What's new - Jul 2001

We've overhauled many of the size comp images. The Saladin, Hermes, Ptolemy and Centaur all have CGI-style images now, and the Soyuz, Nebula prototype, SWAC Nebula. Olympic, Norway, Niagara, and Holoship all have better images. The Dauntless entry also gains a size comp image, and an image has gone up for the Jupiter station.

The low-information ship program (LISP! I have an acronym! :-) rolls on. Today we get full entries for the Raven, the Gage class (known to some as the Apollo) which went up on the sizecomp last week,  and the Sydney class.

A couple of dozen of the cast list entries have had episode and series data added. It's only a tiny proportion of the total, but at least I'm making the effort!

"Natural Law" and "Homestead" go up today. We're in the home straight!

In addition to the three new full entries, two more go up on the size comparison page today. The first is of a "Star Trek : Phase 2" model of a proposed USS Enterprise. This was used in the Wolf 359 graveyard scene as the USS Gage, and has gone up as the Gage class. Some sources call this the Apollo class, but the details of this are sketchy at best, and I tend to fall in line with the Encyclopedia as labelling the Vulcan ships used in Unification as Apollo class ships. Both this sizecomp and the one used for the Defender are the first such images I have created myself without kitbashing some other image.

I'm starting to do some of the lesser known classes, filling in the blanks as it were. I've long held of doing this because given the nature of the site I more or less have to have full specifications for all Starfleet ships, and this involves a whole lot of speculation when all you have to go on is a ship name or a fuzzy three pixel high image on a screen! Nevertheless, I've finally caved in on this.

So, the Challenger class size comparison image has been replaced with a far more accurate one, and has been expanded to a full entry. The Springfield class has also gained a full entry. Both of the size comparison images used on these ships are coutesy of Ex Astris Scientia. Additionally, I have added the "Defender" class. This is the class name I have chosen for the four nacelled study model built as a potential Excelsior and later used as a graveyard ship at Wolf 359. The class name is speculative... in fact the entire entry is pretty much speculative! Still, I think it's one of my better efforts, and I became quite enamoured of this class while writing it.

A biggie... a list of every cast member ever in all of Startrek! Stunt people, alien computer voices, the whole shebang - over 2,800 people! Alas, every silver lining... there is a downside. Most of the entries don't have episode or series references for them, so there are lots of people listed as playing stuff like "Tark", with no reference to who that might be. Still, I think this will be a useful resource for people who do know the character name and want to know who played him. I may make improvements to the list as time allows. Also, the sheer size of this one means there will likely be more than a few errors. Please report them to me so I can fix them!

A couple of dates for Voyager episode 'Friendship One' have gone up.

Entries have been added for DS9 episode 'The Visitor' and TOS episode 'Tomorrow is Yesterday'.

Yet more minor species go up today. We now have an entry for virtually every species that has been seen in TNG. We also have for just about all of Voyager up to season 6.

The Hirogen hunter ship has gone up to the other ships list.

Bussard Collectors and Plasma Venting have been added to the Warp Drive page. Also a new page on Parallel Dimensions has been added.

Another three episodes have been added today. This brings season seven up to episode 'Friendship One'.

Hope that makes up for some of the lack of updates recently!

I know the updates have been few and far between lately, real life stuff has been somewhat interfering with my free time. Hopefully things will go back to normal in a couple of months.

Well, the new Enterprise design is now out and it's an ever so slightly different Akira. To say that I'm disappointed by this is an understatement of epic proportions. My expectations for the new prequel series have never been terribly high, but I had been trying to work myself up into a positive mindset about it. The revelation that the show will have Klingons in it was a hell of a knock to that, but I had eventually managed to get myself into a position of accepting this. Then came the Akiraprise.

To my mind this ship shows a stunning lack of imagination on the part of the creators of the new show. They had an opportunity to show us a part of history, a stepping stone between the rocket-like Phoenix and the full Starships like the Daedalus and Constitution. Instead, they have taken a late 24th century ship, made a few minimal cosmetic modifications to it, and dumped it down in the middle of the 22nd century. The design jars badly with the Daedalus class which it predates by barely a couple of decades, if indeed it predates it at all.

I genuinely cannot understand why the creators have done this. Surely the whole point of doing a prequel series was to show us what the early years of space exploration are about? I can only guess that they either don't know or don't care about how the ship should have looked, but rather just wanted something that was 'cool' and so did a slightly modified version of a known fan favourite. But why bother doing a retro series only to ignore the retro aspect of it? Surely it would have been more sensible to set the series in the post-Voyager universe, where they could safely throw up a design as cool and sophisticated as they liked and have the fans cheer them on.

I've gone from trying to build optimism over dread to a point of near total despair regarding the new series. I have absolutely no confidence in those who are creating it and while it's still possible that something good will eventually struggle free from the shackles of a poor and creatively bankrupt concept, I am not holding my breath.

An online petition has already been set up to try and make Paramount change their minds about the ship. I urge all those who visit this site to go there and register a protest right now - it's probably too much to hope for that the design will be changed at this late stage, but if a sufficient number of fans make a stand here and now, then just maybe it will make them a little more reluctant to disregard the past they are stomping on in the future.

So please, please go and register your vote now by visiting this external link.