The Suliban freight carrier: A study in cellular conglomeration.
Continuing our study of Suliban space going assets we get a rare good look at the the freighter class vessel. What an interesting conglometion, carrying forward the Suliban penchant for cellular communing, first seen at the Helix. Each cargo pod is a self contained ship hitching a ride docked to a central carrier ship, like branches on a tree. One wonders how far the cargo branches might extend before the hives warp field become unstable and collapses. From a John Eaves sketch.
3/4
Side
Top
Front
Back
Screen caps courtesy Jörg.
“One wonders how far the cargo branches might extend before the hives warp field become unstable and collapses.”
You could always add a couple of extra “trunks” to the mix, though eventually, you’d end up with a giant cell cube…
Then again, is that really a bad outcome?
Ask Captain Picard!
Are those cell ships in between the arches on the central spine?
I’d imagine such a ship being used on long range missions as a carrier for the cruisers which can save power by being taken to their destination.
The more I see of these ships, the more I regret not seeing the Suliban race developed more. So many stories could be told and so many tactical variations due to the Suliban design philosophy of vessel intercontectivity.
Thanks Doug, I LOVE this stuff!
Hope you enjoyed the Independence holiday.
Barrie, I totally agree with you about seeing more of the Suliban. There are more than a few races that would have been a treat to find out more about or at least see occasionally in our travels. But alas, She was cut down in her prime.
Seeing how ENT was gaining speed after four seasons, this could possibly have been the series to break the seven year cycle (almost like starting over after the first three). I enjoyed all of the seasons to some degree, but I know that wasn’t the case with everyone.
That is one odd looking take on the freighter design that is definitely in the vein of the Suliban. I was wondering what the functions of the spine area would be, if other than basic docking, passage and storage areas; however, I don’t see how that would at all be an effective place for cell ships (but it did briefly cross my mind).
Oh look, pesky Tholians in the screen caps. I can’t help but like those pointy little ships.
This has a bit of a BSG Resurrection Ship feel to it, did you have anything to do with the BSG ship Doug?
Interesting! Kind of makes me think of a freight train that has multiple engines. Wonder if the thought was that when they reach the point where a specific cargo is to be dropped off, that ship can disengage while the rest of the freighter continues on. On the way back, they just pick up the ships and head home.
Never occurred to me before that the ships are an analogy for individuals of the Suliban species, being capable of reconfiguring their cells for different purposes. Oh well, better late than never.
Now I know for a fact that “Future Tense” was a really cool episode; the mystery surrounding the pod that was bigger on the inside than it was on the out was particularly memorable! Once again though I must admit that the Suliban freighter is yet another Trek-ship for which I have no recollection of whatsoever! – This is getting ridiculous now!
I love the whole concept of a large vessel made up of smaller ones. The series Babylon 5 also played around with this concept for their Raider mothership as well as for the ship used by the alien race that came back to reclaim planet Epsilon 3 in the first season of that show. This all pales of course when compared to the USS Prometheus from the Voyager episode: “Message in a Bottle” – That was something special that one! (oh yes!!
)
These renders are of course amazing and when I finally get around to lapping Enterprise a third time (I’ve got them all on DVD!) I’ll probably pounce on this freighter and won’t pay much attention to anything else! (haha!!) – Cheers for posting Doug!!
I like how the different ships have several different alignments/gravity vectors. It’s always nice to see a spaceship design that remembers there’s no preferential up or down in space. Although on the other hand, it only works with the Trek assumption that the hulls of spacecraft are somehow opaque to artificial gravity, so that, as in “Minefield” for example, you can be weightless on top of the ship’s hull even though you’d be in full gravity if you were just one level down from there. More realistically (assuming artificial gravity could be generated at all), the gravity would be felt even outside the ship, dropping off as the inverse square of the distance from the generator, so a multiplane arrangement like that would end up pulling people in some rather odd directions. (In one of my Trek novels, I threw in a line rationalizing the short range of Trek gravity plates by claiming that the virtual gravitons were calibrated to decay after a very short distance so that the ship’s AG fields wouldn’t interfere with the warp field or some such handwave.)