The ORIGINAL Klingon Vessel
- Thread starter Henoch
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I agree, and I don't think that it would take that many tweaks to remove the BoP influences and really make it feel like it belongs in the TOS era.Interesting design. Though I wish the ship had only taken design cues from the series proper and ignored the movie-era BoP.
And it's rather grating to hear "T O S" spoken aloud over and over again.
Kor
I ask myself, why does the Klingon ship, and many other ships especially seen in the viewer, glow with colored light? My solution is deflector screens and/or shields. The more powerful the shield strength, the more it glows. The Enterprise always seems to be brightly lit, shadow-free (i.e. shedding light) even when running in deep space with no external lighting near her. The new shields in TMP don't generate as much light, hence the addition of external lighting installed on the refitted Enterprise. 
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My take on that problem is that our external views of the Enterprise are from the omniscient point of view. Just as we can hear the music where there is no orchestra, we can see the ship from vantage points where there is no camera. We're being shown what an all-knowing God would see, and if anybody can see in the dark, He can.
That's why I don't care much for the TOS-R shots that go too dark, especially in "The Immunity Syndrome." I understand why they did it, but it isn't as nice to look at.
Oh cool. Please share your design when you finish it. Its fun to see all the creativity that folks have.
Maybe ask trekyards to do a design also
I ask myself, why does the Klingon ship, and many other ships especially seen in the viewer, glow with colored light? My solution is deflector screens and/or shields. The more powerful the shield strength, the more it glows. The Enterprise always seems to be brightly lit, shadow-free (i.e. shedding light) even when running in deep space with no external lighting near her. The new shields in TMP don't generate as much light, hence the addition of external lighting installed on the refitted Enterprise.
Also in TOS, ships glowed when their engines are being overloaded or outputting higher than normal energy (as indicated in dialogue about engines overloading). This could either be the view screen adding the visual cue or the ship's engines energy field glowing the whole ship.
I had an idea for the scout design that is similar but the nacelles on the end were longer to match the screen visual. They were oversized disruptor cannons instead of the combo warp engine-disruptor nacelle design of the battlecruiser. The single warp engine was in the body.
Looking at the original two dimensional image I would conclude, whatever the design, we are seeing it slightly bow upward on the right or slightly bow downward on the left. We are certainly not seeing it bow on (which would be a more expected attack posture presenting little profile) or in side profile.
An interesting video and the conjectural design itself is quite interesting and well done.
I know I will be attempting my own interpretation of this two-dimensional shape for my Unseen TOS thread. But there I will be taking a somewhat different approach as I will not be concerned with tying in the design with later productions. I’ll be trying to concern myself only with what influences were available in the mid 1960s. Mind you I would like to know exactly when Matt Jefferies designed the D7 that wouldn’t be seen until Season 3. If by some chance the D7 design existed even as a concept drawing during Season 2 (even though they couldn’t yet afford to construct it) when “Friday’s Child” was produced then it’s a valid source of inspiration. If the D7 concept did not yet exist in Season 2 then it gets trickier given we know what at least one Klingon warship will look like in Season 3’s “Elaan Of Troyius.”
An interesting video and the conjectural design itself is quite interesting and well done.
I know I will be attempting my own interpretation of this two-dimensional shape for my Unseen TOS thread. But there I will be taking a somewhat different approach as I will not be concerned with tying in the design with later productions. I’ll be trying to concern myself only with what influences were available in the mid 1960s. Mind you I would like to know exactly when Matt Jefferies designed the D7 that wouldn’t be seen until Season 3. If by some chance the D7 design existed even as a concept drawing during Season 2 (even though they couldn’t yet afford to construct it) when “Friday’s Child” was produced then it’s a valid source of inspiration. If the D7 concept did not yet exist in Season 2 then it gets trickier given we know what at least one Klingon warship will look like in Season 3’s “Elaan Of Troyius.”
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Between when the episode was filmed (May of '67) and when it aired (December 1967). Jefferies had tons of concept sketches leading up to the final design, but I don't know when the screen effects for Friday's Child were done, so it makes it hard to try to match up where Jefferies was in the development of the Klingon ship at that point. Almost all of the concept designs included a "head" (usually just a sphere) connected to a "body".
There is lots of data out there on this, I just haven't spent any time sorting any of it.
June 1967, according to the dates on the FX leaders.
Sketches of concepts for the D7 have floated around and been reprinted for years. If one of them has a date scrawled somewhere on them then that could be a clue.
It isn’t a really critical issue. The OP’s conjectural design is a reasonable extrapolation of the original 2D image. And no reason the Klingons, like the Federation, couldn’t have designs that have general similarities. The D7 has something of a predatory look to it and thats a design idea that could be reflected in varying degree with other Klingon ships.
That said we have to remember in “Friday’s Child” the ship is seen at a distance and not featured prominently or seen close up. To that end I would approach the design in similar fashion as I have others: what could the production staff work up reasonably quickly that could look sufficiently decent from a distance? It wouldn’t have to be that detailed because you wouldn’t see much of it. Such a miniature would certainly not be lighted internally—windows and other details could simply be painted on.
But the overall shape is what really matters and the OP’s design is a good one.
This does touch on another aspect of TOS designs. The D7, like the Romulan BoP and the Enterprise, and other ships, were painted in generally lighter tones because that showed off the designs better against the black of space particularly on a smallish CRT televisions. Today television resolution and picture quality, like feature films, allows for darker tones to be used. But that has led the vfx teams to retcon darker colours onto TOS designs.
This is an issue I have with a lot of the work in TOS-R. The Klingon and Romulan ships look horrible. The Enterprise doesn’t look right. And don’t get me started on the shuttlecraft and hangar deck. The colours and lighting are all wrong. It’s jarring.
Here I commend the OP for their design’s colouring looks much more in line with what we would have actually seen in TOS if they had actually built such a miniature.
It isn’t a really critical issue. The OP’s conjectural design is a reasonable extrapolation of the original 2D image. And no reason the Klingons, like the Federation, couldn’t have designs that have general similarities. The D7 has something of a predatory look to it and thats a design idea that could be reflected in varying degree with other Klingon ships.
That said we have to remember in “Friday’s Child” the ship is seen at a distance and not featured prominently or seen close up. To that end I would approach the design in similar fashion as I have others: what could the production staff work up reasonably quickly that could look sufficiently decent from a distance? It wouldn’t have to be that detailed because you wouldn’t see much of it. Such a miniature would certainly not be lighted internally—windows and other details could simply be painted on.
But the overall shape is what really matters and the OP’s design is a good one.
This does touch on another aspect of TOS designs. The D7, like the Romulan BoP and the Enterprise, and other ships, were painted in generally lighter tones because that showed off the designs better against the black of space particularly on a smallish CRT televisions. Today television resolution and picture quality, like feature films, allows for darker tones to be used. But that has led the vfx teams to retcon darker colours onto TOS designs.
This is an issue I have with a lot of the work in TOS-R. The Klingon and Romulan ships look horrible. The Enterprise doesn’t look right. And don’t get me started on the shuttlecraft and hangar deck. The colours and lighting are all wrong. It’s jarring.
Here I commend the OP for their design’s colouring looks much more in line with what we would have actually seen in TOS if they had actually built such a miniature.
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Much the same.
We have a finished, Matt Jefferies-designed, Klingon-esque scout ship contemporaneous with TOS. It is the scout ship he designed to go with his Leif Ericson AMT model. That is what should have been employed for the blob in “Friday’s Child”. It also has the added benefit of looking like it fits in a lineage with the movie-era bird of prey.
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7gYNb3GSh4M/RumpEbGK6HI/AAAAAAAABy0/_RGVPF_vauQ/s400/Scout.jpg
http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_7gYNb3GSh4M/RumpEbGK6HI/AAAAAAAABy0/_RGVPF_vauQ/s400/Scout.jpg
How big was that scout ship? Like an inch long? While it’s a nice contemporaneous design, I doubt they would have filmed something that small.
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