#(which is the tag i shall use to replace 'alt!sirena' from now on)

[mappinglasirena]

La Sirena’s Season 2 Exterior

So, Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard is well and truly upon us :D

There is a lot to say about what we’ve seen in the only two episodes that have come out so far, and from the previews it’s clear there’s a lot more to come. I’m not sure how quick (let alone systematic) I’ll be in writing it all up, but I figured I’d make a start here.

I loathe advising anyone to go on twitter voluntarily, but if you find yourself dissatisfied with my posting speed here, I usually have  on the @mappinglasirena twitter. But in the end, everything ends up on this blog in some form or other anyway, so don’t venture into the wilds of twitter unless you feel emotionally ready and have a good exit strategy ready 😋

With all that out of the way, let’s look at what we’ve seen of the exterior of La Sirena in season 2.

Spoilers for Season 2 ep 2 “Penance” after the cut.

We got our first glimpse of La Sirena in the alternate evil timeline this episode.

As we already knew from the trailers, she lost her lovely red-and-white paint job, which has been replaced by a mottled grey-black camo colour scheme.

Production designer Dave Blass posted this concept art of Sirena’s new paintjob on twitter:

The redesign is credited to John Eaves, though the original design of the ship was done by Mark Yang, Todd Cherniawsky and the season 1 VFX team.

As you can see, La Sirena is a registered ship in the alternate timeline, and her official registy number is NCC-93131.

You can see the full dorsal registry here (the “C.S.S. La Sirena” on top is barely legible, but in contrast to the design image, I’m fairly sure it’s there nonetheless).

Underneath the name is the mermaid nose art John Eaves designed for the ship in season 1.

There were some hints the mermaid was going to get a redesign, but for now it looks like she has stayed the same, only flipped. You can see the writing is mirrored in the concept art.

The name of the ship and the mermaid also appear on the outside front of the starboard nacelle.

The other ships listed in the concept art above are the Kaplan F17 Patrol Frigates fighting alongside her over Vulcan. According to Blass, there’s a sixth ship, the C.S.S. Charybdis, NCC-93137. I love that all of these ships are named after sea monsters!

I’m not sure if there was any thought put into why a redesign of an ancient freighter was used as a squadron of attack ships leading the assault on Vulcan, but I know a lot of headcanons already abound. I’m looking forward to reading the fic people are going to write about this :D

Externally, it looks like CSS Sirena is pretty much identical to her prime timeline counterpart, apart from the paintjob. We’ve only seen brief glimpses of her so far, but here is the clearest shot we get:

The one big change, apart from the paint job, is the engine lights. While prime!Sirena’s engines had a blue light, the lights in the alternate timeline are switched to golden yellow, which works nicely in contrast with the colour scheme (and is rather unsual for a Star Trek ship).

Despite all the changes, however, most of the ship has stayed the same. (Edit: In fact, VFX supervisor Brian tatosky confirmed on twitter that they only changed the paint job and fixed a slight bug in the model, but otherwise her exterior is still exactly the same as last season.)

Details that are ommitted in the concept art still show up in the on-screen model. For instance, the shutters protecting the lateral bridge windows and the large panorama window cutting across the upper and lower deck on both sides are still in place and are lowered when Sirena drops out of warp over Earth.

(The shutter covering the bridge window.)

(On the right you can see the shutter covering the upper half of the panorama window.)

Of course, there are a bunch of changes on the inside of the ship which I’ll have a closer look at in time. But for now, this is a first glance at what our little Speed Freighter’s evil sister looks like.