Um, this is a public bulletin board for fans to post thoughts, not a private table at a cafe. Don’t be rude if you find my thoughts different from yours.
Ambassador Class Variations
- Thread starter yotsuya
- Start date
You are being completely hypocritical. You say this is a public board for fans to post thoughts, and yet my thoughts don't matter because it's 'just a freaking tv show.' I believe you're the one being rude here, and I've had just about enough of it. Unless you want to actually take part in a meaningful discussion about the thread topic, I have nothing more to say to you.
As you said, to an extent. Any entertainment requires a certain amount of suspension of disbelief. The more "real" that entertainment is, like, say, Cheers, the less suspension of disbelief is required. The less real it is...for instance, Spongebob Squarepants, the more suspension of disbelief is required (in this example, an astronomical amount). I think (and I may be wrong; I've never studied the phenomenon in depth) that an audience will allow for a greater need for suspension of disbelief with an entertainment that they value. Obviously, the crowd here values Trek and it's many iterations highly, else we wouldn't be here discussing it at all. So that audience is willing to say "Yeah, that's clearly a set, but screw it" or to say (while groaning) "Why did her hair change between shots?"
So, it's because of the value that we place on Trek that we're willing to overlook little things. But, the definition of "little things" varies from person to person, from sub-fandom to sub-fandom, and from fandom to non-fandom. Generally, I'd expect a post on a topic in "Trek Tech" to be less forgiving of tech-based concerns, and thus more likely to find an in-universe means of explaining a discrepancy.
For me the thing is that they clearly didn’t care about a number of very important concerns if you’re going to take those shots literally. Everyone was wowed by the feat that was “The Way of the Warrior” compared to previous effects shots in the franchise (heck, even in GEN, years later and on the Big Screen, the Enterprise fired what 1 good phaser shot at the aged Bird-of-Prey?), and so they went all in with the Dominion War scenes, despite not having a lot necessary to make them real. Because look at this, here we are on a bulletin board decades later trying to make them work when they clearly don’t. (Is the entire Romulan fleet comprised of D’deridex Warbirds?) So you have to take it all with a grain of salt, especially if you’re an Ambassador Class lover like me.
Ti be fair there is zero canon evidence on the opposite as well. All we know for sure is that the class is relatively old but at least a few ships are still in service.
Soyuz might look similar on the outside but have plenty of differences inside. The other two aren’t that similar on the outside either.
true, it can. And I don’t see a problem with this.
You never met someone’s look-alike? Years ago in Greece we met a Swedish guy who was almost identical to a friend of mine, we should still have the photo of the two of them together.
what are you even doing on this board?!
maybe? We probably shouldn’t rule out big fleets of identical ships after Picard!
Glad to see you've returned to discussing the topic at hand instead of being insulting. (Edit: @jackoverfull , that was not meant for you.)
The fleet shots in both "Way of the Warrior" and the Dominion War Starfleet/Klingon fleet shots were borne out of necessity. They originally wanted a bunch of new Klingon ship classes in WotW, and John Eaves was supposed to design them. But they eventually decided that it would be more time and cost efficient to use BoPs, K't'ingas and Vor'chas because they had cheaply priced Playmates toys and AMT model kits available to film and blow up, instead of building expensive new filming models both for regular use and for explosion scenes. So we got a fleet of new ships mixed with very old ships.
For the Dominion war fleets, they had access to the Reliant, Excelsior and Enterprise-D filming models, which they scanned into CGI. They also had three of the CGI First Contact ships that ILM handed over to them. So that's what they used. There wasn't time or budget to come up with a bunch of new CGI starship designs when they already had enough assets available to make a satisfactory fleet. And that's what they were going for: satisfactory. Not logical, just satisfactory. And it's up to the fans to interpret the in-universe reason why Starfleet and the Klingons used those particular ships. And there's nothing problematic in doing so.
The fleet shots in both "Way of the Warrior" and the Dominion War Starfleet/Klingon fleet shots were borne out of necessity. They originally wanted a bunch of new Klingon ship classes in WotW, and John Eaves was supposed to design them. But they eventually decided that it would be more time and cost efficient to use BoPs, K't'ingas and Vor'chas because they had cheaply priced Playmates toys and AMT model kits available to film and blow up, instead of building expensive new filming models both for regular use and for explosion scenes. So we got a fleet of new ships mixed with very old ships.
For the Dominion war fleets, they had access to the Reliant, Excelsior and Enterprise-D filming models, which they scanned into CGI. They also had three of the CGI First Contact ships that ILM handed over to them. So that's what they used. There wasn't time or budget to come up with a bunch of new CGI starship designs when they already had enough assets available to make a satisfactory fleet. And that's what they were going for: satisfactory. Not logical, just satisfactory. And it's up to the fans to interpret the in-universe reason why Starfleet and the Klingons used those particular ships. And there's nothing problematic in doing so.
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You’d be surprised. When I was in high school, during the Spring Concert, a classmate’s parent came in to see her sing, and I couldn’t stop staring at him for being the spitting image of actor John Mahoney, Frasier’s dad. He even caught me staring one time and I wondered if he got that a lot. Even so, it wasn’t quite the identical person.
Having fun, unlike some people!
What a dark day that was!
Exactly. So why let necessity ruin the magic?
Depends on what aspect you think is problematic. You think I have it out for you, that I think you’re problematic. That’s annoying but there’s little I can do about that. What is problematic is letting production limits change the intent of the universe we know and love. Especially when, again, it changes when there are fewer limits. See TOS Remastered. Or the Directors Edition of TMP or TNG remastered. And one day DS9 and VOY and DSC remastered.
I tell you the moment my AI lets me play with Trek, I’m going to replace so many ships in the canon. Starting with the supersized Birds of Prey in “The Defector.” Probert Ambassadors everywhere.
well, tuvok isn’t really identical to that other guy either. The hears and eyebrows are obviously different!
Well, no, that's not what I think. I think you were being rude just for the sake of being rude. But we're past that, so we can move on.
Different people have different tolerances for different things. I'd say that I'm a big trek tech fan, but personally I've had no issue with the two different Yamato registries. On the other hand, I've done a ton of work on the Starbase 11 wall chart.
Re duplicates, when I was in high school I had a young lady walk up to me in line at McDonald's, and being about a foot from me accused me of having gotten her pregnant.
Some shots that immediately come to mind that need replacing:
The Birds-of-Prey in “The Defector” with contemporary Klingon ships (Vorchas? New designs?), and maybe more of them too if they’re going up again two massive D’deridexes.
The Enterprise-C “Yesterdays Enterprise” with the Probert version.
The stock footage we already saw previously in the series and movies in “What You Leave Behind.”
The reuse of the TUC Bird-of-Prey explosion in GEN.
The Birds-of-Prey in “The Defector” with contemporary Klingon ships (Vorchas? New designs?), and maybe more of them too if they’re going up again two massive D’deridexes.
The Enterprise-C “Yesterdays Enterprise” with the Probert version.
The stock footage we already saw previously in the series and movies in “What You Leave Behind.”
The reuse of the TUC Bird-of-Prey explosion in GEN.
My only nitpick about using Vor'Chas in "The Defector" would make the warbirds seem much more outmatched, relative to the canon version. At least those BOPs are giant. 
It would be kind of cool to replace the BOPs in YE with Vor'Chas, which is what they probably would have used if the model had been built earlier.
It would be kind of cool to replace the BOPs in YE with Vor'Chas, which is what they probably would have used if the model had been built earlier.
That’s an interesting idea! I forgot about those.My only nitpick about using Vor'Chas in "The Defector" would make the warbirds seem much more outmatched, relative to the canon version. At least those BOPs are giant.
Where else would we replace ships with Ambassadors?
Maybe one of the ships Nacheyev came on? Or Sarek? Jellico’s USS Cairo? Would it be cool to see orbit of Dytallix B in “Conspiracy” and see Walker Keel’s USS Horatio in space?
It’s completely unnecessary to replace the Enterprise-C in YE with the Probert version. There’s nothing wrong with the Sternbach design. However, I’m in agreement that that huge BoPs in ‘The Defector’ and the ‘K’Vort class’ BoPs in YE should have been something else entirely.
agreed on all accounts.
Wanna make a bet? There is a lot of evidence for near look-a-likes who are not related. I recently read about two who got called twins because it was so hard to tell them apart. They did a DNA test and except for some distant common ancestry, they were not related.
And I had an issue in my college years where I was mistaken for someone. I never met them, but I had many people I didn't know walk up to me and start taking to me like they knew me. So as far as I'm concerned, two people can exist who look alike but are not related and it would make sense to have twins or the same actor play the roles. It is not common enough to make a regular thing about it, but it does happen more often than you think.
I totally agree. In my view of things, USS Ambassador was launched in a different configuration but by the time the Ent C was built the configuration had changed and she was built the way we see her. I would say the Ambassador was the first recipient of the refit. Or the Ent C was a subclass like Ent B had been. There are lots of possibilities.
The issue isn’t “look alikes” though. It’s identical people, down to every curve of every inch of their bodies from their brow to their taint. Even with identical twins, or dare I say clones, there’s some drift that is not present when you have the same actor playing multiple roles.
Continuing on from my previous post, if we are trying to figure out what else they could have used for those giant BoPs in 'The Defector' at the time the episode was being produced, my choice would have been the Promellian battlecruiser model used in "Booby Trap,' which was used again later in DS9 as a Skreean ship and as...a Klingon ship (with green hull color added in post-production.) They certainly weren't going to build a new Klingon ship for that episode considering it already debuted three new filming models (the 2nd Romulan warbird, the Romulan scout ship, and the 4 foot Enterprise-D.) The Promellian ship somewhat resembled a Klingon ship, and it could certainly have been scaled large enough to be imposing against a Romulan warbird.
http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/klingon/freighter_noggra.jpg
And considering that the front of the ship was never seen clearly in Booby Trap, it might have fooled the casual viewer into thinking they built a brand new Klingon warship (with the appropriate greenish tint added in post.) Either way, it would have been better than scaling up the BoP to ridiculous proportions.
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except that tuvok and that guy aren’t really identical, as mentioned above. Sure, same actor, but the makeup is different enough to differentiate them.
By the way, did tuvok also commit piracy on the enterprise in starship mine?
