#Dave Blass

[mappinglasirena]

The Stairs Under the Bridge

If you've been following my blog for a while, you know that one of the many mysteries/points of discussion that come up repeatedly is: what is happening in the space under La Sirena's bridge? There's a door leading there from the mess hall and we see Picard walk through it in S01E06, "The Impossible Box", but we never find out what that space is being used as.

(At least, we don't know what its in-universe use is. We know from set plans that in the studio, the space apparently held the playback setup.)

We got a glimpse of a cross-section of the ship in the Blu-ray set tour, which has some impossible geometry happening under the bridge...

(That is not a proper floor and something is definitely clipping through it!)

... and if you remember my post from a while back, I speculated that the most likely explanation is that the model has an extendable ladder there, that would allow people to board/leave the ship by a means other than the loading ramp. This would fit with the early idea of the season 1 writers to have Picard board La Sirena in a space port, rather than beam him on board while she's in orbit.

Well, a couple of weeks ago, we got confirmation that this is indeed what the production team originally intended.

Dave Blass, the production designer for PIC Seasons 2 and 3, tweetet some images showcasing a cross-section of the Sirena set/model:

As you can imagine, this gave me enormous joy (and a not too small amount of glee)! I have long insisted that the panorama windows, i.e. the exit the Motley Crew use to get off the ship once she crash-lands on Coppelius, don't really work as a proper access point to the ship. There is a three foot drop right inside the window the crew needs to bridge, no proper hatch, no ladders, etc. The only reason it makes for such a convenient exit is that Sirena is buried in a few metres of dirt, bringing the window level with the ground.

And indeed, La Sirena has, or at least was originally intended to have, a proper access to the front of the ship, one with a ladder and hatch and everything! And it's located in the mysterious space under the bridge!

But, me being me, this schematic also immediately raised a question: Isn't that ladder a bit too short?

If you remember this post, it seems like one of the changes made during Sirena's design process was that the wings were dropped quite a significant amount. Where the early concept art has the ship sitting fairly low to the ground, she is raised much higher when she reaches her final form.

Essentially, we went from a configuration that might have looked something like the version on the top to the actual model on the bottom:

This change increased the ship's clearance significantly.

For the non-imperial-measuring among us, the height of the ladder given in the schematic shared by Blass, 14' 10 1/2", translates to about 4.8m. However, when you line up the orthogonal view of the ship with the cross section, the length of the ladder is not really enough to reach the ground once the ship has landed.

(The green line indicates the bottom of the stairs.)

There is some speculation that maybe Sirena can fold up her nacelles for landing, and that might be true. There are rooms extending into the wings that would end up at an odd angle, but I suppose with artificial gravity, anything is possible -- if somewhat unlikely.

Still, if we presume Sirena's wings are rigid in general, the distance from the tarmac to the belly of the ship (here: the stage floor in the schematic) is a bit larger than 4.8m.

I wanted to adapt the ladder accordingly, but getting good measurements by converting between feet, pixels, and metres is a bit of a hassle. So instead, I simply used the measurements already on the schematic and extended the ladder so that the ship's clearance would be 5.5m or around 18ft.

This brings the total length of the ladder to about 21ft or 6.5m, and overlaid on the orthogonal ship view, it looks like this:

(The green line once again indicates the bottom of the stairs.)

As you can see, this length requires for the outer engines to fold up a little bit and would have the lowest point of the nacelles basically sitting on the ground. I personally think that would make a lot of sense, and in season 2 we did see that the outer engine pods are on hinges and can definitely fold down.

(It's subtle, but they do move back into their resting position towards the end of the gif.)

It was never confirmed that the engings can fold farther up as well, but looking at how they're attached, I think it makes sense that they could.

Now, in the adjusted S1 concept art of Sirena at the space port, the outer engines are in their normal positions and the wings are actually fully off the ground, with the ship resting on extended landing gear:

So, my extended ladder is the absolute minimum length needed to account for the dropped wings. In all likelihood the ladder would have to be even longer than that, because the clearance would be over 5.5m.

One thing that playing around with all of these views and measurements made me realize, though, is that La Sirena is quite a bit larger than I usually picture her. I have this realization about once every two or three months, so to make it easier to internalize, I asked the wonderful @regionalpancake to assist me.

Google helpfully suggests that 5.5m / 18ft is about half the size of a telephone pole or of three Michael Jordan's standing on each other's shoulders. It is also the size of...

... one average adult giraffe. (This is more or less helpful, depending on when you last went to the zoo, but I really enjoyed that as a visual aide.)

And because Regionalpancake is a good sport (and extremely proficient at adding animals to La Sirena), she also gave me this second edit:

(She also helpfully removed the spacedock workers who were a little to tall in comparison to Sirena. Hopefully, the friendly Averagely-Sized Adult Giraffe will make the ship's real dimensions slightly easier to gauge.)

So, now we have an idea of what might lurk beneath La Sirena's bridge!

I imagine in-universe, there is more stuff stashed under there than just the stairs, though. Perhaps the space gives easier access to the phaser banks in the nose of the ship, or to some other flight control or power distribution machinery. And there's still the question of why Picard, after a very emotionally draining conversation, chooses to head into this space rather than going straight upstairs to his cabin or to his study on the holodeck. (Yes, I know the Doylist answer is because it was the more dramatically satisfying blocking/staging choice, but on this blog, we like to dig for Watsonian explanations, too!)

My personal guess is still that there's some communal washroom down there, because those have to be somewhere on the ship, and that space would actually make sense, being in such close proximity to the bridge and mess hall.

But, since we never saw any of it on screen (and won't ever see La Sirena on screen again), I guess the space under the bridge will always remain a canonical mystery -- and thus available for any interpretation your writing /mapping/ headcanon might require ;)

[nameofjones]

[enigma-the-mysterious]

Dear God, I had always felt iffy about the stereotypical (and borderline racist way) Rios' storyline in particular was handled in S2 (the Latin Lover? Seriously? THAT'S what you got from his character in S1?) but this is just the toxic cherry on the top of a shit cake.

In other words

So Picard wrote off all their diverse new characters (except Raffi and Seven) and added two new white men, who are both suffering.

And added more pain to Will and Jean-Luc.

We briefly get Beverly's feelings (and Gates is phenomenal) and then it's all about the pain of white men.

And this is the show everyone's excited about. Best trek in ages, Twitter says.

Because the narrative is back where they are comfortable? Centered around white men. (So far very heterosexual white men).

Seven, Beverly, Deanna...they get good lines but they're all orbiting the storylines of the male characters.

Radfi gets to suffer but that is what her character does. She suffers.

Even Vadic has a male boss.

[stra-tek]

Interior of the Borg Cube, Star Trek: Picard season 3. From Dave Blass on Twitter.

[hiccupmistress]

Beware MAJOR spoilers for season 3 of Star Trek: Picard

Something about my Star Trek fandom that I’ve talked about elsewhere but only ever really hinted at on Tumblr is how and when I first got into Star Trek. Strictly speaking, my first encounter with the franchise was when I would have been about 11 or 12, I think. A TV channel was showing a one-per-week marathon of all the Star Trek movies (Nemesis was out by this point, but 2009 was still a ways off). I was too young to really appreciate it at the time, I guess; I have small memories of seeing bits of Search For Spock, Voyage Home, First Contact and Nemesis during that TV marathon, and I liked it, but I didn’t get that into it at the time. I saw the 2009 movie when it came out, but as someone with only a little bit of Star Trek experience, I simply enjoyed it as a summer blockbuster and moved on with my life.

But then around 2011, a friend on Steam messaged me asking if I liked Star Trek - apparently some online game had just gone free-to-play, and the friend wondered if I was interested in trying it out. Since I had a passing familiarity with the movies and remembered enjoying them as a kid, I figured why not and then my whole life changed forever.

Star Trek Online was (and still is) full of so many pieces of lore and information and references to past shows that it utterly piqued my interest and prompted me to start watching all the shows.

As a result of STO being my main introduction to Star Trek though, be it in its original 'Odyssey Class' configuration or its (non-canon) 'Yorktown-Type' refit configuration, the Enterprise-F is "my" Enterprise, in much the same way as those who grew up watching the early movies call the Constitution-Refit “their” enterprise, or those who grew up watching TNG call the Galaxy Class "their" Enterprise and so on. That was the big hero-flagship when I was getting into Star Trek for the first time. There was a point (like a decade ago) in the game where you could go see the Enterprise any time you wanted by looking out the window in the ship requisitions room on Spacedock. I remember standing there and being in awe of it as it loomed over the requisitions room.

I am THRILLED that Star Trek Picard made the ‘Oddy’ canon. Yes, it was disappointing that "my" Enterprise was sidelined after about 30 seconds on screen; we'd known for some time that the Enterprise-F was to be slated for "early decommission" in Picard season 3, and I'd gotten used to that fact, but I wasn't ready to see an Enterprise-G quite so soon. I actually briefly went through the stages of grief over it, not going to lie, but I've made peace with it now.

I look forward to seeing what adventures Captain Seven and First Officer Raffi have on the Enterprise-G (Star Trek: Legacy?), and I'm hoping that at some point, we might get a show, or at least flashbacks, set on or around the Enterprise-F during its prime (maybe Prodigy, since its about the right point in the timeline, as per Terry Matalas and Dave Blass’ lore about when the canon version of the ‘F’ launched).

As much as I would have liked to see more of it in those episodes, the Odyssey Class Enterprise-F, "my" Enterprise, will forever be part of Star Trek canon now and I am so grateful!

[startrekucast]

We’re talking about the Star Trek Discovery Season 5 trailer, maman. Also there are some updates for Lower Decks, Strange New Worlds, Section 31 and Legacy plus a whole lot more...

Saying Goodbye to Gary Graham and Kenneth Mitchell

Discovery Season 5 Trailer | https://youtu.be/6Fi7ZePgh8k

Sonequa Martin-Green Teases “Big Thing” And Familiar Faces

Cast For ‘Star Trek: Section 31’ TV Movie Announced As Production Starts

Mike McMahan And Tawny Newsome Tease Unexpected Cameos In ‘Lower Decks’ Season 5

'Lower Decks’ Season 4 Arrives On DVD And Blu-ray In April

Paul Wesley On Kirk Preparation and Evolution

'Star Trek: Legacy' Updates From Michelle Hurd, John de Lancie and Dave Blass

Zoe Saldana Reiterates That Paramount Wants Kelvinverse Cast Back For One Last Film

Cate Blanchett And Rami Malek Might Have Starred In Noah Hawley’s Shelved Star Trek Movie

Terry Matalas Nominated For Writers Guild Award For ‘Star Trek: Picard’

‘Star Trek: Picard’ Wins 4 Saturn Awards, ‘Strange New Worlds’ Wins 1

‘The Archive’ Star Trek Spatial Experience Released For Apple Vision Pro | https://youtu.be/gggNizSkaDM | https://youtu.be/fhgNIaatDHI | https://youtu.be/wYD2pkDukfM

Hosts: David C. Roberson Matthew Carroll

Join Us: Site: http://startrekucast.com Apple: http://bit.ly/StuCast Spotify: http://bit.ly/StarTrekUCast Spreaker: http://bit.ly/StuCastSpreaker

[tybarious-ii]

"Please welcome back to the Fleet for a Limited Time Engagement. Direct from Athan Prime where she will be the highlight attraction at the Starfleet Museum, I give you the USS ENTERPRISE NCC-1701-D

Design by Andrew Probert, Concept Art By John Eaves repairs by Laforge."

Posted on Twitter by Dave Blass: link

[procrastinatorproject]

I'm very torn about whether I want to spend any more energy talking about season 3 of Picard, or just... let it go, now that it is finally, finally over, and rebuild from the ashes.

But there is one petty thing I will say (and of course it's Sirena-related, so probably irrelevant to anyone but me and three other people 😅)

SHE! IS! UNREGISTERED!!!!!!!

They forgot Sirena existed about halfway through the season (seriously: after Raffi and Worf come on board, we get a wide shot of the Titan warping away, and Sirena is nowhere to be seen. They literally just... left her somewhere off screen, never to be mentioned again). And in the episodes we did get, there is not a single canon hint that the ship is anything but unregistered.

The only reason a registry number exists is because Dave Blass was asked to make one up for promo materials, but from what I've heard from the people involved in that process, they didn't decide that Sirena was no longer unregistered, they actually didn't understand that being unregistered means the ship would have no registry! That is literally what that means!

"But you need a registry to dock somewhere!" Yeah, that's why you bribe people or hack systems or have a fake registry! But the point of being unregistered is that you don't have a fixed number people can associate with your ship. Because in order to have a registry, it needs to be on the books somewhere. Otherwise it's just another name.

So yeah. At no point did we get canon confirmation that anyone registered our beloved little speed freighter. Let alone of a registry number, real or fake.

I know I will never convince the Trekbros of this, but I feel completely justified in staunchly saying:

SIRENA REMAINS UNREGISTERED AND CANONICALLY HAS NO REGISTRY NUMBER ASSOCIATED WITH HER!

Now excuse me, I need to go be smug in the Memory Alpha production details section 🙈😂

[isagrimorie]

Ten Forward, LA 2024 Set:

The Bar at 10 Forward St. Los Angeles in the year 2024 #StarTrekPicard Set Decoration by Tim Stepeck @OfficialSDSA (source: Twitter: Dave Blass)

Damn. No wonder Picard s3 kept using this set, Picard s2 production built this set for Guinan and it was too expensive, and they ran out of time to build a new set specifically for the Titan.

[pluralzalpha]

Dave Blass has released the plan for the Fleet Museum from PIC "The Bounty." As not all of this was visible on screen it's up to you if you count it as canon/in-universe fact.

Nice to get confirmation that the Excelsior-class is the USS Excelsior itself, and the Klingon battlecruiser is Kronos One.

Interesting that the Enterprise NX-01 is here; I'd assumed it was another NX-class since I thought the NX-01 was decommissioned in its original configuration. I guess it was refit and recommissioned.

Although as it's now the USS Enterprise I feel like it should be the NCC-01.

This is my favourite addition though:

The USS Wersching, after the late Annie Wersching.

[mappinglasirena]

La Sirena's Registry

Before season 3 aired, I promised I would make a post about La Sirena's registry if and when it was canonized during the final season of Star Trek: Picard. Now that the finale has aired and we are unlikely to ever see this little speed freighter on our tv screens again, I think it's high time I elaborate on this issue.

Mild spoilers for early season 3 of Star Trek: Picard below!

What are we talking about here?

Back in May 2022, after season 2 wrapped up, the official Star Trek twitter account made a post about some of the ships shown in the season finale.

As you can see, they added additional information about the ships, including names, classes, and registry numbers. For La Sirena, they listed her as "S.S. La Sirena NAR-93131".

The "S.S."-prefix and registry number were repeated by, among others, production designer Dave Blass, who said he was asked to come up with a registry number for season 3 and/or promo purposes, and they have since been listed on Sirena's Memory Alpha page and also showed up in the season 3 Instagram promos run by Paramount+ (which I briefly talked about here).

However, I have been holding off on changing any of my posts on this blog or the way I talk about La Sirena to reflect this new information, because I was waiting to see if it would actually get confirmed in canon. (In Star Trek, generally only things shown on screen during the aired shows and movies are considered canon. The many books and technical manuals, any deleted scenes, official promo-materials, tweets, Q&As, interviews, or other messages from the showrunners, writers, or production staff are usually relegated to beta canon).

Now that the show has officially ended, I can say with some confidence: we never got confirmation that La Sirena has a registry number, let alone what that number might be.

(Follow me below the cut for a (very long) exploration of registry numbers in Star Trek and why I think La Sirena remains without one.)

What is a registry number?

Most Trekkies are probably very familiar with the typical starship registry numbers we find throughought the shows and movies. They're blazoned across the hull and are often seen in official information or even used as identification in dialogue.

Here the classic example: the U.S.S. Enterprise which has the registry "NCC-1701", with various letters added for all later reincarnations of the famous flagship.

While it is never discussed in detail anywhere in canon (unless I have missed something crucial), these registries are unique identifiers given to the ships. They are created and kept on file by the organization that has registered the ship in question (e.g. Starfleet for the Enterprises, the Klingon Empire for Imperial ships, the UFP for civilian vessels, etc.).

The prefixes before the ship name are an indication of this affiliation. Where in the real world, a ship operated by the UK's royal navy might be called "HMS Shipname" for "His/Her Majesty's Ship", in Trek world, we have Starfleet using "USS" for "United [Federation] Star Ship"/"United Space Ship", or the Klingon "IKS" prefix for "Imperial Klingon Ship."

(Like this beauty. Though I don't think we ever see official registry markings on the hulls of Klingon ships.)

Similarly, the registry number has a specific format depending on the institution issuing it. For Starfleet, the most common in the 24th century was "NCC" followed by a number, though others were possible (e.g. "NA" for the fully-automated Starships like the U.S.S. Aledo from Lower Decks.

With the few civilian ships we have seen over the course of the 24th-century Trek series, the most common prefix/registry combination has been "S.S. Shipname" (presumably for "Star Ship"), and a registry number beginning with "NAR".

(See for example the "S.S. Mariposa, NAR-7678" from TNG's "Up the Long Ladder".)

At first glance, it would make sense for La Sirena to follow this pattern. However there is a snag.

To Register or not To Register?

We learn in season 1 that La Sirena is an unregistered vessel. Rios is an "off the books" pilot and the fact that his ship is not registered is mentioned more than once.

However, at no point in any of the series (as far as I'm aware, and please, correct me if I'm wrong) do we get a clear explanation of what this entails in the Star Trek universe.

On its face, I would think "unregistered" means that La Sirena is not listed in any of the official registries that exist throughout the spaces where Rios operates his vessel. She's not registered with the UFP, the Romulan Free State, any merchant association, or any other organziation that might keep such a database. In order to be truly independent (and capable of doing a lot of shady dealings), Rios has kept Sirena out of any and all official records.

But if that is the case, that would mean there is no institution who could have conferred an official registry onto the ship. If "NAR-93131" were the ships registry, by definition, that would have to be listed in some kind of official register. Which would defeat the purpose of being off-the-books in the first place.

"But wouldn't the ship need a registry any time it docked at a port or came into contact with other ships?"

Presumably, yes. The point of registries is to make ships trackable and accountable. So, if you rocked up to a Starfleet-run spacestation and didn't have an official-sounding registry to broadcast, you would probably be in a lot of trouble. But there are many ways around this.

A determined off-the-books pilot (especially one with an extremely capable hacker-friend like Raffi Musiker) could have any number of fake registries (think: fake licence plates), official papers that are just out of date (e.g. stolen from a recently decommissioned ship) and a good story about currently being in the process of renewing them, funds set aside to bribe port officials in places farther from the centre of the Federation, where money still runs the economy... There are many ways around the obstacles presented by not having an official registry, and it seems very likely Rios would have chosen one of those.

Now, as I see it, there are three in-universe ways to bring in the "NAR-93131" registry.

The first possibility is that it's the designation the ship used to have, before Rios (or a previous owner) took her over and let the registration lapse. We don't know anything about the age of the ship in canon (in beta canon, she is fairly old), so it's possible she was fully integrated into a registered organization before she went rogue. In that case, Rios might even keep the registry around to have handy in case of interstellar bureaucracy mishaps.

Alternatively, this might be one of the fake registries Rios uses commonly when he encounters any kind of authority who will be likely to ask for his ship's identification.

In both of those cases, however, it likely wouldn't be a permanent feature of La Sirena. If you consistently use a fake registry, even if there is no record of it in any official database, it will eventually become associated with your ship and trackable across jurisdictions and time, which is the opposite of what you want to achieve by remaining unregistered.

The third possibility is that some time after Season 1, someone registered La Sirena with the UFP and "NAR-93131" is the number that was assigned to her then. I can't speculate about whether that was the production team's intended explanation (not least because from some of the comments I've read from them, it seemed to me like the connection between "this ship is unregistered" and "this ship does not have a fixed registry" might have gotten a bit muddled on their end), but it's definitely a possibility.

However, I am also not convinced by this explanation. While Sirena does rise to more prominence in the immediate aftermath of the Coppelius incident (she is ferrying around the Newly Great Jean-Luc Picard, after all), I'm not sure Rios would have agreed to register her before he joined Starfleet. Then Seven of Nine takes over the ship for work with the Fenris Rangers, and while I disagree with season 3's characterization of the Rangers as "pirates" ("vigilantes" or "non-state actors" seems more apt imo), I still think they would either not bother too much with having their ships properly registered or might even prefer the more stealthy approach of unregistered ships.

Finally, Sirena ends up with Raffi Musiker, who is using her for undercover work in Starfleet Intelligence. Once again, it could go either way. Raffi's cover story is that she's out of Starfleet, and while it would probably not raise any eyebrows for her to have a properly registered ship, I also think leaving the ship unregistered might have been useful to add to her outlaw persona.

As it stands, I think you can make good arguments for both, La Sirena being registered at some point during the run of Star Trek: Picard and her being kept unregistered and off the books for use in various semi-legal and/or covert activities.

One thing is clear, however: We never got any on-screen confirmation of her being registered, let alone the "official" name "S.S. La Sirena NAR-93131".

(NB: There is a minute chance a reference to the registry number might be somewhere in all of this information:

but since effectively none of it is legible and the two or three docs talking about Raffi's assignment (Operation Daybreak) seem to be highly redacted, I will go with: It's never actually confirmed.)

Why does any of this matter?

Honestly? It doesn't. If it brings you joy to have a registry number to associate with this ship, I'd say go ahead and live your bliss.

This is really just a petty and very personal gripe of mine. I liked that La Sirena wasn't a Starfleet ship with the usual bells and whistles (registry number, dedication plaque, etc.). She was an oddball, run by a captain who, while emotionally still deeply connected to Starfleet, was also on the outside and preferred it that way. Season 1 offered a look at parts of the Star Trek universe we never really got to see before, and that felt fresh and exciting.

To me, personally, giving Sirena a registry number (without any character-driven explanation for how she got it or who decided to register her and why) felt like it erased a part of her identity. It changed her from a scrappy underdog operating in the grey areas and along the edges of the Federation to just another quasi-Starfleet ship of the line.

Is that a highly personal pet peeve and completely blowing things out of proportion? Yes. Yes, it very much is. Which is why I won't ever fault anyone for choosing to adopt the headcanon/fanon/beta canon of this registry and running with it.

But if anyone ever wonders why I continue to call her simply "La Sirena" and talk about her as an unregistered vessel, now you know ;)

[nameofjones]

[dax9616]

Trekonderoga 2023 was a beautiful thing!

Met Jonathan Frakes, John de Lancie, and Robin Curtis.

Had the chance to walk around a perfect recreation of Kirks Enterprise.

Met a Klingon and walked away with my life!

Met Dave Blass who gave a fantastic presentation on the making of Picard seasons 2 and 3.

Nerded out a lot! 🤷🏼‍♀️

❤️🖖🖖

[stra-tek]

Picard season 3 size comparison chart, from Dave Blass on Twitter

[richardnixonlibrary]

#Nixon50 #OTD 1/3/1973 President met to discuss plans for a Roberto Clemente Memorial Fund for Nicaraguan earthquake victims with Daniel M. Galbreath, President of the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball team, and Pirates pitchers Dave Giusti and Steve Blass. Clemente, a Pirate for 18 seasons, died on December 31, 1972 en route to Nicaragua to deliver disaster relief aid. (Image: WHPO-D1160-05)