A quick analysis of the background ships from Star Trek: The Next Generation

 

   If you're like me than you're fascinated by background models and props. That is, models and props used in Film and Television. You might also ask, "What is a background model or prop?" Well, it is an item that was not given a close-up or if it was it was seen only briefly and from a distance. For example, the Navy ships used at the end of the film "The Abyss". Or the kitbashed Starships as seen in several episodes of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.  

U.S.S. Stargazer

   Let us start with the Constellation class U.S.S. Stargazer. The model having been featured in several episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation and featured originally as Captain Picard's first command. The registry (NCC-2893) and interior sets suggest that it is a ship of the late-23rd early 24th centuries. It seems to have been a tradition of that time to use ships for 100 or more years as we see ships of the Oberth, Miranda and Excelsior classes bolstering the Starfleet. Real world reason being that it was far cheaper to re-use models than to create new ones, still even after they had more modern ship models they continued to use the old Star Trek movie-era models. Funny enough the model built for the Stargazer was brand new and was created in place of using the Enterprise refit model for the episode "The Battle", hence the class name of Constellation.

One of the things I've noticed about the models built and modified for TNG, more often than not, featured strange dishes, antennae and protrusions. These features seem quite anachronistic for the era as we hadn't seen such things since the original Enterprise and her "Sensor"/ Deflector dish. Features which are more akin to things seen on Star Wars ships, they seem somewhat out of place on Star Trek ships. As a child I used to call the movie era and pre-TNG ships the "Junk" era of Star Trek as the ships seemed encrusted with greeblies, bits and bobs. Picards Stargazer and those of her class being the most obvious examples of such. What purpose did these things serve? Were they sensors as some on the production have speculated? Or were they instead Phaser cannons? That would seem to be an unpopular and indeed a very un- Trek like feature. One of the commonalities of the more 'greeblified' (Constellation, Miranda, Soyuz) ships is the distinct lack of a Deflector dish, did these things make up for a lack of that? .

Soyuz class U.S.S. Bozeman

My first impression of the Soyuz class is: It evokes the feeling of a WWII Destroyer or Battleship with it's many "sensor" cannons and blisters. It's registry also fits well with that theme (NCC-1941) It's clear quite a lot of work went into the conversion of the Miranda (Reliant) into the Soyuz (Bozeman). Shame we didn't see more of it, but the episode suggests that even by TNG standards the ship was old.  I wonder, were these ships a dubious flirtation with alternate technologies, technologies which clearly never really caught on since the only other ship we see with dishes and protrusions is the U.S.S. Saratoga seen in the pilot for Deep Space Nine, which by the way was never seen again, nor were any other ships like it.

Sensor protrusions on the U.S.S. Saratoga

On a special note, notice the details on this 'breakaway' model of the Saratoga for DS9's "The Emissary", it has decals or stickers representing the detail parts. Also notice the Enterprise refit warp nacelles mounted on a Reliant type ship! Pretty cool...

Clearly these ships and their strange features were one-offs created for production reasons and likely weren't meant to be analyzed. They were simply meant to 'flesh out' these background ships and to differentiate them even further from their on-screen counterpart.

- Spaced out blogger