#farragut

[images © CBS/Paramount, Ex Astris Scientia, Eaglemoss Ltd., Star Trek Shipyards, Star Trek Timelines, probably others]

La Sirena (Kaplan F17 speed freighter)

La Sirena is a whole different shape than normal ships because we’re looking at a freighter instead of a big starship, but she’s the hero ship of the show, so we’re covering her! The red color and white stripes are nice. She looks a little like a cricket, with wings and antennae that swoop back very efficiently. If not for the smaller size, we could see this ship in Star Wars. Mostly, it’s clear by her looks that she’s utilitarian but still has that need for speed.

USS Nightingale (Wallenberg class)

We see some more nice colors, this time in nicely complementary turquoise and orange, in the fleet of Wallenburgs we see evacuating Romulus. Their compact, LEGO-like structure makes them solid little things, which makes sense because they were meant to tug other vessels or cargo containers. We also see two slight variants in the design (one a little bigger than the other), which is always good for variety’s sake.

USS Zheng He (Inquiry class)

We see roughly one million of these things at the end of season one Picard, though purportedly there are like three slight variations in the design. Collect them all! When you think about where the Federation is at (post Borg attacks, post Dominion War), it would make sense to just crank out the same ship on an assembly line. Eagle-eyed fans may see something like these oyster shells with nacelles in the Star Trek Online MMORPG game, though we must admit that those pylons that angle forward like a turkey aren’t the prettiest things.

USS Stargazer (Sagan class)

Somehow we have a new Stargazer just to be confusing. Like the old Stargazer, it’s got the four-nacelle look. It’s like someone made a Constellation class ship but with the Sovereign class aesthetic, so that’s kinda interesting. We suspect it was designed to look like it could be a kitbash, except that it’s all CGI new. I’m left thinking this was all just a nod to the fans, which I could go either way on.

USS Cerritos (California class)

Speaking of ships that are all CGI, let’s look at some more animation! The California class seems unnecessarily huge for its role, at least to me. It’s over 100m longer than a Sovereign class ship, and the biggest hero ship of a show so far, mostly thanks to it’s incredibly long pencap nacelles. Overall, it kinda looks like a cartoon scooter. It’s fine; I’m not gaga over it or anything. But really, what’s the in-universe reason why it’s so big?

USS Titan (Luna class)

Riker gets a leg up every so often in Lower Decks, and we finally get to see the canonical design of the Titan that he’s at the helm of in a bunch of novels. It’s a little like the Voyager and the Reliant had a baby. It’s got that crow’s nest section and underslung nacelles of a Miranda class, while having the sleek, futuristic look of any of the more recent ship designs we’ve seen. We’re digging it.

USS Vancouver (Parliament class)

I may have misspoke on the podcast about which ship on Lower Decks this one was because all the CGI kinda runs together for me. This is the one Tendi and Rutherford are enamored with in “Cupid’s Errant Arrow.” Tendi calls it “the greatest ship I’ve ever seen,” but I’ve seen better (just keep reading this list for one!). We find the Parliament class to mainly be a trimmed-down Nebula class without the table on top. Like California class, it’s also needlessly huge, with the biggest saucer section in Starfleet. For reasons!

USS Archimedes (Obena class)

Sigh. Sonya Gomez’s little ship is literally just an Excelsior class with a little extra stuff it didn’t need. Like we said about the Enterprise-B: you messed up an already perfect ship when you didn’t need to. We’re a bit disappointed in how the Lower Decks designers updated one of our favorite designs, chunking up some of the smooth lines with rough edges. Our beautiful luxury cruise liner now looks more like the rows of balconies on an apartment building, and we’re pretty displeased.

USS Protostar (Protostar type)

Here’s the good news! We’re big fans of Prodigy on this podcast, and also big fans of its beauty queen of a ship, the Protostar. It’s got a really sleek, spade-like shape to it and it just looks so smooth and shiny like someone’s been polishing it incessantly for years. The bussard collectors are just flat disks, which is new. The deflector dish just looks like a strip, like on the Defiant. It’s a smiley, happy little corvette of a ship and we’re into it!

USS Archer

These next ones are the newest ships on the block, so bear with the relatively few screengrabs from Strange New Worlds that are available since there’s no model kit to refer to for these ones. We get mere glimpses of the Archer in episode 1, and we can tell that they went with the one-nacelle style of something like the Kelvin, but it’s unclear just how well-attached that neck is based on the couple of angles we see. It’s like they took the infamous Freedom class and made it a little less utterly ridiculous. A little.

USS Farragut

And lastly, we finally get a look at Jim Kirk’s first ship, the Farragut, and she looks a little like the Kelvinverse’s take on a Miranda class. The nacelle pylons are rounded, like everything in the Kelvin movies is rounded (but we opined on this last week, so let’s move on). Mostly, this ship just looks clunky. It’s a little like someone tried to streamline a Miranda class, with its single hull and underslung nacelles, but managed to lose all its charm while doing so.

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