Is anyone here a Trekkie?
I have not myself had that much acces to so much starship eye-candy until getting an internet viable laptop last November. Learning to use it has been a right stress, and discovering all the stuff that we have discussed is all rather new to me, but none the less, or actually more so - with it all just being so drool factor ten.
To begin with I never really liked any of the early Enterprises that much, although I really did appreciate them as being the stages for Gene Roddenberry's vision. When the Enterpise of Generations came along though that was incredibly inspiring for me. When Vovager came along then I was absolutely stoked with it, and then with the blend of Enterprise and Voyager blueprints coming along as the 107-F hull design - I am in just so much agreement with you and everyone else about it being the flagship of a therefore much needed new series.
One of the problems I am having with the internal archetecture of the 1701-F so far - is that it is too large and open-spaced currently. The operational arenas of starships need to be compact and beju more or less - which the Enterprise D design achieved exceptionaly well, but the F is just too large between the operational sectors. Transporter failures, hull breaches and deck depressurisations are going to cause massive problems, and heavily armed well trained raiding parties are going to have a field day with the crew in such open spaced shooting galleries.
When it comes to raiding parties or villians of any sort in Star Trek, most noticably with the Jem'hader and especially the Borg - none of them are firearms experts!?! I know this has been the standard format for series and films, but this really gives people the deluded impression that wars or battles are relatively safe states of affairs.
So, digression aside there, the 1071-F Bridge really is rather excellent with a slight exception concerning the ships monitor - in that its shape conflicts with the lines of the cieling. I know that this would not bother most people, but irregularieties in the visual arena - are not helpful in any working environment. Just Inverting the monitor though sorts it out completely.
I am so with you on the streching the bounderies of accepted norms of spacecraft design. I mean considering what Voyger got up to with transwarp, hull transformation and all that - the 1701-F should be rather interesting. One of my designs for a series of vessels involves having seven hulls in the space of one ship. So for example there is engineering hull, a habitation hull, a cargo hull and so on. The bridge or entirety of the command hull like all the others can be transparent, and its molecular lattice structure enables it to polarise, depolarise, or change mettalurgical state or states depending on the need. Another aspect of these vessels is that each hull has seven further sub-hulls. So taking thousands of people and tonnes of cargo from location to location is really easy.
Oh - one thing about the Bridge of the Enterprise F, is that I had it in my mind that the ceiling and walls would be the ships monitor - not unlike just described above. I thought that the Dominion monicle would have set a president there, and so many people over the years have thought so too. The Atlantian spacecraft in Stargate really worked in this respect. I know in years past special effect costs were huge, but perhaps not small enough just yet to be seeing the stars and galaxies passing by on the bridge every time.
I agree with you absolutely, infinitely, completely and utterly about the Enterprise (or any other vessels in any other sci-fi series or film) being the setting or depature point for the stories. Sociological and techological developments irrifutably go hand in hand with the character and plot developments. I just have a need for the ships or anything else in the stories to be as well thought out as any of the other characters in the series. The Borg for instance really were a brilliant parody of society at large, and when I first saw them and heard the:
"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to that of our own. Your culture will be adapted to service us. Resistence is futile."
Please excuse the additional text, but the Borg were Borg and not sloppy grammatarians - and the your culture will adapt to service us implied you could resist to some extent. Anyway - I was really pleased as the Cybermen of Doctor Who were a presentation of the same issue, but so much more pleasing was that the Borg analogy was in no way subtle and really made the socio-ill-logical point - par excellence. I actually burst out laughing and several times over praised Gene Roddenberry, and carried on laughing about it here and there for months. So many people were influenced by it and so many people discussed it and pondered its ramifications.
Your fears about Discovery are I think all too valid, and personally I am not passionate about it which is a first for Star Trek. I am really concerned about the Klingons having had their appearance changed. I mean they look really really good as an alien species - but they look nothing like Klingons at all, and in terms of evolutional genetics - I am not sure they ever could. When Wharf was asked why the previous generation of Klingons did not look like the modern Klingons in the Deep Space 9 episode - 'The Trouble with Tribbles', and he responded with annoyance saying that was something that did not get talked about - it seems as such (given the new Klingons in discovery) that the new Treck is divorcing itself from the old.
I do see the point in covering all aspects involving the history of Trek, much as building a house on a solid foundation is essential. Discovery though seems more like a house that is being built on both sides of a cliff edge, and completely unlike the 107-F - the Discovery is not a balanced design and thereby contradicts itself. This interplay of irregularities has so far been a right proper muck up. I really hope at least that the postponements of Discovery's release date have involved some major improvements.
Another thing with having to wait for the next venture, is that as such it is going to have to involve a combination of Generations, Deep Space Nine and Voyager story-structures. Which, considering that there are only so many types of stories to tell, there is going to have to be some quite innovative angles and curves thrown in - plus each new starship goes further and gets farther quicker than the preceeding ones. New species, new cultures and new stories structures therefore. This is a major undertaking, so being patient for years may well be a necessity. At very worst if Discovery lasts for as long as the other series that could be depressing, but given that spin-off series can run alongside their forebears as conterparts - this is encouraging.
I really wish the Discovery team all the best, alot of jobs are involved, and I generally enjoy sci-fi of any sort really - as long as the characters are good and the stories work. My hope though like others is that the Star Trek franchise owners get as stoked by the fanbase productions as so many other people are, and recognise instead how productive and advantagious getting collarborative actually is.
P.S. Your ideas for the 1701-F story line, and actually seeing the ship, have really gotten me thinking about what could be what. I am not sure if this commentary has been way too long, and therefore more off putting than not which is not unusual at all - but I could put a few ideas across so we (and anybody else) could come up with something together, possibly?
P.P.S. Janeway and then the Borg, and Sisko and then the Dominon - to start with perhaps?
I have not myself had that much acces to so much starship eye-candy until getting an internet viable laptop last November. Learning to use it has been a right stress, and discovering all the stuff that we have discussed is all rather new to me, but none the less, or actually more so - with it all just being so drool factor ten.
To begin with I never really liked any of the early Enterprises that much, although I really did appreciate them as being the stages for Gene Roddenberry's vision. When the Enterpise of Generations came along though that was incredibly inspiring for me. When Vovager came along then I was absolutely stoked with it, and then with the blend of Enterprise and Voyager blueprints coming along as the 107-F hull design - I am in just so much agreement with you and everyone else about it being the flagship of a therefore much needed new series.
One of the problems I am having with the internal archetecture of the 1701-F so far - is that it is too large and open-spaced currently. The operational arenas of starships need to be compact and beju more or less - which the Enterprise D design achieved exceptionaly well, but the F is just too large between the operational sectors. Transporter failures, hull breaches and deck depressurisations are going to cause massive problems, and heavily armed well trained raiding parties are going to have a field day with the crew in such open spaced shooting galleries.
When it comes to raiding parties or villians of any sort in Star Trek, most noticably with the Jem'hader and especially the Borg - none of them are firearms experts!?! I know this has been the standard format for series and films, but this really gives people the deluded impression that wars or battles are relatively safe states of affairs.
So, digression aside there, the 1071-F Bridge really is rather excellent with a slight exception concerning the ships monitor - in that its shape conflicts with the lines of the cieling. I know that this would not bother most people, but irregularieties in the visual arena - are not helpful in any working environment. Just Inverting the monitor though sorts it out completely.
I am so with you on the streching the bounderies of accepted norms of spacecraft design. I mean considering what Voyger got up to with transwarp, hull transformation and all that - the 1701-F should be rather interesting. One of my designs for a series of vessels involves having seven hulls in the space of one ship. So for example there is engineering hull, a habitation hull, a cargo hull and so on. The bridge or entirety of the command hull like all the others can be transparent, and its molecular lattice structure enables it to polarise, depolarise, or change mettalurgical state or states depending on the need. Another aspect of these vessels is that each hull has seven further sub-hulls. So taking thousands of people and tonnes of cargo from location to location is really easy.
Oh - one thing about the Bridge of the Enterprise F, is that I had it in my mind that the ceiling and walls would be the ships monitor - not unlike just described above. I thought that the Dominion monicle would have set a president there, and so many people over the years have thought so too. The Atlantian spacecraft in Stargate really worked in this respect. I know in years past special effect costs were huge, but perhaps not small enough just yet to be seeing the stars and galaxies passing by on the bridge every time.
I agree with you absolutely, infinitely, completely and utterly about the Enterprise (or any other vessels in any other sci-fi series or film) being the setting or depature point for the stories. Sociological and techological developments irrifutably go hand in hand with the character and plot developments. I just have a need for the ships or anything else in the stories to be as well thought out as any of the other characters in the series. The Borg for instance really were a brilliant parody of society at large, and when I first saw them and heard the:
"We are the Borg. Lower your shields and surrender your ships. We will add your biological and technological distinctiveness to that of our own. Your culture will be adapted to service us. Resistence is futile."
Please excuse the additional text, but the Borg were Borg and not sloppy grammatarians - and the your culture will adapt to service us implied you could resist to some extent. Anyway - I was really pleased as the Cybermen of Doctor Who were a presentation of the same issue, but so much more pleasing was that the Borg analogy was in no way subtle and really made the socio-ill-logical point - par excellence. I actually burst out laughing and several times over praised Gene Roddenberry, and carried on laughing about it here and there for months. So many people were influenced by it and so many people discussed it and pondered its ramifications.
Your fears about Discovery are I think all too valid, and personally I am not passionate about it which is a first for Star Trek. I am really concerned about the Klingons having had their appearance changed. I mean they look really really good as an alien species - but they look nothing like Klingons at all, and in terms of evolutional genetics - I am not sure they ever could. When Wharf was asked why the previous generation of Klingons did not look like the modern Klingons in the Deep Space 9 episode - 'The Trouble with Tribbles', and he responded with annoyance saying that was something that did not get talked about - it seems as such (given the new Klingons in discovery) that the new Treck is divorcing itself from the old.
I do see the point in covering all aspects involving the history of Trek, much as building a house on a solid foundation is essential. Discovery though seems more like a house that is being built on both sides of a cliff edge, and completely unlike the 107-F - the Discovery is not a balanced design and thereby contradicts itself. This interplay of irregularities has so far been a right proper muck up. I really hope at least that the postponements of Discovery's release date have involved some major improvements.
Another thing with having to wait for the next venture, is that as such it is going to have to involve a combination of Generations, Deep Space Nine and Voyager story-structures. Which, considering that there are only so many types of stories to tell, there is going to have to be some quite innovative angles and curves thrown in - plus each new starship goes further and gets farther quicker than the preceeding ones. New species, new cultures and new stories structures therefore. This is a major undertaking, so being patient for years may well be a necessity. At very worst if Discovery lasts for as long as the other series that could be depressing, but given that spin-off series can run alongside their forebears as conterparts - this is encouraging.
I really wish the Discovery team all the best, alot of jobs are involved, and I generally enjoy sci-fi of any sort really - as long as the characters are good and the stories work. My hope though like others is that the Star Trek franchise owners get as stoked by the fanbase productions as so many other people are, and recognise instead how productive and advantagious getting collarborative actually is.
P.S. Your ideas for the 1701-F story line, and actually seeing the ship, have really gotten me thinking about what could be what. I am not sure if this commentary has been way too long, and therefore more off putting than not which is not unusual at all - but I could put a few ideas across so we (and anybody else) could come up with something together, possibly?
P.P.S. Janeway and then the Borg, and Sisko and then the Dominon - to start with perhaps?
