Nimitz Class Carrier

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I am going to take a little side trip from my usual reviews to show off some of my personal work.  In this particular case, I want to show of a ship that I call the Nimitz Class Carrier.

I will talk more about how this design came to be later on in this article, but needless to say, this model has gone through some changes during it's lifespan.

Alternate Timeline Writers Are Asses

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I am going to share a post I did on FaceBook, however, since this blog is more for Trekies, I'm going to edit my original writing a bit.

Time to put on my Trekie Nerd Hat. 

I've been on the fence for a long time about this new alternate time line that JJ Abrams has created. I am still sliding more and more quickly into disliking where they are taking the franchise. And it's mostly due to bad writing and a lack of continuity to already established source materials.  Not to mention a complete lack of respect to scientific fact.

Star Trek IS Science Fiction.  Yes, I get this.  And Science Fiction IS make believe.  Yes, I get this too.  However, the originators of Star Trek always prided themselves on trying to make things believable.  They had scientists serving as advisers so that they could come up with believable make believe.  In fact, they were so particular about this sort of stuff that years and years later, real world devices are starting to emerge that are very similar to thier make believe counterparts.  

 

Star Trek has motivated real world individuals to create things based off of that make believe world.  Ask most scientists what motivated them to become scientists and a large portion of them will say "Star Trek".

So it is a real big middle finger to that concept of trying to stay believable when you start ignoring science facts so that you can do something cool in a movie.

Let us start with this concept of the Enterprise being able to go underwater as well as land on a planet.  I could quote website after website of physics professors and structural engineers who can disprove the possibility of either of these things happening.  

To make it simple, a vessel built for space is built to handle the vacuum of space, a negative pressure being exerted on the hull.  A vessel built for traversing the depths of the ocean, is built entirely different, so that it can withstand the extreme positive pressure being exerted on the hull.  

 

My second point to this is that the Enterprise is physically unable to land or even stay upright if it did land.  I have quite a few models of this ship.  Here is a picture showing the size comparison of all of the ships named Enterprise.  the bottom one is the one from Abram's Alternate Timeline.

Now, take a good look at all but the top ship.  You notice that big part in the front, it's called the saucer section.  That part of the ship is a big solid part of the ship.  It's heavier than the back part of the ship where the warp nacelles are.  Every model I have, when placed on a flat surface, ends up doing a nose dive and rests on that saucer section.  

I suppose if you put landing gear that extended out from the engineering hull towards the front of the ship you could compensate for the nose heavy ship, but then you now have to contend with the weight of that saucer section being supported by the thin neck of the ship.  I'll point out the movie "Titanic" where the ass end of the ship was sticking up in the air and then suddenly buckled and broke.  Same thing would happen here.

One last point about structural integrity.  Those warp nacelles that stick out on the back of the ships are pretty heavy themselves.  Go back and look at the comparison picture again.  Those support struts are not meant to support the weight of those things.  They are there to keep them attached to the ship and transfer power from the warp reactor out to the warp nacelles.  Put that ship in a positive gravity and you will once again have the "Titanic Effect"

If you have ever read anything about how and why the designers made them this way, you'll see that they realized that it was impossible for this style of ship to land on a planet.  Which is why they came up with transporters and shuttle craft.  

The Alternate Timeline Kirk should have lost his captaincy simply on the fact that he jeopardized his ship and crew by taking it down to the surface of a planet as well as submerging it under water.

And now, let us go on to what originally sparked this whole post.  I will first share what I originally wrote and then I will share my follow-up post as well.

ORIGINAL POST:

I've been doing some reading on the Narada which is the big bad ship from the 2009 movie. 

Part of my reading on this ship brought up some comic books that told some back/future history of how this ship was built. For those of you who don't understand what I mean by "back/future", the Narada went back in time from the distant future (a future that was past all the Next Generation movies and TV series), and changed the course of events that would have occurred in the Original TV series. I of course go and track down these comics and read that Data (who is now captain of the Enterprise E) from The Next Generation is partially involved with the story of this ship. 

HOLD THE PHONE MISTER!!! Data could not be the future captain on the Enterprise, because Data was killed in the movie titled "Nemesis". His brother B-4 is the only known surviving android at that point in time. 

Come on writers, at least know your source materials, especially if you want to write stories for an already well established fictional universe. And because this story is supposed to be a tie in to the 2009 movie, you should especially have your facts straight. This story had to be approved by the writers on the 2009 movie as it is an official prequel story. Therefore, the 2009 movie writers have yet again shit all over the Star Trek universe.

FOLLOW-UP POST:

OK, it helps to do some research myself and I retract my previous statement about the writer's needing to know thier source material. I did some follow-up reading on Data's brother B-4. 

The Memory-Alpha website is considered the Wikipedia of Star Trek. According to thier entry on B-4, he eventually is reprogrammed to become Data, in essence, resurrecting him like they did with Spock in the third Star Trek movie.

SOOOO, I humbly submit that it would be possible for the events in the comic book to actually happen and that I was wrong.

That being said, JJ Abrams is still an ass. 

About the Manufacturers

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Before we get into looking at the actual collection, let's do some deeper looking at the manufacturers that I've collected.

Memory Alpha Link

The main driving force in my collection is this company.  These are the guys that got me hooked on collecting small model starships.

"Hallmark has been known primarily as an American greeting card company and was founded in Kansas City, Missouri in 1910.

Since 1991, Hallmark has produced many licensed "Keepsake" Christmas ornaments based on Star Trek characters, ships, props, artwork, and scenes."

I find that thier ornaments are very well detailed and for the most part, thier choices in what to produce each year are pretty good.  Their move to having the ornaments be self-powered was a good one, in my opinion as now the internal lights on the models won't burn out from being on all the time.  As I've stated earlier, I have questioned some of thier choices in ships over the years (Reman Scorpian... BAH!!!  PHOOEY!!!) and really, why do they keep making new versions of the TOS Enterprise?

About My Collection - Addendum

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So this is where collectors might yell at me about how I've defiled certain "models".

Back in the early days of Hallmark's Star Trek ornaments, they had wires attached to each ship that you would then need to plug into a Christmas Tree light bulb socket in order to get it to light up.

When I decided to start displaying the ornaments in bookcases, those wires looked really dumb sticking off the ships, as well as they threw the ship off balance so that it would not stay in a nice position.

And so, I cut all the wires off.

There, I've said it, it's out in the open.  I have sinned against the collecting world.  And I don't care.

As you'll read in my first review though, that's not the only sin I've committed so stay tuned.

About My Collection

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Note: This display setup is constantly changing as I add new models and have to re-arrange to cut down on crowding.

Originally my collection fit entirely on that brown bookcase you see in the pictures above.  When I decided to expand the collection and fill in the missing items, it became painfully clear that I needed to expand the display area.  That was when I bought the Dark Chocolate colored bookcase, some fishing twine and a bunch of eye hooks.

My Star Trek: Enterprise Rant

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In my opinion, Star Trek: Enterprise (ENT) was given the shaft way to soon.  This series had the greatest potential.  They had great opportunities to tell some really cool stories and show us what space exploration was like in the "cowboy" days before Kirk and all the rules that captains had to follow.  This series was based in a time when we as a race were learning what the universe was really like.  And it was a time when we learned from our mistakes.  For the first two seasons, they suffered from what every other sci-fi show suffered from and that was rushing thier stories.  The show had 45 minutes to lead into a great story line, but as will always happen in these situations, you find that they have to rush the solution in the last 5 to 10 minutes of the show. I would like to smack the producers for Season 3 of the show. Their attempt to fix the quick rush solutions by turning the entire season into one long story arc was just plain stupid and was in my opinion the shot to the head that ultimately killed the show.  Season 4 is where this show finally shined and was sadly thier last season.  They got back to telling the grass root stories and did some wonderful tie ins to stories from TOS and beyond.  And they finally got the formula right so that instead of rushing the stories, they did them over 2 or or three episodes which for me was perfectly acceptable.  It's a shame they killed the show at this point.  On a side note, there is a campaign to resurrect the show through NetFlix or ABC directly.  It's called Star Trek Enterprise Season 5 - Netflix Campaign and they are doing it through FaceBook.  If you liked the show, go check it out.  They even have pictures of what the NX-01 would look like as it was do for a major refit.

About Me and This Blog

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I am a Trekie.  Plain and simple.  Although I love the series and everything about it, I do not dress the part.  I was introduced to Star Trek The Next Generation (TNG) as a kid, so yes, I am a child of the 80's.  My mother also introduced me to The Original Series (TOS) crew through the movies.  I will admit that while growing up, I did not get into any of the other series after that.  The TOS TV episodes seemed crappy and fake to me after having seen TNG and the movies.  Deep Space Nine (DS9) lost me after only two episodes as I felt they had deviated away from what Star Trek was about, which was exploration.  While Voyager (VOY) was on I was going through a weird time in my life and just never had the time to watch it, although I did manage to watch the series finale when it aired.  Enterprise (ENT) was really what got me back into the franchise as I had both the time and the interest in stories.

I really like star Trek because it shows what we as a human race are really capable of if we would set aside religious and political bullshit and put our heads together.  Everything tech wise in the show is possible from a scientific point of view.  Medical, computer, star ships, all of these innovations can be achieved one day if we worked together.  As a computer technician, I particularly am fond of the technical side of the show.  And I'm a huge fan of space ships.  Lets face it, the show has tons of those.