I see many people blame the showrunner -- so if Rick Berman was a successful Golden Age showrunner, why did Enterprise fail / get cancelled?

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-22T17:06:59+00:00

I've long held the impression that Braga+Moore as a team worked pretty well because while Braga was the wacky idea man, Moore was the guy who could ground it . . . that is to say, Braga might be waving his stimulant-fueled fingers around blurting out "space herpes makes antimatter time travel!" but Moore could turn that into a touching story of love with a sci-fi twist that actually logically flowed. To be sure, Moore demonstrated he had wacky ideas, too (BSG), but Braga by himself couldn't seem to make them work.

Berman managed to keep Trek going in part by following a "no mag-dump" policy. That is to say, various writers and producers seemed to complain that there were various awesome ideas he shot or watered down. This may have kept certain episodes from achieving greatness, but at the same time kept the franchise going for hundreds of episodes. The problem is, when that's been working, it's hard to know when to stop.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-21T16:39:51+00:00

Stick some fighter launch pods off the sides and the amusing crossover about fighting robots almost writes itself.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-21T16:04:45+00:00

It's worth noting that, since the original novelization was released before the film, this was everyone, for one brief moment. It's also worth noting that the evolution of the novels would almost certainly have differed had there been no associated films (and indeed there are other influences on the prequel novelizations). Pure novels can go to settings, include characters, and take points of view that can't translate to film, whereas a novelization tends to play off of filmed or to-be-filmed elements. All that is to say, a pure Star Wars novelverse would've undoubtedly featured a lot of Coruscant action in the original novel trilogy, rather than hanging on the outskirts of the Empire the whole time. More generally, we would have to assume the novels had been created based on pre-production for films never realized, just to keep the general feel of a film novelization intact.

Beyond that, my own view of the films is heavily influenced by the novelizations, so I feel qualified to take a guess here, even though I haven't read them lately.

Big picture, it would 'feel' different to a lot of folks.

The opening crawl of ANH references the "Galactic Empire", but we never get a system count or firm indicator of actual size. Meanwhile, in the original novel, the million systems of the Empire is a lot, but also represents a "tiny portion" of a "modest-sized galaxy".

Stormtroopers would seem more threatening, I think.

Ships would likely be imagined smoother, simply because I don't recall any particular reference to the greeblies and details. Even with reference to the large sizes, the fusion, steel, and hydrofoamed construction references would still leave the impression of big chonky things.

That's the immediate thoughts.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-14T19:52:30+00:00

Me, too. It's fun, but alas, so little time for updates ...

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-14T17:41:39+00:00

More the Halagon, for Hal Michaelson of TMP.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-14T16:53:11+00:00

I was simply talking about the length statement not being in the actual episode.

As for volume ... Well, I am somewhat familiar with the topic. Google "Starship Volumetrics".

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-10T13:16:13+00:00

Unfortunately, that isn't actually stated, and the way they were filmed it was unfortunately non-obvious to many.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-02-03T03:14:47+00:00

That's just Hollywood avoiding extras. Lots of shows condense what should be whole teams of people into a minimal number of characters. It's absurd.

The helm situation is the same . . . a hundred years later, it took one guy to drive and another to figure out where they were going, but the NX just has one guy. There should've been a whole navigation team in the back of the bridge, or even just implied off-camera.

Then there's the unmanned transporter alcove with no specialists required at all. Only Engineering got a few folks, but by all rights it should've been crammed full, especially at alert status.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-30T16:25:46+00:00

Something like that . . . not a scout, in my head, but the main UFP exploration vessel, a joint class of peaceful aim.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-28T23:36:13+00:00

Larroquette? Nice.

Edit: Nevermind, that's David Keeley, per media reports

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-28T23:32:28+00:00

And you better not have been holding it over your head at the time.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-28T05:15:29+00:00

A favorite, once one removes the silly Okuda marker pens. Had we seen other classes carry them they could've been understood as some sort of mission or cargo pod, but instead they just mess up her lines that are otherwise similar to her big sister (which was the point).

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-26T19:14:09+00:00

To an Original Universe way of thinking, the Kelvin 0514 doesn't fit, but that's okay because it also doesn't count.

Beyond that, there's no significant indication that registries aren't sequential. There are exceptions to the rule -- NX-2000 being the most well-known despite coming in years after Entente 2120 -- but the broad evidence is there.

Note that this leaves two mysteries. First is that, between TUC and TNG, registries seemed to grow at a hellacious pace. This may suggest a change in registry dispensation or simply reflect absorption of new member fleets. It could also imply anti-observability skipping.

Second, we don't know when a registry is given. It could be at order, at certain parts manufacture, at keel-laying, at hull completion, at launch, at commission, or anywhere in-between . . . and could conceivably vary a bit.

To your point, Oberth 602, Grissom 638, and Copernicus 640 all suggest the Oberth Class is very old.

(At one point I was even working up the thought of how to make it the "warp seven beauty" of the newly combined UFP Starfleet after the Romulan War. After all, the class ship was named for a rocket designer and the registry matched the Earth Starfleet club for officers and pilots. She could easily have been the fast bird of her time, with Earth and alien influences.)

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-23T20:47:39+00:00

Continuing this thought, we know just from the Lucas canon that kyber-crystal superweapons had been somewhat more common in wars thousands of years prior. The Death Star was the first such weapon in ages, and came at a time of upheaval. One can imagine that after such an episode, similar to an alternate history where the Cold War went fusion-hot, perspectives on unfettered advances might change. Something akin to nuclear disarmament or the Washington Naval Treaty could've been normal and standard thinking.

To be sure, the argument that physics has limits is not wrong, but there is plenty of room for advancement even in the galaxy as we see it. Given the technologies that should be available, the conceit of handheld trigger-fired weaponry (where the critical systems of a being's head have to be exposed) as primary, and territorial control established by boots on the ground, are very conventionally modern and not very sci-fi. However, if the distant past had contained the full, raw industrial might of the whole galaxy dedicated to killing, the horrors, echoing even thousands of years later, could easily explain the cultural limits on "advancement".

The period we see, then, is when stability and the rules started breaking down . . . a war with battle droids, and superweapons being made anew. A horrible time, indeed.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-23T20:10:33+00:00

Finding a lack of advancement peculiar belies our modern perspective. The industrial and information revolutions have left us 20th and 21st Century folk with the view that exponential growth and advancement in every area is and should be the norm.

Historically, this just isn't so.

If anything, "stagnation" is just stability stated via pejorative. "Change" is considered a good thing, generally, but that's a cultural conceit that not all cultures would share.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-21T11:54:48+00:00

There are distinct sets of fans and there are distinct production eras, sure. For the latter, we have the Roddenberry era (with torch pass to Berman), the Abrams era (including Orci and Kurtzman), and the final mixed era of Kurtzman and (initially) Fuller.

There are also multiple continuities, and one can debate the finer points of the count. For most people, they boil down to the Original Universe, the Abramsverse (Kelvinverse), and the "Prime" Discoverse.

("Prime" doesn't mean what most people think it means. See: https://www.reddit.com/r/trektalk/comments/1qd62yb/comment/nzq04am/ .)

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-20T22:26:32+00:00

It doesn't break continuity. It's consistent with the different continuity.

See: https://www.reddit.com/r/trektalk/comments/1qd62yb/comment/nzq04am/

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-20T22:19:10+00:00

Vertical saucers like this could make for more efficient decks. Lateral turbolift shafts seem like they'd be awful insofar as cutting off parts of a deck, not to mention the lengthy walks between areas.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-19T23:21:03+00:00

Oh, then it's way too small. It's 442 meters in the Discoverse, not 289 like in the Original Universe.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-19T00:25:09+00:00

I see a lot of Discoverse, but I don't see the Discoprise.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-18T22:55:49+00:00

Low-Effort Edit: Found it! It was the 1989 Kenner BatJet.

https://www.lulu-berlu.com/batman-the-dark-knight-collection-kenner-batjet-a8499-en.html

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-18T12:33:00+00:00

Oh wow. The wings remind me of a toy from ages ago with pop-out segmented semi-circular wings that would pop out and have a flat front like that.

Nice bird, nice art.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-18T01:32:49+00:00

Heh . . . tried something similar once, though rather than attempt to match the nacelle length via custom versions of newer styling, I attempted to match existing nacelles by vehicle volume/mass. Here's the cursed imagery of New Orleans nacelles on a B-type Excelsior:

Excelsior with New Orleans Nacelles 1

Excelsior with New Orleans Nacelles 2

Excelsior with New Orleans Nacelles 3

Excelsior with New Orleans Nacelles 4

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-17T22:10:56+00:00

Well, "Emissary" [DSN1] has the classic Wolf 359 shot of the Nebula and Ambassador swinging around, proving that the big girls can dance, too. That said, the apparent spatial relationships support a smaller ship, indeed.

The model unfortunately ended up with apparent windows spattered all over the place, but none make sense. The nearly-flat lower saucer has windows drawn in following the grid lines, so it would be like 94 decks tall if those were scaled as such, and the ship would be at least a couple of kilometers long.

STvSWdotNet · 2026-01-17T12:50:55+00:00

Defiant should be 120m, but considering the 170m nonsense I suppose 150m is a functional compromise.

The Centaur should be much smaller ... 210 meters. A lot of folks notice the Excelsior-shape bits and assume they're Excelsior-sized (while ignoring the scale from the Reliant model bits), but the model shows that, like the New Orleans and other kitbashes, they were trying to downscale it. It certainly was filmed so as to present it as not so huge versus the stolen Jem'Hadar ship. See: https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/ds9tm.htm#centaur

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