It occurred to me the other day that despite all the battle damage and whatnot, Voyager's variable geometry doodad warp nacelle pylon hinges were never identified as being damaged, or being a reason the ship couldn't go to warp, or anything of the sort.
Seems like the writers would've focused in on them, but so far as I know it never happened. Given that they broke everything else at one time or another that's just odd.
Seems like the writers would've focused in on them, but so far as I know it never happened. Given that they broke everything else at one time or another that's just odd.
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I always thought that variable geometry thing was a steaming pile of bovine faeces! The nacelles only have two positions: lowered when at impulse, raised when in warp. So, why not have them raised all the time on normal pylons? It's not like they're doing a damn thing while the ship is at impulse. The whole thing was just used for the bloody wow-effect! It shattered my faith in Rick Sternbach.
I find your lack of faith disturbing.
No ship is designed by just one man. The Voyager prototype model, for instance, is rather nice . . . and, referring to someone else, the Akiraprise was made that way because they wouldn't allow the use of Daedalus.
Sternbach's all good.
"I find your lack of faith disturbing.
No ship is designed by just one man. The Voyager prototype model, for instance, is rather nice . . . and, referring to someone else, the Akiraprise was made that way because they wouldn't allow the use of Daedalus."
Let me guess... That was because though the Deadalus looked too "old fashioned" for a modern show, right?
Hehe, so does my mother. She deals with my atheism by trying to implement the "don't ask, don't tell" policy. But I digress. ;)
I used too harsh a word. Maybe not shattered, but definitely diminished. Sternbach's had a pretty clean record as far as sensible* designs are concerned. So clean, in fact, that I idealized the man. But the kewl moving nacelles were a needless faux pas. Besides, they weren't even referenced on screen, let alone rationalized. They mentioned the fancy piece of technobabble that is Voyager's "tricylic plasma manifold", but they didn't even mention the ship's most obvious unique feature? O RLY? I don't buy it. Things would've been better off without it.
As far as the Akiraprise is concerned, I don't see what does being or not being allowed to use the Daedalus have with blatant plagiarism and downright ridiculous anachronism. There are great examples at Bernd Schneider and Masao Okazaki's Starfleet Museum of how the NX should've looked like. When a few fans beat a major studio, I call that epic fail.
Now I'm off to my European history exam. Zagreb's Faculty of Humanities and Social Sciences will never catch up with the other faculties' terms. Bloody bureaucracy...
* As an example of what is not sensible, I'd like to bring to everyone's attention the otherwise excellent Akira-class with its ridiculously overinflated number of torpedo tubes. It's no surprise that a guy from ILM, most probably exposed to Warsie wankery, would design a starship with no less than fifteen torpedo tubes. :P Thank God that's never been canonically established.
The kewl moving nacelles were not Sternbach's choice, however. "The producers also wanted some part of the ship animate or articulate either the nacelles, or a weapon array, or perhaps the navigational deflector."
http://www.starshipdatalink.net/art/voyager1.html
A different batch of folks did the same thing with the JJPrise, which fortunately in that case was toned down to just little pieces of the deflector and nacelles popping out and such.
Sadly, there's no way any of Masao's ships or even design philosophy would've ever made it on-screen. The producers wanted ships to be all 'sexy', looking like fast cars or something, instead of making any sense. And can you imagine them ever having anything like the logical plot developments of big fusion ships versus newfangled advanced antimatter ships? Shee-it.
Even if Coto and the Reeves-Stevens gang might've tried to incorporate any of that, the simple fact was that it was already too late. As it stands, even ships like the Daedalus are considered a little wierd to get into the timeline, unless you presume them to be a mass produced ship for wartime or post-war needs. That's about as close to Masao as we can get, which is a damn shame.
I may be mistaken, but I seem to recall reading about at least one instance of Voyager going to warp without raising its nacelles.
Bah, thats just an effects gaffe. Galactica jumped with her pods out once as well.
But yeah,you can pretty much guarantee that the gimmicks are imposed from on high. IIRC the only reason why we didn't get the Akira flat out in ENT was Doug Drexler and Co put something together on their own time and begged to change it.
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