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A, B, C, D, E, F, G! With the conclusion of Picard a new legacy is born. There's a lot in a name.
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00:00N-C-C-1-7-0-1. No bloody A-B-C-D-E-F, but there is a G.
00:14We are now diving into the Constitution 3, or Neo-Constitution class, Enterprise G.
00:21I am Sean Ferrick for Trek Culture, and here are 10 secrets of the Enterprise G you need to know.
00:28Number 10. Word up, G.
00:31The arrival of the Enterprise G has meant that some parts of the expanded canon are now very firmly not
00:38canon anymore.
00:39Let's start with the Enterprise F. In Star Trek Online, that gets an upgrade from Odyssey class to Yorktown class.
00:47That now doesn't happen, as it's retired in the early 25th century after the Monfet Gambit.
00:54As it stands now, the G has not been made available on Star Trek Online.
01:00Speaking of Star Trek Online, the Titan continued on with the Luna class, which showed the Titan, Titan A, and,
01:09once that was destroyed, the Titan B also continuing on in that frame as well.
01:13Star Trek Fleet Command has now actually shown the Constitution 3 class, with the Titan A crossing over onto its
01:22platform in the Kelvin timeline as part of that ongoing story.
01:26The now-defunct fan series Frontiers, not to be confused with the Wizikids game of the same name, showed the
01:32Enterprise G turning up there as an Excalibur class.
01:36That was designed by Stephen Davis, but, now, actually, most of that would focus more on the Enterprise H.
01:43Unfortunately, it's difficult to find from that, but you can still see images of that online.
01:48Number 9. Marvelous Medical.
01:51Among some of the most impressive sets built for the Titan A was, in fact, the Medical Bay, which Dave
01:58Blass, production designer, went into a lot more detail about.
02:02You never really know what action is going to take place there. Usually, it's one person in a bed, but
02:07it's a huge ship, so you really need 10 to 12 beds, but that's a giant waste of space and
02:11money.
02:12Then, you need a surgery bed and somewhere to sit and talk, as well as somewhere to look at medical
02:17readouts.
02:18So, Sick Bait was just wrangling of the time and money beast and making it as big yet interesting as
02:24possible.
02:24Costs were further reduced, actually, for this set by the introduction of these kind of large OLED holographic-type tubes.
02:33This holographic was very, very deliberate, as Blass said that it was able to give a more technological feel to
02:41the room without actually upping the budget considerably.
02:44Number 8. Pursuit Krauss.
02:46The design of the Enterprise-G was based on the Shangri-La class and also inspired by the designs of
02:53Trek fan and designer Larry Miller in the 1980s, as Bill Krauss explained.
02:58Originally, the idea for the Shangri-La class was something that could both stand out but also very much blend
03:06in with some of the original series movies as well.
03:10In fact, Krauss looked to Andrew Probert's designs so that it would be something that you could see, theoretically, becoming
03:18part of the lineage of Starfleet.
03:21Miller's Hornet-class design was also used as a bit of inspiration for what would turn up as the USS
03:26Intrepid, as well.
03:28Krauss actually never expected this design to play as pivotal a role as possible.
03:33Terry Mattalis found these designs via Krauss' Instagram account and commissioned Krauss to build a model for him.
03:39He thought it might show up in the background of an episode here or there, not in the, well, hero
03:46form it ended up taking in Season 3.
03:48Number 7. Set Pieces.
03:5018 new sets were built for the Titan A, which of course would go on to be the Enterprise-G.
03:56You might have noticed that the lower section of La Sirena was reused as the bridge of the Shrike,
04:02whereas, well, the standing set of the Stargazer's bridge from Season 2 became the skeleton of what would become the
04:11Titan A's bridge in Season 3.
04:13New OLED screens were added to the Titan A bridge, along with some more panels, platforms, and stations,
04:22including the one that Picard used to fire torpedoes at one point.
04:26The Observation Lounge, as well, was given a bit of a touch-up from what we saw in Season 2,
04:30with the addition of, of course, the new models away from the Stargazer and Sagan-class moving towards the Constitution
04:373,
04:37and, of course, the Luna-class as well.
04:41With all of these new sets being designed, and the previously mentioned Medical Bay being the most complex of them,
04:47this was a massive undertaking at a time when a lot of what we see on screen is computer-generated.
04:55Number 6. Shangri-La-La-La-La.
04:58The Enterprise-G can trace its design lineage back to the 23rd century,
05:03with the original USS Titan being a Shangri-La-class under the command of Captain Savick.
05:09It's a blink-and-you'll-miss-it moment, but the shuttle that Riker and Picard borrow to go over to
05:16the Elias 12
05:17is, in fact, named the Savick after the captain of the first Titan.
05:22The Constitution 3-class was effectively a 25th-century update of that original Shangri-La-class,
05:28with the Luna-class sort of slipping in the middle, if you like.
05:32Let's call that the grunge phase in the middle of their upbringing,
05:36and that, by the way, is not a word against Sean Tarango's design of the Luna-class, which I love.
05:41While the overall design of the Constitution 3 is based heavily on the Shangri-La-class,
05:47the actual nacelles were borrowed from Season 2's Sagan-class USS Stargazer,
05:54with this difference being that they could be opened and tinkered with by some captain-level grease monkeys.
06:00Number 5. Downsizing in the move.
06:03If you trace things from the original Enterprise right up to the Enterprise F,
06:07you can see that there is a trend of Enterprises tend to get bigger and bigger and bigger.
06:12You had crews of about 400 back in Kirk's day, right up to over 1,000 in Picard's day.
06:18You might think that, well, hold on, the Enterprise E didn't have anything like that complement,
06:23and you would be correct, although the Sovereign-class is quite a bit longer than the Enterprise-D's Galaxy-class,
06:30so we're continuing that trend.
06:33Having said that as well, the Sovereign-class was just over 600 metres,
06:37where the Odyssey-class Enterprise F is about a kilometre long,
06:41so it's getting a bit ridiculous at that point.
06:43That's not even taking into account the Universe-class Enterprise J.
06:47The Constitution 3-class actually brings everything down again,
06:52and this was a conscious decision by Terry Metallus,
06:56who explained in an interview with Inverse.com
06:58that he wanted to bring this ship back to the exploratory nature of Starfleet
07:04that had been sort of...
07:07After Wolf 359, we'd started to see the introduction of a more militaristic side of Starfleet,
07:12which, you know, led to ships like the Defiant, the Enterprise-E, the Akira-class.
07:18The Constitution 3 Enterprise-G was a deliberate attempt to go back to science vessels and exploring vessels,
07:25and, in Metallus's own words, would have its absolute ass kicked in the wrong situation.
07:30Number four, what's in a name?
07:32The path to the Enterprise-G is not actually quite as straightforward as you'd think.
07:37Shangri-La-class designer Bill Krause explained that
07:40they would start as the Titan, but end as the Picard,
07:44which would follow the overall arc of the season,
07:46and ironically leave the show named after the ship, but just retroactively.
07:52The moment, however, in The Last Generation,
07:54which sees the shuttle come up over the bow of the now-Enterprise-G to reveal the new name,
08:00is a direct parallel to the tease at the end of Star Trek IV The Voyage Home,
08:04when Sulu says,
08:06actually, I'm counting on Excelsior,
08:08and then they rise up over the Excelsior to see the newly christened Enterprise-A.
08:12There was a fun parallel in this as well.
08:15You see, originally, for The Next Generation, we were going to have NCC-10017.
08:23However, the choice to alphabetise the new Enterprise in Star Trek IV The Voyage Home
08:29meant that we were going to not do the additional number at the end,
08:34but rather a letter.
08:35It was going to be the NCC-1701-G.
08:39Now, this was brought down to 1-701-D to be more in line with the 78-year gap
08:45between the end of Star Trek VI The Undiscovered Country
08:48and, of course, the beginning of Encounter at Farpoint.
08:52Number three, reconstituted.
08:54The decision to make the Enterprise-G a Constitution III class was a very deliberate decision,
08:59and when the reveal happens, it makes quite a lot of sense.
09:03You see, there's a parallel in the end of The Voyage Home,
09:07which sees the Enterprise-A revealed as a Constitution class as well.
09:11Well, depending on which version of beta canon you follow here,
09:15you could either believe that it was renamed from the USS T. Ho
09:21in the 1980s book, Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise,
09:24or renamed for the, well, now coffin ship USS Yorktown.
09:29But either way, it was a renamed existing starship.
09:34Terry Metallica said as well that Season 3 of Star Trek Picard
09:38was an origin story of the G, which is why, when you look at episodes,
09:43particularly The Bounty and The Last Generation,
09:46you see the Enterprise-G, A, NX-01, and the Enterprise-D,
09:53and the Enterprise-F all on screen.
09:57Quite frankly, that's a lot of Enterprises.
10:00Number two, not-so-new new ship.
10:02There were a lot of theories around the arrival of a new hero ship for Picard's third season.
10:07Of course, enter the Titan A, the Neo-Constitution class ship.
10:11There was quite a surprising reveal in that this was, in many ways,
10:17the exact same ship, Luna-class, that a certain Captain William T. Riker had commanded.
10:23Yes, it was revealed that the Luna-class USS Titan
10:28was heavily, heavily refit into the Neo-Constitution class.
10:33There's a couple of gags here and there where Shaw said he had to free up a few thousand gigabytes
10:39by trying to delete Riker's entire jazz library from the computer systems as well.
10:43Now, it's not the first time that we've seen a massive refit of a starship.
10:47I mean, look at the Constitution to the Constitution refit of the motion picture.
10:53While perhaps not as drastic, it is still effectively a new ship built around the frame of the last one.
11:01In this, a lot of the computer systems, the nacelles, and the warp coils were directly held over,
11:09even if they did receive quite a bit of tinkering and changes.
11:12This also goes away toward explaining the addition of the A to the USS Discovery's registry
11:22after it too goes under a significant refit in the third season of Star Trek Discovery.
11:28It also helps to hide it in time as well.
11:31Number one, Captain's Prerogative.
11:33The paint is barely dry on the hull, and yet the Enterprise-G already has quite the lineage behind it.
11:39Now, technically, if we're taking the physical ship into account here,
11:44there's already been three commanders of the Enterprise-G.
11:48So, first of all, from the Luna class, we have Captain William T. Riker.
11:52Then, of course, you've got Liam... no.
11:56Shaw taking over for the refit and for what ends up being the last five years of its life.
12:03Riker does take over again for a little while when Shaw's incapacitated,
12:07but as we see, when the ship is officially designated Enterprise-G,
12:11you've got Captain Seven of Nine in the big seat.
12:14While we are still waiting on Star Trek Legacy to show us more of Seven in the captain's seat,
12:19it's actually not the record for the amount of commanders of an Enterprise.
12:22Look at the original one.
12:23You've got April.
12:24You've got Pike.
12:25You've got Kirk.
12:26You've got Commodore Decker.
12:28You've got his son, Will Decker.
12:30You've got Spock as well.
12:33And then, you know, varying kind of like here and there.
12:36It's all the way in between.
12:37The Enterprise-D had Picard a few times.
12:40We had Jellicoe.
12:41Now, the difference there is that that did stay the Enterprise-D.
12:45And although the original Enterprise had quite a few commanders,
12:49the Enterprise-A sort of, you know, kind of oscillates between Kirk and Spock,
12:53depending on the afternoon.
12:54What I'm saying is that it's a privilege to be a captain of the Enterprise.
12:58God only knows how long you'll be one for.
13:02Hashtag save seven.
13:03Thank you very much for watching along.
13:05This has been one of the exciting ones because it's always good fun to talk about an Enterprise,
13:08and it's always great fun anyway to talk about these ships.
13:12So, please don't forget to give the original article,
13:14which was written by the wonderful Clive Burrell, a read.
13:17That's over on whatculture.com.
13:19Thank you so much to our wonderful editor Martin for making this all look so pretty.
13:23Remember, go and follow us at TrekCulture on Twitter,
13:25at TrekCultureYT over on Instagram.
13:27Remember, as well, that we have a podcast that drops every Tuesday.
13:31That's going to be on all the podcast catchers of your choice,
13:33so you go check it out if and when it suits you.
13:36I have been Sean.
13:37You are awesome.
13:39Make sure that you live long and prosper until I see you again.
13:41Our friends in Ukraine, Slav, Ukraine.
13:44Everyone, however long it is until I'm talking to you,
13:46make sure, above all else, you have a wonderful time.
13:50Make it so.
13:51Thanks.
13:52Blah, blah, blah, blah.
13:53Bollocks.
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