SeaQuest Class

NOTE:  You can click on most pictures to get a larger view of them.

During my early days of kitbashing, I started to challenge myself.  Some of those challenges involved merging two different sci-fi genres together.  In some cases, they looked great.  In other cases, I had to get creative with the back-story in order to justify the ship's unique looks.

This model was one of those more challenging builds.

In Universe Story:

The USS Lafayette (NCC-1720) was a refit Constitution class that was presumed lost with no further information on her fate. 

In reality, she was investigating a strange spatial anomaly along with a Klingon K’Tinga class cruiser, the IKV QItI'nga.

Photo Credit: Memory Alpha

While they were studying the anomaly a strange vessel emerged and began firing a tachyon based canon at them. The QItI'nga was caught off guard and immediately was disabled and her warp core went critical. The Lafayette took heavy fire but managed to save half of the Klingon crew. Not knowing about warp core breeches, the assailant's ship drifted to close to the Klingon vessel as it exploded, thus taking heavy damage as well. The explosion also caused some sort of adverse effect to the anomaly and both vessels were sucked back into it and thrown across the universe. The surviving crews immediately called a cease fire as both vessels were now in serious condition.

The crew of this new vessel were from a race known as Gamilons and had come through the anomaly thinking that the Federation vessels were being the aggressors. The ships limped to the closest habitable planet and began to salvage whatever they could from both of the ships as well as resources from the planet. It took them ten years, but they were able to construct a new ship using merged technology from all three races. They were also able to construct an additional two warp nacelles from the materials that they found.

USS Seaquest (NX-666)

Seaquest Class

1:2500 Scale Bandai & AMT Kitbash

 

 

 

 

They discovered a living material on the planet that was stronger than the material on either of the original ships’ hulls and this material could withstand the ravages of space travel. They harvested enough of this material to cover the new ship. They later discovered that an added benefit of this new bio-skin was that it liked to feed off the ships shield energy matrix and thus was able to heal itself rather quickly, without the need for the crew to spacewalk and do the repairs themselves. 

 

NOTE: The blotches on the hull are in fact spots where the bio-skin has healed or is in the process of healing.

Since the material was originally oceanic, the new crew christened the new ship "The Seaquest".

Keeping with the “submarine” theme, and the fact that the Klingons and Gamilons are very warlike in nature, the ship was outfitted with 13 photon torpedo launchers.  she also packs a punch with 23 dual phaser emitters scattered across her body.

The three races put their heads together and were able to create a whole new drive system that operates much like a Quantum Slipstream Drive, hence the reason the deflector dish glows a different color than the traditional light blue.

  

Because the ship gained a larger crew quarters area from the addition of the Gamilon’s hull, the secondary/engineering section of the Constitution part of the ship was hollowed out more to make room for a larger hanger deck and support craft storage area.

 

The Seaquest eventually got her bearings and set a course for the Alpha Quadrant. By their best estimates, they will reach Federation space in about 90 years.

Real Universe Story:

Parts Used: I used an AMT Enterprise Refit as well as an extra pylon and nacelle set from another similar kit for the Trek parts. I also used a bunch of AMT Reliant parts and AMT Klingon K’Tinga parts that were sitting in my parts bin for other various parts of the ship. The main body is a recycled Bandai Deslock’s Command Cruiser from Space Battleship Yamato (Star Blazers here in the U.S.).

This may have been the first model build I shared on the Star Trek Modelers Group Facebook page. It certainly was my first original idea for mixing parts together to make a completely new design. This was a really fun ship to design and turned out better than I thought. And my kids and nephew thought it was pretty bad-ass. The paint job is blotchy as I was still learning a few tricks of the trade; however, given the back story for the ship, the blotchiness and uneven painting actually pays off. 

This ship’s looks were inspired by the TV series called “Seaquest DSV”. I was shooting to make something long and submarine like, yet alien looking like the Seaquest.

As I stated earlier, this was my first attempt at mixing two different sci-fi universes together to see what I could come up with.  It was also an experiemnt to better hone my kitbashing skills.

Unfortunately, I built her back in the day when I wasn't taking Work In Progress pictures so the entire build process has been lost in time.

I do remember that one of the challenges I came across while building her was that the impulse engine that I cut off from the saucer section seemed too small to push a vessel of this size. So I custom built one using the command cruiser’s SMITE pods and the top of a Reliant impulse engine.

As always, I hope you found this article useful and informative.  If you have any questions, comments or suggestions, please feel free to comment below.

So for now, "Live long and prosper!!!"



Additional Links To Photos Of My Collection:

The Model