The above is a remarkable re-creation of everything leading up to the famous Battle of Wolf 359, combining existing footage with a bunch of custom work. The creator is known for their VFX fan work using Trek CG models, including some previous samples from the battle. It's mushed together with assorted clips of characters in other media (bonus points to repurposing some Martok dialogue as from the captain of the Saratoga) plus a lot of AI-generated voiceover. This last part is the only component that really takes me out of the production, and I wish they'd recorded humans reading out that text.
JTVFX is one person and they'd probably didn't have the funds to pay for any extra actors. It's easier with each rewatch to listen to their voices.
All told, the work is pretty exhaustively researched, and includes stuff up to and including the recent addition of the USS Constance to the Wolf 359 fleet. There are also a lot of assumptions (i.e. the two Melbournes, Klingon warships en route, what ship Admiral Hanson was in, etc.) but they do make note of pretty much everything they assumed over what we "really" know about the battle from dialogue and BOBW I and II. It's really a remarkable work, and I look forward to the actual presentation of the battle.
They went into it in the Pinned Comment section the reasoning behind the decisions made in the creation of these, though no one seems to read them. Should see the person who in other comments just tells them to read the pinned comment and all their questions are actually answered.
This month for Part I of the Massacre, the trailer hinted at so much
Neat, the source of his "two Melbournes" theory is cited as the short story I co-wrote. He even uses the captain of the ship we established in that story!
I only got to read that once before it disappeared from my local library and never saw it again (might have been stolen or put out of circulation like most of the Star Trek novels). It's part of my headcanon the two
Melbournes theory and I think it's supported by a lot of others. And it makes sense really.
I agree that AI voice actors are somewhat distracting, I'm now picturing the Jouret IV colonists as bored Bynars or a couple of Echo pucks. Two Melbournes (or one Melbourne and a Roma with an old paint job!) is a fine idea! Now what is the "USS USS Bellerophon"?
Likely typo on their end.
I like that this version of Admiral Hanson decided to leave the saucer section of his starships behind. Maybe it adopted a new stardrive and the ship was reborn, or renamed like Enterprise would be over 30 years later (be "funny" if the new ship was the Syracuse and that was the saucer section that was lost later, leaving the damaged stardrive to be adopted by Enterprise).
Judging from the original reels, the saucer was going to come with the
Auriga (back then known as
Sojourner) but they clearly changed their mind and it would make sense.
Well, Hanson is on the Battle Bridge set, and the script describes it that way specifically and
there wasn't any redressing compared
to how the Enterprise's looked later in the episode, so it seems like a reasonable assumption that he was on a headless Galaxy.
Some arguments I saw on the comment feed was about that "Red Alert" in the background making it like an older ship -- and they kept pushing the "
Melbourne was the flagship" theory despite common sense being that Hanson was still alive later on enough despite
Excelsior-class
Melbourne being the first ship destroyed in combat. It probably wasn't helped but Shelby's solemn naming of the ship but it could mean anything since she would've known about Riker's offer of the ship (and it might've been the
Nebula-class
Melbourne she was referring to since
Excelsior-class
Melbourne's forward saucer section was annihilated and wouldn't have been as distinguishable as other
Excelsiors at Wolf 359 without it).
Why headless though? It's not unreasonable to believe Hansen would use the Battle Bridge as his own personal command center to manage fleet operations while the Main Bridge was used by the regular crew to operate the ship.
Refer to above.
Leaving the saucer behind makes more sense than "offloading nonessential personnel" at a Starbase to avoid a horrifying body-count a la the Odyssey in "The Jem Hadar."
I think if I recall the
Odyssey keeping its saucer was largely due to the loss of the model or just other things to do with the model in general. In universe, perhaps Captain Keogh preferred the phaser strips of the saucer section than the stardrive section's. He considered the Jem'Hadar rather concerning so didn't think the armament wasn't going to be enough. At least he evacuated the civilians and non-essential personnel to DS9, unlike
Saratoga's captain before Wolf 359 and Donald Varley aboard the
Yamato before taking his ship into the Neutral Zone.
I highly recommend you give this a read. They just released their “book” a few days ago. Pretty damn well written in my opinion.
I rather enjoyed it. It was an interesting take on the events before, during and after. Gave interesting explanations over why Starfleet didn't appear familiar with the Borg prior despite the El-Aurians and the Hansen family seemingly knowing about it. And it gave us an idea of why losing 39 vessels was a disaster for Starfleet (having less than 400 starships to defend the 8,000 light year expanse of the UFP, an unreasonable President and Council, forced to rely on 80-year-old
Excelsiors,
Mirandas
, Oberths and
Constellations with limited numbers of newer classes including the
Galaxy class, pushing the Klingons to do something, trying to end the Cardassian border war etc. etc.). Though I did prefer the 40 ships JTVFX selected to fill the gaps over some decisions made in the book but each to their own.
Andy has mentioned keeping up with the Trek books before, so he probably read The Sky’s the Limit organically before he started working on this (I don’t know the other co-author and can’t speak to his experience with the novelverse).
There are still a few Star Trek books I have yet to acquire for my personal collection, including the
First Contact novelisation since Memory-Beta indicates it as the source for
Reliant's presence and Lieutenant Eiger's first name of Inge (I prefer Alice from the junior novelisation) and the
Slings and Arrows anthology that expanded on Eiger, Paul Porter, Ensign Lynch, Lieutenant Hawk and Lieutenant Daniels prior to
First Contact. I don't think I want any Shatnerverse novels, aside from the first Academy novel. That fascinated me alot.
