All Good Things love

[Evan van Eyk]

Bad news first: I don't particularily like the Future Enterprise, for various reasons. First of all it is a too militaristic design with the new "Death-Star-Phaser" and all these additions to her hull made her look "disrupted". Her elegant, majestic design is buried under unnecessary add-ons.
There is hardly any ship in any show which looks as majestic as a Galaxy-Class. Making her look military is simply odd and in vain, because there are ( at least by now ) far better military designs, like Akira, Defiant, Sovereign-Class.
Additionally the three-nacelle configuration looks not very good in my point of view. The extra pylon looks far too large and the whole position makes it appear as if it does not belong where it was put.


However, no to the good news, I escpecially like the last episode of TNG. Voyager's last episode was rather strange, too much concentration on the always troubled Borg-arc. And I always missed to see what actually happened to the crew afterwards, would have like to see that after following the crew on that journey.
DS9 at least layed out what was to happen to the characters, but since the battle for Cardassia was rather short and most parts of the episode concentrated on the paranormal "Sisko is a God"-story line, which I never particularily liked.
TOS had a standard episode as its last and ENT was, well stupid ( see the appropriate thread for my more elaborate opinion ).
TNG had a very interesting premise and I like the idea of connecting the beginning and end of the series the way they did. The only thing I did not like was that at the end there was no change in the crew or whatsoever, which called for a "break". It did not seem that this part of the story was at an end - to stop accompanying the TNG crew at this point seemed to be arbitrary...
Besides I especially like the end of the episode, where Picard joins the staff to play poker and realizes he should have done that a long time ago, since this is his family. The beauty shot of Enterprise as a last view was nice as well.
I really love the series and AGT as well.

[tonyg]

First: I like All Good Things.

Second: I don't like ships with three nacelles. And not because Gene said there were no ships with an odd number (which he did), but because I think all three-nacelled ships come from the same misunderstanding of what makes the ships go.

The nacelles do not generate power, they turn the power into motion. Like more tires, more nacelles may make a ship look cooler, but they will not help it go, nor offer it more power for weapons and other systems.

So, I'm a bit at war with myself: I agree the three-nacelled Enterprise-D looked cool, but the part of me that knows that wouldn't be helpful thinks its dumb.

Uh spyone,

Look at ships and aircraft.

OCean going ships usually have propellorrs (Screws) that turn the power generated by the engines into motion, just like a starship. With ocean going ships one of the reasons why mutliple propellors is desireable is for reducancy. Another is for finer control in maneuvering. Still another is to get past the limited efficnecy of a propellor system. Once you reach a certain point, the props no longer propell the ship as efficnecy.Eventually they will either just turn the water into vapor, or wreck the screws. To get around this limit, ships have mulitple screws.

This become very important when you are working with larger, more massive vehicles. While you might not get much more speed, you do get more power. It applies to land vehciles too. Plus land vechles have things like ground pressure to consider.



For Star Trek, if the number of nacelles didn't matter, then there should be some single nacelle designs.


While warp drive is all technobabble, one explaination might be that each nacelle generates a warp field, and two or more multiple the effectiveness . That would explain why the warp scale is mostly a power function (^3 for TOS, ^ 10/3 for TNG). So single nacelle ships are not practical.

Perhaps the "in setting" reason why we don't see ships with three or more nacelees is just because they can't "balance" more than two. Maybe by the time of AGL someone figured out how?

Yeah, the Stargazer had 4, but supposedly, ships have a pair or warp coils in each nacelle, so the Stargazer was effectively a twin nacelle ship).

[First of Two]

For Star Trek, if the number of nacelles didn't matter, then there should be some single nacelle designs.

Freedom Class.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

For Star Trek, if the number of nacelles didn't matter, then there should be some single nacelle designs.

"Tell me about your ship, Riker. It's the Enterprise, isn't it?"
"No, the name of my ship is the Lollipop."
"I have no knowledge of that ship."
"It's just been commissioned. It's a good ship."

[tonyg]

Freedom Class.

But is the Freedom-class officially listed as a single nacelle ship ? There are tons of unfoffical signble nacelle designs, some quite good. But I don't think there were any single nacelle Fed ships shown on TV.

[tonyg]

"Tell me about your ship, Riker. It's the Enterprise, isn't it?"
"No, the name of my ship is the Lollipop."
"I have no knowledge of that ship."
"It's just been commissioned. It's a good ship."

BTW, while the reference is pretty obvious to people in the late 20th century, I wonder how clear it would be in the 24th? Is it still a common pop reference, or something that Riker picked up through a history or tirva skill? Trek doesn't do stuff like that too often.

[The Tatterdemalion King]

BTW, while the reference is pretty obvious to people in the late 20th century, I wonder how clear it would be in the 24th? Is it still a common pop reference, or something that Riker picked up through a history or tirva skill? Trek doesn't do stuff like that too often.

How weird is it that he'd remember it, too?

Or maybe he's just really terrible at bluffing outside a poker game, and shirley temple was the first thing he could think of : P

[Tobian]

Strictly speaking the only single and triple Nacelle designs we ever saw mostly came from the Wolf 359 battle scenes - lots of old bits of models they fudged together, and later got defined as 'canon designs' by the fans yes while screen legal, it's not exactly much to go on... a tiny 5 pixel space debris smudge

[tonyg]

Strictly speaking the only single and triple Nacelle designs we ever saw mostly came from the Wolf 359 battle scenes - lots of old bits of models they fudged together, and later got defined as 'canon designs' by the fans yes while screen legal, it's not exactly much to go on... a tiny 5 pixel space debris smudge

Well, accepting some of the rushed models as cannon would open up a whole case of worm cans.

Once you accept th Star Destroyer and the F18s, the entire Trek setting gets a serious revision.

[tonyg]

How weird is it that he'd remember it, too?

Or maybe he's just really terrible at bluffing outside a poker game, and shirley temple was the first thing he could think of : P

Yeah, it is a case of dropping a joke that the audience would be aware of, but that the other characters would be unlikely to get. Trek usually didn't do much of that, since it works against the illusion that the series takes place in the future.

Of couse they can get away with that once in awhile.

And it was first season TNG. Things changed.

Just think how the reputation or Kirk and the TOS Enterperprise were downplayed in TNG's first season, compared to the "Starfleet Legend" he is treated later on. Kirk goes from being "a starfleet captain" to a household name.

[Cut]

Once you accept the Star Destroyer and the F18s, the entire Trek setting gets a serious revision.

Äh...what?
Were there ISDs and a F18 in the graveyard scene of TBOBW?

[First of Two]

Well, the models themselves were big enough...

[The Tatterdemalion King]

Well, accepting some of the rushed models as canon would open up a whole case of worm cans.

If you think that's bad...

ps fixed the typo.

[Tobian]

Hmm funny, I don't remember seeing those two people in the background of BoBW.... oh wait, it's not a screencap, and in fact those models were tiny fuzzy whizzing pixels in the actual show :P My point is yes, they may have been big models, but that's just the size models get made at for TV. They were just kitbash-kludges meant only to look cool for a few seconds of on-screen footage, but instead they've been analysed to death by fans with video freeze frames for 17 years But still that's what fans do

[Cut]

If you think that's bad...

ps fixed the typo.

Cool, didn't know that either. That is classic BSG footage, not the new series, right?