I've been working on this one for a while as it is one of the first ships along with Bill Krause's Sentinel that got me to appreciate updated TOS aesthetics and rocket it past even TNG style ships in my personal list of favorites. The original design of the ship was by Masao Okazaki on his
Starfleet Museum website. He adapted the original version, the Paris class light cruiser, into a scout class for use on the covers of the popular
Vanguard series of Star Trek novels by Pocket Books. I've covered the Archer Class in a way in the past as I've reviewed Scott Bell Fleitas' Saggitarius deck plans in an earlier
post. Scott has kindly allowed me to adapt his images for use on my FASA stat sheets which allowed me to put the finishing touches on this particular edition. No promotional consideration was given for the use but I do openly consider myself a happy repeat customer of his (and will be reviewing the Sentinel deck plans as well in the future). If
you're interested in learning more about this ship or seeing more of
Scott's work, feel free to check out his designs over on Amazon.com.
As usual, to get the full size image, just right click and open the pic link below in a new window. This post will also mark the first time I've included a PDF version of the stat sheet (link below the pic) which has been a request in the past.
On a final note, I'm in the process of updating my Star Trek house rules so look out for an update later this week. Particularly astute readers may already notice a small preview of what is to come. :)
While the movie Enterprise looked slicker than a slick thing, the original series has an emotional resonance that holds my heart. Next Gen, again slick, but while the designs look good, there seems to me to be little raison d'etre behind each design within the fleet or they didn't manage to sell me with what they said.
ReplyDeleteI grew up with reruns of TOS and watching TNG new along with the various movies in the late 80's and 90's. I always considered myself a "TNG" era guy but when I got back into Trek fandom last year I was surprised at how much I enjoyed the updated TOS asthetics that were clean, simple, and elegant.
DeleteI still have my Starfleet Technical Manual from back when information was sparse: it was a time of darkness, a time before the internet, but it was also an age of elegance. ;-)
ReplyDeleteTimes were definitely sparse back then! That technical manual is a bit of a collectors item so definitely don't get rid of it. You had a few editions of the technical manual and that was it IIRC until FASA expanded the ships in the main trek timeline (Starfleet Battles being its own unrelated spinoff license).
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