The Book That Should Never have Been, Part 3: Bigger is Better

By Al Spader

            Welcome to part three of an ongoing series about the FASA Star Trek The Next Generation Officer’s Manual. 

            Reading through this book, it quickly becomes apparent that that FASA had not gotten a clear picture as to what the plan was going to be for Star Trek The Next Generation from Paramount. With the lack of useful information from the parent company, FASA did their best to extrapolate the notes and information they had on hand, while at the same time, putting their own mark on the content.

            What was obvious to the writers, however, was that the Enterprise was now going to be a massive ship that would also carry family members in addition to crew and officers. Making the Galaxy class a small city in space seemed to define what the show was going for with their stories. As such, FASA used this information to create massive warships by expanding on designs that already existed in the fleets. Herein, the Royal Sovereign class was born as essentially an enlarged Excelsior class ship.

            It is important to point out that the Royal Sovereign should not be confused with the Sovereign class that held the name Enterprise-E, which was introduced almost one hundred years after the Royal Sovereign class ships. In my research, I was unable to determine if there was a connection between the names of these two frames. 

            Of course, if Starfleet was going bigger and badder with its ships, it made sense that the Klingon Defense Force would as well. This idea prompted FASA to create the K’Mirra class ship as an extension of the dreaded K’Tinga ships that replaced the K7s Battlecruisers. Using Starfleet technology, the KDF created this massive juggernaut with both phasers and disruptors, as well as a cloaking device. Though few were actually constructed, those that saw battle were truly terrifying.

            In a nutshell, these two frames defined the idea of a militarized future of Star Trek, something many writers at FASA preferred to see. However, the frames also reveal how little information FASA had to work with when it came to the new series. The company’s leaps of logic made sense based on what little they knew, and those who enjoyed tactical space combat benefited from the creative ability of the designers.