Spoilers The Voyager-A thread

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

It only shows up for for a few seconds when Raffi is doing her google searches in Episode 1:

The-A looks more like a Sovereign to me than an Intrepid. Like it does borrow some Intrepid elements, but it borrows a lot more from the Sovereign.

I feel like this shouldn't be canon. It handcuffs and restricts what the Voyager-B should be and when it should be if and when someone wants to tell that story. They should have just left this out or show this but slap a different name on it.

 

[Daedalus]

The Voyager-B was supposed to be Captained by Harry Kim, but they ran out of time and/or money. Paramount would have to be raking it in to have a new Voyager show though.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

The Voyager-B was supposed to be Captained by Harry Kim, but they ran out of time and/or money. Paramount would have to be raking it in to have a new Voyager show though.

Oh? Harry and the Voy-B were planned to be part of S3? Really? An easter egg for something bailed on?

 

[Daedalus]

Oh? Harry and the Voy-B were planned to be part of S3? Really? An easter egg for something bailed on?

Not sure how much of a role he had, but Matalas had this to say

“Harry Kim appeared as the captain of the Voyager-B in the first draft of Frontier Day. But Prodigy was telling a lot of Voyager stories and we didn’t know if Harry was going to appear and we didn’t want to step on their toes."

Terry Matalas On Why Janeway And Harry Kim Weren’t In ‘Star Trek: Picard’ And The Fate Of The Enterprise-E

"I would have had as many as we could get." - Terry Matalas on legacy cameos in season 3 of 'Picard.'

trekmovie.com

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Not sure how much of a role he had, but Matalas had this to say

“Harry Kim appeared as the captain of the Voyager-B in the first draft of Frontier Day. But Prodigy was telling a lot of Voyager stories and we didn’t know if Harry was going to appear and we didn’t want to step on their toes."

Terry Matalas On Why Janeway And Harry Kim Weren’t In ‘Star Trek: Picard’ And The Fate Of The Enterprise-E

"I would have had as many as we could get." - Terry Matalas on legacy cameos in season 3 of 'Picard.'

trekmovie.com

Sounds like Kim on the Voy-B became Shelby on the Ent-F. Wha'cha think?

 

[Daedalus]

Sounds like Kim on the Voy-B became Shelby on the Ent-F. Wha'cha think?

It could've been better in my opinion. It was great to see Shelby, of course.

 

[Macintosh]

#1 I mean functionally. Why have it if it takes up so much internal space?

Because most 24th century starships are already vastly larger than they need to be, so they might as well use all that extra space for something interesting instead of hundreds of empty crew quarters or a turbolift funhouse.

#2 If the warp core goes critical, saucer sep. probably not going to help.

Eject the core then. The original Voyager couldn't separate its saucer either.

#3 In the pic, it's a forest. Look how tall those trees are.

I was clearly being facetious re: "arboreal ops". We've seen ships with gardens and trees in before, I genuinely don't understand why this is an issue.

#1 True, but I just feel like the ship needs to be a lot bigger if it's going to have this massive facility dedicated to one or a few whales.

The Voyager-A is much bigger than the original Voyager. It's roughly the same size as a Sovereign-class ship, which would also make it about the same volume as the Enterprise-D's saucer or the Cerritos, both of which had plenty of space for cetacean ops and several hundred people besides.

#2 Fair enough, but throughout all of Star Trek, the whole point of the engineering hull is to keep the warp core AWAY from the saucer section.

Perhaps originally but not any more, since by the 24th century ejectable warp cores are standard. Besides, we've seen dozens of ship classes either without secondary hulls to put the warp core in, or with secondary hulls that can't be detached from the primary.

#3 I count about 40 trees in a room spanning 3 decks. We have scale, because nearby, we have the bridge showing the Captain's Chair. If you stand in the middle of the room, it's going to look like you're in the forest. I'll give you it's a small forest, but still a forest. My question remains: why is there a forest? I'm not objecting, just asking. Take a look!!!

Why not? I think having a forest aboard a starship as a recreational facility, and also possibly as part of the life support system and biological research facilities, is a grand idea.

 

[Macintosh]

It could've been better in my opinion.

I too would have liked to have seen Kim get fatally shot.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Because most 24th century starships are already vastly larger than they need to be, so they might as well use all that extra space for something interesting instead of hundreds of empty crew quarters or a turbolift funhouse.

Eject the core then. The original Voyager couldn't separate its saucer either.

I was clearly being facetious re: "arboreal ops". We've seen ships with gardens and trees in before, I genuinely don't understand why this is an issue.

The Voyager-A is much bigger than the original Voyager. It's roughly the same size as a Sovereign-class ship, which would also make it about the same volume as the Enterprise-D's saucer or the Cerritos, both of which had plenty of space for cetacean ops and several hundred people besides.

Perhaps originally but not any more, since by the 24th century ejectable warp cores are standard. Besides, we've seen dozens of ship classes either without secondary hulls to put the warp core in, or with secondary hulls that can't be detached from the primary.

Why not? I think having a forest aboard a starship as a recreational facility, and also possibly as part of the life support system and biological research facilities, is a grand idea.

#1 If this were something huge like a Galaxy, Nebula, or Ambassador-class ship, I wouldn't think anything of it. What I am objecting to is proportionality.

#2 If Voyager-A cannot saucer separate, fair enough, but again, the whole point of the engineering hull is to keep the warp core away from the saucer section. It just seems weird for it to be in the saucer.

#3 In all of Star Trek, I have never heard of arboreal ops, what is that even supposed to be?

#4 Yes, on par with the Enterprise-E.

#5 There'd be very specific reason to put a forest on a Starship, not just a flippant "why not?" We know Starship life support systems, biological research labs, and recreational facilities do not require a forest to be onboard, so why on the Voyager-A? I think it's a reasonable question.

 

[Ray Hardgrit]

It's funny, I've never questioned why a starship would have a park on it, as it seems like the kind of thing people would want to bring with them on long space missions if they've got the space. Trees produce oxygen, they're nice to be around, there's a whole bunch of positives there. The whale tank just baffles me though. I mean I can get they could have crew members from aquatic species (anyone smart enough to invent warp drive underwater is worth bringing along), but an actual whale?

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

It's funny, I've never questioned why a starship would have a park on it, as it seems like the kind of thing people would want to bring with them on long space missions if they've got the space. Trees produce oxygen, they're nice to be around, there's a whole bunch of positives there. The whale tank just baffles me though. I mean I can get they could have crew members from aquatic species (anyone smart enough to invent warp drive underwater is worth bringing along), but an actual whale?

No objections to a park, we've seen concepts like this come and go in science-fiction. What's on Voyager-A's MSD is more than a park, it's a forest. Some of the trees are two stories tall, and the forest room spans 2 1/2 decks. It's huge! Is it too big given it's size relative to the ship? Nope, no objections, I'm just asking "why" have it? I'm not objecting, just curious as to why. I don't object to whales as crew members. haha I just thought the whale tape ops whatever it's called takes up an awful lot of space. Looking at the MSD again, I now realize why the warp core is in the saucer: it's because the whale ops thing is in the engineering hull where the warp core would traditionally be.

 

[Macintosh]

#1 If this were something huge like a Galaxy, Nebula, or Ambassador-class ship, I wouldn't think anything of it. What I am objecting to is proportionality.

The Sovereign-class is almost 90% the volume of an Ambassador-class and still pretty damn big, being almost four times the size of an Intrepid and over eleven times larger than Constitution. We don't have many hard facts about the Lamarr-class but we know it has 29 decks to the Sovereign's 24 and may be slightly longer, likely giving it a larger overall volume. We also know it's a new, experimental science ship, which makes it more likely to have unusual features compared to a more conservative "standard" ship class like the Sovereign. A giant cetacean ops section attached to stellar cartography or advanced navigation and propulsion research, exactly as we see in Prodigy, makes sense in this context. The ship is optimised for its intended function; you might as well complain about why the Akira-class has so many photon torpedo launchers when other ships do just fine with far fewer.

#2 If Voyager-A cannot saucer separate, fair enough, but again, the whole point of the engineering hull is to keep the warp core away from the saucer section. It just seems weird for it to be in the saucer.

You keep banging this drum. Why exactly does the warp core have to be kept away from the saucer section? It makes some sense in the days of the Constitution-class when warp cores were too large and complex to eject in an emergency and you had to get the crew to safety somehow, but by the mid-to-late 24th century ejectable cores are standard. It's not like the cores release dangerous radiation – we see people happily working alongside them day in day out with just a standard uniform. We've also seen a huge number of ships active in the 24th century that definitely have no separation capability: Akira, Centaur, Constellation, Danube, Defiant, Echelon, Freedom, Gagarin, Intrepid, Miranda, Norway, Nova, Reliant, Sabre, Sagan. It's debatable for several others. They also all have escape pods so it's not like the crew are consigned to death the moment the warp core hiccups.

In fact I'd argue that the reason secondary hulls began to house the warp core was less "to keep it away from the saucer" and simply "because it meant that it was closer to the nacelles, and freed up more space in the saucer for crew facilities". Neither of which is a fundamental requirement.

#3 In all of Star Trek, I have never heard of arboreal ops, what is that even supposed to be?

As I've already said, I was being facetious. It's obviously a joke relating to you being so hung up on cetacean ops. It was either go with this or talk about them rechristening the Voyager-A to be yet another Ent-erprise.

#5 There'd be very specific reason to put a forest on a Starship, not just a flippant "why not?" We know Starship life support systems, biological research labs, and recreational facilities do not require a forest to be onboard, so why on the Voyager-A? I think it's a reasonable question.

We know that the Constitution II-class and the Galaxy-class have internal arboretums as standard so clearly this is not that unusual, even for smaller and older ships. While life support, biological research labs, and recreational facilities do not require a forest, true, it may be desirable for certain mission profiles or specific crew activities – and as already mentioned, we know the Lamarr-class is a new experimental science ship, which means it's going to have unusual requirements or features compared to most starships. The Crossfield-class, the "new large experimental science ships" of their day, are shown to feature a huge "cultivation bay" for harvesting fungal spores.

Also – starship MSDs are full of things that turn out to not really be there, or that are represented in oddly prominent ways. The Enterprise-D doesn't really contain a giant rubber duck, a Porsche, a Douglas DC-3 plane, or a shuttlecraft designed to look like Snoopy. Some versions of the Sovereign-class MSD, including one shared by Rick Sternbach on his Facebook page as the "definitive" version, include a TARDIS – which would certainly go some way to addressing how to deal with it being so much smaller than a Galaxy-class.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

The Sovereign-class is almost 90% the volume of an Ambassador-class and still pretty damn big, being almost four times the size of an Intrepid and over eleven times larger than Constitution. We don't have many hard facts about the Lamarr-class but we know it has 29 decks to the Sovereign's 24 and may be slightly longer, likely giving it a larger overall volume. We also know it's a new, experimental science ship, which makes it more likely to have unusual features compared to a more conservative "standard" ship class like the Sovereign. A giant cetacean ops section attached to stellar cartography or advanced navigation and propulsion research, exactly as we see in Prodigy, makes sense in this context. The ship is optimised for its intended function; you might as well complain about why the Akira-class has so many photon torpedo launchers when other ships do just fine with far fewer.

You keep banging this drum. Why exactly does the warp core have to be kept away from the saucer section? It makes some sense in the days of the Constitution-class when warp cores were too large and complex to eject in an emergency and you had to get the crew to safety somehow, but by the mid-to-late 24th century ejectable cores are standard. It's not like the cores release dangerous radiation – we see people happily working alongside them day in day out with just a standard uniform. We've also seen a huge number of ships active in the 24th century that definitely have no separation capability: Akira, Centaur, Constellation, Danube, Defiant, Echelon, Freedom, Gagarin, Intrepid, Miranda, Norway, Nova, Reliant, Sabre, Sagan. It's debatable for several others. They also all have escape pods so it's not like the crew are consigned to death the moment the warp core hiccups.

In fact I'd argue that the reason secondary hulls began to house the warp core was less "to keep it away from the saucer" and simply "because it meant that it was closer to the nacelles, and freed up more space in the saucer for crew facilities". Neither of which is a fundamental requirement.

As I've already said, I was being facetious. It's obviously a joke relating to you being so hung up on cetacean ops. It was either go with this or talk about them rechristening the Voyager-A to be yet another Ent-erprise.

We know that the Constitution II-class and the Galaxy-class have internal arboretums as standard so clearly this is not that unusual, even for smaller and older ships. While life support, biological research labs, and recreational facilities do not require a forest, true, it may be desirable for certain mission profiles or specific crew activities – and as already mentioned, we know the Lamarr-class is a new experimental science ship, which means it's going to have unusual requirements or features compared to most starships. The Crossfield-class, the "new large experimental science ships" of their day, are shown to feature a huge "cultivation bay" for harvesting fungal spores.

Also – starship MSDs are full of things that turn out to not really be there, or that are represented in oddly prominent ways. The Enterprise-D doesn't really contain a giant rubber duck, a Porsche, a Douglas DC-3 plane, or a shuttlecraft designed to look like Snoopy. Some versions of the Sovereign-class MSD, including one shared by Rick Sternbach on his Facebook page as the "definitive" version, include a TARDIS – which would certainly go some way to addressing how to deal with it being so much smaller than a Galaxy-class.

#1 I'm pretty sure the Ent-E was bigger than the Excelsior, but smaller than Ambassador regarding internal volume. I do agree, Voyager-A size-wise is on par with the Enterprise-E. Why would I complain about the Akira-class? First, nothing to do with what we're talking about, and second, its additional weapons were external and did not take up much more internal space than would be standard for Starfleet.

#2 The original idea for the Enterprise wad for the bulk of the ship's residential and scientific spaces to be in the saucer, most of the engineering and industrial spaces to be in the engineering hull, and the warp nacelles projected away from the ship to protect the crew. This has been design lineage kept through most of Star Trek. There's really no point for the engineering hull to exist if you're putting the warp core in the saucer, just do something compact like Defiant, Miranda, or Akira-class at that point.

#3 I've never objected to arboretums. I never objected to Voyager-A having one. I asked why it is so big, spanning three decks to the point of being a small forest. Only two of the Crossfield-class ships had a spore drive. In "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry" we learn the Glenn was trashed from a Spore jump, the crew dead. To keep her out of Klingon hands, the ship was destroyed. Discovery was the only Crossfield-class ship with a spore drive from then on, so we can conclude the mushroom bay or whatever it was called as a modification, not a standard facillity.

#4 All of those things you listed about the Ent-D MSD were jokes not meant to be picked up by the camera. It's very different from the very massive oceanic ops facility.

 

[Macintosh]

#1 I'm pretty sure the Ent-E was bigger than the Excelsior, but smaller than Ambassador regarding internal volume. I do agree, Voyager-A size-wise is on par with the Enterprise-E.

A Sovereign-class has a volume of 2,429,000m³. An Excelsior-class has a volume of 873,000m³ – about a third. An Ambassador-class has a volume of 2,871,000m³. I don't have enough information to be able to accurately calculate the volume of a Lamarr-class but assuming she scales with the Sovereign – some sources suggest she's longer, and she's almost certainly taller – she might have a volume of up to 3,000,000m³. Again, plenty of space for a forest and a cetacean ops and a secret third shuttlebay.

Why would I complain about the Akira-class? First, nothing to do with what we're talking about, and second, its additional weapons were external and did not take up much more internal space than would be standard for Starfleet.

Stop being obtuse. It was an example of how a ship's form follows its function.

#2 The original idea for the Enterprise wad for the bulk of the ship's residential and scientific spaces to be in the saucer, most of the engineering and industrial spaces to be in the engineering hull, and the warp nacelles projected away from the ship to protect the crew. This has been design lineage kept through most of Star Trek. There's really no point for the engineering hull to exist if you're putting the warp core in the saucer, just do something compact like Defiant, Miranda, or Akira-class at that point.

Warp nacelles are warp cores are not the same thing; and we see plenty of compact ships, so clearly it's not required.

#3 I've never objected to arboretums. I never objected to Voyager-A having one. I asked why it is so big, spanning three decks to the point of being a small forest. Only two of the Crossfield-class ships had a spore drive. In "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry" we learn the Glenn was trashed from a Spore jump, the crew dead. To keep her out of Klingon hands, the ship was destroyed. Discovery was the only Crossfield-class ship with a spore drive from then on, so we can conclude the mushroom bay or whatever it was called as a modification, not a standard facillity.

And how do we know the same is not true of the Voyager-A? That it's a deliberate modification for some as-yet-unknown reason and not a standard facility?

#4 All of those things you listed about the Ent-D MSD were jokes not meant to be picked up by the camera. It's very different from the very massive oceanic ops facility.

And yet some of those jokes are clearly visible in some episodes. The MSD of the Voyager-A is no more definitive than the MSDs we've seen of other ships that don't always even get the hull geometry correct.

 

[Admiral Jean-Luc Picard]

Warp nacelles are warp cores are not the same thing; and we see plenty of compact ships, so clearly it's not required.

And how do we know the same is not true of the Voyager-A? That it's a deliberate modification for some as-yet-unknown reason and not a standard facility?

And yet some of those jokes are clearly visible in some episodes. The MSD of the Voyager-A is no more definitive than the MSDs we've seen of other ships that don't always even get the hull geometry correct.

#1 I said original design idea. I'm aware of ships such as the Defiant.
#2 The scientific advantage of a forest is... what, exactly?
#3 Which episodes?

 

[Macintosh]

#1 I said original design idea. I'm aware of ships such as the Defiant.

So what the damn hell are you arguing about? That you wouldn't have put the warp core there due to bad feng shui?

#2 The scientific advantage of a forest is... what, exactly?

Ask a botanist.

#3 Which episodes?

"Galaxy's Child" and "The Mind's Eye".

 

[F. King Daniel]

#2 The scientific advantage of a forest is... what, exactly?

Crew sanity, for starters. Why do you think we have parks in urban areas?