Within Star Trek we have had numerous hero ships, from the iconic USS Enterprise to the tough little
ship the USS Defiant. But our latest hero ship may be one of the most interesting to date,
so let's break down everything we know about the new Sagan Class starship, the USS Stargazer.
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The USS Stargazer was a Sagan Class starship active during the early 25th century
in service to Starfleet of the United Federation of Planets. The ship was designed and built
during the late 24th century, but saw most of its notable service during the 25th century.
The first ship of its class, probably after the USS Sagan, would be the USS Stargazer.
The ship was constructed to utilise new components derived from research from the Artifact,
which is a nice way of saying... abandoned borg cube that was under the jurisdiction of the Borg
Reclamation Project, and independent organisation which 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.
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 Sagan Class,
if it can even be called a secondary hull, was directly attached to the rear of the saucer.
The ship also had 4 nacelles, which wasn't too uncommon a sight on starfleet ships,
such as being on the Prometheus class, the Cardenas Class
and the previous Stargazers, the Radiant and Constellation classes.
The nacelles had large orange bussard collectors on them, similar to the nacelles of ships such as
well as the Gagarin class and other ships of the 25th century seen in the game Star Trek Online.
The nacelles were not directly attached to the hull, with their pylons attaching to
a structure located above and below the main hull
of the ship. This structure seemed to be some sort of Engineering Bay.
Not only did the ship have 3 seperate shuttle bays located at the rear of the ship, but also
has cargo loading and staging areas on the top of its hull,
in front of the nacelle pylon structure and behind the bridge section of the saucer.
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.
This Bay was connected to the main hangar of the ship through the interior.
Either side of this cargo staging area there are these circular structures. These are the warp
field governor system to assist the ship in creating a stable warp field when going to warp.
The ship has at least 4 tractor emitters on its hull, 2 on either side of the ship.
Additionally, the Stargazer has up to 5 transporter emitters visible on its hull,
2 on the dorsal side of its hull, either side of the bridge module, and 3 on its ventral side.
This would complement the ship’s numerous sensor arrays and strips along its hull.
On the underside of the hull you can see the location of the antimatter
loading port for the warp core as well as the exit points for
the dual synchronised warp core system which the Stargazer has.
The deflector dish of the ship is sunk into its saucer section, and
interestingly is not overly circular in shape, unlike many deflector designs of the time,
not even that oval either. What purpose this might serve in deflector design is not known,
but I assume Starfleet was experimenting with variations in deflector design, considering
the previous modern ship seen in starfleet was the Inquiry Class with its grill style deflector dish.
As can be expected with any federation the ship was outfitted with weapons. Along the
hull are numerous Phaser strips, which allow for phaser fire in various arcs around the ship.
None of the breakdowns of the ship we have seen from creatives such as Dave Blass
have revealed where the Torpedo tubes of the Stargazer is, but we can be sure that they
exist, due to them being standard on all Starfleet ships. Whether the Stargazer has a complement of
Quantum torpedoes alongside the regular photon torpedoes, or even some mention of a type of
torpedo from Beta canon, like phased plasma or Adam's own personal design [//Redacted//]
This class of starship was 16 decks in height. The ship obviously had holodecks, and these were
located on decks 5, 7 and 9. Whether there were only 3 holodecks, with 1 on each of these floors,
or more is unknown. There is a sickbay as well of course, which is located on Deck 5.
The warp cores were located in the engineering substructure of the ship, which from floor
plans seem to be a massive space located on the underside by the pylon section of the vessel.
The cargo hold of the ship was located underneath the
main hangar also in this engineering substructure.
Not much of the Stargazer interior has been visible so far, with mostly the corridors,
Turbolifts and bridge sections being seen. The corridors are very clean and differ
from the carpeted corridors seen on most Federation ships from the 24th century.
However we have seen some corridors coming equipped with weapon racks,
similar to what is seen on the Sovereign class starships of the time.
The turbolift of the Sagan Class is very spacious, much more spacious than those seen
on other ships. The turbolift also featured numerous terminal screens around the walls,
giving visual readouts of the ship's interior, as well as probably other functions.
These turbolifts seem to have taken design inspiration from the ships of the TOS era,
with handlebars lining the walls of the lift. An interesting addition to
the turbolift is a control panel near the door which comes equipped with a retinal
scanner. Perhaps there are some decks which you need permission to access?
The Bridge of the Sagan Class is very sleek,
with the usual iconic central command chair set up found on most Federation starships.There are two
individual fore control consoles for helmsman and navigational officers.
The interesting thing about these fore control consoles is that
on the floor of them they have holographic assisted foot controls. Perhaps this can be
altered to have it work like the pedals of an automobile, or perform other functions.
The terminals surrounding the bridge are incredibly large,
curving up the side of the wall, and show a variety of different displays,
from Dilithium articulation frame status to communication systems.
As usual, you have a captain and up to two commanders seated in the centre of the bridge,
though there are ramps either side of this section, it is slightly
elevated with steps to the front. This seems like a trip hazard, but oh well.
As long as they still have seat belts.... Took forever to get hose installed as standard...
The most combustible consoles on this bridge seem to be these ones at the back of the bridge,
near the turbolift entrances. They have a transparent display above their consoles. The same
design of consoles can also be seen at the front of the bridge, either side of the seated consoles.
Just behind these consoles are where the primary ODN manifolds are located. This system uses an
upgraded Bio-Neural Gel Pack technology, presumably derived from research on the bio-neural
gel packs used on the USS Voyager, so hopefully they can no longer get ill from Neelix’s cheese.
I dont know, i feel like thats on the same level as the Borg as far as Galactic threat goes...
This bio-neural gel tech has been incorporated into a more dynamic isolinear
chip. This allows for more reliable storage, faster speed and more intuitive processing.
This more advanced Isolinear chip can be seen here, with the gel in the centre of
the chip though there also seemed to be an energy-based isolinear chip system as well.
The most interesting part of these ODN Manifolds is the incorporation of the Daystrom
M47 Quadrotronic processing Unit, obviously working much better than the M5 Multitronic
processing unit seen in The Original Series episode “The Ultimate Computer”.
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.
An interesting thing about the bridge is that the
viewing lounge was directly accessible from the rear of the bridge through a
centrally located door. It seems like this door has frosted window tech for privacy.
The viewing lounge offers a view of the cargo loading bays as well as the engineering bay
which connects to the nacelle pylons of the ship. However inside we see 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 in this case are ship models of the previous ships called Stargazer,
a plaque of the previous Constellation USS Stargazer, and other random sculptures.
The captain's ready room is located just off this viewing lounge, though this room
has not been seen yet. Perhaps this set is being saved for another project, who knows,
but we can imagine the Sagan-class has a modern ish looking Ready Room.
Likely complementing the similar designs we see for the conference room and bridge.
The Stargazer seemed to have a complement of the new Type 14 Long Range Shuttle Craft,
with one of these shuttles named the USS Jemison after NASA Astronaut Mae Jemison.
These shuttlecraft look particularly armoured compared to their predecessors.
This USS Stargazer is not the first ship to be named the Stargazer, and even though it has its
name from the Constellation-Class Starship the USS Stargazer, NCC-2893, which was famous under the
command of Captain Jean-Luc Picard in the 2330s, there was actually a relatively unknown stargazer
before that. The Radiant Class USS Stargazer was a Starfleet vessel during the time of Kirk and his
captaincy of the USS Enterprise NCC 1701 (Scotty Quote Here(You've already told this joke)).
During the year 2401, the USS Stargazer was under the command of Captain Cristobal
Rios. The Stargazer was tasked with investigating a spatial anomaly in 2401,
which had formed and damaged the Akira-class starship the USS Avalon.
The crew of the USS Stargazer under captain Rios included:
Commander Moshe, a trill who served as First Officer
Lieutenant Sing, a Bajoran who served as Communications Officer
The human operations officer Lieutenant Urten And a Haliian Helmsman called Ensign Kemi
The USS Stargazer would receive a message from this spatial anomaly,
and with the assistance of cyberneticist Agnes Jurati, would decode this message as not only
requesting Admiral Jean-Luc Picard but also included the entirety of Article 15, a legal
document used by a non-Federation member to make a request to join the United Federation of Planets.
This request was made by a borg collective, who would appear through the spatial anomaly,
and would then transport their queen aboard the ship for negotiations.
Captain Rios was unwilling to allow a borg queen to beam aboard the Stargazer,
but the Borg ship's transporter beam was able to penetrate the stargazer's
shields, which allowed the Queen to be transported onto the bridge of the ship.
The queen would then say she required power and began to assimilate the ship,
which was assisted by the fact the ship had components derived from Borg technology.
She would go on to use the ship as a hub to obtain command codes for the
entire Starfleet fleet assisting the Stargazer against the Borg threat.
While Stargazer officers attempted to take out the Queen and failed miserably, other plans went
into action. Admiral Picard, who was currently onboard the Stargazer would then activate the
stargazer’s self-destruct system before the queen could fully assimilate the entire fleet.
We all know this song and dance... Unlike normal though this
time the plan was thwarted by Q.
After some Q-related temporal hijinks, Picard, Seven and Raffi would return to the Stargazer,
without Captain Rios or Dr Agnes Jurati. Seven would be given a
field commission by Admiral Picard and take command of the Stargazer,
and open negotiations with the Borg queen who would turn out to be Agnes Jurati from the past.
Allowing her to take command of the fleet,
the combined ships would be able to harmonise the shield harmonics to prevent an energy
wave from the formation of a transwarp gateway from damaging the nearby sector,
which would possibly destroy several inhabited planets and have killed billions of people.
The Sagan class Starship was Designed by John Eaves, Doug Drexler and Dave Blass.
Obviously, John Eaves and Doug Drexler are renowned Star Trek designers, with John Eaves
responsible for numerous famous designs from Star Trek: Deep Space Nine to Star Trek: Discovery,
and Drexler being well known for his work from The Next Generation onwards,
but also for the creation of the NX-01 Enterprise.
However the Sagan Class really is a collaborative effort from so many different artists,
so let's give those we know a shout out and what they worked on to get this ship made.
Let's first go over many of the concept artists that worked on the USS Stargazer, which include:
Igor Knezevic
Matthew Cunningham Sean Hargraves
James Chung Daren Dochterman
And I am sure many more. However this does not just include concept artists, but set designers,
graphic designers and everyone else involved with bringing such a thing to life on our screens.
The Dedication plaque was designed by Geoffrey Mandel,
who is a famous graphic designer who has done a lot of previous work on Star Trek. Mandel
would also do the graphic work for many of the Capsule stickers seen throughout the entire ship.
The gold starship models made for the ready room of the USS Stargazer were made by
starship designer Bill Krause, who also would then design the Radiant Class USS Stargazer.
The Primary ODN Manifold FTL Nanoprocessing unit from the
Bridge of the U.S.S. Stargazer was designed by Darko “Darmar” Markovic.
Many concepts for the bridge and its consoles were done by concept artist James Chung, who even
designed that the forward bridge consoles would have holographic assisted foot controls on the
floor of the console. Many of James Chungs designs would have a Nova Class starship or the Vengeance
Class from Into Darkness as placeholder textures on the console's screens.
James Chung seemed to also be the one who came up with the new Isolinear chips which
incorporate Bioneural gel, and funnily enough, the file of these is titled “Isolinear Chip
TidePods”... So let's hope no cadets try eating these new chips in the 25th century…
I am sure there are many stories about the creation of the USS Stargazer, from its exterior
to its interior. With Star Trek Picard Season 3 having been filmed back to back with Season 2,
and the number of Starfleet ship interior leaked pictures we have
gotten from series Showrunner Terry Matalas, we definitely may see more from this Starship.
And with Season 3 seeing the return of many of the main TNG cast, I wonder what adventures they
and the crew of the stargazer may get up to in Season 3. If the ship does indeed appear that is!
But what do you think of the USS Stargazer? 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
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For now, I’ve been LT.Adam, thanks for watching
and we’ll see you next time! Live Long and prosper my friends!