What do Romulan ships of TOS Movie Era look like?

[Arpy]

In TOS we had the Raygun Gothic-looking Romulan Bird-of-Prey. By TNG we had the organic D'deridex Warbird.

That's a pretty big difference in designs, and you could put almost anything in between...

Some fans imagine a busy BoP Refit-like design esthetic, similar to the E-A and K't'inga Classes.

FASA gave us the Nova Class, choosing not to bridge the gap in an obvious way (to my eye, the elongated body echoes a bit the Early Romulan Ship from Star Trek Chronology). FASA also got rather flamboyant with the very avian Winged Defender Class from the same era.

Maybe remembering the presumed Romulan-Klingon Alliance from TOS, one comic book artist gave us the Warbird Moonhawk. It does begin to bridge the gap from the headless TOS BoP to the very headed D'deridex.

Others have yet other ideas.

Personally, I thought ships of TOS Movie Era would look like the Romulan BoP from ENT, but now maybe not.

EDIT: Also, in looking for pictures for this thread, I found this pretty wicked paint job on a TOS Romulan Bird-of-Prey -- black hull, with bright blood-green bird glowing underneath. If you can see this space predator...it's too late!

 

[t_smitts]

The Romulan BoP we saw in "Minefield" always rubbed me the wrong way, because it looked like it was off by about 150 years. It looked like an intermediate step between the BoP from "Balance of Terror" and the 24th century warbird, except it wasn't.

It might've fit in the late 23rd, early 24th century era, though it's hard to imagine it fitting in with the world Nicholas Meyer designed.

Another neat design I saw once was from a graphic novel about Sulu called "Test of Courage". It was basically a warbird but with the "head" of a D7, which was a interesting looking intermediate step as well.

 

[B.J.]

Heh. I asked this same question way back on the Flare forums. This design:

Some fans imagine a busy BoP Refit-like design esthetic, similar to the E-A and K't'inga Classes.

...was @Atolm's (aka Christopher D. Reyes) response to the question. (The links in the Flare thread don't work anymore, but it's the same one.) Personally, I think it fits the movie-era design aesthetic perfectly, especially if it was created at the same time as the K'tinga and refit E.

 

[drt]

Heh. I asked this same question way back on the Flare forums. This design:

...was @Atolm's (aka Christopher D. Reyes) response to the question. (The links in the Flare thread don't work anymore, but it's the same one.) Personally, I think it fits the movie-era design aesthetic perfectly, especially if it was created at the same time as the K'tinga and refit E.

Yeah, I'm going with the "BoP refit" as well. I especially like the way they incorporated the bird design on the underside by selectively coloring the specific panels needed to do so.

 

[Solariabsg25]

I think the FASA Winged Defender makes an excellent movie-era design, like a Klingon Bird-Of-Prey on steroids. Almost like they're saying to the Klingons "No, THIS is how you do it! WE'RE the masters of birds of prey!"

 

[The Old Mixer]

What became the Klingon Bird of Prey was originally intended as a stolen Romulan ship...so that's the closest we got to a movie-era Romulan design, though it's now indelibly associated with the Klingons through its overuse as their all-purpose ship.

 

[Scotchy]

I heard sometime back in the 90's that the TNG warbird design was supposed to be able function like an aircraft carrier. The idea was that the large empty space in the center of the design was for transporting a fleet of fighter ships. When the warbird came out of warp the fighters would fly out from the warbird in two squadrons, one to port and the other to starboard, to execute a pincer maneuver against an enemy. I suppose the warbird could have also carried other non-warp ships or even large cargo in that area as well, in theory. The supposed reason they never showed anything like this was budgetary limitations. While this sounded like an interesting idea at the time and it was a plausible explanation for the open space in the warbird design, to this day I never heard or read anything that would back up this claim. Has anyone else ever heard this theory, maybe it's mentioned in one of the novels?
http://www.lightningcoyote.com/old web portfolio/images/bof/Ships/rh1.jpg

 

[Timo]

The real reason for the looks of the Warbird? Andrew Probert originally wanted for the two nacelles to be mounted above and below the ship, not to the sides. To achieve this, he needed two pylons per nacelle for symmetry (as he was a stickler to the rule that the nacelles must "see" each other, even though nobody else in the Trek universe ever was, and thus couldn't use just one pylon in the middle of the nacelle, blocking the way). But TPTB didn't like his "vertical" design and asked for him to flip it to the "horizontal" one more familiar from preceding Trek. And the double pylons, now above and below, stayed.

Is there a functionality to this? Might be the empty space is for carrying something - but surely whatever is being carried should be fixed in place somehow, rather than left to rattle against each other in the empty volume? Fighters especially ought to be fixed to something, as it would be the task of the mothership to provide them with fuel and ammunition and to allow for the pilots to embark and disembark.

Another reason might be that Romulans want to make their ship as stealthy as possible, so even their warp field is internal to the ship! The energy supposedly flowing between the two warp nacelles is nicely masked by two broad wings or hulls here.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

Excellent question.

The Interplay video games Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy posited that it would just be a refit Bird of Prey with square TMP nacelles:

https://images-3.gog.com/99606722ed...a6296c65db5e5_product_card_screenshot_600.jpg

Thats a pretty plausible idea of what Romulan ships in TMP era look like.

 

[Kor]

I love the original design by Wah Chang... sleek and streamlined, without a bunch of junk on the exterior of the ship like we got in later decades of science fiction.

Kor

 

[Arpy]

I love the original design by Wah Chang... sleek and streamlined, without a bunch of junk on the exterior of the ship like we got in later decades of science fiction.

Kor

It'd be interesting to see other ships from that fleet and ships that came later following that esthetic. Might be a little difficult to pull off without it being too Flash Gordon-y, but Id like to see an artist pull it off.

 

[Shawnster]

[QUOTE="Timo, post: 11703033, member: 2277"
Is there a functionality to this? Might be the empty space is for carrying something - [/QUOTE]

Perhaps a result of their quantum singularity drive system? Maybe some sort of energy field is generated in the space between when the ship goes to warp. 23rd century Romulan vessels might have had more traditional matter/antimatter warp propulsion and didn't need to be designed as such.

Remember, the Romulans signed a treaty with the Klingons which allowed Romulans to use the Klingon D7 design. Maybe they bought the ships outright/traded or just used the design and built their own. In exchange, the Klingons got the Bird of Prey and cloaking device technology. At least, that's my head canon.

Perhaps this is the beginning of their experimentation with quantum singularity drives:

 

[Richard Baker]

I always liked this intermediate design-

 

[The Old Mixer]

In retrospect with Enterprise, the open-spaced design may be descended from that of the Vulcan ringships.

 

[matthunter]

In retrospect with Enterprise, the open-spaced design may be descended from that of the Vulcan ringships.

Not just Enterprise - the TNG story Unification had the Vulcan transport ships showing a similar design aesthetic.

http://vignette1.wikia.nocookie.net...ision/latest?cb=20150401132937&path-prefix=en

 

[Scotchy]

Andrew Probert originally wanted for the two nacelles to be mounted above and below the ship

Sounds a little like the USS Stargazer design....

http://www.neutralzone.de/database/Federation/Starfleet/Constellation_USS_Stargazer.jpg

Is there a functionality to this? Might be the empty space is for carrying something - but surely whatever is being carried should be fixed in place somehow, rather than left to rattle against each other in the empty volume? Fighters especially ought to be fixed to something, as it would be the task of the mothership to provide them with fuel and ammunition and to allow for the pilots to embark and disembark.

I thought about that, but smaller ships would be contained in the larger ship's warp field and inertial dampeners. I'm thinking pilots would be beamed in and out as needed. It's probable that each fighter would have a miniature engine core, so injecting fuel into them shouldn't be an issue. The blueprints for the Romulan scout vessel featured hydrogen collectors and singularity confinement, which suggests they were somewhat self-sufficient in that regard. Weapons like their disruptors wouldn't require ammunition, just energy. Microtorpedoes could be beamed on board as needed.
The advantage to this concept - if it even really ever was considered - would be similar to the Prometheus class vessels and their multi vector attack mode. Numerous, fast, small fighters can provide an edge in combat, as the Enterprise crew found out in Beyond.
It's kind of too bad they never went in that direction, it would've been cool to see a warbird de-cloak with two squadrons of fighters immediately fanning out around the Enterprise.

 

[The Old Mixer]

I heard sometime back in the 90's that the TNG warbird design was supposed to be able function like an aircraft carrier. The idea was that the large empty space in the center of the design was for transporting a fleet of fighter ships. When the warbird came out of warp the fighters would fly out from the warbird in two squadrons, one to port and the other to starboard, to execute a pincer maneuver against an enemy. I suppose the warbird could have also carried other non-warp ships or even large cargo in that area as well, in theory. The supposed reason they never showed anything like this was budgetary limitations. While this sounded like an interesting idea at the time and it was a plausible explanation for the open space in the warbird design, to this day I never heard or read anything that would back up this claim. Has anyone else ever heard this theory, maybe it's mentioned in one of the novels?
http://www.lightningcoyote.com/old web portfolio/images/bof/Ships/rh1.jpg

Excellent question.

The Interplay video games Starfleet Academy and Klingon Academy posited that it would just be a refit Bird of Prey with square TMP nacelles:

https://images-3.gog.com/99606722ed...a6296c65db5e5_product_card_screenshot_600.jpg

Thats a pretty plausible idea of what Romulan ships in TMP era look like.

Sounds a little like the USS Stargazer design....

http://www.neutralzone.de/database/Federation/Starfleet/Constellation_USS_Stargazer.jpg



I thought about that, but smaller ships would be contained in the larger ship's warp field and inertial dampeners. I'm thinking pilots would be beamed in and out as needed. It's probable that each fighter would have a miniature engine core, so injecting fuel into them shouldn't be an issue. The blueprints for the Romulan scout vessel featured hydrogen collectors and singularity confinement, which suggests they were somewhat self-sufficient in that regard. Weapons like their disruptors wouldn't require ammunition, just energy. Microtorpedoes could be beamed on board as needed.
The advantage to this concept - if it even really ever was considered - would be similar to the Prometheus class vessels and their multi vector attack mode. Numerous, fast, small fighters can provide an edge in combat, as the Enterprise crew found out in Beyond.
It's kind of too bad they never went in that direction, it would've been cool to see a warbird de-cloak with two squadrons of fighters immediately fanning out around the Enterprise.

The images in these posts appeared to be hotlinked from non-image-hosting sites, so I've converted them to links. Please only post pictures from an image-hosting site like Photobucket, to avoid stealing other sites' bandwidth.

Thanks.

 

[B.J.]

Sounds a little like the USS Stargazer design....

http://www.neutralzone.de/database/Federation/Starfleet/Constellation_USS_Stargazer.jpg

Eh, not quite the same. See the sketches in the "Design" section of this article: http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/D'deridex_class_model

 

[Griffeytrek]

Sounds a little like the USS Stargazer design....

http://www.neutralzone.de/database/Federation/Starfleet/Constellation_USS_Stargazer.jpg
.

The Stargazer was a design that wildly violated Proberts early rules.
- Two Nacelles. Or at a minimum Nacelles must be paired and balanced.

And his big one

- Nacelles must have a clear line of sight to each other. There must be nothing but open space between the two nacelles. This is why they are always on pylons out above or below the ship. Nothing can be blocking the los between them.

Needless to say later designers abandoned Proberts rules once they started kit bashing new ships together.

 

[Albertese]

The Stargazer was a design that wildly violated Proberts early rules.
- Two Nacelles. Or at a minimum Nacelles must be paired and balanced.

And his big one

- Nacelles must have a clear line of sight to each other. There must be nothing but open space between the two nacelles. This is why they are always on pylons out above or below the ship. Nothing can be blocking the los between them.

Needless to say later designers abandoned Proberts rules once they started kit bashing new ships together.

The Stargazer DOES comply with these rules. The nacelles are paired and there is clear LOS between the pairs. The trick is you have to realize that the nacelles are rotated 90 degrees around from normal. So the blue/black grills are facing each other top-to-bottom. Each pair of engines also has it's own impulse engine hardware (also rotated 90 degrees) between each pylon. So, the pairs are not a top pair and bottom pair, but rather a port pair and a starboard pair.

The only dodgy detail regarding this one is the lack of an obvious deflector dish, but given a similar lack in plenty of other canon ships (Reliant to name the first obvious one) it's in good company.

--Alex