Hello, Love your work! I've long believed that the realm of transport and logistics in the Star Trek universe is a potential treasure trove of content often ignored. PIC S1 almost bucked the trend with the La Sirena "trailer hitch" and the Sampson/Wallenberg Class alluding to #spacetrains. Are you aware of any Fanart or Fiction exploring #spacecontainers #spacetrains?
Thank you so much for the compliment!
I don't know if you meant to send this to the main blog or @mappinglasirena, but I'm gonna answer it here so it ends up in the tags and more people have a chance to see it ;)
I love when people enjoy specific aspects of the worldbuilding in Trek! There is so much to dive into, and logistics and transportation is definitely a big area that holds a tonne of potential!
Off the top of my head, though, I can't think of any art or fic relating to spacetrains specifically, not in a Trek context. There's a tiny bit of concept art which you may have seen before, of La Sirena delivering cargo before picking up Picard, which was ultimately dropped from season 1:
But I don't recall ever seeing anything more detailed. As for the Wallenberg, the only things I have there are the Eagle Moss booklet cover and very grainy footage from just before the Attack on Mars.
So, I'm throwing this one to the wider tumblr Trekkie community! Does anyone know of any art including Trek-trains? Particularly space trains? Or stories that deal with cargo and towing cargo in particular?
Seven having to figure out the byzantine controls of Sirena's hitch system to take on some particularly heavy cargo? How the previous owner was recruited to aid the Romulan Rescue effort and that's why the hitch was added to the ship? Maybe some exciting spacetrain-heists?
Because I'd definitely love to see/read those myself 😁
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Awesome job!! What is the cargo tonnage and expected price? Thanks!
Thank you so much for the compliment! And I'm very sorry I'm only getting around to your message now, I hope my answer is not too late to be useful.
Though I'm afraid it might not turn out terribly useful in general, since I can't give a precise answer to the first part of your question - and I'm not entirely sure what you mean with the second part 😅
But let's start with the first:
It's really difficult to say what the cargo capacity of La Sirena might be, given that we've never seen her cargo bay. Nor even a proper sketch of what her cargo bay might have been intended to look like. The closest we get is this cutaway from the "Set Me Up" featurette:
On the left-hand side of the cutaway, you can see what is likely supposed to be a cargo bay at the bottom, leading to the big cargo doors. But technically, the space above that is the engine room, and given all the slightly arbitrary geometry in there, I'm not sure any of these spaces in the model were fully thought out by the production team or should be used to draw conclusions about the in-universe ship.
And even taking this model at face-value, it's still really difficult to evaluate the size of the cargo bay. The set of the front part of Sirena, as it was designed and built, is too large to fit into this model. You'd have to make a bunch of adjustments to either the size of the ship or the size of the interiors, and that would have more or less drastic impacts on how large the cargo bay would turn out to be in comparison.
Also, it's very much a question of how the ship is loaded. In an early design phase, all the open spaces along both decks of the ship were supposed to hold modular cargo containers.
Quoting from the Eaglemoss Official Starships Collection Special Issue on La Sirena:
[Art Director Rob] Johnson gave the interior an exposed framework that modular rooms were designed to fit into. The cargo would have done the same job, with different-shaped containers made to fit in the voids in the bulkheads. The cargo was never added and Johnson says what you see is “a skeleton without the organs.”
This is an early design of what this modular cargo might have looked like, also from the booklet.
When we meet Rios and La Sirena in season 1, the only cargo we see are a number of crates strewn around the upper and lower decks.
It stands to reason he wouldn't have too much freight on board, since he has just been hired to ferry Picard to destinations unknown, which doesn't really combine well with any scheduled cargo run. But whether there are these sort of modular containers somewhere in-universe that might be fitted in between the ribs of the ship is never answered.
Apart from storage space inside the ship, though, there is also the fact that Sirena was conceptualized as a tug. Some of the assembly at her back serves as a tether for cargo modules that can be strung together like the cars of a freight train.
At that point, the cargo tonnage of the ship expands dramatically and becomes a question of engine power and warp mechanics that nobody can answer in any meaningful way.
So, the answer to "how much cargo can Sirena transport?" is "almost impossible to answer"it's pretty much impossible to say". Depending on how much you want to bring production design intentions into it, the available space varies between "as many of the sorts of crates we see used in the show stacked along the two decks we know exist for certain" and "that plus some unseen cargo bay" and "densely stacked modular cargo containers designed to slot into all parts of the ship alongside the living quarters and holodeck, plus the same in cargo bay, and a train of freight modules hitched to the back of the ship."
As for the "price": I'm afraid I'm not entirely sure what you're asking here. How much this sort of ship would cost to acquire? How much you would be charged to have your cargo hauled by one of these freighters? What we think Picard might have paid Rios to take him on his little adventure? Something else entirely?
Money is always tricky in Star Trek, but the core of the United Federation of Planets is supposed to be a moneyless, post-scarcity society. If we go by the strictest interpretation, if Rios found Sirena on Earth, he wouldn't have had to pay anything for her. Same goes for shipping costs. If a Kaplan F-17 freighter were operated legally anywhere within or near the core of the Federation, I assume you wouldn't have to pay to acquire their services.
Now, once we move into the further reaches of Federation space, where people do still use money for the exchange of goods and services, things get even more complicated.
According to the designers' original intent, the Kaplan F-17 is fairly old. It was suggested that Sirena was built anywhere between 50 and 100 years before the start of season 1 (which is set in 2399). Acquiring such an old-fashioned ship might not have incurred a huge cost. Then again, she has souped-up engines and weapons, which either Rios or some previous owner added (same with the modular cabins, holodeck, transporter, etc. inside), and which might all affect the price.
And if we're talking about shipping costs, Rios, of course, is operating outside the typical post-capitalism norms of the Federation (and outside Federation space often enough to know e.g. the political situation in and around Vashti fairly well). But it's unclear whether he'd be paid in gold-pressed latinum or some other currency, and the value of any of those are pretty much impossible to know, anyway.
I think in beta canon, i.e. Rogue Elements by John Jackson Miller, we also don't get an exact number for what Rios pays for Sirena, though the down-payment is made in gold-pressed Latinum, and it takes him months to work off the rest of the price. But it's been a while since I've read the book, so I can't give you any more details on that off the top of my head.
Perhaps I might be able to give you some better suggestions about price and cargo if you let me know in a bit more detail what you want to know and what you need it for? (i.e. just out of general curiosity, or for story-writing purposes, or to size a 3D model properly, or....)
I hope I understood your question correctly, and I'm sorry if this answer isn't particularly satisfying 😅 If you're looking for info for a specific reason or project (just out of curiosity, for story-writing purposes, to size a 3D model of the ship more accurately, ...), maybe I might be able to offer more insights or at least point you to some other places that might be able to help?
EIther way, I hope that this was at least a somewhat informative read, and thank you for giving me the opportunity to write about this bit of design history!
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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 ;)
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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 ;)
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Spaceshiptember 2023, Day 06: Red - "Siren's Song"
With warlords and pirates roaming the remnants of the Romulan Neutral Zone, it falls to the likes of the Fenris Rangers to maintain order among the chaos of the post-supernova galaxy, such as maintaining communications infrastructure at the outer reaches near Romulan Refugee colonies.
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I have an "archive" (i.e. a Google spreadsheet) of all of my past posts, including the date, content, tags, important additions in reblogs, etc. Because of course I do.
And as I am slooowly coming back into a brain space where I can more deeply engage with Trek things, I figured it was high time to update said archive, because I know I have fallen behind. But surely, it can't be that bad, right?
... Oh.
WELP, looks like I have my work cut out for me 🙈😅
(But I will try not to use this as an excuse to procrastinate on the steps-under-the-bridge post, which I am very excited about, actually!)
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In the spirit of not letting my perfectionism deter me from actually Doing and Posting things: I spent a few hours yesterday, designing a new header/banner image for mapping purposes!
I might eventually go back and tweak it a bit more, but I quite like the outcome (especially given that it's been some time since I did any major image editing).
I also created a new icon to match:
I like it quite a bit, but I'm not sure whether I'll use it on tumblr. I'm A Creature Of Habit, and I've gotten very used to the mapping blog having the simple silver Sirena logo on black 😅
For now, I think I'll stick with the logo I'm used to, but I still wanted to share this. And now back to the actual mapping post I was working on before I got distracted.
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Set Blueprint Archive
The new version of the Set Blueprint Archive is now live. Covering set blueprints, CGI models, LCARS, concept art, panoramas, my reverse engineered blueprints and the physical models.
archive.frogland.co.uk
The big new addition is the Physical Models section - various ships, stations, figures, and miniature sets.
The history of the Archive can be read here - https://www.tumblr.com/startreksetplans/708365341243424768/the-set-blueprint-archive?source=share
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La Sirena's unseen landing gear. From Dave Blass on TwitterX
@mappinglasirena
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Archive update in progress
Attention! - the Set Blueprint Archive website is now transitioning to the new site design. Please do not use the site until completion announcement. Thank you
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La Sirena
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“Fandom is a Potluck Dinner… you’re invited!”
Hello friends, it’s that time of year again!
Grab a plate, pull up a chair, and consider yourself enthusiastically invited to StarTrekPotluck2023!
The challenge is to create a piece of fanwork that is food or drink themed, and based within the realms of the Star Trek universe.
If you’re interested in joining in, here’s what you need to know:
What do I do?
Pick a type of food or drink, a meal time or a place where nourishment is served/prepared, then create a fanwork around that place/event/object.
It can be any type of fanwork, for example; fanfic, gifs, fanvid, fanart, poetry, podfic. The only constraints are that it needs to be set within Star Trek (any series), and it must include the theme of food/drink.
When do I do it?
Choose a publishing date between 1st August and 14th August. We will fill up each slot, and if more people want to join in the fun, we will open double bookings. That way, we can all enjoy up to two servings of delicious fanworks a day!
How do I do it?
1. Pick a Star Trek fandom, or a mash-up of Trek fandoms. (Please do not submit crossovers with non-Star-Trek fandoms.)
2. Send an Ask to this blog with your chosen date, the Star Trek fandom(s) you’ve picked, and the type of fanwork you’ll be creating.
3. Message this blog for any questions / changes etc, your hosts @regionalpancake and @procrastinatorproject will be happy to help :)
4. Post your delicious fanwork on your chosen date.
5. Message this blog with the details of where your fanwork is posted, and tag your post with #startrekpotluck2023
6. If posting on AO3, add your fanwork to the StarTrekPotluck2023 Collection.
7. Follow this blog for updates!
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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 ;)
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“the millenium falcon would wipe out the enterprise in seconds” lmao the enterprise is just an innocent science class floating thru space…. all they wanna do is look at some rocks… kiss an alien…. find some space plants….. why would you fight that its not a battleship theyre just nerds…… leave them olone
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Starship Profile: SS La Sirena
La Sirena is a non-Starfleet vessel, registry number NAR-93131.
A Kaplan F17 Speed Freighter, La Sirena was purchased by former Starfleet officer Cristóbal Rios following his medical discharge from service. Rios utilized the vessel’s Emergency Holograms to man the ship’s stations. Each hologram was based on Rios’ appearance but had different personalities, complimenting their onboard function.
Retired Admiral Jean-Luc Picard hired Rios and La Sirena for an unauthorized mission in search of Lt. Commander Data’s “daughter”. Picard had noted that Rios had maintained the ship to Starfleet standards.
After successfully completing Picard’s mission, Rios returned to Starfleet as Captain of the USS Stargazer NCC-82893. He gave La Sirena to Fenris Ranger Seven of Nine, replacing her ship that was destroyed during Picard’s mission.
Following Seven of Nine’s admission to Starfleet and admission to the USS Titan NCC-80102-A, Raffaela Musiker took command of La Sirena, however, current ship’s status and whereabouts are unknown.
— submitted by @bellerophonm
Thank you so much for sending this in and for the transcription! I’m really glad Sirena got one of these little fact sheets and I’m very much looking forward to seeing her in season 3 - even if it’ll just be little glimpses. One of the trailers has a shot of her parked somewhere, so maybe we’ll even get to see her loading ramp or other access points!
(I know we probably won’t, but it’s a nice thing to hold out hope for.)
A minor note: it looks a bit like whoever made the log got their images mixed up. The version of Sirena seen in the post is the model from Star Trek Online, where they scaled up the ship to fit their game parameters. You can see the ship in the log has the tell-tale shrunk front window of the “Kaplan Heavy Raider”. So, because there can never be too many beauty shots, here is what they probably meant to put in that post:
(Courtesy of Eaglemoss via Memory-Beta.)
(Also: for anyone who is a bit confused about the registry (I know I was in the beginning): I will make an entire post about this if and when it’s confirmed in canon. So far, this blog’s focus has been on La Sirena as we meet her in season 1, and at that point, she was unregistered, so that’s going to be my default for now.)
Thank you again, @bellerophonm, for sending this in!
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The Set Blueprint Archive
Archive : http://archive.frogland.co.uk/
I run a site called the Set Blueprint Archive. Its aim is to archive and make available the blueprints used to create the various sets of Star Trek shows and movies.
There is also an RSS feed to be notified of additions to the archive - http://archive.frogland.co.uk/plugins/rss/
It started back in 2014, I had found that several websites that once had images of set plans were returning "Error 404" - website dead. So I placed all the ones I had saved in archive and reached out to the TrekBSS community. They shared their images and the archive grew.
Since then, myself and many members of TrekBBS have sought out auction photos, book scans, and images from websites. Some of us have been fortunate to acquire original set blueprints and scan them for the archive.
Recently our efforts to preserve have widened the scope and added images of the CGI models and photos of the LCARS.
As extensive as the archive is, there are still large gaps. So I work on reverse engineering the sets using the blueprints as a start. These projects (Runabout Project, Voyager Project, and Galaxy Project) are released incrementally, with each PDF file under a creative commons licence.
Hopefully these resources can help with others with their own projects - fan art, fan films etc.
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Upper Deck Under Construction
I have spent the last few weeks amassing a new set of screenshots for season one of Star Trek: Picard, to replace the lower quality ones I had somehow managed to pry off of Amazon Prime back in the day. And as I'm staring lovingly at images of anything and everything La Sirena, occasionally, I notice things I've never noticed before. Usually those are very small things, but every now and again, I discover something absolutely delightful.
So, I thought I'd drop in to share one of my latest observations!
I've probably mentioned before, and many others have, too, that when Admiral Picard (retired) first arrives on La Sirena, the ship is undergoing a bit of a refit or possibly some repairs.
For one, the transporter console is nowhere to be found:
The console is clearly mobile, we see it move around the deck on other occasions.
But apparently, when Picard arrived, it had been taken somewhere else entirely for a while.
Similarly, the chairs on the bridge undergo a lot of transformations throughout season 1 (so many, in fact, they deserve their own post), but one of the most stark ones is from episode 3, "The End is the Beginning" to episode 4, "Absolute Candor":
Clearly, while in orbit over earth, someone on Sirena decided it was a good time to reupholster all the bridge chairs.
Now, if you wanted to, you could find explanations that fit the canon for all of these changes -- the removed transporter console, the reupholstered bridge chairs, the amount of cargo that increases drastically between eps 3 and 4, all of it could have a perfectly logical reason.
However, as I was looking through my screenshots today, trying to find an image of one particular section of the port wall for my 3D model, I noticed another refit, one that had never caught my attention before. And this change, I think, even the most dedicated canon-wrangler will have a hard time explaining (not that we won't try).
Let's go back to Picard's very first arrival on the ship for a second.
I have, on occasion, wondered how they managed to film this shot. I've never thought about it too deeply, but it has always seemed vaguely off in my mind. The thing is: this shot should be impossible, because this is the port side of the upper deck, and there are quarters where the camera man is standing right now.
Of course, this is a film set, so many of the walls are wild and can be moved around to allow for all kinds of equipment and setup. Maybe that's what I subconsciously assumed happened with the shot of Picard's dramatic entrance.
Today, however, I realized the walls had not just been moved aside temporarily to allow access for the camera crew. Rather, when they were filming the ep 3 scenes taking place on the open upper deck, the quarters on the port side of the ship weren't actually there yet!
It's subtle and a little difficult to see, which is probably why I never noticed it until today, even though I've been staring at every inch of this ship for the better part of three years now. But if you look closely at the middle section of the port wall and zoom in (especially on the second image, right next to Agnes's right arm), you can tell that there is open space where the quarters would be built in later.
(Especially compared to the same section of the deck in later episodes.)
(See how much of the beams and the space in between them is blocked here?)
Now, I'm as happy to wrangle the canon into submission as the next detail-obsessed nerd, but I in this case, I have yet to come up with a fitting, canon-compliant explanation for the discrepancy between episodes. I think, in the end, I'll probably file it under: "these things can happen on a tv set" and move on.
(Although if one of you wants to try their hand at a headcanon, I would be thrilled to read all about it!)
For now, let's pour one out for the production team, who must have been stressed out of their minds, getting this monumental set ready for shooting while significant parts of it were still under construction.
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