxy hull?
No, not quite. Refreshing my starship spotter skills, I see some
differences between the saucer and a Sovereign, and between the
secondary hull and a Galaxy; the nacelle supports appear to angle up
even before the bend (at what I'm still going to insist is a hinge,
and not a massive Miranda megaphaser), and it has dual warp cores,
don't ask me how I know.

So, a second new ship, thanks to D. M. Phoenix.


October & November
Why cover these two together? Because of the age-old debate whether
the calendar should fall open vertically or be held up horizontally.
Even TV GUIDE writers know, "there is no up or down in space," but
most of the months have a heavily preferred viewing direction. These
two lack that, and they lack it in spades! They could be hung
vertically either way, or horizontally, even upside down! I may rehang
it once each week. (Admittedly, the weekday grid would be hard to
read, but as it is a 14-day grid, it's not so great upright.)

Nov treats the E-D as "ground" as we follow the Stargazer diving in
for a strafing run. I remembered the Constellation-class staying in a
level attitude while coming over the top, but that was the Hathaway in
"Peak Performance", the Stargazer was just warp-jumping closer to the
E when she got caught in a tractor beam, wasn't she?

Oct shows DS9 with the E-D docked, and the Defiant and Chaffee
(literally) streaking off towards an Excelsior class emerging from the
wormhole. Everything is askew to each other, rotating brings
different objects into prominence.

With the exception of the adopted Terok Nor, all Earth or Federation
designs, but a nice spread.

TOS 3
TMP 2
TNG 4
DS9 1
VOY 0 (Ilooked up the Malon, that's not quite their ships on Sept.)
ENT 2


--
-Jack