Onto the Next Phase - A Star Trek Production Timeline

[Mechadogzilla]

Chaos on the Bridge, Part III
The Endless Nightmare

Promotional Image of Mark Hamill as William Decker. I tried my best.​

Author’s Note

I’ll have another note at the end to go into it more in depth, but today (or maybe tomorrow on the last one, last minute rewrite) you guys are getting three updates. This is partly to make up for lost time, and partly because I wound up splitting one update into three, but didn’t think it would be fair to hold them back. This first one is production troubles, the second is Music / Models, and the third is the final, actual plot summary of the pilot Telefilm.

It has been mentioned before, but bears repeating, that work on Star Trek II was not an enjoyable experience for anyone involved. I’ve mentioned a few of these in passing before, but wanted to organize them all and explain them in depth. I struggled to do so in a few different styles for months now, so I am throwing in the towel. This is just a numbered list detailing the problems. And if I think they needed clarification I will explain where I believe they would come from.



Production troubles
In no particular order;

1. The writers room was in chaos the entire time, with script changes occurring while the cameras were rolling. The cast were occasionally forced to improvise lines and keep consistent characterization themselves. [1]

2. The two leading producers, Roddenberry and Justman, argued incessantly over minute differences. While friends, the strained production but that friendship to the test. Roddenberry was incredibly protective of ‘his’ brainchild, and began to see Justman as an unimaginative studio stooge who wanted to dilute the project to banality. Justman saw Roddenberry as an increasingly off-the-rails man with too much power whose ideas were misaligned with reality. [2]

3. Robert Justman saw the script editor Jon Povill as woefully unqualified and a Roddenberry yes man, and fought against his choices at every turn. This only made scripting harder and arguments worse. [3]

4. The studio heads, ever anxious about their ‘big-budget’ project turning into a flop, kept sticking their hands in. For example, the decision to change medical officer attire to white? That was ordered by a studiohead because he disliked that Spock and McCoy ‘looked too similar’ in a promotional image. Costume Designer William Theiss had to pull double time in the days before filming started to create the new costumes. [4]

5. The art department was forced to scrounge and scramble to put together decent looking sets, props, and costumes on the tight budget they were allocated. Roddenberry spent more of the budget on contracting expensive spaceship miniature work. Much of what was used was repurposed from older Paramount productions, but little actually survived of STI. [5] Roddenberry wound up handing them proportions of his own wealth to aid, and the actors agreed to tack a payment deferral until after release to put more money into production. [6]

6. Due to shoddy wiring, Chekov’s bridge console caught fire while filming. While no one was hurt, it is very obviously not lit-up throughout the film.

7. The producers had a strained relationship with the cast after they fought to bring back Leonard Nimoy. Though not as argumentative as the Justman-Roddenberry relationship, the coldness felt between the two lead to a hostile and uncomfortable workplace.

8. The cast had a strained relationship with themselves, or more accurately, William Shatner had a strained relationship with everyone else. Ever since Nimoy’s recasting, the rest of the group had pulled much closer together. Shatner already had an ego, but this threatened him. He saw the group banding together as a force able to challenge his own. His ego led to him attempting to steal lines, reframe shots with himself in the center, demand script changes to suit his own desires, and other power moves [7].

9. George Takei was the cast member who butted heads with Shatner the most. And if rumor is to be believed, at one point while location filming in the Vasquez National Park they got into a fistfight. [8]

10. Unable to properly cast them, both Decker and Ilia had to be written out of the pilot-movie.

11. Filming was on a relatively tight timetable. While not nearly as bad as an episode of the original Star Trek, it was far from ideal.



And despite all of that, a final product would be cobbled together. The Endless Voyage would first air on Wednesday August 27th, in the 9-11 time slot, before the fall season began. The Series itself would subsequently air on September 10th, 1975, on NBC, in the 9-10 timeslot [9]. Not exactly a primetime slot, but far better than the Friday-Night-Death-Slot Star Trek I had wound up in.

She followed the second season of Little House on the Prairie. LHP’s first season was a hit, being ranked 13th in the Nielsen ratings for the 1974-75 season. It was one of the highest rated NBC shows, though it targeted a different demographic. It was a decent lead-in. Star Trek II would compete against two detective shows. CBS’s Cannon and ABC’s Baretta.

The people who viewed The Endless Voyage would find a complete, polished, well put together science fiction film with impressive effects, action, and clear care put into it. Only those who followed the production could tell the behind-the-scenes problems.



Footnotes

[1] True of OTL TMP

[2] Ever since losing control of season III of TOS and then seeing the show be cancelled, Roddenberry had a tumultuous relationship with the franchise. His attitude got him kicked off of the TOS movie production, drove away much of the original TNG production staff, and then lead to a soft-coup by Rick Berman. I think it’s inevitable he causes similar problems here. He was so pugnacious the entirety of TNG was almost cancelled because he did not want to make a pilot longer than 45 minutes.

[3] I would argue this is true. Povill was just a 20 year old with no industry experience who aided Roddenberry in moving offices, became his friend, and got one of the most important roles in the production because of it.

[4] Based (loosely) on Studio meddling on Star Trek Voyager, in which they had to refilm huge chunks of the pilot because a studio exec didn’t like Kate Mulgrew’s haircut.

[5] True of TOS and pretty much all made-for-TV sci-fi of the era.

[6] Based on similar budgetary arrangements made on the criminally underfunded Star Trek VI.

[7] All true of TOS and the TOS films. Here, as the other cast members have more power as series regulars, and are tighter-knit, so it's a more even fight.

[8] Flatly denied by both parties. In truth, it was more of a yelling and shoving match that was settled by both of them being sent to their trailers for the day, but it’s a popular urban legend in the fandom.

[9] OTL, NBC picked up a new medical drama called ‘Doctor’s Hospital’ for this timeslot, but ITL they picked up Star Trek II instead. Doctor’s Hospital ran for only one season OTL, but only received a pilot ITTL.

 

[Mechadogzilla]

Chapter IX
Models and Music

Image of the Phase II Enterprise from Hero Collector, based on the Eaglemoss model


​

The final two bits of production I will go over are VFX and Music. These were handled by outside studios, away from the chaos of writing and filming. This meant they avoided the rockiness of Star Trek II’s development. Correlated or caused by this, the two were unanimously praised.

Roddenberry would contract Jerry Goldsmith to write the music for The Endless Voyage and Star Trek II. A decade prior, during pre-production on The Cage, Roddenberry approached Goldsmith to score the unsuccessful pilot. Goldsmith, having other commitments, recommended Alexander Courage. Courage and Goldsmith had collaborated before, and Courage would wind up composing the iconic theme of Star Trek I. This time he had no such requirements, and would work with Courage to score TEV and write the title theme of STII.



Studio Models and Visual Effects

The starship models and associated special effects were handled by Paramount’s subsidiary special effects company, the Future Generations Corporation, led by Douglas Trumbull. Trumbull had worked on 2001 A Space Odyssey, and was a pioneer in the industry. He is credited with a variety of innovations in the realm of special effects, and was one of the best in the business at the time. In another time, he would also work on Close Encounters of the Third Kind and Bladerunner.

In late 1974 one of Roddenberry’s first actions once the show was greenlit was to secure Trumbull’s corporation for The Endless Voyage and STII. Roddenberry desired high quality work, and FGC was among the best in the business. Because of these commitments, Trumbull politely turned down chances to work on Steven Spielberg’s Close Encounters and industry unknown George Lucas’s Star Wars. [1]

In a rare agreement between Roddenberry and Justman, there was an ethos of ‘reusability’ that ran through the Visual Effects. Special effects work is incredibly expensive, mishap-prone, time consuming, and was a messy aspect of STI’s production. So the producers agreed it would be easier to film as much of the visual effects as possible at the beginning, and recycle them as much as possible. This led to ‘future proofing’ by creating models that could be used in a variety of circumstances.

Douglas Trumbull, the employees of FGC, Joe Jennings, Michael Minor, (and some ‘consulting’ by Matt Jeffries) would create all of the models used in TEV and STII. Their personal style would directly define much of the later franchise. Jeffries created much of the concept art, design language, and helped create the 2-foot study model of the Enterprise. Jennings and Minor refined his designs, then Trumbull and FGC created the models and filmed them.

These represented some of the highest quality studio models used in science fiction at the time. This set the bar for science fiction film and television, a bar which would be raised again and again by a series of projects in the later half of the ‘70s.



The list of models includes:

Spoiler: ”Star Trek II Models”

Federation Vessels

The New Enterprise
Starship Class Heavy Cruiser - Ticonderoga type
The Hero ship of the series. Around 45 stock shots of the ship were filmed. An 8 foot, highly-detailed model was used for close ups, while a more maneuverable 4 foot model was used for distant shots. There are slight differences between the two that one can notice with a careful eye. For example, the Nacelle struts are thicker and less curved on the 4 foot model.


The Original Enterprise / The USS Hood
Starship Class Heavy Cruiser - Yorktown type
The gargantuan, clumsy, and mishap prone 11 foot original model of the STI Enterprise had been one of the only pieces to survive from the production of TOS. In 1973 The Smithsonian had inquired about acquiring it, but was politely declined by Paramount, as talks of a series revival were beginning [2]. To serve the plot of TEV, she was rebranded the USS Hood.


The Amazon Class Patrol Cruiser.
“In my head, this design was created shortly before the Enterprise refit. That’s why it is number 18... It’s just after the Starship class, number 17 [3]. We… We wanted to give some texture to the fleet. It’s sort of an in-between between the two Enterprises. Initially, it was just a drawing I made to help set the language of Starfleet design for the other people in the art department. As we were working we had some spare parts, so we were actually able to assemble it based on those.”
- Matt Jeffries, 1977 Convention Appearance

The Amazon Class is the second live action Starfleet design. It was built from the 2-foot study model of the Enterprise refit. It borrows the study model’s saucer, but uses STI style nacelles. These stick right from the stern of the saucer. A small STI ‘sensor dish’ (what we would call the deflector dish) sticks out from the front of the saucer, the ship has no engineering section. A gangly, misfit, kitbash of a ship, it is often described by both the production crew and fans as ‘cute in an ugly way’. [4]

Scale wise, the saucer’s windows and the ship’s drawings indicate it is around two-thirds the size of the Enterprise’s saucer. But without an Engineering section, she has far less internal space.


Shuttle Amstrong
K-Type Medium Shuttlecraft
Based on concept art by Matt Jeffries, the K-type Shuttlecraft serves as the primary shuttle in use by the Enterprise. A model only a few inches long foot was made to be scaled with the 4 foot Enterprise model. That was used for flying in and out of the Enterprise’s hanger. Then a larger, 2 foot model was used for close up shots. Like the Galileo before it, the shuttle is named after a famous person in the field of Astronomy, Armstrong.

Concept Art of the Phase II Shuttlecraft​

Courier Class Interstellar Transport
This design was a generic civilian transport. It is supposed to be dynamic enough to have a variety of functions, from dropping off ambassadors to use as a Starfleet transport to use by smugglers, but generally, a ship made to send distress calls to start an episode.

The actual design is functionally just a box with nacelles and a small bridge dome. It is four decks tall, and can dock with, but not fit inside, the Enterprise’s shuttle bay.

“The Courier, yeah, I remember. They wanted a ‘civilian transport’ but could not explain anything more, so we just made something simple and generic and hoped it would work.”
-Douglas Trumbull, 1990s TV interview.


Starfleet Space Station
The Starfleet space station that Appears in The Endless Voyage is shaped like a sideway dumbbell. Living space at the ‘top’ and ‘bottom’, a long, central tube connecting them, and a series of spokes sticking out from that tube to serve as docking ports. It has three sets of three spokes, and each has room to dock one Starship class ship, or




Romulan Vessels

The Aquila
Bird-of-War - Aquila type
The new Romulan Battleship. The primary antagonist ship of TEV. It is slightly superior to the Enterprise Refit. Stylistically the ship is somewhat similar to the STI Bird-of-Prey design, but is larger, and with more detail. Instead of being painted, the bird along the bottom is etched, and has a rainbow plumage. The Nacelle ‘wings’ are larger, more slopped, and curve downwards. The biggest change is that the ship has a large, beak-like prow that serves as the bridge.


Bird-of-Prey - Praetor Type
As the original Bird-of-Prey model was either lost or destroyed, a new, much simpler model was made to be placed as part of the Romulan flotilla in TEV, but this model is of poor quality as it is only intended to be viewed from a distance. Studio notes label it a ‘Praetor type’. Any of the original ideas that the ship was based on Starfleet technology were seemingly abandoned.


Avum Transport - Accipiter Type
A small transport for the Romulans, the model was a heavily kitbashed version of the K-type shuttlecraft. Repainted to resemble a bird, with the front of the shuttle as it's 'head'. Just like the K-type, she had her own actor-sized set, albeit it was only ½ scale, as it was only used from a distance.



Klingon Vessels

New Klingon Battlecruiser
The D9 Class Battlecruiser
The primary Klingon vessel for the show. In and out of universe, it is a simple improvement on the D7. There is more greebling and detail and the new model is sturdier. It is also about 20% larger, with the scale changed to accommodate. The markings along the hull were extended, and would form the basis for the Klingon script. We would see it as an in-between between the TOS D7 and the TMP D7. The model has a ‘sideways’, red, green blue Klingon Emblem that would form the basis for it’s appearance in Star Trek II. [5]

The OTL Phase II D7 Model. Image from Memory Alpha​

Old Klingon Battlecruiser
The D7 Class Support Cruiser.
The TOS D7 model survived TOS’s production as well, in the hands of Matt Jeffries. It was reused for Star Trek II now in a support role to the D9. The shot from below of a D9 -flanked on either side by D7s- hunting for the Enterprise is one of the more iconic shots of the series.

Music

The theme for both the film and series was recorded by Jerry Goldsmith, who created the OTL TMP/TNG theme. Alexander Courage assisted with arranging the themes. Goldsmith and Courage scored TEV in its entirety, though Courage would score the regular episodes. Along with Roddenberry’s ethos of reuse, the pair created a series of leitmotifs for the primary trio and the primary factions, to be reused as needed in the series. [6]

The main theme for the series was instantly iconic. A rising piece of brass told to Kirk’s monologue that beckons the viewer to adventure. [7] The Star Trek I theme was reused as closing credits for the series. The monologue received two minors edit. With the phrases 'It's Five-year mission' and 'Where no man has gone before' was replaced with 'It's New-Mission' and 'Where no one has gone before'.

Kirk received a brassy blare of trumpets titled ‘The Adventurer’. The heroic motif was designed to remind of Horatio Hornblower, Kirk’s literary inspiration. It even contained a bosun’s whistle. Spock was given ‘Ode to the logician’, an intellectual piece of strings. Doctor McCoy’s ‘Surgeon’s Song’ used woodwind instruments to remind us of his naturalistic and healing attitude.

‘The Klingon Battle theme’ was stylized like a real world military marching song. Drums, brass, along with ‘tribal’ elements. It is exactly as oppressive and loud as one would expect Klingon music to be. [8] Starfleet received a series of strings harkening back to the age of sail [9]. The Romulan motif is an eerie faux-Latin chanting layered with strings that grew louder and more discordant as it went. The strings in the piece served as a direct contrast to the ones found in Spock’s motif.

Goldsmith and Courage’s work established iconic and recognizable music for the franchise as a whole. Universally praised, their tunes would be reused again and again throughout the franchise.



Footnotes

[1] OTL, Trumbull worked on Close Encounters, and instead wound up turning down Star Wars and TMP. TMP was subsequently dolled out to a lesser-quality studio that ran over-budget and caused numerous problems, causing Trumbull to be hired to clean them up. He agreed to do so only if he could sever the ties between his company and Paramount, because he had mounting disagreements with them. None of this happened ITL.

[2] OTL they received both the Enterprise and D7 models, and flatly refused to give the first back for Phase II. Here with the Animated Series doing better, Roddenberry was able to petition Paramount to keep them ‘just in case’.

[3] Jeffries labeled the Enterprise 1701 because in his mind it was the first ship (01) of the seventeenth Starfleet design. With more of his influence, this numbering pattern sticks, but there are some oddly numbered outliers.

[4] Similar to OTL’s Nebula model and her relation to the Galaxy model.

[5] The modern, red-gold-black-white, upright Klingon emblem comes from TNG. This is how it was more commonly depicted at the time, though the design was not standardized.

[6] Not a music person, so this is about as good as I can do. Anyone with more knowledge than I can feel free to offer corrections to what I said. Without Berman’s utter hatred for any form of instrumentation and the combined efforts of Goldsmith and Courage, Star Trek develops some more iconic music ITL.

[7] Picture the TMP / TNG theme mixed with the TOS one, that’s what I imagine Phase II’s theme sounds like.

[8] Pretty much identical to the one found in TMP.

[9] OTL during TMP, the theme during the reintroduction of the Enterprise was a nautically inspired piece of strings. Director David Wise told Goldsmith he wanted a theme with more umph, and that’s the origin of the TMP theme, it was so good TNG reused it. ITL, that piece is not abandoned and becomes associated as the theme of Starfleet

 

[farmerted555]

Decker 30 years later: "If you strip away the myth and look at their deeds, the legacy of Starfleet is failure. Hypocrisy, hubris."

 

[Ogrebear]

Well The Endless Voyage sounds like a nightmare for everyone but the viewing audience here. If the numbers are high its the sort of thing execs will laugh about and producers let out a *phew* that it all somehow came together.

After this movie is made I can see Roddenberry being 'kicked upstairs' exactly like TMP.

Shatner needs to learn to be humble towards the other cast, this is a paying gig for all of them and he suffered post TOS with typecasting so he knows how much they all need it. Chill Bill.

While I no longer believe Roddenbury was 'the Great Bird of the Galaxy' and quite flawed, I do feel a lot of what happened on TNG regarding driving away the composer and the old crew of writers was not Roddenberry but his lawyer Leonard Maizlish who was responsible for it, esp given Roddenberry was ill a lot during this time. Yes, Roddenberry could be combative, esp as it became clear he was not getting almost anything other than Trek made, but the old crew where his friends, and he had invited them along, so I do not think he would have treated them as badly as Maizlish did.

 

[JamesHunter]

Looks good so far. Also no surprise the Shat is being his usual lovely self, I'm wondering if maybe the producers would have preferred to kick Kirk upstairs, make Shatner a recurring and put Spock in command?

Agree with @Ogrebear about the influence of Gene's lawyer but its also well known that Gene had long since gone badly off the rails (see TMP) so him causing trouble on his own really isn't surprising. Much like OTL I assume NBC Paramount will take the first chance they get to kick him out of the command chair and rejig the production.

 

[Ogrebear]

The music and effect work for this series seem like they will blow anything else on air in 1975 out of the water, and I bet they will stand against anything else for a good many years, even Star Wars in 77 (if it happens on time) given the people invovled. Trumbull and team will certainly keep costs down compared to OTL.

Do any of the ships here origin with the Animated series or vice versa?

Hopefully the needs of StarTrek II will help keep the Culver City 40 Acres filming location open: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RKO_Forty_Acres

 

[Ogrebear]

Looks good so far. Also no surprise the Shat is being his usual lovely self, I'm wondering if maybe the producers would have preferred to kick Kirk upstairs, make Shatner a recurring and put Spock in command?

Agree with @Ogrebear about the influence of Gene's lawyer but its also well known that Gene had long since gone badly off the rails (see TMP) so him causing trouble on his own really isn't surprising. Much like OTL I assume NBC Paramount will take the first chance they get to kick him out of the command chair and rejig the production.

It is true. Though I think 75 Gene and 85 Gene are quite different people, he will be a lot less ill and bitter for a start. Though that might lead him to be more combative over 'his baby' but I suspect he will still be pitching stuff while all the drama is going on so might even vanish from production during the season like he did on TOS.

 

[Mechadogzilla]

Well The Endless Voyage sounds like a nightmare for everyone but the viewing audience here. If the numbers are high its the sort of thing execs will laugh about and producers let out a *phew* that it all somehow came together.

After this movie is made I can see Roddenberry being 'kicked upstairs' exactly like TMP.

Shatner needs to learn to be humble towards the other cast, this is a paying gig for all of them and he suffered post TOS with typecasting so he knows how much they all need it. Chill Bill.

While I no longer believe Roddenbury was 'the Great Bird of the Galaxy' and quite flawed, I do feel a lot of what happened on TNG regarding driving away the composer and the old crew of writers was not Roddenberry but his lawyer Leonard Maizlish who was responsible for it, esp given Roddenberry was ill a lot during this time. Yes, Roddenberry could be combative, esp as it became clear he was not getting almost anything other than Trek made, but the old crew where his friends, and he had invited them along, so I do not think he would have treated them as badly as Maizlish did.

I probably should clarify this, Maizlish had been an assistant of Roddenberry since the TOS days. Much of the stuff he did on the set of TNG is happening here as well. Justman and Roddenberry were friends, yes, and OTL the one time Justman ever yelled at Roddenberry was about Maizlish. Here, Justman's anger at Maizlish's antics, (combined with lacking the other 3 members of the big 5 to help him) is what is testing their friendship.

Looks good so far. Also no surprise the Shat is being his usual lovely self, I'm wondering if maybe the producers would have preferred to kick Kirk upstairs, make Shatner a recurring and put Spock in command?

Agree with @Ogrebear about the influence of Gene's lawyer but its also well known that Gene had long since gone badly off the rails (see TMP) so him causing trouble on his own really isn't surprising. Much like OTL I assume NBC Paramount will take the first chance they get to kick him out of the command chair and rejig the production.

Location shooting is expensive, difficult to arrange, and an overall hassle. loosing a day of filming on set is bad enough. Loosing a day on location, because your lead has an overinflated self worth? That's the kind of thing that Execs are going to be talking about. STI is already underbudgeted, they don't have money to blow like this.

The music and effect work for this series seem like they will blow anything else on air in 1975 out of the water, and I bet they will stand against anything else for a good many years, even Star Wars in 77 (if it happens on time) given the people invovled. Trumbull and team will certainly keep costs down compared to OTL.

Do any of the ships here origin with the Animated series or vice versa?

Hopefully the needs of StarTrek II will help keep the Culver City 40 Acres filming location open: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RKO_Forty_Acres

As it currently stands, Roddenberry and the STII crew don't really have any contact with the Animated Series team, and vice versa. Idea sharing is extremely limited. As for the the filming location, I will have to look into that. Thank you.

 

[nick_crenshaw82]

I think you should use the same name of the webseries, Star Trek: New Voyages:

Star Trek: New Voyages - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

 

[Mechadogzilla]

I think you should use the same name of the webseries, Star Trek: New Voyages:

Star Trek: New Voyages - Wikipedia

en.wikipedia.org

It’s a nice title, but the plan OTL was to call the show ‘Star Trek II’’. And I’d not want to cause confusion nor take the name of an existing fanwork.


This does give me an opportunity to talk a bit about naming schemes. I’ve been trying to move away from TOS and Phase II, at least outside of footnotes and author’s notes. In general, though the terms exist ATL and are occasionally used, Star Trek I and Star Trek II are the far more common monikers.


And a small announcenent, I wasn’t really liking the draft I had of the next update, so I’m going to do a rewrite. It should come out by Sunday. To give a small tease, three previously unmentioned TOS alumni and one TAA alumn will have roles of various sizes in it. I’d be curious to see guesses.

 

[TheDimensionalWatcher]

Which earlier versions of the Enterprise were you talking about in the new shuttlecraft?

 

[wwbgdiaslt]

I did wonder if the new themetune might be akin to the end credits of he Discovery Season 2 finale that merged the Disco and TOS theme

 

[Ogrebear]

I did wonder if the new themetune might be akin to the end credits of he Discovery Season 2 finale that merged the Disco and TOS theme

Or the remake on the 2009 soundtrack?

 

[phx1138]

Kzinti

I understood the Caitians were created by Niven as Kzin expys.

Also, the overnight isn't a "night shift", it's a "watch" (navies don't have "shifts"), & it would be identified by hours. (As a title, it'd probably be "The Late Watch". "Night" aboard a starship is a bit artificial...)

 

[JamesHunter]

I understood the Caitians were created by Niven as Kzin expys.

No Niven was only involved with the Kzinti episode itself (and loaning them out permanently ITTL). M'Ress came first and her being a Romulan to the Kzinti's Vulcan's was invented OTL for Foster's novelisations.

 

[phx1138]

No Niven was only involved with the Kzinti episode itself (and loaning them out permanently ITTL). M'Ress came first and her being a Romulan to the Kzinti's Vulcan's was invented OTL for Foster's novelisations.

IIRC, Niven says different.

Enterprise Squared
Predestination

Why do I feel like I'm reading about "ST:V" repeats?

Heavy Lies the Head..., Part I

Guest starring Andy Robinson?

 

[Mechadogzilla]

I understood the Caitians were created by Niven as Kzin expys.

Also, the overnight isn't a "night shift", it's a "watch" (navies don't have "shifts"), & it would be identified by hours. (As a title, it'd probably be "The Late Watch". "Night" aboard a starship is a bit artificial...)

As far as what I’ve read, M’Ress and the Kzinti were separate ideas that later were merged. OTL this never went beyond novels, but ITTL it evolved more as the two got more screen time. If you have information that says otherwise I’d be happy to see it.

As for the shift, OTL’s TNG-on used the phrase ‘shift’. Starfleet isn’t a one-to-one comparison with the USN. She’s also being written by Hollywood writers (who in turn are being written by me), neither of whom served in the Navy. So even if it was supposed to be a one-to-one, mistakes like that did and would continue to happen. I’d also make the argument having dedicated ‘day’ and ‘night’ times on the ship would be pretty important to maintain stable psyches and keep up morale among the crew.

IIRC, Niven says different.

Why do I feel like I'm reading about "ST:V" repeats?

Guest starring Andy Robinson?

I don’t know what you mean, the guy who played Garak?

 

[phx1138]

I don’t know what you mean, the guy who played Garak?

Because that "TAA" episode is essentially "Distant Voices", which famously ends with Garak saying, "After all our lunches, you still don't trust me. There's hope for you yet, Doctor."

Father was captain of the USS Independence

Not Matt Decker?

Here Ilia is very similar to Counselor Troi

Troi, in "Farpoint", was closer to Tom Hagen than she was later, IMO, & that would have been better for her, & for the show. As it was, she came off as a very '80s & '90s pop culture add-on, & far less useful. Ilia could be a Protocol or JAG Officer, & do the consigliere job.

Even if Roddenberry bitched about 'getting a share' there existed a rich market for histories, technical plans, etc

Not to mention comics. If it was me, I'd be getting Marvel or DC, instead of Dell, to do a book, & I'd make it canon. That would allow for Caitians, Edoans, Andorians, & others the OTL franchise didn't (or couldn't) use much. I'd go broader than Enterprise, too, if the show's production team, & Paramount, would go for it: the TOS universe is pretty broad.

In fact, I'd seriously consider a comics universe of spin-offs, including JAG, Academy, & others. (Maybe Dell would be better-fitted for that. You'd need better artists & writers than Dell used.)

BTW, Mechadogzilla, Spock wasn't emotionless: he suppressed them, as you have Ilia doing.

We know that technology is moving slow because the Excelsior class—the best one, obviously—stuck around for at least a century. If a ship can be that easily refit and remain first or second rate for that long? Clearly no need for lots of classes. Even though they were second rate by TNG/DS9 we’re shown a top tier upgrade example in DS9. If that old a ship can be refit the TNG version of like four other classes of ships makes sense.

But yeah say pre-Constitution I could buy tons of short run classes

How much if it is (or could reasonably be explained by) the large number of UFP members, all with their own types? Are other yards building a standard UFP type? Also, it's entirely possible older ships are getting regular *FRAM updates, not unlike Enterprise in TMP: hulls could have 100yr or more life designed in, with the interiors, electronics, weapons, & such gutted & replaced on a semi-regular basis.

I do wonder how UFP got to registry numbers above 70000 between TOS & TNG.

Though it's probably past its sell-by date now, my $0.05 on Decker & Ilia: Gregory Harrison (butterflies him out of "Logan's Run", which can only help his career) & Barbara Carrera (who I really like, & who has an exotic look Ilia wants, & isn't so lilly-white, for a change). If I could get away with Marilyn Tokuda, I'd do it--but she hasn't started in the biz, yet, AFAICT.

The Andorian Concordat, a theocratic monarchy with a belligerent relationship with the Federation.

Not according to "Journey to Babel", which has Andorians as UFP members. (Why were they aboard, otherwise?)

entirely internally submerged in water

That's actually not necessary (contrary to "STTVH"): just turn off the artificial gravity & increase the humidity to 100%.

they crashed in Roswell

Are you sure it was Rigellians? 🙄

Elanore Sitwell

My first thought was she's related to a SHIELD* agent.

And just for a thought, if you need story ideas, what about sequels to "TOS" episodes? "A Private Little War" & "A Piece of the Action" could easily support one.

"TAA" going more heavily into "minor" species is a really, really good idea, IMO, & one the live-action "reboot" should follow.

 

[dsp19]

This story is great and some of the background is usable for my TOS surviving it’s 5 year mission story

 

[wwbgdiaslt]

My early theory on registration numbers was that the first two digits denoted the Class of the ship, and the next two the production unit within their class.

So, USS Enterprise, NCC 1701, was the first production model of the Constitution Class, the 17th Class of starship under the Naval Construction Classification.

USS Excelsior NX 2000 would be the first ship (the pathfinder, not tge first production model) of the Excelsior Class, the 20th class of Starship etc