Star Trek: stuff that grinds my gears...

SethS said:

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.

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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.

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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.

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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

Inquisitor Peregrinus said:

...Here's Rick's later unused Pegasaus MSD:

https://public.boxcloud.com/api/2.0...box-content-preview&box_client_version=1.17.0...

--Jonah

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Linky no worky.

“Regular” was an auto fill typo— but I did forget which station was which. Been awhile since TMP.

And I am trying to recall the sketch I saw. It wasn’t for Voyager, the nacelles just had a similarly shaped cap. I saw it during TNGs run, but it was a proposed Ambassador era design.

It could have been a random Trek Art sketch I invented a story for I suppose.

robn1 said:

Linky no worky.

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Fixed, and updated.

That Pegasus sketch is supercool! I wonder if there's a fan made render out there.

That made me realize that the design aesthetic of the 24th century was really never delved into outside of the E-D, Defiant, and Nebula. Everything else was a TOS Movie-era recycle, often with engine glow added. It was that way for all of TNGs run and half of DS9's, which is a real bummer. It wasn't until FC that we saw a bunch of new 24th century ship designs.

SethS said:

That Pegasus sketch is supercool! I wonder if there's a fan made render out there.

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That made me realize that the design aesthetic of the 24th century was really never delved into outside of the E-D, Defiant, and Nebula. Everything else was a TOS Movie-era recycle, often with engine glow added. It was that way for all of TNGs run and half of DS9's, which is a real bummer. It wasn't until FC that we saw a bunch of new 24th century ship designs.

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Eeeeehh...








I taped the episodes for repeat viewing, and I practically wore out "Best of Both Worlds, Part 2". *lol* They may not have been in the foreground, but I loved that something was being done to at least imply that there was more to Starfleet than a bunch of Excelsior B-52 analogues.

--Jonah

I guess the Springfield and New Orleans sorta count...

SethS said:

That Pegasus sketch is supercool! I wonder if there's a fan made render out there.

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You can get it 3d printed here: https://www.shapeways.com/product/A8FFMLKAU/uss-pegasus-design-sketch-variant-1-7000

That planned Pegasus-type looks like an early design for the Nebula class, although that was based on Ent-D parts, rather than Ent-C

Angelus Lupus, yeah, that's why I theorize that the initial napkin sketch from season 1 was inspiration for Ed Miarecki to make his two season 3 kitbashes that became the Nebula class:

Something that may have started on The Next Generation but was totally out of control on Voyager was that everybody was an expert on everything. Aside from one or two episodes where they made a point about a few crew members being in over their heads. It's just not humanly possible. I'm a computer programmer and it can be hard just moving from one programming language to another. At a previous job my boss had an Information Systems degree and some of the stuff we worked on was beyond him. Meanwhile, on Voyager they would have situations where people would end up working in departments that had nothing to do with their regular job.

I really hate sloppy writing like that.

That’s one problem with Gene’s no-conflict be your maximum potential Federation society. Whose ultimate goal is to be a transporter chief or janitor or technician. They way thy describe humanity in Trekwould give you starships with all Captains aboard.

They rarely showed regular folk without reducing them to being idiots (Barclay for example.)

That’s why Lower Decks is one of my favorite episodes.

That's why I liked O'Brien before he got screwed up. He wanted to go to space, he liked engineering stuff, and he'd adopted a sort of proprietary role over the Enterprise's transporters. He'd probably have finished out his career in that post, working on perfecting himself in it. Look up th eactual philosophy of kung fu. When done right, the Trek/Starfleet vision of Humanity is one where we're free to dedicate ourselves to the mastery of this science or that art or this small constellation of related disciplines. And it makes more sense for the best and the brightest to be on the Federation Flagship than on an unimportant Scout vessel. I do love and appreciate the nods to not everyone in Starfleet being Perfect Paragons:

• Ron Tracy going all homicidal loony in "The Omega Glory"
• Robert DeSoto griped to Picard that "[T]hey send you Galaxy-class boys out here to the far reaches. Me, I just haul my butt back and forth between Starbases."
• The whole Equinox thing
• The Humans involved in the Orion Syndicate in DS9
• Good old by-the-book J. T. Esteban in TSFS
• Vash

And so on and so on. One of the things that pained my about Voyager was that they had a great setup for some flawed "humanity" (quotes for the non-Human characters thus encompassed). Chakotay had quit Starfleet to fight for his home in the Maquis. B'Elanna had quit the Academy because of her temper. Harry's eager but naive, straight out of the Academy. Tom's an irreverent rogue who's prone to getting himself in trouble (and who, I feel, should have been Nick Locarno after Robbie MacNeill was cast). And so on. But the showrunners very quickly had everyone pinnacles of perfection (except for the occasional lip-service to their never-seen flaws) and the show was Gilligan's Island in space for the first couple years. All of this, plus the meh adversaries in the Kazon, set a very bad foundation for the show.

I still find late-first-season-through-second-season TNG to be about the most infinitely re-watchable Trek, followed closely by "The Jem'Hadar" on in DS9. The characters are good without being awesome, the "conflict" is low-key and mostly friendly difference of opinion, the stories are crew-comes-together-to-overcome-external-threat model, which is my preference...

--Jonah

In my head canon Locarno changed his name to Paris to hide from his past, but it didn't work.

There was literally no reason it couldn't have been the same character, they were essentially the same.

SethS said:

In my head canon Locarno changed his name to Paris to hide from his past, but it didn't work.

There was literally no reason it couldn't have been the same character, they were essentially the same.

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Paris originally was meant to be Locarno, but they changed when they realized they would owe residual payments to the author of "The First Duty" for every VOY episode.

robn1 said:

Paris originally was meant to be Locarno, but they changed when they realized they would owe residual payments to the author of "The First Duty" for every VOY episode.

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Weeeeeeeeeak...

That’s right— First Duty was a spec, not written by anyomne on staff. Trek was great in being the only TV show to have an open submission policyt— but it lead to stuff like this.

NormanF said:

Something that may have started on The Next Generation but was totally out of control on Voyager was that everybody was an expert on everything. Aside from one or two episodes where they made a point about a few crew members being in over their heads. It's just not humanly possible. I'm a computer programmer and it can be hard just moving from one programming language to another. At a previous job my boss had an Information Systems degree and some of the stuff we worked on was beyond him. Meanwhile, on Voyager they would have situations where people would end up working in departments that had nothing to do with their regular job.

I really hate sloppy writing like that.

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I totally agree. An extension of this was how easily they were always able to use and understand the tech of everybody they encountered even though they're in a completely different part of the galaxy and nothing should be the least bit familiar since they would/should have developed all of their tech in completely different ways from the Alpha quadrant. Even if they were able to figure some new species' tech, there's no way that any of their tech should be as readily compatible with Federation tech as it was. On DS9 they regularly had issues with integrating Federation tech with the station's Cardassian tech to the point that most of the systems on the station were still Cardassian. Even here in the real world you can't take a part from, say, a Ford F-150 and put it in a Ford Focus and make it work without a lot of jerry rigging, if you can make it work at all. But on Voyager you could take a part from an alien race and plug it into the Voyager and works just fine.

The series that did this even worse was Enterprise. I remember an episode where Tripp went over to some alien ship of a race they've only just encountered for the first time, and he was instantly able to not only work their computers, but was able to diagnose and work on what was wrong with their ship. Pretty much par for course for Trek but in this instance, the Federation isn't a thing yet and Starfleet is still in its infancy and they've barely begun to use warp technology themselves but was able to understand and work on alien tech.

SethS said:

That’s right— First Duty was a spec, not written by anyomne on staff. Trek was great in being the only TV show to have an open submission policyt— but it lead to stuff like this.

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Is it Writers Guild rules that govern situations like this? Is there any option for a one time lump sum to a writer in this situation in lieu of residuals. Since if they change the name of the character and tweak the backstory the writer gets nothing. Basically I wonder why they didn't just buy the character outright.

Not how it works.
Paramount owned the character, but the writer was still entitled to residuals. The studio doesn't get to decide offer something else in lieu of them. It's all ironed out in union contracts, etc.