Well, using the examples I originally posted, the Ambassador Class vessel would be the diplomatic and executive ship [Kirk], the Nebula would be the science and exploration ship [Spock], and the Defiant would be the ship handling most of the conflict [Not McCoy]. There is some differences in ship design and that would probably be reflected in the rosters of each ship.
Imagine the TNG crew on the Ambassador, the DS9 crew on the Defiant, and a ship full of Spocks or Datas on the Nebula and you get an idea of what could be done with them.
A ship full of Spocks or Datas is exactly what should not be done, in my opinion; from a storytelling standpoint, there wouldn’t be much there to tell. There are more ways to be forward-looking and gather information than to be emotionless robots.
For instance, such a ship might have linguists or xenologists (as from Enterprise but not as lame) and brilliantly mad computer technicians like O’Brien who could cobble together two disparate technologies and make them work (fitting their Alpha quadrant data input line to some Gamma Quadrant output conduit). It might have exobiologists and a very diverse crew, for maximum understanding and appreciation of the new perspectives they’d run across. You might have someone along the lines of a Counselor Troi (but again, not as lame) who can communicate with species they encounter who defy their attempts at conventional translation. There might even be a Worf-like officer there (maybe a Romulan?), one who understands combat and, importantly, when not to get into it.
From the classes of ships you have described, it seems as if two perform essentially the same story function: both can fight, but one can fight and look good doing it. How can they be made sufficiently different so their story functions don’t overlap?
The “ship full of Spocks and Datas” was hyperbole meant to get the point across that the Nebula would be the specialist ship, not an actual suggestion for how to staff it.
As for combat, none of the ships are particularly weak but only the Defiant is exceptionally strong. To put it in naval terms, imagine the Ambassador as an aircraft carrier, a strong ship that is still pretty vulnerable without its task force, and the Defiant as its battleship escort. The Nebula, I guess, would be a cruiser or destroyer.
Then I guess I’m back to my original question. What artificial limitations can be put on the Defiant and Ambassador class ships that make them each more unique in the role they play?
Setting aside for the moment that any ship could potentially be the ideal “first contact” ship depending on what race they’re encountering, the Defiant class seems more like a sidekick ship than an individual participant.
Ah well, it’s 1am and I’m out of ideas for the night. My Kirk-Spock-McCoy ship triumvirate idea might not last until the afternoon when I can post again. I’ll leave it here for now.
Again, the Defiant is the only really strong ship there. ditl.org (a Trek tech site) gives it a strength index of 1 551 (the Galaxy, which is the baseline, is 1 000) whereas the Ambassador is measly 723 and the Nebula is only slightly better at 841. Even combined, they just barely beat out a Defiant in overall strength and would probably still lose a direct battle. Those things were designed specifically to fight the Borg.
…which does drive the point home that it’s more of a sidekick ship but that’s to be expected from what amounts to an overpowered gunboat. It’s the really pissed off Worf [Security/Gold] to the Ambassador’s Picard [Command/Wine] and the Nebula’s Data [Science/Should be Cerulean but isn’t].
If the expedition is one of diplomacy, exploration, and first contact, what philosophical problems would exist in presenting yourself to new, unknown cultures when one of your ships is an attack dog? (Admittedly, there would be races such as the Klingons, who wouldn’t respect an expedition without an attack dog. I’m just trying to consider the story possibilities of a whole ship based on the idea of Worf. Would this be the ship that always gets beat up in combat to prove how powerful the enemies are? Would the “Worf Ship” be the one always recommending inopportune battle and prudent paranoia? Would it grow a long ponytail?) Maybe that ship should be both the attack dog and a faithful companion, depending on the situation…
In the Kirk/Spock/McCoy model, Spock was entirely about dispassionate science and learning, McCoy a hot-blooded human physician with empathy and emotion. Kirk had one on each shoulder whispering in his ear, and he had to find a balance between those two impulses.
Frankly, if a Defiant-class ship were the third ship in an expedition to establish ties in a new quadrant, it would make the most sense if it were captained by someone as level-headed as a Picard or a Sisko, but staffed with people who knew how to make the ship’s weaponry kick butt. That ship isn’t there to conquer but to defend and there wouldn’t be room in the expedition for a captain who had to be kept on a short leash. Maybe it would be possible for a Defiant vessel to be the McCoy ship, defensive of humanity and protective of its fellows, if staffed properly. (Staffing an offensive ship with a defensive captain is a good artificial limitation that gives the ship new character.)
Ah well. We’ll see what the Executive Producer says in the morning. This could all be hot air. (Or maybe some kind of gaseous anomaly.)
I didn’t intend to paint the Defiant as an **attack **dog; its inclusion in my proposed group is that of a **guard **dog and your description of it as “defensive of humanity and protective of its fellows” is exactly what I was trying to accomplish. The best defense is a good offense and so on and so forth.
What if one of the ships was a new, radical departure from the old prime directive days? One of the ships is a kind of modified freighter whose job is to pick up one or two volunteer members of each species for a 5 year cruise around the galaxy as a way to spread science and understanding. After which they’d bring them back to their home planet. So you’d have engineers designing envirnments and cabins for all these new aliens and lots of interaction between Federation and their new ambassadors. Lots of potential for some really odd critters walking around the cafeteria and learning about the others. Plus, if someone caught on you could write more stories around them and ignore those who aren’t that interesting.
While I’m still fond of the three ship model, it may be too unwieldy for our purposes and this is a most excellent idea.
Not exactly the Peace Corps, but certainly designed to build understanding and learning among species.
Some other thoughts that occurred to me:
1.) The Federation is NOT opening up the Gamma Quadrant to settlements yet.
2.) They are allowing allies and (for some unamed accord) the Romulans access for exploration, so they are there, not as allies, but not specifically as enemies.
3.) There should be equal or at least significant representation of all federation species on this ship, with room to bring more.
4.) Ambassadors should be left on each world that agrees to enter into talks with the Federation.
5.) NO TIME TRAVELLING STORIES
6.) I’m going to second the Medusan in some type of artifical body (hey there goes our FX compositing budget) because it is simply one of the coolest postulations concerning Trek I’ve heard in a while.
7.) NO TIME TRAVELLING STORIES
We need to discuss this ship seriously though, because it should be capable of defending itself.
Things I don’t want to see (or Trek Cliche’s that need to be put to sleep):
1.) NO TIME TRAVELLING STORIES
2.) Constantly encountering technology that negates our technology
3.) Prime Directive Driven stories
Feel free to continue adding to this – the idea is pretty fresh so we want to be certain up front what we’ve seen and can do without.
Another idea, as we iron out characters and stories, I suggest the idea of a seasonal story arc that ties everything together – I find it more satisfying than story story story story story.
However, having at leat one ship for the ambassadors and another for Guard duty helps ensure the ambassadors’ safety. The other ship can go to the new planets while still ensuring the security of the Embassy ship.
Also, I think some of the new aliens encountered should be from much more less advanced civilizations. Imagine if we’d been approached by Starfleet back in 1879 or 1960. One or more of the others could be from a more advanced civilization who agree to join the trip in order to study us.
I see this being done because the current administration of Starfleet has come to question the necessity of the original Prime Directive and so the decide to do something different in this quadrant. They don’t give away the technology they have, but they don’t try to hide it either. No more beaming down to planets wearing Gestapo uniforms.
You could have all sorts of worldviews, religious beliefs, attitudes.
Hello, fairly new here, big Star Trek fan. This idea of a ship cruising around, picing people from varius encountered races, and teaching them is excellent. What we keep this idea, and the “fleet of 3-5” ships idea?
What if this group that’s going around isn’t Federation, or Romulan, or even associated with the major political organizations at all? What if it’s a group of like minded scientists, teachers, explorers and pilots who want to spread knowledge around as much as possible, to create a pluraistic galaxy, where big dogs like the Dominion and The Federation cannot control the fate of untold trillions?
Let’s call them “The Golden Path”, since Frank Herbert codified that idea first, IIRC.
If it were a real television show, or even a real project to write stories in a shared story universe, I can think of several immediate drawbacks.
Continuity would be extremely painful to establish and maintain as it would be essentially impossible to write more than one story concurrently without tremendous pre-planning.
Forehead of the week syndrome would be rampant. It would be too easy to create stories with the general plot of, "This week we go to planet ______ and meet the ______ians, who are characterized by _____, ____, and __ __. This causes problems when ________________________, but the ______ian solves it at the end by _____, ____, and __ __.
The feeling of trial and error as novelty one-off specialized characters are abandoned (like Troi) and persistent, powerful, generalized characters get all the attention (think Data). It isn’t inherently bad that weak characters should go away, but there should be more incentive not to create them in the first place. A real TV show wouldn’t count on viewers to be patient and wait for the dumb characters to go away.
“We don’t talk about it to outsiders.” A proliferation of unknown aliens makes it all the more tempting to retro-fit characters with (ahem) second eyelids or redundant brain stems whenever it’s convenient. It always bugs me when the writers crowbar some convenient interalien feud we’ve never heard of, some alien anatomy that’d never been discussed, or some complicated death ritual they had done for thousands of years since Season 4, but hadn’t done in Season 3.
All of the above objections can be overcome with sufficiently good writing, enough advance planning, and time. I’m jus’ sayin’, is all, not that the three-ship problem doesn’t have its own challenges.
In that case, I sugest that at least 2 definate class ships be available to protect a small fleet. Defiants aren’t really that big, more like heavy gunboats or frigates, but 2 would allow them good coverage over a small fleet.
My problem with using a single heavily armed ship to protect several lightly armed ships is that if it came down to a battle or an ambush, it wouldn’t be hard to draw the heavily armed ship away with a small attack force while another force goes after the rest of the fleet.
Hey, sorry about seemingly ignoring some pervious posts there. I took a long time to type a reply, and didn’t realize it had gone on. I’ll lurk for now.
The trouble with the refugee/hunter/hunter story arc is that it’s too limiting. You can’t have the hunters chasing the refugees constantly, never getting nearer, never getting farther. I’ll give you one season to wrap up the story arc!
The other trouble is that there’s no real incentive for Maqui refugees to explore. What exactly are they exploring for? Who are they going to report back to? Are they ever going home? You can have a series based on a ship of wanderers…but the goals are a little thin. The original Maqui were colonists who found themselves under Cardassian rule. Are they trying to set up a new colony? They’ve already lost their original homes, if they wanted a new home they could just settle on any other planet in the Federation, or explore until they find a suitable world. Almost uninhabited planets are a dime a dozen in Trek.
What few survivors exist don’t have the resources to colonize. I’d make them still fugitives in the Federation. They’d live on the edge of legality, an interesting concept where the Feds “see paradise” as Sisko said. There would paper pushing Captains like the Excelsior-“How can you have a red alert in space dock” guy who would hassle them.
