I like the emergency medical ship idea. I like the idea that Starfleet would have ships that could perform rescue missions during combat, recovering pilots from fighters or crews from downed ships.
especially if the enemy (borg) will scavenge /capture crew for conversion or death. ) This was the tack our game took in exercises post wolf 359 and dominion.
The idea of additional pods to add to it's capacity gives a great reason for the ungainly, fragile looking design of the rear structure. With that in mind, I can easily see a larger version of a pod designed to take up the whole area between those structures and dock into the curved space with the two shuttlebays, turning it into a mass-evacuation ship or a temporary large-scale hospital.
I like the cargo pod storage idea, a larger unit to fill that slot even better, but the gap always made me think they launched this class on Monday when it's secondary hull was to installed on Tuesday. 🫤
Another option would be a specialised medical auxiliary craft that fits exactly into the slot. It's used for planetary landings and has a separate mobile biological science lab and triage medical facilities, so it can land on a planet's surface and work on mass casualty events then and there. Also, the biological lab is for developing cures for unknown diseases, where being a separate ship is a very useful quarantine feature. Especially if some locals may try to escape a quarantine zone. Allowing them on board a short range medical cargo shuttle/lander rather that a long range starship limits options for desperate hijackers. And there's also the possibility of scenarios where transporters aren't recommended.
The only issue with a larger pod in the cavity is that it would break the rule that nacelles need to be able to “see” each other to function. Then again, the Defiant doesn’t seem to care, so maybe it’s just that opposing nacelles is optimal, but you can get away with an obstructed warp field if you have to. Maybe it just burns more power or something.
I have a soft spot for those First Contact ships... the hull finishing, the odd configurations, the fact that they feel like they belong to the same time period but aren't just kitbashes of each other. Love 'em.
I can see this as a rescue starship that picks up escape pods after a battle and can defend itself from enemies still in the area. Imagine that it uses multiple tractor beams to grab them en mass, put then between the aft booms, then warp away to a safe place to debark them.
Being a short run S cience and medical ship gives it an interesting niche and may help explain why the are about as infrequently seen as Ambassador Class vessels are too. I like the cargo pod idea too. You could use that slot to lay mines or buoys too, or carry something like a spare starship Nacelle. .
I imagined self-contained pods for use in researching highly contagious diseases. If the pod loses containment of the pathogen, only a few medical staff and a single pod would be lost. Like a mobile BSL-4 lab of today, where alien bioweapons could be studied.
The Norway has always held a special place among my favorite ships since the days of Starfleet Command III - it looks so good to me. I really wish we got so much more of it.
A Norway class ship, the USS Tenara, is the ship of my Star Trek Adventure's campaign I run, and it's a wonderful blend of being an Next Gen style hero ship and a Lower Decks style workhorse ship. It feels rugged and well equipped, but it's also clearly not built to do everything or go where no man has gone before. Narratively it's a great vehicle for plot ideas too, because responding to emergencies gives so much variety yet still holds a consistent theme. We've had things from dealing with a virus from fluidic space infecting a tropical world to investigating espionage on a research outpost.
A Star Trek game I'm running will see my group using a Nova-class as their first ship...then they'll get a Steamrunner-class. I did seriously consider the Norway-class to replace their Nova, though - I find the Nowrway very interesting. But the overall arc of the game will require a bit more firepower than the Norway can muster, so... :)
The real reason why the class was never seen agaib was because the hardrive that contained the 3D model crashed in between First Contact and DS9 and the model was lost. It was recreated for Voyager, but was just never made it on screen.
I thought the reason the Norway class never appeared in Deep Space 9 during the Dominion war was because the data files got corrupted. ILM was able to provide 3 of the 4 designs, but discovered that the Norway was unrecoverable. I think it was STO that did much of the work of recreating the design for later appearances, which was later the basis for the Eaglemoss models (or the other way around, but I kinda expect it would have been STO that did it first)
@@sardonicspartan9343Very different time periods and demands. Though even in recent days, Disney couldn't rustle up a movie quality ship design in time for The Last Jedi, so they just copy/pasted the model built for Rogue One and said it was now 1.5 times bigger, and slapped a cannon on it. They didn't even replace the masts that were a giveaway to many fans that they didn't put any effort in.
Star Trek Adventures has a wealth of information, and it is nice to hear it mentioned more and more in videos like this. Glad to hear that you enjoy our work with Star Trek.
Crazy fan theory: the Jaegers were actually the prototype vessels for the Prometheus. The Norway is the top, the Steamrunner is the middle, and the Saber is the bottom, and they're all designed to nestle into each other. And the reason the Norway-class has engineering where it does is because the original was the test bed for the dinky little nacelles in the Prometheus' saucer; subsequent ships of the class got standard nacelles, but they were just sort of tacked on without much refinement to their design. I know it's stupid and probably not at all what Alex Jaeger was thinking. But it's an entertaining thought.
I been thinking on this ship for years. Three design features stand out, the inspiration for thr supposed captians yacht looking much more like and experimental deflector dish, thr 4 rear heavy tractor beams, and the curved gap under the shuttlebays looking like a special docking section. All this screams to me a mining, salvage, and recovery ship. Adding medical functionality does also make sense.
I always wonderd if the space between the warp pylons wouldn't look better if it was filled in. But the fact that it was basicly an external cargo bay blew my mind.
The ship is a blockade runner. Built to use speed and heavy phaser fire to zip through limited defenses, then pick up or drop off supplies, medical staff, and such. Big enough to evacuate a few hundred people, but still small and narrow enough that it could be hard to hit while it made its run through the lines. it COULD do other rolls too... while not listed, its cargo area... between the pylons.. would allow for rapid deployment of mines or orbital defenses, holding them in place then dropping them one after another as it made a high speed run. In fleet action, its limit on torpedoes made it weak in fleet actions but it could do phaser escort and play the phaser screen for heavier torpedo ships.
Crazy theory: What if the Norway-class and Steamrunner-class were meant to combine together into a larger and more powerful ship. So the Steamrunner's rear mounted deflector dish would slot into the opening between the nacelles on the Norway-class. That would create a more powerful weapons platform and offer more docking bays.
Thank you for doing a video on this often overlooked ship. I find it soo interesting how all the major youtube channels and games each have a unique take on this ship. Its a fighter carrier in STO, you have it as a medical ship and theres another youtube channel that has it set up as a long range heavy phaser cannon ship designed to work in tandem with the Akira. I hope they eventually make a legendary version of it in STO. keep up the great vids!
Well, the name is usually based on the first ship . ( but there are exceptions), but Norway may have been destroyed in the battle. We only saw the final minutes of a 3 hour plus battle. The columbia class is an example. ( nx class )
IIRC the original CGI model/mesh was lost and the ship was never seen again in TV or movies as a result. The newer version was slightly redesigned to have conventional phaser banks rather than the large phaser cannon in the bow, where the deflector now is. The ship being a science/medical vessel is news to me, since I figured it was always meant to be a combat vessel like the Sabre and Defiant classes given its small profile and heavy armament.
personally given her role in First Contact, I always thought of her as a replacement for the Oberth class of cannon fodder, as the space between the pylon booms looked like it could fit a modular sci/cargo/transport unit or aid in colony construction :)
Love the look of this ship. The wedge shape is distinctive and definitely looks more nimble than the typical Federation saucer designs whilst looking like a tough little nugget. Class!
Fun fact I noticed while I was building a model kit of the Norway; a lot of the ventral hull details appear to be lifted from the dorsal hull design of the Defiant-class. You can see at 8:01 the dark areas with the lifeboats and the deepened sections near the middle are the same. The area immediately in front of the pennant arrowhead is where the Defiant’s deflector/nose would be.
New viewer because I just randomly typed in Star Trek. An episode or three from whatever series is a favourite nightcap, currently Enterprise and I’ve watched all series except Discovery more than once. This was a fun vid, and many of comments enjoyable as well.
An interesting ship design. With the gap between the pylons and their supports leading from the saucer section it looks like it could be expanded relatively easily at a later date with the addition of an 'engineering section'.
I've always loved the Norway class, but it seemed to me that it was missing it's secondary hull/engineering section. Like the class was launched on a Monday when the secondary hull was to be installed on Tuesday.
the way it's built, it would make an ideal lander. also: I see it potentially able to dock to another Norway beyond just tractoring small cargo boxes, it looks like it could be fitted with a full cargo towing module.
heck yeah! I just bought the fleet version a couple of weeks ago, and I was sad when I looked and you hadn't made a video on it yet, but now I'm pumped!
out-of-universe, the reason this ship wasn't seen in the shows is because there was only ever a digital model of it, and apparently, the file containing that model got corrupted, and was subsequently unrecoverable. Probably why they made a physical model of voyger for that show, rather than just sticking with a digital one.
Giving a nod to the SW-Verse, I could see either Corellian Engineering Corporation or a rival making something Norway Class shaped with the space for the cargo pods serving the same function as the forward pylons on a YT-1600 freighter.
The Norway kinda looked like it has that giant Intrepid sensor array at the front, which lead me to believe that (in my headcanon) it was a long-range scout and AWACS ship, which is why it wasn't seen at the front of battles too often.
I think the last one I saw of it had it as an artillery ship. Honestly it fits the Starfleet ship development. They like to make multi role ships so one that can fight and be a hospital ship is great for them. It also allows them continue claiming that they do not build warships. "It's not an artillery ship. It's an aggressive medical frigate. Perfectly peaceful... with force!"
I think this would be a good class for a landing ship as well, based on it's overall flatness on the bottom. It would be cool if they actually had drop pods that went in the negative space the nacelles instead of holding cargo by tractor beams.
At 1:11 The ship in the inset.... That as a lot of the flavor of NX-01 Enterprise.... So far the views of the Norway looked a bit like the NX-01 as well....
The Norway Class was no doubt influenced by the Y-Wing Fighter in Star Wars. The gap between the pylons always bothered me as it looks like a major vulnerablilty but that's before I found out that the gap can house cargo pods.
I'd not heard of the medical/crisis support role of the Norway, but I really like it. The Norway always seemed oddly tacked into the same role Sabre and Steamrunner which fit the combat frigate role really well, but this idea fits really nicely between those two and the Nova class. The Intrepid and Akira go above that as the cruisers with the Sovereign and Prometheus as your "battleship"' while the Defiant class as the "Promise it's not a hardcore warship" warship.
The Norway has always been the oddball of the First Contact starships. Its design is the most different from the FC ships and traditional Starfleet ship designs, and its name diverged from traditional Star Fleet naming convention, establishing a new naming scheme that persists to this day, i.e. the Luna class naming ships after moons from the Terran system, the California class naming ships after cities from California. And it all started with the Norway-class! This reinforces Starfleet’s apparent human-centric bias that the Klingons called out in ST6:TUD. I’m glad that the Norway-class has faded away.
I actually quite like the form factor of this ship. While the finer details leave something to be desired, I'd love to see more ships that dare to defy elliptical saucer sections and distinct - even if well blended and without a thin neck - engineering hulls. The idea of leaving a lot of space for external cargo pods is truly inspired, I could definitely see a use case of this ship dropping a handful of refugee pods on a planet and then flying back up to defend the area while everyone gets ready for evac, then swooping down to pick up the pods and fleeing. Kind of like the idea behind the Galaxy class saucer separation, but with fewer compromises and more versatility (especially because the galaxy saucer section doesn't exactly have a great track record for landing on a planet gently).
The flat bottom of the ship makes me think it would be very good at landing on planets, even more so than the Intrepid. Handy for large scale evacuations that would overwhelm the transporters.
I’ve always thought the ship would’ve looked better flipped over. It kinda looks like a runner up for the sovereign and they flipped it over and made a new ship.
In the video game Star Trek: Starfleet Command III, it was stated that the Norway-class starship had a crew complement of 337 personnel, including three passengers and fourteen dependents.
I don't know. In my head cannon the Norway class always looked more like a beefed up boxcar hauler, kinda like the Millenium Falcon in reverse. The area between the nacelles looks like a docking section for a long cargo pod or series of cargo pods. It's primary tasks would be moving cargo around the federation, but if attacked it could disconnect from the cargo pods and defend them. It could haul, but in a pinch it had the teeth for defense.
Changing the standard designs to prepare for the advent of using slipstreams and the possibility of a working slipstream drive for anywhere anytime slipstream travel, required a total retooling of starship construction protocols.
Seems like that slot between the nacelles should have a lot more than just tractor beam clamps to externally carry cargo, it should be fitted to accept modular mission pods slotted in. Think pods for extra medical facilities, special cargo bay pods, troopcarrier or colonist carrier pods, large shuttlebay pods for SAR, commerce lane patrol, or other light carrier duties, specialty survey or science lab pods, and tow / recovery pods (with own power supply, powerful tractor beam for towing, and carrying warp sustainer assemblies to attach to the towed object to extend the ship's warp bubble around it), specialist fleet support pods like specialty long range sensor, special cloak detection sensor, fleet electronic warfare/countermeasure pods, ect.
hi sir cheers from venezuela sir! another awesome video ! i wanna ask about a ship present in this chapter specifically the one present from the 2.13 minutes to the 2.22 minutes of this video thanks in advance sir! and please keep on making this videos ! is a magnificent work
the reason it only appeared in first contact and nothing else after is because the ships for first contact were all CG models.. and apparently the Norway class's files had been either corrupted or lost (different interviews say different things), which meant when the team doing the CG work for DS9 and Voyager came to borrow copies of the First Contact ships for the dominion war battles, the norway was the only ship from the film that couldn't be shared. (and given they had plenty already, i suspect that no one saw it as important to try an recreate the CG model at the time.) it was only fairly recently that efforts were made to recreate the design, based off the footage. apparently Eaglemoss did most of that work in order to create their collectable.
This is a perfect -as star wars calls it "base ship". Seems like its got awesome attack ability, can carry a couple shuttles, carry an excess of cargo safely and has great science function
Anyone else here because of the fan film Squadron from 2021? In that film, the 38th Squadron consists of 4 Norway-class ships: the USS Minneapolis (which is also the flagship of the squadron), the USS Luanda, the USS San Jose, and the USS Nuuk. I also thought the Norway-class looked similar to the Texas-class from Lower Decks.
You know, going with a combo of medical and heavily armed might be a point towards it being intended to be something that would be deployed in the aftermath to rescue survivors and deal with things like the Borg infestations of the remaining hulks there. That combo might also make it something that would see heavy use as a prison transport for moving prisoners out of hot zones after conflicts
Are the grill panels between the numbered shuttlebay doors and the impulse engines the launch bays? They a similar appearance to the bay doors and look like behind them, it could lead to the same hanger.
I'm imagining one of these with adapted storage bays for a squad of Valkyrie Fighters, repurposing the vessel for single purpose peacekeeping/escort missions
I could have sworn that some of the canon references said the Norway was designed as a long-distance artillery support vessel to complement the Akira's torpedo armament, and had a Lance Phaser in the in-cut portion of the saucer, just below the bridge?
Do impulse engines just provide forward thrust? Lots of Star Fleet vessels have a small profile and thus a smaller target from the front but when they fly by or turn, they offer a big side-target and all its vulnerable engine systems. For a SF ship to pass an opponent and rotate/slide to their nose pointed at them, they'd need more than just lateral thrusters. Do impulse engines have any lateral thrust?
He appears to have forgotten to mention that it was one of only 2 ships at the time fitted with a phaser lance system and so carried one of the best weapons in Star fleet.
The retrofit/remake version from star trek online kinda reaffirmed my belief it would carry large building size cargo or land and serve as an impromptu surface base.
these videos really make me appreciate these (lets be honest) odd looking ships, other than the akira of course the lore and explanations as to why they look the way they do makes me feel like i understand them more, like meeting an unattractive girl but falling in love with their personality which eventually makes you see their "odd" shape as something more sexy i just called a ship sexy... and it wasn't the sovereign... i think im proud of that
Star Fleet's CSAR ship.... As it atmosphere capable? Because being able to sling the bunks and tents everything else for a mobile hospital, and run it with a take off from the ship would be a huge amount of capability. And fast, precise cargo transporters so you can try to beam a whole crew out in a couple of passes. Whoever came up with this role.... They made a ship called Doc. IYKYK
Simpler and more faceted designs are easier to produce quickly and maintain under tight constraints, such as combat or war, where time, energy, and material resources are at a premium. This is why they Ambassador Class, as seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise" reads a a ship Starfleet would build knowingly entering into a period of conflict. Meanwhile, the Andrew Probert version is the ship Starfleet would build knowingly going into a period of peace. The simpler ship pointing to a wartime footing being taken. The more curvaceous shapely ship needing more time, material, and attention to build it, pointing to a low conflict or peacetime environment. Further, the Vengeance Class emphasizes this as well being a deliberately designed Battleship, if having a LOT of holes, figurative and literal, in its design implementation. But is a much easier design to build quickly and easier to repair and maintain. Since Adm Marcus was sure the Klingons were going to declare war on the Federation (A story line that could have informed future installations), the design makes sense, if only as prototype.
I regularly hear opinion that Norwey was a Lance ship. So that explain special weapon. It is first time I hear it was medical ship. Though it does make sense.
All these years and I had no idea that that weird ass butt of this ship actually served a cool tractor beam purpose or that it was a medical ship at all. Awesome. Thanks for this. I'm guessing it was expanded in Star Trek online so yeah. I would never have known otherwise. EDIT, NOPE the Star Trek Adcebtures RPG. Never even heard of that, so even more awesome.
I don't know why the twin booms going aft are wide open. It seems like the nacelles could be easily lost by firing at them. If it were bridged further aft it would have strength and could hold more medical shuttles.
Thought the whole point of this ship was part of the borgbuster designs. It supposed to carry a high powered phaser lance, along with the steam runners and its long range torpedoes it whole hold back while the defiant, akira, sabre and sovereign got in close to do the heavy fighting
while the concept of the norway class is very intresting and very federation like to build a space rescue helicopter type of ship, but on the other hand, Starfleet seems to only send one small Ship for a Planet if there is a Medical Problem, but i guess, it's okay since there is always just a Hamlet on most Planets
I like the emergency medical ship idea. I like the idea that Starfleet would have ships that could perform rescue missions during combat, recovering pilots from fighters or crews from downed ships.
yeah it's very fitting for Star Fleet to literally design a medical ship that can go to dangerous places and survive.
especially if the enemy (borg) will scavenge /capture crew for conversion or death. ) This was the tack our game took in exercises post wolf 359 and dominion.
The idea of additional pods to add to it's capacity gives a great reason for the ungainly, fragile looking design of the rear structure. With that in mind, I can easily see a larger version of a pod designed to take up the whole area between those structures and dock into the curved space with the two shuttlebays, turning it into a mass-evacuation ship or a temporary large-scale hospital.
Something like the Ptolemy's cargo pods?
Or they could add science lab pods between the nacelles
I like the cargo pod storage idea, a larger unit to fill that slot even better, but the gap always made me think they launched this class on Monday when it's secondary hull was to installed on Tuesday. 🫤
Another option would be a specialised medical auxiliary craft that fits exactly into the slot.
It's used for planetary landings and has a separate mobile biological science lab and triage medical facilities, so it can land on a planet's surface and work on mass casualty events then and there.
Also, the biological lab is for developing cures for unknown diseases, where being a separate ship is a very useful quarantine feature. Especially if some locals may try to escape a quarantine zone. Allowing them on board a short range medical cargo shuttle/lander rather that a long range starship limits options for desperate hijackers.
And there's also the possibility of scenarios where transporters aren't recommended.
The only issue with a larger pod in the cavity is that it would break the rule that nacelles need to be able to “see” each other to function. Then again, the Defiant doesn’t seem to care, so maybe it’s just that opposing nacelles is optimal, but you can get away with an obstructed warp field if you have to. Maybe it just burns more power or something.
I have a soft spot for those First Contact ships... the hull finishing, the odd configurations, the fact that they feel like they belong to the same time period but aren't just kitbashes of each other. Love 'em.
I can see this as a rescue starship that picks up escape pods after a battle and can defend itself from enemies still in the area. Imagine that it uses multiple tractor beams to grab them en mass, put then between the aft booms, then warp away to a safe place to debark them.
"Whatya mean you mounted a .50 cal on an ambulance! For what!?" "Zombies" "Oh."
Being a short run S cience and medical ship gives it an interesting niche and may help explain why the are about as infrequently seen as Ambassador Class vessels are too.
I like the cargo pod idea too. You could use that slot to lay mines or buoys too, or carry something like a spare starship Nacelle. .
I imagined self-contained pods for use in researching highly contagious diseases. If the pod loses containment of the pathogen, only a few medical staff and a single pod would be lost. Like a mobile BSL-4 lab of today, where alien bioweapons could be studied.
@@jasonswiatkowski9127much better than just hoping your stasis field doesn’t fail in a shuttlebay or cargo bay (as seen in TNG S2E1)
The Norway has always held a special place among my favorite ships since the days of Starfleet Command III - it looks so good to me.
I really wish we got so much more of it.
I’m with you. One of my favorites.
My favorite since Star Trek Armada! That thing was great!
it's a really awesome design that deserves more time in the spotlight 😊
A Norway class ship, the USS Tenara, is the ship of my Star Trek Adventure's campaign I run, and it's a wonderful blend of being an Next Gen style hero ship and a Lower Decks style workhorse ship. It feels rugged and well equipped, but it's also clearly not built to do everything or go where no man has gone before. Narratively it's a great vehicle for plot ideas too, because responding to emergencies gives so much variety yet still holds a consistent theme.
We've had things from dealing with a virus from fluidic space infecting a tropical world to investigating espionage on a research outpost.
A Star Trek game I'm running will see my group using a Nova-class as their first ship...then they'll get a Steamrunner-class.
I did seriously consider the Norway-class to replace their Nova, though - I find the Nowrway very interesting. But the overall arc of the game will require a bit more firepower than the Norway can muster, so... :)
The real reason why the class was never seen agaib was because the hardrive that contained the 3D model crashed in between First Contact and DS9 and the model was lost. It was recreated for Voyager, but was just never made it on screen.
I thought the reason the Norway class never appeared in Deep Space 9 during the Dominion war was because the data files got corrupted. ILM was able to provide 3 of the 4 designs, but discovered that the Norway was unrecoverable. I think it was STO that did much of the work of recreating the design for later appearances, which was later the basis for the Eaglemoss models (or the other way around, but I kinda expect it would have been STO that did it first)
Eaglemoss came first
I've definitely read that
@@chrisedmund335 hmm, yeah, I know it was one of them, and then the other used that. But couldn't remember who.
If STO could do it, it couldn't be that hard.
@@sardonicspartan9343Very different time periods and demands. Though even in recent days, Disney couldn't rustle up a movie quality ship design in time for The Last Jedi, so they just copy/pasted the model built for Rogue One and said it was now 1.5 times bigger, and slapped a cannon on it. They didn't even replace the masts that were a giveaway to many fans that they didn't put any effort in.
Star Trek Adventures has a wealth of information, and it is nice to hear it mentioned more and more in videos like this. Glad to hear that you enjoy our work with Star Trek.
Crazy fan theory: the Jaegers were actually the prototype vessels for the Prometheus. The Norway is the top, the Steamrunner is the middle, and the Saber is the bottom, and they're all designed to nestle into each other. And the reason the Norway-class has engineering where it does is because the original was the test bed for the dinky little nacelles in the Prometheus' saucer; subsequent ships of the class got standard nacelles, but they were just sort of tacked on without much refinement to their design.
I know it's stupid and probably not at all what Alex Jaeger was thinking. But it's an entertaining thought.
Never heard that theory before...but now that you've said it I can't unsee it. Thanks for the addition to my head cannon.
I been thinking on this ship for years. Three design features stand out, the inspiration for thr supposed captians yacht looking much more like and experimental deflector dish, thr 4 rear heavy tractor beams, and the curved gap under the shuttlebays looking like a special docking section. All this screams to me a mining, salvage, and recovery ship. Adding medical functionality does also make sense.
5:24 I love it when those congratulations you are being rescued moments happen in star trek
I always wonderd if the space between the warp pylons wouldn't look better if it was filled in. But the fact that it was basicly an external cargo bay blew my mind.
The ship is a blockade runner. Built to use speed and heavy phaser fire to zip through limited defenses, then pick up or drop off supplies, medical staff, and such. Big enough to evacuate a few hundred people, but still small and narrow enough that it could be hard to hit while it made its run through the lines.
it COULD do other rolls too... while not listed, its cargo area... between the pylons.. would allow for rapid deployment of mines or orbital defenses, holding them in place then dropping them one after another as it made a high speed run.
In fleet action, its limit on torpedoes made it weak in fleet actions but it could do phaser escort and play the phaser screen for heavier torpedo ships.
The quote "Lots of ways to help people. Sometimes heal patients; sometimes execute dangerous people" comes to mind w/ this
Crazy theory: What if the Norway-class and Steamrunner-class were meant to combine together into a larger and more powerful ship. So the Steamrunner's rear mounted deflector dish would slot into the opening between the nacelles on the Norway-class. That would create a more powerful weapons platform and offer more docking bays.
The U.S.S. Megazord, Starfleet's secret weapon against the Borg, the Dominion and Lord Zed!
@@popculturegreece I was thinking more along the lines of Super Dimensional Fortress Macross.
Thank you for doing a video on this often overlooked ship. I find it soo interesting how all the major youtube channels and games each have a unique take on this ship. Its a fighter carrier in STO, you have it as a medical ship and theres another youtube channel that has it set up as a long range heavy phaser cannon ship designed to work in tandem with the Akira. I hope they eventually make a legendary version of it in STO.
keep up the great vids!
The design project was headed up by Dr Slartibartfast.
he won a award for it.
Douglas Adams reference, if I'm not mistaken. :)
He always liked designing fjords.
Had great fun doing all the little crinkly bits.
One of the Norway class ships at Sector 001 was the USS Budapest, so Finland must have been built third.
Well, the name is usually based on the first ship . ( but there are exceptions), but Norway may have been destroyed in the battle. We only saw the final minutes of a 3 hour plus battle.
The columbia class is an example. ( nx class )
"Not bad, for a doorstop." That had my sides hurting! Well played!
IIRC the original CGI model/mesh was lost and the ship was never seen again in TV or movies as a result. The newer version was slightly redesigned to have conventional phaser banks rather than the large phaser cannon in the bow, where the deflector now is.
The ship being a science/medical vessel is news to me, since I figured it was always meant to be a combat vessel like the Sabre and Defiant classes given its small profile and heavy armament.
personally given her role in First Contact, I always thought of her as a replacement for the Oberth class of cannon fodder, as the space between the pylon booms looked like it could fit a modular sci/cargo/transport unit or aid in colony construction :)
Perhaps "long term" the idea of coloured stripes to denote ship speciality may be retconned onto the Sector 001 fleet too.
Love the look of this ship. The wedge shape is distinctive and definitely looks more nimble than the typical Federation saucer designs whilst looking like a tough little nugget. Class!
Fun fact I noticed while I was building a model kit of the Norway; a lot of the ventral hull details appear to be lifted from the dorsal hull design of the Defiant-class.
You can see at 8:01 the dark areas with the lifeboats and the deepened sections near the middle are the same. The area immediately in front of the pennant arrowhead is where the Defiant’s deflector/nose would be.
I expected the RL reason that it's little seen to be mentioned, they lost the digital model.
Close but the image file was corrupted sometime after First Contact but wouldn't suprise me if it was an excuse and was lost like you said..
New viewer because I just randomly typed in Star Trek. An episode or three from whatever series is a favourite nightcap, currently Enterprise and I’ve watched all series except Discovery more than once. This was a fun vid, and many of comments enjoyable as well.
An interesting ship design. With the gap between the pylons and their supports leading from the saucer section it looks like it could be expanded relatively easily at a later date with the addition of an 'engineering section'.
I've always loved the Norway class, but it seemed to me that it was missing it's secondary hull/engineering section. Like the class was launched on a Monday when the secondary hull was to be installed on Tuesday.
the way it's built, it would make an ideal lander.
also:
I see it potentially able to dock to another Norway
beyond just tractoring small cargo boxes, it looks like it could be fitted with a full cargo towing module.
heck yeah! I just bought the fleet version a couple of weeks ago, and I was sad when I looked and you hadn't made a video on it yet, but now I'm pumped!
I have been looking forward to a video on this class so much.
Love this video and the lore, even if ILM did lose the original file with the CG model when they where doing the DS9 War arch
out-of-universe, the reason this ship wasn't seen in the shows is because there was only ever a digital model of it, and apparently, the file containing that model got corrupted, and was subsequently unrecoverable. Probably why they made a physical model of voyger for that show, rather than just sticking with a digital one.
Giving a nod to the SW-Verse, I could see either Corellian Engineering Corporation or a rival making something Norway Class shaped with the space for the cargo pods serving the same function as the forward pylons on a YT-1600 freighter.
The Norway kinda looked like it has that giant Intrepid sensor array at the front, which lead me to believe that (in my headcanon) it was a long-range scout and AWACS ship, which is why it wasn't seen at the front of battles too often.
Every video I've ever seen on this ship has given it a completely different role and I love that
I think the last one I saw of it had it as an artillery ship. Honestly it fits the Starfleet ship development. They like to make multi role ships so one that can fight and be a hospital ship is great for them. It also allows them continue claiming that they do not build warships.
"It's not an artillery ship. It's an aggressive medical frigate. Perfectly peaceful... with force!"
The "doorstop" comment makes me think that was a reference to the Enterprise-E EMH's retort to Crusher: "I'm a doctor, not a doorstop!"
I think this would be a good class for a landing ship as well, based on it's overall flatness on the bottom. It would be cool if they actually had drop pods that went in the negative space the nacelles instead of holding cargo by tractor beams.
At 1:11
The ship in the inset....
That as a lot of the flavor of NX-01 Enterprise....
So far the views of the Norway looked a bit like the NX-01 as well....
The Norway Class was no doubt influenced by the Y-Wing Fighter in Star Wars. The gap between the pylons always bothered me as it looks like a major vulnerablilty but that's before I found out that the gap can house cargo pods.
You didn’t start the video with “hey all rick here” took a second before felt normal. Great overview as usual
I'd not heard of the medical/crisis support role of the Norway, but I really like it.
The Norway always seemed oddly tacked into the same role Sabre and Steamrunner which fit the combat frigate role really well, but this idea fits really nicely between those two and the Nova class. The Intrepid and Akira go above that as the cruisers with the Sovereign and Prometheus as your "battleship"' while the Defiant class as the "Promise it's not a hardcore warship" warship.
The Norway has always been the oddball of the First Contact starships. Its design is the most different from the FC ships and traditional Starfleet ship designs, and its name diverged from traditional Star Fleet naming convention, establishing a new naming scheme that persists to this day, i.e. the Luna class naming ships after moons from the Terran system, the California class naming ships after cities from California. And it all started with the Norway-class!
This reinforces Starfleet’s apparent human-centric bias that the Klingons called out in ST6:TUD.
I’m glad that the Norway-class has faded away.
I actually quite like the form factor of this ship. While the finer details leave something to be desired, I'd love to see more ships that dare to defy elliptical saucer sections and distinct - even if well blended and without a thin neck - engineering hulls. The idea of leaving a lot of space for external cargo pods is truly inspired, I could definitely see a use case of this ship dropping a handful of refugee pods on a planet and then flying back up to defend the area while everyone gets ready for evac, then swooping down to pick up the pods and fleeing. Kind of like the idea behind the Galaxy class saucer separation, but with fewer compromises and more versatility (especially because the galaxy saucer section doesn't exactly have a great track record for landing on a planet gently).
The flat bottom of the ship makes me think it would be very good at landing on planets, even more so than the Intrepid. Handy for large scale evacuations that would overwhelm the transporters.
I’ve always thought the ship would’ve looked better flipped over. It kinda looks like a runner up for the sovereign and they flipped it over and made a new ship.
In the video game Star Trek: Starfleet Command III, it was stated that the Norway-class starship had a crew complement of 337 personnel, including three passengers and fourteen dependents.
I don't know. In my head cannon the Norway class always looked more like a beefed up boxcar hauler, kinda like the Millenium Falcon in reverse. The area between the nacelles looks like a docking section for a long cargo pod or series of cargo pods. It's primary tasks would be moving cargo around the federation, but if attacked it could disconnect from the cargo pods and defend them. It could haul, but in a pinch it had the teeth for defense.
I greatly appreciate all the work u do😊
Changing the standard designs to prepare for the advent of using slipstreams and the possibility of a working slipstream drive for anywhere anytime slipstream travel, required a total retooling of starship construction protocols.
I like this Star Ship.
It is simple and clean style.
And has a practical side with being
extra storage. 👍
Seems like that slot between the nacelles should have a lot more than just tractor beam clamps to externally carry cargo, it should be fitted to accept modular mission pods slotted in. Think pods for extra medical facilities, special cargo bay pods, troopcarrier or colonist carrier pods, large shuttlebay pods for SAR, commerce lane patrol, or other light carrier duties, specialty survey or science lab pods, and tow / recovery pods (with own power supply, powerful tractor beam for towing, and carrying warp sustainer assemblies to attach to the towed object to extend the ship's warp bubble around it), specialist fleet support pods like specialty long range sensor, special cloak detection sensor, fleet electronic warfare/countermeasure pods, ect.
hi sir cheers from venezuela sir! another awesome video ! i wanna ask about a ship present in this chapter specifically the one present from the 2.13 minutes to the 2.22 minutes of this video thanks in advance sir! and please keep on making this videos ! is a magnificent work
"Not bad, for a doorstop."
That perfectly describes my life's ambition.
In the SFC3 it operated more like a federation bird of pray, filling the same rapid response role and patrol missions.
the reason it only appeared in first contact and nothing else after is because the ships for first contact were all CG models.. and apparently the Norway class's files had been either corrupted or lost (different interviews say different things), which meant when the team doing the CG work for DS9 and Voyager came to borrow copies of the First Contact ships for the dominion war battles, the norway was the only ship from the film that couldn't be shared. (and given they had plenty already, i suspect that no one saw it as important to try an recreate the CG model at the time.)
it was only fairly recently that efforts were made to recreate the design, based off the footage. apparently Eaglemoss did most of that work in order to create their collectable.
"Not bad for a doorstop," Oh I see what you did there, well played...
This is a perfect -as star wars calls it "base ship". Seems like its got awesome attack ability, can carry a couple shuttles, carry an excess of cargo safely and has great science function
The Starship built for Trauma Team International.
I didn't know about the medical aid history of the class. Great video!
Anyone else here because of the fan film Squadron from 2021? In that film, the 38th Squadron consists of 4 Norway-class ships: the USS Minneapolis (which is also the flagship of the squadron), the USS Luanda, the USS San Jose, and the USS Nuuk.
I also thought the Norway-class looked similar to the Texas-class from Lower Decks.
I liked it... except for the big gap running down the middle of it.
Fill that opening or at least add a bridge and I think it would look a lot better.
My idea for the "deflector weapon" is a spinal phaser lance. Capable of drilling into something, or stand off fire.
You know, going with a combo of medical and heavily armed might be a point towards it being intended to be something that would be deployed in the aftermath to rescue survivors and deal with things like the Borg infestations of the remaining hulks there.
That combo might also make it something that would see heavy use as a prison transport for moving prisoners out of hot zones after conflicts
Okay, what about that sketch at 1:04 ?
That's an interesting looking ship concept, it would be interesting to see a 3D render of it.
Are the grill panels between the numbered shuttlebay doors and the impulse engines the launch bays? They a similar appearance to the bay doors and look like behind them, it could lead to the same hanger.
I guess they could be. I'm looking at my Eaglemoss model of the Norway trying to figure that out too😅
Excellent video!
I'm imagining one of these with adapted storage bays for a squad of Valkyrie Fighters, repurposing the vessel for single purpose peacekeeping/escort missions
I could have sworn that some of the canon references said the Norway was designed as a long-distance artillery support vessel to complement the Akira's torpedo armament, and had a Lance Phaser in the in-cut portion of the saucer, just below the bridge?
Do impulse engines just provide forward thrust? Lots of Star Fleet vessels have a small profile and thus a smaller target from the front but when they fly by or turn, they offer a big side-target and all its vulnerable engine systems. For a SF ship to pass an opponent and rotate/slide to their nose pointed at them, they'd need more than just lateral thrusters. Do impulse engines have any lateral thrust?
Some ships seem to have reference to supplemental impulse engines for steering, but it seems to be rarely thought of/mentioned
He appears to have forgotten to mention that it was one of only 2 ships at the time fitted with a phaser lance system and so carried one of the best weapons in Star fleet.
The Norway needs more attention
The retrofit/remake version from star trek online kinda reaffirmed my belief it would carry large building size cargo or land and serve as an impromptu surface base.
“Not bad for a doorstop.”
I genuinely snorted!
these videos really make me appreciate these (lets be honest) odd looking ships, other than the akira of course
the lore and explanations as to why they look the way they do makes me feel like i understand them more, like meeting an unattractive girl but falling in love with their personality which eventually makes you see their "odd" shape as something more sexy
i just called a ship sexy... and it wasn't the sovereign... i think im proud of that
You should do the Olympic class next!👀
The ships need more fjords....
Hitchhiker"s Guide to the Galaxy?
I remember fjords being award winning. Even getting a trophy.
Could that gap between the nacelles be considered a fjord?
Unfortunately Slartibartfast was busy at the time on a bigger project...
Can’t affyord them.
Terrible.
Awesome ship
Awesome video
Are you doing Star Trek online again?
Love your videos of infos and wondered if you could make a cultural index of Ba'ku?
I'm glad there's some use for all that negative space between the nacelle limbs, it'd be weird otherwise.
Rick, that's boss! I didn't know that this class could be used as hospital ships. 👨⚕️👩⚕️🏥
Am I the only one who recognizes Yoyodyne from The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai Across the 8th Dimension?
Star Fleet's CSAR ship.... As it atmosphere capable? Because being able to sling the bunks and tents everything else for a mobile hospital, and run it with a take off from the ship would be a huge amount of capability. And fast, precise cargo transporters so you can try to beam a whole crew out in a couple of passes.
Whoever came up with this role.... They made a ship called Doc. IYKYK
This ship reminds me of the armed and armoured combat ambulances that armies use today.
Simpler and more faceted designs are easier to produce quickly and maintain under tight constraints, such as combat or war, where time, energy, and material resources are at a premium. This is why they Ambassador Class, as seen in "Yesterday's Enterprise" reads a a ship Starfleet would build knowingly entering into a period of conflict. Meanwhile, the Andrew Probert version is the ship Starfleet would build knowingly going into a period of peace. The simpler ship pointing to a wartime footing being taken. The more curvaceous shapely ship needing more time, material, and attention to build it, pointing to a low conflict or peacetime environment.
Further, the Vengeance Class emphasizes this as well being a deliberately designed Battleship, if having a LOT of holes, figurative and literal, in its design implementation. But is a much easier design to build quickly and easier to repair and maintain. Since Adm Marcus was sure the Klingons were going to declare war on the Federation (A story line that could have informed future installations), the design makes sense, if only as prototype.
I regularly hear opinion that Norwey was a Lance ship. So that explain special weapon.
It is first time I hear it was medical ship. Though it does make sense.
All these years and I had no idea that that weird ass butt of this ship actually served a cool tractor beam purpose or that it was a medical ship at all. Awesome. Thanks for this. I'm guessing it was expanded in Star Trek online so yeah. I would never have known otherwise. EDIT, NOPE the Star Trek Adcebtures RPG. Never even heard of that, so even more awesome.
Slightly off topic but I'd love to see a video about how when Q introduced humanity to the borg he saved them from the dominion.
My headcanon believes this was an offshoot of the Intrepid-class...like a torpedoboat variant, specifically designed for 'close quarter' combat
Yoyodyne Propulsion, and its head of research, Dr. Emilio Lizardo, always build the best stuff!
The reason for the Norways’ absence is that the designers lost the computer files or something like that.
You should do the Iwo Jima Class from Star Trek Armada
I don't know why the twin booms going aft are wide open. It seems like the nacelles could be easily lost by firing at them. If it were bridged further aft it would have strength and could hold more medical shuttles.
I fly this ship quite a bit in star trek online.. its a nimble little minx 😳
Tough little ship
Little?
@RandomTrinidadian yes it is little
Thought the whole point of this ship was part of the borgbuster designs. It supposed to carry a high powered phaser lance, along with the steam runners and its long range torpedoes it whole hold back while the defiant, akira, sabre and sovereign got in close to do the heavy fighting
I like that: medical fregate. Kind of Trauma Team/Doc Wagon starship.
I heard they lost the cgi model file for it after First contact, so wasn’t available for DS9 etc.
I heard that the digital model from First Contact was actually lost, hence why the ship never appeared again.
What kind of ships were used as cargo shipsin the Federation??
while the concept of the norway class is very intresting and very federation like to build a space rescue helicopter type of ship, but on the other hand, Starfleet seems to only send one small Ship for a Planet if there is a Medical Problem, but i guess, it's okay since there is always just a Hamlet on most Planets