Season 3 of Star Trek Picard saw a host of brand new ships for us Trek fans to love. From the retro styles of the Constitution-III Class and its USS Titan-A/USS Enterprise-G.
The weird underslung deflector of the Duderstadt Class and the latest ship to be called the Intrepid.
To even a whole host of Star Trek Online vessels, including the Enterprise F’s Odyssey Class.
Though a Trek tradition of making new ships is to just kitbash an old model, and make something weird and new.
With that, today we take a look at the Echelon Class Starship, a Two Nacelled Sagan Class Variant that is said to be a ship that can hunt down its foes and provides a substantial threat to our heroes
In the third season...
Let's take a look!
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The Echelon Class starships were mid-model starships active during the early 25th century in service to Starfleet of the United Federation of Planets.
The ship was essentially a variant of the Sagan Class starship, which the USS Stargazer belonged to, but with a focus on defence rather than the Sagan class as a science ship.
This ship class was said to be 1694 feet, or 516.3 metres, in length.
The Sagan Class was constructed to utilise new components derived from research from the Artefact, an abandoned Borg Cube that was under the jurisdiction of the Borg Reclamation Project,
an independent organisation that was overseen by the Romulan Free State, and had treaties with the United Federation of Planets for Federation Researchers to assist the project, as the Artifact itself was located in Romulan Space.
Therefore it can be presumed, but not confirmed, that the Echelon Class also utilised components and technology derived from research on Borg Technology.
With the Echelons focus on tactical missions rather than scientific like the Sagan Class, the Echelon could have more technology derived from borg armaments.
The design of this ship had the usual design elements of Starfleet ships, a Saucer section attached to a secondary hull with nacelles.
However the secondary hull of the Echelon Class, if it can even be called a secondary hull, was directly attached to the rear of the saucer.
Unlike the Sagan Class however, the ship only featured two nacelles, the top two, with these nacelles attaching to a structure located above the main hull of the ship,
which is where the ships dual warp cores were located. This structure was the main engineering section of the ship.
The nacelles of the vessel had large orange bussard collectors on them, similar to the nacelles of ships such as the Gagarin class, Reliant Class and other ships of the 25th century.
This Engineering section also had a cargo loading and staging area on the top of its hull.
This was known as Bay 4, and was equipped to allow larger pieces of cargo or a variety of shuttles, depending on the needs for the missions the stargazer was deployed on, to be stored.
The ship would presumably come with a complement of shuttles, with the current shuttle type starfleet employed being the Type 14 shuttlecraft,
a long-range shuttle craft that was said to be unarmed and was 52.5 feet in length.
These shuttles were usually used for transporting people between locations when transporting was not an option. They could also dock with the ship with a docking port located at the rear of the shuttle.
Presumably with the tactical role of the Echelon Class, some more armed shuttles were also present in the shuttles bays of the vessel.
Considering the large shuttlebays and the staging area of the ship, I wouldn’t be surprised if she also had a complement of runabouts as well.
As can be expected with any Federation vessel, the ship was outfitted with weapons. Along the hull are numerous Phaser strips, which allow for phaser fire in various arcs around the ship.
The interesting thing about the Echelon class which differentiated it from other federation starships was its traceable payload which could allow the Echelon to track ships hit by its weaponry.
The weapons left residual ionic energy that could be used to track their target.
This method of tracking was more efficient than tracking warp trails or transponders, with a hit seemingly sealing your fate to be hounded by this ship.
These specialised weaponry focused the Echelon role as that of an interceptor, and would aid the ships in hunting down starships, whether they be pirates attacking convoys or rogue starfleet ships trying to stop a conspiracy.
Does that remind you of anyone?
An Echelon Class starship has not been seen from the inside, however with the Echelon being a variant of the Sagan Class,
we can take a very educated guess as to what its interior looks like.
Starfleet in the turn of the 25th century employed a lot of modularity into their ship building, possibly to recover from the losses suffered in the late 24th century during the Dominion War, the Attack on Mars, and the Loss of Utopia Planitia.
Most ships of the 25th century employed a standard bridge module, which is very sleek, with the usual iconic central command chair set up found on most Federation starships.
Vessels such as the USS Enterprise G and the USS Stargazer would have a captain's seat flanked by two other seats, for an XO and another senior officer.
Whereas the USS Enterprise F would have a raised dias with a single chair for the captain in the centre of the bridge.
Though these bridges were modular in general design, there would be other differences between ships that used this bridge module.
The Enterprise F would employ more standing consoles for its bridge crew, while the Enterprise G would have more sitting consoles around the outside ring of the bridge, and consoles that could be swung to the central chairs.
What would be standard on these bridges is the Primary ODN Manifolds at the rear of the bridge, which utilised upgraded isolinear chips that incorporated bio-neural technology, as well as Daystrom M47 Quadrotronic processing Units.
That's a mouthful, but hopefully you get what we mean!
The viewscreen of the bridge was actually created using Holographic Reconstruction Generators (HRG) that create a 3D view of space/data/information and project it on the Viewer.
A Blast Shield can cover the opening which can become a transparent window as needed. Therefore it is both a window and a viewscreen.
The viewing lounge can be accessed from the rear of the bridge. This room offers a view of the cargo loading bays as well as the engineering bay which connects to the nacelle pylons of the ship.
Inside there is also a table for meetings, which has a console integrated into its top, allowing for more detailed meetings without pointing to a viewscreen off the side.
The viewing lounge also has shelf space for random knick-knacks, which are up to the captain to decide what to place, usually trophies of prior missions as well as previous ships in the legacy, whether they be Titans, Enterprises or Stagazers.
As a starfleet ship we can expect other facilities on board the ship, including but not limited to:
A sickbay Transporter rooms, which would have tactical gear readily accessible in the same room
Holodecks for crew leisure when not at red alert, though could provide sanctum due to the dedicated holodeck reactors which were incompatible with the ships main power grid
Yep, we're still not letting that one go!
A brig for any prisoners the Echelon class had intercepted or caught And many more
As said, these ships were active in the 25th century in the employ of Starfleet, and we know that there were at minimum thirteen ships active in the fleet.
Some of the ships commissioned were the:
USS Yorktown (NCC-97422) USS Minor (NCC-97452) USS Cole (NCC-97938) USS Sternbach (NCC-97942)
In 2401, the USS Titan-A had seemingly gone Rogue. This was due to their uncovering of an infiltration within Starfleet by a faction of changelings led by Vadic.
Vadic had been a prisoner to Section 31 during the Dominion War, another rogue faction, but of Starfleet origins.
Section 31 had experimented on her and other changeling prisoners of war to try and create perfect spies for the Federation, enhancing the changelings' already base shapeshifting abilities to allow them to bypass security features that could tell if someone was a Changeling or not.
Vadic had managed to kill her captor, and took her form. She would go on to share this gift of seemingly perfect mimicry (mim-ic-ree) with other changelings, acting alone from the Great Link in getting revenge against the Federation.
Starfleet had numerous high level officers replaced with Changeling doppelgangers, and were working with the remnants of the Borg Collective
to assimilate young starfleet officers through transporter technology, to take over Starfleet from the inside.
With the USS Titan-A discovering part of this plan, the Changeling infested Starfleet would order for the Titan-A to be hunted down,
blaming them for an attack on the Duderstadt (Dude-Uh-Stat) Class USS Intrepid NCC-79520.
The attack was actually the result of an assassination attempt by the changelings on Starfleet Intelligence Operative Ro Laren, who was temporarily stationed on the Intrepid.
She was investigating the Changeling Infiltration and had come too close, with Changeling security officers placing a bomb on her shuttle, which she would then fly into the Intrepid’s Nacelle to give her allies on the Titan, which included Admiral Jean Luc Picard, a chance to escape.
The Echelon Class USS Yorktown was one such ship to aid in the manhunt.
She, along with the Excelsior-II Class USS Mestral and the Duderstadt class USS Trumbull had identified the transponder signal of the USS Titan-A,
The Titan would use this opportunity to infiltrate Daystrom Station, a high security black site for the Federation,
which had been a base of operations for Section 31 and stored numerous section 31 projects.
It was at this very site that the Changeling Prisoners were also experimented on.
Two Echelon Class vessels would track the Titan to Daystrom station, the USS Cole and the USS Sternbach.
They would try and utilise their traceable payload weaponry in order to keep track of the Titan after engaging her in combat, but would fail to land a hit.
I guess they were crewed by Storm Troopers?
The Cole and Sternbach would remain in orbit of Daystrom Station in order to locate an away team the Titan had deployed to the station.
Later that year during the Frontier Day celebrations at earth, to celebrate 250 years since the maiden voyage of the Enterprise NX-01, thirteen ships of this class were involved in fleet manoeuvres.
During this event, Fleet Formation Mode was revealed, a system embedded in Starfleet ships that allowed vessels to coordinate as a single entity in large fleet formations
However during this event, the emergence of the Borg with the help of Jack Crusher, the son of Picard and in-essence, Locutus of Borg,
were able to assimilate starfleet officers under the age of 25 through genetic material embedded in people through transporter systems acting as a receiver for Jack Crushers transceiver he had gained from being the son of Locutus.
I know it's a bit confusing,
but watch Star Trek: Picard Season 3, or watch our videos and it will make a bit more sense.
These officers would commandeer the ships and fleet formation mode with it, killing all unassimilated officers they could find,
which were those who did not transport on infected transporters or officers over the age of 25, and blowing up ships that had not been commandeered by its assimilated crew, such as the Excelsior-II class USS Hikaru Sulu.
The Fleet would turn its attention to Probert Station, the Space Station installation protecting earth as the Central Nexus of Earth's Shield Grid.
With Probert Station out of the way, the fleet would turn its attention to key cities on earth, but fortunately the Borg Collective Signal would be disrupted by the efforts of the USS Enterprise D crew, and the newly reforged USS Enterprise D, rebuilt by Commodore Geordi La Forge.
We can say that this ship was designed by John Eaves, Doug Drexler and Dave Blass.
The Sagan class was designed for Season 2, but Season 3 would require a lot of new ships for its very large Federation and Starfleet centric story it wanted to tell,
so more ships would have to be made, and the Echelon Class is just a two nacelled version of the Sagan Class.
For a lot of the newer ships in Season 2, most of them would come from a collaboration between the Production Designer Dave Blass and the game studio Cryptic Studios,
responsible for the Trek MMO Star Trek Online.
Though Season 2 would have some new starfleet ships designed, one just being an updated Excelsior Class, the Excelsior II Class,
but one being the main ship of at least the first and final episodes of Season 2, the USS Stargazer, which the Sagan Class would be.
Season 3 would have a lot of ships created by Bill Krause, notable ship designer and modeller, who had originally provided ship models to be used in the ready room of the USS Stargazer.
His work on Season 3 would include the Hero ship the Constitution-III Class USS Titan-A turned USS Enterprise-G. As well as the Duderstadt class ship, with the USS Intrepid.
Though in standard trek tradition, there are other ways to make brand new ships without starting from scratch, and that is just to change the number of nacelles, or add a little pod here or there.
I'm looking at you Miranda-class!
Or in the worst case to add some highlighters on the saucer. If you are interested in kitbashed starfleet ships, we did do a video on them quite recently.
The Echelon Class was just altered from the Sagan Class by removing two nacelles from the bottom of the ship.
Simple!
Many ships of the Echelon class were named after notable designers behind the scenes for Star Trek over the years.
The USS Cole is named after Carole Lee Cole who was a graphic designer on the infamous Star Trek: Phase II, as well as what Phase II turned into, Star Trek: The Motion Picture and its sequel The Wrath of Khan.
She was responsible for designing all the Federation signage seen throughout the movies. Mike Okuda would follow in her footsteps who has continued as a graphic designer up to Picard itself.
Her initial work can still be felt in sets and design to this day.
The USS Minor is named after Michael Minor, who was the Art Director for the Wrath of Khan.
It was his idea that the Omega System was just a weapon, and that it should be a terraforming device, which inevitably became the Genesis Project and the Genesis Device.
He also worked on the Enterprise Refit from The Motion Picture, the inventor of the USS Reliant and photon torpedo casing and much more!
The final ship named after a notable designer is that of the USS Sternbach, named after Rick Sternbach who worked on The Motion Picture, TNG, DS9 and Voyager,
, and is responsible for so much from many notable star trek ships from the Intrepid Class itself, Deep Space Nine, and even smaller things like the Design of the PADD.
The Echelon Class seems like the ship class to celebrate these great designers who have made Trek what it is today, and that is a heavy yet worthwhile legacy to assign to this brand new ship, even if it is out of universe.
Maybe we will see more Echelon Class ships named after notable Trek Designers if we ever get Star Trek: Legacy.
Do you want to see that? Would you be keen to pilot your own Echelon-class Starship?
Maybe we'll see it in Star Trek: Online in the next year or two?
But what do you think of the Echelon Class? Let us know in the comments below, because as always, if you are talking about Star Trek then we would love to hear about it!
If you want to keep up to date on all the latest Star Trek news, lore and more, then make sure to hit that subscribe button to never miss a video from the team here at Trek Central!
You can also follow us on social media, or join our Community Discord Server!
For now, I’ve been Captain Jack, thanks for watching and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!