First Look At J.J. Abrams’ New USS Enterprise

Johhny-O says:

@ Rumbeard:

U know, ‘Beard, I think you may be right, since you are hanging on to this like a dog with a bone (don’t take that as a put-down, I admire your tenacity), as IRRITATING as it may be to some people, in fact, U remind me of me!

I’m very impressed with your knowledge of tachyons and subspace communications (I remember that too, from the first Star Trek paperback book I ever bought, oh, hell, 40 years or more ago), and I commend you for doing your homework, really.

What the hell is ‘Cerenkhov radiation’, anyway? It rings a bell, U are obviously very smart, and I won’t fence with you, but really, enlighten me? I know I have heard that term somewhere. I think I heard it somewhere – is it pronounced “Cher-EN-kov”?

And to be honest, I apply to whatever you say (based on logic and what seems sensible) the same standard I ever applied to anything I see or hear on any of the artifacts of the ST Franchise:

If it sounds good, it’s logical & there is no natural law against it (like, say, Max Planck’s Constant), then what the Hell, why not?

I still say phasers cannot be used effectively in hyperspace (I sort of like the idea of a natural limitation, just to be like in our world), but who knows?

Maybe Scotty (or Geordi, B’Lanna, or Chief O’Brien – there’s a sharp one – or Trip Tucker) could figure out a way to get around it.

And as to you ‘maybe being mistaken’, I just do not know, Rumbeard, but I do have this to offer, “with all appreciation for your obvious intelligence” to paraphrase Scotty when he tried to turn down stewardship of the Excelsior’s engine room:

As I recall, the warpcore (also called the warp reactor) produces a spacewarp (subspace field) as a result of the harnessed, confined annihalation of two tuned plasma streams, one from the top, of matter (deuterium plasma), the other from the bottom, of antimatter (contraterrene deuterium plasma), into a fist-sized crystal of an incredibly rare substance formed by the addition of an extra atom of lithium, called, I’m sure you will remember, dilithium.

So much for the warp core.

As for the impulse engines, they are energized by a group of ingot-shaped fusion reactors (5, as I recall), mounted internally but (on the Refit, anyway) easily ejectable – and therefore visible – from the strip of what looks like panels on the Refit’s impulse unit centerline, on top, right behind the big round dome (the impulse deflection crystal), which is apparently connected by a massive power tranfer tunnel (PTT) directly to the warp core.

I am only speculating, but in ST/TMP, they did mention how significant it was that the phasers were routed through the warp engines, and if that is true, then it wouldn’t matter if the phasers were fired in warp, they would still work.

Having said that, NCC-1704 is absolutely right; I watched my tape of ST/TMP again, and believe me, the ‘wormhole effect’ happened when they were still in sublight, BEFORE the ship went to warp. They had to use the phototorps because the phasers were now tied in through the unstable warp nacelles, which caused the wormhole in the first place. They were unbalanced, and therefore the phasers wouldn’t have worked, Rumbeard.

In other words, I don’t see that this is an example of the phasers’ usual function, Rumbeard.

JOHN

Bright Eyes says:

The Star Trek back story is a lot like that old AMT kit; you have to do a lot of filling in to make the pieces fit.

Scotty designing the Ent-E is conjecture on my part, as is most of what I have written here. When a state-of the art ship with 50+ year service life ahead of it is suddenly superseded by a new model, you have to wonder what happened.

Scotty’s path after being revived would not have been to some obscure retirement planet, but back home to Earth, if only to have a look around to see what had changed. His arrival would have been cause of great sensation and media publicity.

The inevitable question at the inevitable interviews would be “So what do you think of the starships of today, Mr Scott?” You can only imagine his response, but I’m sure he would work in the phrase “designed like a garbage scow” in there somewhere.

This would prompt some snot-nosed Galaxy team member to respond with “So you think you can do better, old timer?” The gauntlet would be thrown and the rest pretty much writes itself.

Back to the model kit, you not only had to fill in the gaps, but you also had to shave away stuff that didn’t belong. Other posters have mentioned that there much written material with the Star Trek name that simply isn’t worth the paper it’s printed on.

This was especially true back in the ’70’s when Paramount didn’t know what they had, and assumed it to be merely a failed TV show with a cult following willing to buy anything. This attitude was doubtless encouraged by the fact that that God-awful plastic kit became the best-selling model of all time.

The worst offender in this regard was Franz Joseph designs. I remember a Christmas long ago, my eager little hands tearing the wrapping of of my new Starfleet Tech Manual, and how quickly my joy turned to dissapointment “WTH is Engineering doing in the saucer section, that’s where the impulse deck should be, didn’t these clowns even watch the show?”

It only got worse when the Star Trek Bluprints came out two years later “That’s no ship of the line, thats not even a cruise ship! where are the structural supports? the machinery? The Photon Torpedoes?, that’s just an outline of a ship with a bunch of empty rooms!!”

For those of us who weren’t fortunate enough to own a copy of the Star Trek Bible, the only reliable reference was Roddenberry’s own “The Making of Star Trek” which showed a cutaway deck plan much different than the “Blueprints” here is an enhanced version

http://www.strekschematics.utvinternet.com/cutaways/orginalcut/orgentcutaway.jpg

I promised myself not to go geeking out on this thread, but sometimes the urge to separate the Trek from the dreck is just too strong.

Johhny-O says:

@ Jake:

I think you’re probably right, based on two details on the picture of the new ship above – there are two docking ports, one about halfway up the side of the dorsal pylon, the other one down on the side of the of the engineering hull, just below the beltline – do you see them?

If the Big E (a REALLY Big E!) is actually 914.4 meters long (3000 ft, kudos to you for using your metric/imperial slide rule, hahaha, I have one too!), these portals would be more than six meters high, which would be almost forty feet, a little HIGH for a starship deck!

Plus, the windows (what few there are, on the edge of the saucer section – THAT they duplicated perfectly, just like the impulse pod!) would be each the height of a man, not impossible, I suppose, but they are LONGER than they are wide, just ridiculous in scale.

No, I think the folks at Wikipedia screwed that up; my guess is, somebody wrote it down wrong and flipped meters for feet – 300 meters long, approximately – and that was mistyped & translated to 3000 feet.

Hey, if it happened to NASA with that Mars probe, ANYBODY can do it, right? Lol!

@ Brighteyes:

As I indicated earlier, I really love your idea of a ‘re-rezzed’ Scotty rejoining the Starfleet ASDB, but I would like to share a couple of my notions, if I may:

I always assumed, since, as you say here, that the Galaxy class was designed for missions of twenty years, and a lifetime of at least 50 years (I think I read somewhere, officially, it was more like 100 years before replacement), that when the Enterprise D was destroyed/crashed (depending on which hull, you remember) on Veridian III, that the replacement for the Enterprise would be, simply, just the most advanced, and at the same time the latest, fastest capital ship to come out of the Bureau; this is only speculation on my part, but the excellent opinions of Cmdr Scott notwithstanding (I’m sure yoiu’re right about that), Starfleet would hardly end the whole Galaxy/Nebula line of superstarships simply because of the loss of the Flagsip Enterprise, right? They would continue apace, for perhaps the next 93 years (43 years, whatever), wouldn’t they? After all, they must represent quite an investment, don’t you think? I mean, the whole Federation doesn’t revolve around the Enterprise, does it?

Anyway, as I say, this is just me: I believe (based as much on the degree to which it reminds me of the earlier, vintage vessel, from certain angles, as much as anything else), that the state-of-the-art Sovereign class design became the new Enterprise because, quite simply, it was the first ship out of the box, it was faster, more maneuverable, leaner & meaner, than the admittedly bloated but ideal (for twenty-year missions) Galaxy class. What ship class was it intended to replace? To me, this answer was obvious -

The redoubtable Excelsior/Excelsior II class, the B-52 of Starfleet. Think about it – along with the amazingly adapable Miranda class (the DC-3 of Starfleet, later reclassed, virtually unchanged in its design, as the Avenger class), the Excelsior was a remarkably usefull ship – modular in design, logical in layout, and very, very long in the tooth. It needed to be retired & replaced, a process that no doubt thakes years, if not decades. As I say, the Sovereign even LOOKS like the old Excelsior from some views, but it is not nearly as, well, frumpy.

I always just assumed that rather than replace the D with another Galaxy (they did that with the Ent-A, right?), they subtly redefined the Enterprise crew’s mission – fewer if any families on board, maybe shorter missions like the old days, and much, much better handling, especially in a firefight.

What do you think, Brighteyes? You know how jazzed I am with your ‘thawed out Scotty’ idea, I think you ought to be writing for Paramount, and if they ever heard your idea, I’m sure they’d go ahead & use it (and probably rip you off for the credit, too, but then I am by nature cynical). I think that one idea alone is the mark of a genius (like I told Vic, I am not above ass-kissing, lol!), and if you ask me, this is the great thing about fanfiction, it’s like the Borg Hive Mind (credit to you, I believe).

Anyway, just wanted to add my light to the sum of it all, the brightest – in accordance with your handle – being yours, so far (although there are some SHARP folks on here!); which brings me to the next subject -

@ ‘Kahless’:

Just wanna thank you, for what you just said there, buddy. That’s what Treknology is all about. You might wanna check out http://www.shipschematic.net, http://www.captainmike.org/Galactopedia/a1.html, and http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles.htm, they are FAN-TASTIC, and there are no doubt more, many many more. Star Trek is alive & well on the net, believe that like Jesus!

Yes, I remember the very pretty Sonia Gomez – sharp l’il gal, wasn’t she? LaForge believed in her, though; stick with it, eat this stuff like a kid locked up overnight in a candy store, and you’ll blow all the rest of us away!

JOHN

Johhny-O says:

@ Rumbeard:

“http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cherenkov_radiation”, heh? Thank you, ‘Beard! I will check this out.

Like you, I loved the whole ST/II transporter sequence, visual and sound, especially the sound effect! It was cool, so overpowering, so – tecky! It reminded me of a FASA fan mag (ship recognition manual) article I read later, where the authors mentioned how the Klingon transporters had something like, a ten percent mortality rate because, among other things, their transporters were designed to operate silently, and therefore didn’t have things like eight pattern buffers(!) & other safety devices, so they could use them for boarding; I remembered how loud & bright (but how cool!) the Starfleet transporters were in that movie, and I remember thinking, “YE-AH! Ours were a loud light show, but BOY, were they impressive!”

I also liked the photon torpedo sound effects, they just scream-asmed outta there.

Not so sure I feel the same as you about the warp effect, I guess I can take it or leave it – as long as it looks believable. For all that, the dead-COOLEST effect of that type, if you ask me, was the original Borg/Rogue Borg Transwarp Conduit effect, if you remember: A sort of tear in space, as if the vessel was swallowed up by a dimension filled with light – you could see the light leak out, remember? Well, I though it was cool.

Oh, concerning your statement about dilitium, I agree, but I remember a conversation from the TNG episode of when they found & de-rezzed Scotty: Scotty was, just like you said, adamant about the impossibility of recrystallizing dilithium (still), reiterated when Geordi gave him a tour of the Enterprise D’s engineering room, focusing on the warp core.

Geordi assured him that in the, what, 80-some-odd years since the elder had been out of the picture, they had found a way to ‘recomposite’ the dilitium (probably an extension based on the same process Scotty had himself been forced to pull out of his arse, back on Earth in 1987), thereby making replacement unnecessary until convenience dictated.

I’m gonna check out the ‘Ships of Starfleet’ by Calon Riel, thanx for that, too, I appreciate it.

I liked all the ships of STG, as you did, including the great Galaxy class, don’t know why folks are so hard on it; I know it wasn’t exactly bristling with weapons but as far as I was concerned, she was the true Queen of Starfleet – but maybe not all that good in a firefight, admittedly.

I liken the Enterprise D to what Henry Hill said about Paul Sorvino’s character in the movie ‘Goodfellas’ –

“For a man as important as he was, Pauly didn’t move very fast, but then, he didn’t have to…”

That’s the way I felt about the Galaxy class. She was the 500,000 gross metric ton gorilla in the galaxy. She could do any damn thing she wanted to.

Even so, she was dwarfed by a Romulan D’diderex class Type II Warbird, so it’s really a matter of perspective, I guess.

Thanx for those links, I will study them both.

JOHN

Johhny-O says:

@ Troy:

Yeah, I’d like to see that, too.

Can’t help ya, but I can describe it for ya:

For one thing, if you remember, it was a lot more intense, a lot more electrical, like the loud, overwhelming power of a giganic electrical generator – the feeling was that you were witnessing matter being defly ripped apart, converted into pure energy, and made ready for transmission to somewhere else. It looked amazing, too – a bright ‘node’ spreading out from the middle (on departure), up & down, and then, at the destination, this bright node, starting from the bottom & the top, pulsing together again in the middle, then again spreading out vertically to form the final form upon completion.

And if you were lying there in the same room on the couch fast asleep, it would wake you up, no question about it. It was that powerful.

Not a very clandestine way to board a ship..

The closest thing I can think of as a parallel to it was when, in the original TOS episode “Errand of Mercy’, about the Organians, a primitive, peaceful people the Enterprise was trying to protect from the Klingons, when the Organians revealed who they really were – pure energy beings who could take care of themselves just fine, thank you very much, and their transformation before Kirk, Spock & Commander Kor was so bright they had to close their eyes and look away. It was not quite as bright as that.

For another, unlike in ANY of the series, you could hear & see people talking WHILE THEY WERE FORMING, like Kirstie Alley & Willinam Shatner, discussing Kirk’s ruse to Spock within communicator range/earshot of Khan – “hours would seem like days: By the book, Lieutenant…”

It was just very believable, is all. But YEAH, I would love to see that, too.

Anybody out there know where to find such an audio-visual sequence on line? I’d kinda like to see it to.

JOHN

PS: seems like they used that same sequence in STIV, with the whales & all.

L8r…

Johhny-O says:

@ ‘n’:

I take your point, so far as it goes; there are a lot of otherwise, well-balanced, peace-loving people here who would take your characterization of ‘trivial’ as fighting words!

Hahaha, feelings run strong about the Starship Enterprise, and a lot of people are saying “Who’s the is sumbitch JJ Abrams think he IS, anyway?”

The Big E is a form of art, that is true, in it’s most classic sense, as a focal point of our shared dreams & inspired ideas, and as a specific platform of (in our minds, anyway) a particular set of shapes, sizes and dimensions, the question is: Has Abrams gone too far? His Enterprise is a lot closer to the original than, say, Ron Moore’s reimagined Galactica, for example. I just saw the film and I think it rocks, and while certain things (like the internal engineering spaces, for example) kinda bugged me, I must confess, overall it was a singular cinematic experience (not to mention outstanding box office receipts) on the order of the original Star Wars. That’s not bad for a film submitted as a prequel to an original TV series of which the creator/producer, his wife, and two of the series’ main stars are all dead from old age.

Having said that, it should be remembered, in the words of the old Texas truism:

“You can put your boots in the oven, but THAT don’t make ‘em BISCUITS!”

JOHN

drflox99204 says:

ok- as a fan of Star Trek from TOS to Enterprise – each incarnation has had redeeming characteristics- ST-redo – has some too – at first glance the new ship looks clunky- but in reality it is better designed based on current space science than the original- the interiors – what few we saw well were a bit “cheap” looking – other the overly engineered bridge- the lack of finish in the engineering section was “disturbing”- the new characters were like-able – and the new Kirk – does look much better in briefs than the original- I have watched all the fan web series, and everyone changes the timeline a little bit so that didn’t bother me- will I see the movie a second or third time yes- will I see a sequel? yes… was it entertaining and worth $7.50 cents? hell yes. Any Star trek is better than no Star Trek–

Jake says:

1704, The Romulans shaved their heads and tattooed their bodies in order to mourn the loss of Romulus. This was mentioned in the “Countdown” comic book series which connects TNG with this new movie.

Jake says:

Honestly, I have only read the plot summary on the comic’s Wiki page, so I am probably missing some key details. Wiki said that the Narada was a,rather large, mining vessle. After the destruction of Romulus, Nero took the Narada to a secret Talshiar base, and had the vessel outfitted with recovered Borg technology. Nero’s crew then began to assimilate Vulcan, Starfleet, Klingon, and Cardassian vessels.

A fleet of Starfleet vessels then engaged the Narada. Most of the starfleet ships were destroyed, and the Enterprise-E was badly damaged. This is when Ambassador Spock comes flying in with his “jellyfish ship”, and manages to pull the Narada, as well as himself, into a black hole.

atseyes says:

One word, Johhny-O, – ‘Cynic’, lol!!!

Well, okay, I know, one person’s cynic is another person’s realist; and the truly worrying thing is, you may well be right!!

And it raised a smile on an otherwise grey and gloomy day!!

Bob Deschambault says:

Just curious … I didn’t read all the comments, but given that this movie is based on an alternative timeline, how could we expect the ship to look the same at all?

Johhny-O says:

@ All:

Btw, did any of you ever hear the story of the original struggle Gene Roddenberry had to put up to get the original Jeffries starship design?

He got a visit from the head of the studio there at Desilu, a bit piqued that Roddenberry was still waiting for Walt Jeffries to finalize the design. He just couldn’t understand what the holdup was.

“It’s a show about people on a spaceship, right?” he says to Roddenberry. “Well, just take a cigar shape, put some windows on it, and there’s your spaceship! Simple, right?”

Wrong. Roddenberry had to fight to get Walt Jeffries’ design to be accepted, and that’s why it took so long (1964-’67, also two pilot episodes).

It could be that we are all being too hard on JJ Abrams – it is possible that his efforts to save the original Enterprise design, to any extent, are nothing less than heroic.

After all, stupidity, just like anything else, skips a generation, right???

JOHN

Johhny-O says:

@ All:

Whoops! I meant Matt Jefferies, dunno who the hell Walt Jeffries is, sorry!

Not to sound like Time Magazine, but as they would say, I regret the error…

JOHN

MiG Hound says:

I can think of a hundred things that is WRONG with this design, both in and out. The worst of which is the bow legged effect of the nacelle pylons, that are attached to the Hangar Deck, instead of Engineering… who ever came up with this design, did not think of the internal layout and mechanics.

The technology, through out the ship is inconsistent, from the ultra high-tech Bridge to the “Grain Combine Cylinders” with a Radio-active sign posted on it, in Engineering. Then comes the plexi-glass 19th century water reclamation room. ugh…

Not to worry, with enough people ranting, they’ll blow it up by the end of the next movie, and replace it with Gabe Koerner’s design, the way it SHOULD have been.