I don't recall where or how-- but that sounds really familiar. Did it have bussard collectors in the same sort of wedge shape as Voyager (though sans window? I would have loved to have seen this.
No, it wasn't one of his proto-Voyager designs. It was a napkin-level sketch that even Rick has forgotten about. It's possible it was just at the spitballing stage for him, but Andy took it more seriously until he was told by Rick Berman "we're not using paintings for the ships". But that brief sketch was derived from Andy Probert's working sketches of the Enterprise lineage, and the Ambassador class in there. The MSD was derived from the later version of the Ambassador that showed up in "Yesterday's Enterprise". Early on Rick and Andy wanted to populate the era with slightly older "stablemates" of the new Galaxy class that were not quite so advanced, but obviously more advanced than the movie designs. This was Andy's comparison poster:
...and this was the matte painting he did of what he intended to be the Hood for "Encounter at Farpoint", before the decision was made to just use an existing model:
And Rick's sketch was a nacelles-down version of those components. Doing slightly older Enterprise and Reliant configuration vessels was what they wanted to do, but they couldn't get the budget for it. There's a good chance Rick's sketch was the inspiration for Ed Miarecki's later kitbashes that became the Nebula class. Same configuration -- complete with tucked-up-close secondary hull, just with Galaxy components instead of the originally-intended Ambassador bits. Here's Rick's later unused Pegasaus MSD:
And while digging for a better link, I found a pretty good reconstruction of Rick's actual Pegasus drawing (still not the original Oberth concept, but...):
Maybe if they ever do a special SPECIAL edition they could replace some of those ships. Yeah-- using it as the Pegasus, made very little sense. That one could be a no brainer-- it should be either the Defiant design, or something that looks like a precursor to it.
Sadly, as unlikely as a DS9 SE. The remastered TNG sold so poorly Paramount decided not to do any more. Dammit.
I forgot to mention too that almost every space station was a re-use of space dock or Regular 1-- though that goes all the way back to TWOK flipping over the station V-Ger nukes.
Turn in your Trek Nerd card. It's "Regula", and it was originally the orbital offices for the San Francisco Fleet Yards, not the Epsilon IX comm station... And probably my favorite Trek space station...
--Jonah
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