Like that USS Centaur-type ship that was seen on that 6th season episode of DS9, which was basically a Mirandaized version of the Excelsior. Most fans call that ship Centuar class, even though we officially don't know what class it is.
Apollo Class Starships?
- Thread starter James Wright
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Like that USS Centaur-type ship that was seen on that 6th season episode of DS9, which was basically a Mirandaized version of the Excelsior. Most fans call that ship Centuar class, even though we officially don't know what class it is.
Certainly the odds are that the class would be considered something else, anything else, than Centaur. That is, unless there is some good reason to assume we see the class ship specifically. With the Defiant or the Excelsior, classshipness was pretty explicit... Not with the Centaur, though.
Hard to tell what a "frigate configuration" would be when the only known/supposed example of a somewhat canon frigate is the New Orleans kitbash. But I'd agree that the Centaur isn't the "nacelles down counterpart" to the Excelsior - but rather a significantly smaller vessel somewhat below Miranda in size. Still related to the "Excelsior generation" of starships, though.
And no, not my favorite candidate for Apollo class, either. Registry-wise, referencing against the assorted Okudagram numbers, the Centaur could be of Renaissance class or something like that.
Timo Saloniemi
Hard to tell what a "frigate configuration" would be when the only known/supposed example of a somewhat canon frigate is the New Orleans kitbash. But I'd agree that the Centaur isn't the "nacelles down counterpart" to the Excelsior - but rather a significantly smaller vessel somewhat below Miranda in size. Still related to the "Excelsior generation" of starships, though.
And no, not my favorite candidate for Apollo class, either. Registry-wise, referencing against the assorted Okudagram numbers, the Centaur could be of Renaissance class or something like that.
Timo Saloniemi
Well, the Miranda design family are considered frigates in most offscreen sources, although they are occasionally called cruisers as well. I generally don't stand too heavily on canon as a rule in this forum, because there are many details we don't see and there are too many designs that are omitted under the canon policy.
The Nebula design is kind of the same. It's clearly the TNG version of the Miranda, but it's considered a light cruiser and not a frigate. I can't recall if this was ever established onscreen, but it's been consistent in every source I've seen.
The Nebula design is kind of the same. It's clearly the TNG version of the Miranda, but it's considered a light cruiser and not a frigate. I can't recall if this was ever established onscreen, but it's been consistent in every source I've seen.
The Nebula, for her part, though, has MOST of the mass of the Galaxy. The Miranda is a bit more noticable in drop, though she's still pretty hefty (a lot more deck space than she first appears). I can easily see the Nebula being a 'cruiser' for the age, while the Miranda is a 'frigate'.
I can help clear up some issues with the Apollo class in general, and the U.S.S. Gage in particular.
Back when the DS9 Companion book came out, there was a section detailing the VFX for the Wolf 359 battle in "Emissary." Apparently there were TWO scenes filmed; one scene that took place AFTER the battle, just like in BoBW, but once the script was finalized, it didn't match the on-screen dialogue, so they had to go back & film a second scene that took place at the start of the battle, which was what we saw.
The first scene apparently showed wreckage of ships, unlike the second which showed the undamaged Ambassador, Excelsior, and Nebula filming models. Logically, I assumed that the wrecked ships from the first footage were new models built specifically to be damaged, and that one of them was the U.S.S. Gage, which was mentioned in the first version of the script, which was what the VFX guys were following until it was re-written.
I was able after a period of time to email Rob Legato, who was the head of DS9's VFX department at the time. Unfortunately, his memory wasn't all that good concerning the footage, but he did confess that there were no new models built for the scene, and that they just used whatever junk was lying around for wreckage. When I asked him specifically about the Gage, he said that he remembered that the damaged version of the Reliant from Star Trek II was used, and that might have been the Gage (take this with a grain of salt, however, as he really didn't sound sure of that at all in his email). Consequently, I also emailed Mike Okuda about the Gage (since he was responsible for labeling all filming models with names & registries), and he didn't recall labeling a model with the name "Gage" either.
So it seems that there never was a U.S.S. Gage filming model that we could call the Apollo class, and that the said class is still a conjectural design (and I'm in agreement with Timo that the Vulcan ships in "Unification" were most definitely NOT Apollo class, if only for the reason that Vulcans would not name their ships after ancient Greek gods).
I also don't think it's a good idea to try to match the DS9 kitbashes such as the Centaur to any of the conjectural classes. They were never meant to be true ship classes anyway, just small background ships that were built specifically to be damaged and not seen close-up so that you could tell what they were really made out of.
Back when the DS9 Companion book came out, there was a section detailing the VFX for the Wolf 359 battle in "Emissary." Apparently there were TWO scenes filmed; one scene that took place AFTER the battle, just like in BoBW, but once the script was finalized, it didn't match the on-screen dialogue, so they had to go back & film a second scene that took place at the start of the battle, which was what we saw.
The first scene apparently showed wreckage of ships, unlike the second which showed the undamaged Ambassador, Excelsior, and Nebula filming models. Logically, I assumed that the wrecked ships from the first footage were new models built specifically to be damaged, and that one of them was the U.S.S. Gage, which was mentioned in the first version of the script, which was what the VFX guys were following until it was re-written.
I was able after a period of time to email Rob Legato, who was the head of DS9's VFX department at the time. Unfortunately, his memory wasn't all that good concerning the footage, but he did confess that there were no new models built for the scene, and that they just used whatever junk was lying around for wreckage. When I asked him specifically about the Gage, he said that he remembered that the damaged version of the Reliant from Star Trek II was used, and that might have been the Gage (take this with a grain of salt, however, as he really didn't sound sure of that at all in his email). Consequently, I also emailed Mike Okuda about the Gage (since he was responsible for labeling all filming models with names & registries), and he didn't recall labeling a model with the name "Gage" either.
So it seems that there never was a U.S.S. Gage filming model that we could call the Apollo class, and that the said class is still a conjectural design (and I'm in agreement with Timo that the Vulcan ships in "Unification" were most definitely NOT Apollo class, if only for the reason that Vulcans would not name their ships after ancient Greek gods).
I also don't think it's a good idea to try to match the DS9 kitbashes such as the Centaur to any of the conjectural classes. They were never meant to be true ship classes anyway, just small background ships that were built specifically to be damaged and not seen close-up so that you could tell what they were really made out of.
Why not interpret the DS9 ships as "actual" classes? The alternative in-universe would be to think that Starfleet built one-off starships. And that makes very little sense.
(Also, why wouldn't Vulcans name ships after ancient Greek gods? Humans often name ships after old battles, especially ones where the foe was formidable; Vulcans could have battled Apollo and his kin a couple of times...
)
On a general note, I would hesitate to connect a certain shape of ship with a certain mission profile. Just because the Miranda and Nebula look superficially similar doesn't mean they would play the same relative parts in the 23rd and 24th centuries, respectively. Then again, there's nothing to say they couldn't both be the relative "second fiddles" of their respective eras, either.
Timo Saloniemi
(Also, why wouldn't Vulcans name ships after ancient Greek gods? Humans often name ships after old battles, especially ones where the foe was formidable; Vulcans could have battled Apollo and his kin a couple of times...
)On a general note, I would hesitate to connect a certain shape of ship with a certain mission profile. Just because the Miranda and Nebula look superficially similar doesn't mean they would play the same relative parts in the 23rd and 24th centuries, respectively. Then again, there's nothing to say they couldn't both be the relative "second fiddles" of their respective eras, either.
Timo Saloniemi
Couple points.
First off, of course I don't buy into the idea that the Unification ships are Apollo Class, if I did then I wouldn't have "designed" the Ambassador kitbash. Leaving that aside for a sec, there are a couple other reasons; one being the whole name thing. Yes, it's possible to have a Vulcan ship named after a figure in an alien's mythology, the Federation is very cosmopolitan and culturally open minded, but I just don't see it happening in this case.
Also, the Apollo-Class ships we know of all seamed to be capable (if not cutting edge by TNG standard) Starships.
For example; the Ajax was a part of the tachyon detection grid blockade and got a turn with received Kosinski's warp drive "upgrades", the Agamemnon was a part of Nechayev's anti-Borg taskforce in Decent, the Clement fought in the Dominion War and of course the Gage was on the front lines at Wolf 359. While you could argue the point on a few of these, the overall impression I get is that the Apollo is a run-of-the-mill, flying swiss army knife like most Starfleet front liners.
Those Vulcan ships we saw on the other hand were transports and not what you'd call one of Starfleet's "Ships of the Line".
I have to agree with Dukat that trying to shoehorn some of those god awful Frankenstein fleeters into known class names is a little futile. However, to my mind the Centaur is an exception in my book as overall, I quite like it and I've always thought the idea of it being Renaissance-Class somehow just feels right. But that's just me; the only corroborating evidence is that the Centaur seams suited for Patrol/Scouting duty, which is something we know the Renaissance has been known to do and that's circumstantial evidence at best.
First off, of course I don't buy into the idea that the Unification ships are Apollo Class, if I did then I wouldn't have "designed" the Ambassador kitbash. Leaving that aside for a sec, there are a couple other reasons; one being the whole name thing. Yes, it's possible to have a Vulcan ship named after a figure in an alien's mythology, the Federation is very cosmopolitan and culturally open minded, but I just don't see it happening in this case.
Also, the Apollo-Class ships we know of all seamed to be capable (if not cutting edge by TNG standard) Starships.
For example; the Ajax was a part of the tachyon detection grid blockade and got a turn with received Kosinski's warp drive "upgrades", the Agamemnon was a part of Nechayev's anti-Borg taskforce in Decent, the Clement fought in the Dominion War and of course the Gage was on the front lines at Wolf 359. While you could argue the point on a few of these, the overall impression I get is that the Apollo is a run-of-the-mill, flying swiss army knife like most Starfleet front liners.
Those Vulcan ships we saw on the other hand were transports and not what you'd call one of Starfleet's "Ships of the Line".
I have to agree with Dukat that trying to shoehorn some of those god awful Frankenstein fleeters into known class names is a little futile. However, to my mind the Centaur is an exception in my book as overall, I quite like it and I've always thought the idea of it being Renaissance-Class somehow just feels right. But that's just me; the only corroborating evidence is that the Centaur seams suited for Patrol/Scouting duty, which is something we know the Renaissance has been known to do and that's circumstantial evidence at best.
Timo said:
(Also, why wouldn't Vulcans name ships after ancient Greek gods? Humans often name ships after old battles, especially ones where the foe was formidable; Vulcans could have battled Apollo and his kin a couple of times...
Since "Vulcan" is also the Roman name for the Greek god Hephaestus there is an extra bit of irony in this rather logical idea.
On the subject of the conjectural classes: The whole reason why Okuda came up with them was to show that Starfleet had many more ship classes that what was seen on screen. Remember, at the time TNG premiered, the only Starfleet ships we'd seen besides the new Enterprise-D was the Excelsior, the Reliant, the Grissom, and of course the TMP Enterprise (which was regarded as obsolete by the start of TNG). To try to match some hastily-built (and in some cases impossibly-scaled) kitbashes with the conjectural classes was really not the intention of the DS9 VFX department, nor should it be our intention to do so. The conjectural classes should remain conjectural, IMHO (with the exceptions of the Challenger, Cheyenne, Freedom, New Orleans, Niagara, and Springfield classes, which were proven to be non-conjectural once the BoBW models were described and seen).
I think the confusion about the conjectural Apollo class was that some misinformation was spread concerning a model that might have possibly been built of a ship that Okuda listed as Apollo class in his Encyclopedia. Since that ended up not being the case, the class remains a conjectural, unseen design.
(Now if some new photos of some DS9 kitbashes that we heretofore haven't seen ever are revealed, and one of them, say, has the name "U.S.S. Ajax" and the registry of "NCC-11574," then we could assume that it's supposed to represent the Apollo class. But that's highly unlikely...)
I think the confusion about the conjectural Apollo class was that some misinformation was spread concerning a model that might have possibly been built of a ship that Okuda listed as Apollo class in his Encyclopedia. Since that ended up not being the case, the class remains a conjectural, unseen design.
(Now if some new photos of some DS9 kitbashes that we heretofore haven't seen ever are revealed, and one of them, say, has the name "U.S.S. Ajax" and the registry of "NCC-11574," then we could assume that it's supposed to represent the Apollo class. But that's highly unlikely...)
That's a fair point. I have a fair number of BattleTech ships, and the earliest chronological tech manual (2750) describes the original warships and alludes to some unseen classes. It wasn't until recently when the 3057 TM was revised that these classes were given actual images and stats, and some others were introduced as well.
Still, what harm is there in pairing the speculative names and hastily kitbashed designs?
We know that both the ships with those names and the ships with those designs are supposed to operate in the timeframe we see, and we have no particular reason to think that the ships with names only would have to remain off camera forever.
Moreover, the goal of "rounding out Starfleet" has been achieved already: if anything, there are too many ship designs in evidence nowadays. Scaling down a bit by declaring that a name and a kitbash in fact represent one rather than two classes would be a welcome development now.
As long as 24th century Trek remains dead, we won't get contradicted on the idea that kitbash X matches name Y. OTOH, "in-universe", the kitbashed ships have to have some sort of a class name, regardless of whether or not they are classy. Inventing one out of thin air would IMHO be less satisfactory than using a preexisting but idle name...
Timo Saloniemi
We know that both the ships with those names and the ships with those designs are supposed to operate in the timeframe we see, and we have no particular reason to think that the ships with names only would have to remain off camera forever.
Moreover, the goal of "rounding out Starfleet" has been achieved already: if anything, there are too many ship designs in evidence nowadays. Scaling down a bit by declaring that a name and a kitbash in fact represent one rather than two classes would be a welcome development now.
As long as 24th century Trek remains dead, we won't get contradicted on the idea that kitbash X matches name Y. OTOH, "in-universe", the kitbashed ships have to have some sort of a class name, regardless of whether or not they are classy. Inventing one out of thin air would IMHO be less satisfactory than using a preexisting but idle name...
Timo Saloniemi
