JC's Trek Talk

Scale and Size: a Discussion There is quite a lot of debate and vitriol online of late regarding size and scale of starships in Star Trek.   In an attempt to quell the fan debate SNW season 3s "What Is Starfleet?" documentary establishes a length of 442.6 meters for the constitution class USS Enterprise.  This numbers fails for several reasons.  As pointed out by VenomGeekMedia on a recent video discussion about starship scale and perspective, this size fails for several reasons.  1: with a crew compliment of 203 (during Pikes time) or even 430 (in Kirk's time) the accepted 289m length (TOS era) or 305m (Movies refit) is plenty big enough for the crew.  Despite what J.J. Abrams and Alex Kurtzman may think, 289m is actually quite large.  To  be frank J.J. Abrams blatant upscaling of the Kelvin Enterprise to around 750 meters long simply doesn't work.  For one, the bridge, with a window viewscreen through which we can see from the outside peopl...

Star Trek Starship Creator (PC) 1998 Star Trek Starship Creator was developed by Imergy and published by Simon & Schuster Interactive in 1998 for Windows 95-XP and MacOS 7.5-9.  To call it a game is a bit of a stretch.  "Software toy" would be a better description.  As the name implies, it lets you create a starship (from one of 7 classes, the add-on pack released in 1999 adds 3 more classes) assign a crew from a list of characters from TOS,TNG, DS9, and Voyager and the movies and send the ship on pre-scripted missions.  Add-on pack also introduces the ability to send 2 ships on a mission simultaneously.  For those who are up for a bit of scripting, custom missions and crewmembers can be added.  The sequel, Starship Creator Warp II released in 2000 added some additional missions, a non federation ship class, and attempts to maked creating custom missions and custom crewmembers easier. Like Simon & Schuster's other trek offerings from the mid and lat...

Time for a little ranking fun.  Today, I’m ranking the Star Trek series finales.  Before anyone says anything, I am not counting Star Trek Prodigy 1: because I have not really watched the series, and 2: because there has been no official announcement that the series is ended.   Keep in mind that this is my ranking, you do not have to agree.  As with any ranking YMMV. From best to worst: 1. What You Leave Behind (DS9) A worthy ending for the series, wrapping up pretty much all of the remaining loose ends (granted DS9 had so many loose ends and so many story lines going that the had to start wrapping up things several episodes early).  “What You Leave Behind” is a satisfying end to the series, the Dominion War, and Sisko’s arc.  Definitely top of the list. 2. All Good Things (TNG) “All Good Things”.  Full disclaimer: I am a TNG fan first and foremost, so I am admittedly a bit biased, but I love this episode.  The only reason this isn’t at the t...

From Starfleet Historical Files Filed Stardate 57262.1, February 2380 Lieutenant Aurelan Brand, Starfleet Diplomatic Corps Captain Rylen Sh'ross, Professor Emeritus, Starfleet History, Starfleet Academy An In Depth Re-Examination of the Battle of Narendra III The Battle The battle of Narendra III.  An oft overlooked yet pivotal moment in the annals of Federation history.  The year was 2344, Stardate 21096.4.  A flight of 4 A-type Romulan warbirds crossed the border into Klingon space and attacked the Klingon colony on Narendra III.  Although uncorroborated, sources inside the Romulan Empire have since indicated that the attack was a rogue operation, ordered by the then recently-deposed Praetor, Dralath.  Responding to a distress call from the colony the Starship USS Enterprise NCC-1701-C diverted from its patrol near the Archer system and moved to defend the colony.  What happened next is unclear, as there are no first-hand accounts from the battle.  W...