Star Trek Series Design Project #4: Ship

[Tsukiyumi]

...Maybe have the ship be part of a taskforce. Riding shotgun for a group of explorers moving into an interesting looking star cluster.

Interesting. Maybe the escort for an exploratory fleet?

[BigJKU316]

Unless you desperately need to be on the other side of the galaxy why bother? The area of the galaxy that's actually been explored by Starfleet is incredibly small. Go to the Politics/Maps/Galactic page on DITL. See that little blue smear? That's the Federation. There is a massive amount of space nearby for things to happen in right near home. It's entirely possible to set the series on the frontier, have them establish that they're six months from Earth or more, maybe a month or more from the nearest starbase.

Maybe have the ship be part of a taskforce. Riding shotgun for a group of explorers moving into an interesting looking star cluster.

Ehh, I don't think they need to go to the other side of the galaxy, I just have no faith that the writers can really restrain themselves from going from this week we are the only ship in the sector type problem to the next week the Borg/Xindi/Breen/Insert Enemy of the Week are attacking Earth. I get why they do it, because that gives them a real sense of peril that you can't get defending the colony on Nalbandia IV, it just drives me nuts.

I think your frontier idea works well, with an Akira type or something that makes sense to have out there. A cruiser on the frontier makes a lot of sense and would be a great story I think. I also like the idea of a task force rather than just one ship. It lets you have multiple command type personalities and possibly see people move up the chain over time.

If it is a big, flagship of the fleet type, especially if it is a state of the art warship, I just can't see it getting that far from home absent a war to be fought or it being able to get back to the Federation core very quickly, unless you have built a ton of them.

[Mikey]

Unless you desperately need to be on the other side of the galaxy why bother? The area of the galaxy that's actually been explored by Starfleet is incredibly small. Go to the Politics/Maps/Galactic page on DITL. See that little blue smear? That's the Federation. There is a massive amount of space nearby for things to happen in right near home. It's entirely possible to set the series on the frontier, have them establish that they're six months from Earth or more, maybe a month or more from the nearest starbase.

Kind of what I was getting at. Without going into an explanation of why art doesn't exist^*, space is big enough for there to be unexplored systems/phenomena/whatever without having to go beyond the ken of "current" propulsion tech.

^* - standard cookie award applies.

[Tyyr]

Ehh, I don't think they need to go to the other side of the galaxy, I just have no faith that the writers can really restrain themselves from going from this week we are the only ship in the sector type problem to the next week the Borg/Xindi/Breen/Insert Enemy of the Week are attacking Earth. I get why they do it, because that gives them a real sense of peril that you can't get defending the colony on Nalbandia IV, it just drives me nuts.

That's the problem though. You don't have an issue with the technology, but bad writing. Instead of making up tech to excuse crappy writing just exercise some control over the writers.

[Mikey]

Exactly. And things like travel time would be so easy to get around.