An artist and an engineer collaborate to create a great What if? for pre-TOS Trek

[scvn2812 504]

The Starfleet Museum

 

I stumbled on this site a few years ago and didn't really take it seriously. Lately, after discovering Atomic Rockets and becoming more interested in the nuts and bolts versus the more abstract elements of sci-fi, I came back and started digging deeper into it. Its a great alternate history for Treknology and really does a much better job of working within pre-Enterprise canon and creating a design lineage that leads to NCC-1701 and all the way back to the dawn of the Earth - Romulan war.

 

What I especially like is the detailed histories for each class and the design notes by the engineer who decided to create deck plans for the ships based on the histories and appearance. I liked how he tried to come up with ways of figuring out why each ship looked the way it did, i.e. what random bumps and lines are rather than ignoring them. Also I like that the interiors have a lot of space given over to storage and machinery rather than crew quarters. They're not mostly empty volumes and pleasure barges. Phaser cannon machinery takes up multiple decks, warp reactors are huge, deuterium tanks are likewise very large and both tanks and cargo bays grow in proportion to how long the ship is expected to stay in space unsupported.

 

In many ways it sort of predicted the direction that the Star Trek reboot would take with its interiors. Emphasis on sort of.

 

All in all, its one of very, very few fansites whose speculation and fiction I wish was canon.

[Tyralak 12,068]

That's a very cool site. It would stand to reason, that especially earlier vessels would have a lot of space dedicated to machinery. Now, it's important to remember, that Starfleet ships use Bussard Collectors to acquire fuel while traveling through space. This greatly cuts down on the amount of space required for fuel storage.

Also, there was no Star Trek "reboot".

[scvn2812 504]

The interstellar medium is so thin on particles that even going faster than light, the big E would burn more than she took in unless she was really plodding along or her engines use only the tiniest trickle of energy and the rest comes from Subspace applications.

 

Edit: flying through a dense nebula might do the trick.

 

Also while machinery has shrunk, there's no space savings in modern designs. They just take the space and put something else in there or put in a bulkier, more powerful version of the old system. Ships are getting bigger and more lightly manned as a general rule and I don't think the actual space for crew persons is getting much bigger.

 

An altered timeline is an in universe way of saying reboot ;-)

Edited August 5, 2012 by scvn2812

[Tyralak 12,068]

An altered timeline is an in universe way of saying reboot ;-)

 

I've had this discussion with several people, and I'll explain why it doesn't fit in the category of a "reboot". In Hollywood, when they make a reboot of a show or movie, they do several things. 1. They change and usually re-interpret the original show/movie. 2. They start over as if the previous work never existed, and they just now thought of this whole idea. This is not the case with ST XI. It's part of the overall continuity of Trek. They didn't replace anything in the existing canon. It's a parallel universe which is inexorably linked to the Prime Universe. In the Prime Universe, Romulus was destroyed, and Spock disappeared into the black hole. Any new TV shows or movies set in the Prime Universe would include this fact. Star Trek Online, which is considered "soft canon" by CBS (the story lines, not the player interaction.) has the Hobus event and the disappearance of Spock as part of the story line. It also explains why the Hobus event happened and who was responsible. Spock (played by Leonard Nimoy, for Pete's sake) is now living in the Alternate Universe, and is part of the stories in that universe. If CBS and Paramount could ever get together on anything, there is the possibility of crossover episodes like what happened with the Mirror Universe. Next, we have the fact that this sort of storyline isn't new to Trek. They've been doing things like this since TOS, and even more radical things in the novels. Time travel and alternate universes are par for the course with Trek. Paramount also includes this movie in the numbered films as ST XI. They obviously view it as part of the same franchise. It also maintains continuity with ENT, the same as the Prime Universe, since the split happened after ENT. A reboot would never do any of these things. This is clearly an expansion of Trek, not a replacement. For example, contrast this selection of Hollywood reboots with ST XI.

 

Spiderman

Total Recall

Halloween (the Rob Zombie piece of shit)

Friday the 13th

A Nightmare on Elm Street

Man of Steel

Fright Night

James Bond (the latest ones)

 

What do all of these have in common? They ignore the previous body of work, a and re-imagine the series from the ground up. There is no connection whatsoever to what came before. ST XI is nothing like that. It expands on the Trek universe, it doesn't replace it. In fact, they went to great pains to integrate the story. Remember: Reboot replaces, spinoffs/alternate universes expand.

[scvn2812 504]

To me it's a matter of semantics. I appreciate on one level the effort put into making it part of the Trek omniverse in an in setting way rather than leaving it for fans to rationalize it however they chose. Granted, CBS left a back door open so that they could return to the original setting, I think it's highly unlikely we will see any sort of continuation of the original setting outside of novels and games, neither of which have ever effected televised plot. So although the new movie series does not fully break with the old in the same manner that nBSG changed virtually every element, the difference is academic because the prime universe is effectively finished, barring Star Trek 12 being a spectacular failure, in which case CBS will likely reboot the setting fully rather than make something in the prime universe for the exact same reasons Trek 11 was a partial reboot: people identify with Kirk and TOS to a far greater degree than any other set of characters. A new series with new characters set in the prime universe will have to be a lot better than a new take on TOS would have to be in order to draw in viewers and justify the expense of an FX heavy show or movie.

 

The one possibility for new prime Trek materials lays in TNG HD being a runaway success beyond all expectations.

[Tyralak 12,068]

To me it's a matter of semantics. I appreciate on one level the effort put into making it part of the Trek omniverse in an in setting way rather than leaving it for fans to rationalize it however they chose. Granted, CBS left a back door open so that they could return to the original setting, I think it's highly unlikely we will see any sort of continuation of the original setting outside of novels and games, neither of which have ever effected televised plot. So although the new movie series does not fully break with the old in the same manner that nBSG changed virtually every element, the difference is academic because the prime universe is effectively finished, barring Star Trek 12 being a spectacular failure, in which case CBS will likely reboot the setting fully rather than make something in the prime universe for the exact same reasons Trek 11 was a partial reboot: people identify with Kirk and TOS to a far greater degree than any other set of characters. A new series with new characters set in the prime universe will have to be a lot better than a new take on TOS would have to be in order to draw in viewers and justify the expense of an FX heavy show or movie.

 

The one possibility for new prime Trek materials lays in TNG HD being a runaway success beyond all expectations.

 

Well, there's the issue of licensing. CBS can't create a TV series based in the alternate timeline because Paramount owns the rights to the motion pictures. CBS can, however, create whatever they please in the Prime Universe. Barring CBS and Paramount actually agreeing on something, the only new TV shows we will see will be set in the Prime Universe. CBS has been making noises as of late regarding a new show. Quite likely to be set in the 25th century, in the same time as Star Trek Online.

[paul 11,988]

This is true. (the above is) there is talks of them doing a show in the 25th century, there is talks of them doing one later in AGT time line, etc. However they could never touch the jjabrams universe due to how licensing is. Personally I wanna see one based on romulans especially after the destruction of their home world but that's just me.

[scvn2812 504]

I think the post Dominion war era would have a lot of story telling potential. Within the former Cardassian Union you could have analogies to the middle eastern events of recent times with the Cardassians struggling to rebuild both their infrastructure and their society and all that entails. Mean while you have the potential for the Federation to be confronted with quadrants whose political landscape has been radically reshaped with the decimation of the Cardassians and Klingons (the war having been a costly victory for the Klingons especially) and if it's post Hoebus, the loss of the Romulan homeworld following not long after a brief coupe that wiped out a lot of the top political leaders. So there is a lot of room to do what Star Trek does best: explore modern issues through the use of lumpy forehead aliens as stand ins for humans.

[scvn2812 504]

I think the post Dominion war era would have a lot of story telling potential. Within the former Cardassian Union you could have analogies to the middle eastern events of recent times with the Cardassians struggling to rebuild both their infrastructure and their society and all that entails. Mean while you have the potential for the Federation to be confronted with quadrants whose political landscape has been radically reshaped with the decimation of the Cardassians and Klingons (the war having been a costly victory for the Klingons especially) and if it's post Hoebus, the loss of the Romulan homeworld following not long after a brief coupe that wiped out a lot of the top political leaders. So there is a lot of room to do what Star Trek does best: explore modern issues through the use of lumpy forehead aliens as stand ins for humans.

[paul 11,988]

I would just like to add this

 

[Tyralak 12,068]

I would love to be able to posrep you for that fine picture. Alas, there is no reputation system....

[scvn2812 504]

Star Trek's elder races seem like they would have a lot of stories to tell too. I'd love to know just what happened to the Iconians. I suspect it may have been a "there's always a bigger fish" scenario, on the other hand they could have been their own undoing, hyperevolved beyond being interested in planets and conquest or splintered and devolved into lesser civilizations.