This is a personal project that I worked on in 2006 or so. I particularly like the TOS era and episodes, so that's the time period I decided to go for. TOS was supposed to continue with Phase II, but that eventually turned into the motion picture featuring our friend V'ger with greetings from the machine planet.

Like so much other fan material, my stories follow the adventures an original starship, though Enterprise might make vague guest appearances. It's an easy way to isolate the material and avoid conflicts. I can also let loose and design some new characters and gadgets. Maybe that's what really pulling me in. I enjoy drawing armour, guns and warships, but I think TOS and Star Trek is better when the episodes are sort of stand-alone (some slower paced) and explore a variety of conflicts (in the abstract sense).

I rebooted this project when I saw the quite nice hammerhead ship design piece made for the (fizzled) "Final Frontier" cartoon. In 2006 I had seen a TOS episode where Daystrom and Kirk try to calm down M5, a rampaging computer. It got me thinking about how a ship or fleet built by such a computer would look, so I came up with a rectangular hammerhead design of my own, I guess almost in parallel with the other guys. I think their design (with the dish set in the split front) is better than my doodle, but I didn't like most of their characters (some-guy-captain & spunky-girl) or the... what to call it... simplified-dynamic-figure cartoon style?

It's 2018 writing this, so my old art naturally needed some cleaning up, but I also kept a lot of the old material because I enjoy respecting and launching off older source material. I barely touched the ship designs, but my human figure drawing has gotten better so I reworked (re-posed) those. I tried to keep the human figures sort of realistic in proportion and posture (maybe my style is has some european adult-cartoon roots?). Also, it's tempting to go nuts with aliens designs when, well, drawing aliens, but humanoid figures translate better into live-action and feel a bit more Star Trek.

Some old filenames suggest that I had set my stories around 2269, right at the end of TOS. They revolved around M3, a rogue Daystrom robot, and its crew. The crew concepts were a little strange, including original alien designs like unicorn women and anglerfishmen, but some strange mixed in with the familiar can make things memorable.

The main story ship might be the hammerhead (MXX-03 Multitronics Experimental Explorer), or a Dakini class long-range cruiser. The Constitution class (possibly only 12 around in TOS) is being phased out due to changing needs and many were perhaps lost. I went ahead and added a Discovery type ship after seeing the new stuff late 2018. It's based on the Phase II ship I believe. I'm glad that they didn't go for a greebly ENT type of design, though the spinny bit is wonky. Would've worked well enough as a static design me thinks.

The nacelle configuration might be a visual indicator of warp speed... maybe Apparently there's a field going between the nacelles (rear) so they need a bit of line of sight between. Longer nacelles, more field. Nacelles are spaced away from the body & saucer because of some kind of radiation. At the front we see the red Bussard collector domes, which need LoS to the front (over saucer). On my Centaur the wide nacelle spacing (and the smaller prods) might suggest it has the capability to tow smaller ships within its warp bubble. Useful when evacuating. Could have extra shields.

I also added a few ships to this in 2022 and thought a bit about ship count. My vision for pre-TOS is that basically nothing of major/massive importance happened as it diminishes the 5-year exploration thing. Maybe some skirmishes and treaties. It works better as history. If there were big galactic events, humans were probably just onlookers.

But prequel writers are all like: Year 2205 - THE PHARTENING: 80% of ALL humanoid life explodes in farts due to the Z'Gel parasite. No one in the future (including the next episode) ever mentions it again. Year 2206 - The most important human ever does amazing very important thing but is a rather awful character that barely appears and is finally written out of the show and never mentioned again. Year 2207 - THE SUNDERING: Half of all planets explode due to the (clumsily foreshadowed) "phasic conflux" conspiracy which erodes planetary particles. The great barrier around the milkyway is built by Spock to prevent more blowage so there's the answer to that. Very cool – it was Spock a character we all know. Year 2208 - We reconsidered the fart thing after fan backlash and pretend like it never happened with an obnoxious lampshade remark. But the NECROGHOSTS show up and it turns out they're the Progenitors, now out to kill the whole universe and all life they seeded. They are stopped when all sentient life is linked in a Vulcan prayer and becomes bonded and thus repel the Progenitors. Half of all stars in the universe did disappear but this has no lasting effect, nor does the mind bonding, other than it explains how aliens can understand each other (retroactively) yeah we forgot about the universal translator thing.

I also edited this sheet a bit in 2024. I've covered an alternative Akira-NX on a new sheet. It's best not to overcrowd the setting with a million designs, however, many older ships (refitted) from earlier in the timeline should still remain active in the 2260s, helping to promote a sense of history without stealing the limelight from the main ship.

I don't think the story and setting should have a military focus – Federation ships are good because of multi-species cooperation, and a Federation Exploration vessel is enough to deal with BoPs and such. Getting new planetary scanners or replicators was probably more exciting to the crew than getting new torpedoes for fighting the Klingons only active in some corner of space. A lot of lore videos just hyperfocus on torpedoes and phasers.

The Carrier ship I drew might be more used for moving non-warp capable orbital shuttles around, helping with colony work and evacuation. The Dakini might be the main ship of my setting. I think it's best to differentiate the timeline a bit from TOS, so maybe there's actually no Constitution class, just something similar. Denobulans could maybe be killed off to make the point. Some enemies are friends and vice versa.

I like the idea that in First Contact, Zefram saw Enterprise in space, and it was at this point the timeline changed, explaining why ENT has the Akira wannabe greeblewaffle and ENT&DIS tech & feel is so different (starfleet tech was also left behind in the past at various points). The first Enterprise according to Motion Picture was likely a Vulcan-ish ring ship* rather than something like the Akira. It looks more like how we might imagine an early interstellar ship. At any rate I'll probably ignore ENT&DIS and just continue from the TOS timeline or one similar (same star map but with new events). I might actually not include the Constitution class, or the classic Enterprise combadge, just to be clear about it.

* The Motion Picture historical Enterprise XCV-330 uses ring nacelles(?) instead of tube nacelles, so it's operating on a different principle (cyclotron acceleration - you better believe it) but perhaps Vulcans & their tech were harder to get results out of than the Andorian and Tellarite friendos. So basically in my prelude story the Vulcans wanted the humans to build ships like them, but nerfed because humans can't be trusted. Then humans get to taste the Tellarite & Andorian nacelle sausages. Sorry Vulcans, we're doing hot nacelle stuff now! Seeya! Vulcans – "Ok but are we still friends? But it's not like we WANT to be friends or anything!!!"

I tweaked the Tellarite design above into something a bit more demon-dwarfy because dwarfs are cool and Tellarites are not. They're one of the UFP founders and kinda important. The Tellarite ship from ENT violated some nacelle rules and was a kind of boring Calamari blob anyways, so I changed it into a mushroom because... Dwarf Fortress. It needs to be similar to the Constitution shape since the Tellarites likely influenced its design. I also drew a TOS Andorian ship.

The cables were used on several of the ENT Klingon ships like the D5 and Raptor, but disappeared by the time of the D7... maybe due to better structural integrity fields. But I kept them as they're make the ships seem like war chariots and they also smooth the body-neck transition.

I think the decent reason why the Feds don't use cloaks is that 99.9% of the time in TOS they are doing mundane stuff which we never see. A waste of resources, unlike for the more warlike Klingons and Romulans. Also don't need three samey factions on-screen (unseen, heh). Fans are very focused on ship battles and combat specs, but a federation person might be more excited about scanning the weird toads on planet Khryll-5 or getting slightly improved bio filters, higher efficiency replicators (larger rations), or an extra holodeck suite.

The Inquiry class is from PIC, but was originally a game concept iirc. I tried to make a TOS version but it looks too anachronistic with the decor paint job and angles so I'll forego it.

In my timeline, perhaps the humans moved away from the Vulcanoid cyclrotron ring ship tech to tube nacelles after being outmatched by the Romulans mid-war, then moving to a Daedelus type ship which is closer to the modern day ships in shape. Still, there's a century until that, not sure how/if to fill. My dates approximate the official timeline. But if I want the TOS era to be one of a second, expanded exploration then it feels strange to have this century long jump from 2160 (Archer) to 2260 (Kirk).

I could throw in some catastrophe to rein things in. I'm not keen on catastrophes and big events (I wouldn't do a "The Burn" thing)... but I suppose something... let's say a swarm of space-wildlife preservation drones escorting some space jellies is passing through the home sectors (or entire alpha quadrant) and everyone has to turtle up for decades as the mysterious advanced drones are single minded and aggressive, easily disabling any roaming ships (similar to the Whale Probe). Perhaps some ship had tried to shoot a space jelly and the drones were like Nope - Big nopes for all of you ants.

Some of these disabled ships were doomed, whilst others perhaps limped to nearby worlds under improvised "sail" power. Some colonies (having been severed from the UFP) might've gone rogue, though FTL communications is probably possible. Maybe the UFP and Klingons were just about to start a brawl (Klingons noticing the weakened UFP after the Romulan conflict) and the whole show just got cancelled, their impotent fleets adrift to... form a weird community in space? Remain mysteriously lost forever? Become a haunted graveyard? Then there would be alien visitors trapped on Earth for decades leading to... things, like half-Vulcans. Extra material for the TOS era story playground.

World governments presumably focused on post-war restoration, internal affairs and planetside infrastructure tech for the duration. Any new ships designed and built had to be kept berthed and were probably old by the time the swarm had passed and spacey activities could resume. I like pushing the idea of there being much more advanced things out there that they just have to stay out of the way of. One needs to address the reality that not all aliens would be at the same tech level. It's probable that the active factions will self-balance (spying/sharing) but only if the gap is small enough. I named the drones after Dra'Azon - a powerful guardian entity in Consider Phlebas.

Here I'm thinking about survival systems. First, it seems reasonable that a ship with transporters would just beam people who get sucked into space right back automatically. The tractor beam could also be used. More primitive solutions like net casters might work too.

But if these fail (power loss, damage), I think the uniforms and combat suits should work as space suits. When vacuum is detected they squeeze up and a helmet is somehow provided.

The fabric has to be comfortable (loose, breathing, light etc) for daily work, so I imagine them using some advanced layered materials which can change property when electrically pulsed. When exposed, surviving for some 10 seconds should not be a problem as long as the redshirt doesn't hold their breath rupturing their lungs (chest pressure from the suit might protect here somewhat).

A suit probably can't carry much oxygen but perhaps a miniature "generator" or recycler could be hinted at. It's the future after all. Possibly the suit doesn't need to be airtight around the body, just the helmet area. Not sure what happens with farts :o

An unexpected complication could be getting a rapid spin from ejection, which would make it very hard to fiddle with a helmet or survival gear, and the spin might send too much blood to the head or pull on the limbs (you'd probably accelerate like a ballerina pulling the arms in). That's why the suit would likely need mini jets or a drive, just enough to stop spin and maybe even drift back.

The helmet bit is tricky... Basically I was thinking that if the character has to fiddle a bit with the emergency helmet, panicking in space, then it will seem more authentic and dramatic than e.g. an automatic system which somehow deploys from the collar. I really want to avoid "materializing helmet" and "personal force field", and I also want the suit to be sort of slim, so no bulky mechanism. Not sure how to do it, but perhaps a gold helmet could be blown as a bubble from a cartridge. A hole is cut (built-in mini laser or natural fissure), then the bubble fits right over a collar which auto-seals. This seems like it could be like a 10 second process done before or after ejection, but possibly the bubble forms better in space. I like the idea of a hardened bubble helmet as it's quite pulp-scifi. Cadets would practice "violent ejection" in zero-G 0.25 atmospheres. Maybe competing for best time, some 6.92 seconds average for the star pupil.

But there are two problems: A. You can't hold the bubble before it hardens and once the hole is cut (delay?) the inside gas pressure will propel the bubble away (has to be shot towards the body). B. You might see poorly with vacuum eyeballs.

Another more elegant idea that was suggested to me, is having the collar shoot up a plastic bag tube around the head and then it's sealed at the top. The air pressure inside could then expand it to a sort of bubble (maybe wrinkly though). It would be reasonably compact when not in use (i.e. most of the time), and could also be deployed when unconscious from an explosion. Perhaps there are many suit variants.

Lighter suits could come with a pocket/pouch containing some sort of plastic bag with an embedded oxygen device. Put it over the head and it seals around the neck. Could help in the case of gas leaks/attacks too, maybe even shuttle crashes on hostile worlds.

Pre-intro scene

Character focus: Teoth - Ship's Doctor (the buff anglerfishman) and Zigor - the second in command (the Gorn lizard). We find Teoth and Zigor fighting with strange weapons in a strange alien arena. The combat ground is covered by tiles and alien runes, looking a bit like a life-sized board game. Teoth parries a seemingly deadly blow, commenting that that trick won't work twice. One might wonder how they ended up in the unusual environment and tense situation.

Intro credits and time skip to weeks earlier

A similar situation plays out in the ship's onboard gymnasium. The Teoth and Zigor are fighting with very heavy, double-headed hammer/mace staffs, panting, sweating. Zigor's movements are slow but calculated (Gorns are not that fast huh?). Teoth lands a strike on Zigor and proclaims "Nachuc!", eyeing a scorekeeper (Nurse character) who then moves some strange metal ornaments on a wooden board, suggesting that this is a form of alien ritual combat or popular sport. The combatants wear funky colour coded armour – black versus white – apparently corresponding to the layout of the score board. However, a casual observer can't tell from the strange scoreboard who is winning and it's perhaps not important how the game works.

–– "Oof!", Zigor groans, resuming his battle stance but looking a little beat.

–– "Not bad... for a doctor.", he adds, grinning.

–– "Well, I'm a quick study.", Teoth responds with an even bigger and certainly more toothy grin. He twirls his weapon and assumes a pose.

–– "Not quick enough!", Zigor declares as he pulls an impressive move, hitting Teoth square in the chest.

A graceful follow up hit then takes Teoth down.

–– "Double Nachuc!", Zigor gloats while looking down at Teoth, "Don't feel too bad though, I-"

Zigor freezes mid sentence as he notices that Teoth has trouble getting back up, instead falling to a knee, clinging to the battle stick for support.

Zigor turns to the scorekeeper Nurse who rushes in. Zigor seems worried.

–– "The hit wasn't that bad. Something is wrong."

Zigor and Nurse lumber out of the gym, supporting the massive form of Teoth between them. In the corridor several crewmen are seen... some perhaps looking exhausted too. Nurse picks up this clue immediately and starts making inquires.

Cut to later. The medibay is full of sick people. Nurse explains to the Captain (the floating robot thing) that there's a virus that somehow got past the filters, and the whole crew is infected. They picked it up somewhere (not relevant?). It's a rare strain, thought extinct. They will need help... special brain help! There are a few experts but only one nearby... a shady woman. However, this expert has a troubled history with the Federation, to say the least (unethical brains research). However, with no other options they set a course towards the last known position of the Expert.

The crew, save the Captain, are all very weak upon arriving at the destination – a no-name, supposedly pre-warp planet (population: Millions) with a small moon. They are captured by an interceptor vessel and unfortunately wake up imprisoned. Hmm.... it seems the crew gave up the ship very easily. Captain certainly thinks so.

Captain and Zigor (Second in command) are brought to the Expert who explains that the crew has been cured, but then continues to explain that the crew will now have to participate in "The Games", which seem quite deadly. The Captain protests. The Expert counters that she's a participant too. In fact, she is well in the top 200 and expects to beat Yab Locrant next match, possibly making top 100... and that comes with special rewards. Top 100 means relocation to district one. The Expert nods towards a nice, glistering city seen at a distance outside the window, silver shuttles moving leisurely between ivory towers and lazy hanging gardens. Zigor (who is a Gorn) seems to think that the games are actually a pretty cool idea. The Expert agrees and thinks Captain will change his mind on the matter. Captain ponders this, suspiciously, but finally agrees to participating. Great! It's settled then! People sure are behaving strangely here. The crew too.

While the Expert is clever she does not appear to be suspicious about the Captain's form. The Captain is actually an advanced floating robot, but as robots are not a thing in this era (no Datas), everyone just assumes the Captain is a human brain in a cybernetic enclosure... and the Captain does little to discourage this view... for its own reasons.

As such, the Captain is not affected by the mind control exercised by a massive lump of brain matter in the orbit (inside the planet's small moon), built from all the previous top 100 game/arena victors. The Expert actually made the first steps in constructing this brain but eventually fell victim to it. Due to the orbit of the moon around the planet the Captain is able to wrestle moments of clarity out of the crew. During these moments, they investigate the history of this planet, the empty ivory city, and the office of the Expert. They reason out what happened here, and eventually manage to construct a mind-shield. The story arrived at the point of the battle between Zigor and Teoth, which is a ruse and not as serious as it had seemed. It is resolved with no casualties in the nick of time.

Looking for the Expert, they find that they were too late – she was assimilated into the mass of brains (having won her last match). Maybe, in a way, this is what she wanted, they speculate.

But what to do about the big brain? Is it right to attack such a creature? Maybe it claims to be new, reformed, complete, out of chrysalis (would you blame a baby?), and simply leaves before anyone has anything to say on the matter.

The people of the planet are free from the mind control. But what will they do now? What a mess!

One subject that's difficult to tackle is that of irredeemable antagonists (if even needed). Can or should an alien race be portrayed as irredeemable? One might argue that aliens could be all sorts of culturally weird and biologically hardwired... but in practice we see most Trek aliens as slightly odd humans and stories do carry a moral message. But then again, Star Trek is ultimately a show for humans about human conflict solving. The alien bit are just a bit of thematic obfuscation.

Certainly, if the aliens are portrayed as monolithic that can feel like blatant stereotyping, but it's also uninteresting to overhumanize and give every alien the full normal human moral range along with only a blatantly superficial funny-forehead type of visual diversity.

I suppose that if an alien is truly alien then it might actually be difficult to convey compelling antagonism... like... imagine some crystal creature showing up , slurping up human colonies with no real way of understanding why, and no way to talk to them about it – they're just doing their thing because they need the... electrolytes.

The federation winning over lovable meanies is perhaps more satisfying to see. The federation generally accepts diverse cultures and makes compromises when it comes to allowing strange rituals and traditions, be it euthanasia, battles to the death or elaborate mating schemes.

Did we ever see a big evil/antagonistic but voluntary alliance in Star Trek (not counting the mirror universe and Dominion)? I wonder what one would look like. I'm thinking something like, the Romulans, Cardassians, Klingon and Ferengi just get chummy and decide the Federation needs to go (it's insidious, right?). But it would be out of character for those to ally. The allied aliens would probably need to all share ideals and traits which are big Federation no-nos (e.g. caste/slavery system, cannibalism, bio weapons, nuking/enslaving primitive worlds or otherwise violating the prime directive). However, such aliens are probably not highly xenophobic if comfortably allied. It's possible that they're all happy (inherently) and just appear evil from our perspective, but if they're expansionist and come into conflict with the Federation then it seems more likely that the populations brought under their heel are suffering (the reverse might be true if the Feds expand into their space, forcefully disrupting their culture even if with good intentions). I don't really like that kind of both-siding though and TOS was more optimistic about the virtues of a diverse alliance (and bullying obvious jerks).

Some aliens might be so xenophobic they only ever put other aliens to work in the mines, so this type of antagonist would not be very diverse in regards to their fleet and ship crew. Alone they could not challenge the Federation but would be limited to colony harassment and sneaky terrorism (unless they have perhaps broken the prime directive and enslaved a lot of worlds to use for fleet production, i.e. tapping resources the Federation won't due to its moral code). The Dominion is larger but employs unnatural manipulation & control so its members are not really coherent like those of the Federation. I suppose it's possible to have a Federation-like alliance where the members are all kinda nice, but there's a Big Misunderstanding causing conflict with the Federation. Some planets blew up resulting in blood lasting centuries. Technically the two sides could've been neutral or even friends, but it's too late due to escalation and propaganda. Maybe too close to home and painful to watch as an omniscient viewer though, just seeing them dig that hole.

I've also been thinking of Episodic vs Sequential formats. TOS had an episodic format with no big seasonal plot. We did see some of the relationships evolve, but that was it. A viewer could jump in at any time really. Game of Thrones was sequential so you'd feel like you missed something if you joined mid season. Modern Doctor Who and Trek are more like... strange confused hybrids. Too many writers working in parallel and with their own ideas, resulting in lack of coherence. The push for constant "epic" season endings often results in even stronger anti-climaxes as ultimately they can't upset the next season much. Also, sometimes I think about Dayna from Blake's 7. She was introduced quite strongly in S3E1 as this super competent kickass amazon technowizard iron lady, but it's never followed up on and she's sort of just regular crew. It made me so sad.

For me the formula would be to go episodic, then trickle in lore and ongoing events more as background noise, and let characters flesh out over time.

^ The Dakini, tentative orthos (likely subject to change if I ever draw it in 3D).

The nacelles would probably be mostly engine so I excluded those from the rough volume calculations (using my clay cube method). In TOS the nacelles possibly have local reactors (unlike later ships which have the iconic central warp core set pieces). It would make sense to have reactors in proximity to the biggest energy hog. Scotty is sometimes up in the nacelles mucking about it would appear from background visuals. Power can be rerouted using relay stations which might also serve as smoothing capacitors / battery power. Local power hungry systems (like shield emitters) might need that energy FAST and power transfer is slower than light speed, and conduits might be 200 meters long. Signal speed matters when designing motherboards, so it probably matters at starship scale.

Saucer separation might be possible (kind of was in TOS). Two 3m tall decks should fit in the saucer even with the bottom curvature. I think my saucer might be a bit thicker than in TOS. Then there are some extra decks (and devices) in the bumps.

The apartment example borrows from Spock's and Kirk's larger quarters, with a screen separator, bed shelves, and an angled table. The closet door can swing out and compartmentalise the bedroom. The chair is moderately comfy. Since they have food synths in the TOS era there's probably no kitchen area (there would still be public kitchens/diners for the novelty of it, and for the capsule hotel passengers). Additional belongings could be stored in shared storage rooms, and there would be more fancy public washrooms, and places to hang out (probably the windowed areas of the ship). With a 5 year mission (and service basically voluntary), an 18 square meter personal quarter seems necessary. The crew would obviously also populate various recreation rooms, lounges labs and workplaces. In TNG there are hangout places in the hallways (sort of like in a school).

There might be a coffin hotels for evac missions. The coffins could also serve as low-metabolism shelters/bunkers (and/or serve as temporary life boats). In some plots the crew hides in the nacelles, but a coffin hotel situation could be fun too! A coffin can be less than 3 cubic meters in volume, so that's more than a dozen times as compact as the regular crew quarters. Some 1% of the net habitable volume could be used to double the capacity of 600 in the case of the Dakini here, but this type of commendation would only be tolerable for a week's journey to a nearby starbase. The coffin capsules are just a 1x1x2.5m box with a bed and survival stuff inside. I'm thinking they could have a pull-down curtain flexi-glass pane for privacy, and maybe they could double as atmospheric shelters during hull breaches.

The corridors and rooms are not placed radially, but in a grid. This would simplify set design as flat panels are easy to build and the the set could be redressed to put characters almost anywhere on the ship. Doors block line of sight down long corridors (rather than curvature). I've added some light panels near the floor. They could be a source of the coloured light and be used to paint (colour code) different areas of the ship.

Bottom row devices: Pad, Computer (possibly with 3D screen) and "floppies" (good for airgap security), Star clock (whatever that might be), Analyser (sure sure), living plant. It would be interesting if the corridors had little alcoves where the industrial aspect of the ship is exposed as a visual reminder.