10. Cake

Three slightly goofy-looking starships fly in formation.

Root and Hamlet in conversation visible through a porthole.

2007-06-26

Transcript

10.1 Three slightly goofy-looking starships fly in formation.

Hamlet (oov): I can see the logic in using the anniversaries of events to ensure you don’t forget they happened…
Hamlet (oov): … but surely the fact that you have been born is not something you will forget.

10.2 Root and Hamlet in conversation visible through a porthole.

Hamlet: Why do you need yearly reminders?
Dev: Any excuse for a party, I guess. And in my case it really IS just an excuse.
Hamlet: How so?

10.3 Root and Hamlet.

Root: Birth records are not kept reliably where I was born, so when I got my official ID, I was assigned a birthdate based on my apparent age and my preferred birthday of 23 April.
Hamlet: So we are eating cake because of a convenient lie?

Notes

10.1

In the foreground: USS Mumbai (NCC-1496), in the background, Nagoya (NC-1488), and Darwin (NCC-1493), with the USS Ballarat (NCC-1567) at the bottom of the panel.

These slightly goofy-looking starships are my attempt to come up with something that looks like it fits in between the Daedalus class ships of the late 22nd century and the Constitution class of the mid-23rd. My thinking is (based on the way starships are designed in TNG) that there are two design constraints in play: one which makes it desirable for ships to be smoothly contoured and shaped like a duck, and one which makes it easier to fabricate ships if they are made from simple geometric shapes. So in TNG we see circular saucers replaced by ovals and later by spade-shaped or pointed hulls, and the stick-like struts become flattened and swept back in Enterprise A, curved in D, and moveable in Intrepid. I’ve also stuck with Roddenberry’s rules (much as I dislike having the bridge on the tippy top of the hull).

With apologies to Gene Roddenberry and the many professionals and amateurs who have created the Star Trek universe over the years.

This silly webcomic is not endorsed, sponsored or affiliated with CBS Studios Inc., Paramount Pictures Corp or the STAR TREK franchise. STAR TREK and related marks are trademarks of CBS Studios Inc.