2021 Ships of the Line Calendar

The cover is the NX-01 by Doug Drexler and Ali Ries

January has 1701-A leaving the Spacedock by Alain Rivard

February Not-quite MSD diagram of the NX-01 with the secondary hull refit by Bryant Critcher. We get a side elevation divided into decks, another panel has the front elevation divided into decks, another has renderings of the hull from five views, and
one has the list of call-outs indicated. If anyone uses this calendar as a calendar, I predict this is the month they will have the most trouble finding the date.

March
1701-E flies away from a exploding Son'a ship. This is the larger one, based on a boomerang, not the smaller one based on a horseshoe. By Michael Wiley.

April: The Defiant investigates something very close to DS9. Looks like two tentacles of Founder goo subdividing into subtentacles to grab the Defiant, but transparent rather than brownish. I wouldn't mind if they were some stream of non-animate matter,
and some smoke-in-a-windtunnel effect is wrapping them around the ship

May: "They Gave Her Back to Me, Scotty" by Marty Miller. The inspection tour from ST:TMP, the travel pod is around the back. The shuttlebay doors are open, workbees are flying to and fro, there is even two of those shuttles from the third movie
Spacedock. One odd thing is a spacesuited worker on the left side of the picture. It fills a blank area of the image, but doesn't bear much thinking about in 3-D space. Where is he coming from, and where is he going to?

June: "Away Team Nine Reporting: Perimeter Secured." D.M. Phoeniz uses a near-Saber type design also used in (rustle, rustle,) the 2015 calendar. This time it has done a "Generations" landing into a planet.

The USS Borealis is NCC-62587, higher than the ones used in the 2015 page, in fact, on the other side of the Akira from them. Still, two prominent crew in this picture are in TNG third seasonish uniforms; they have the high collars, but look to be "
onesies," and they add a number of straps around the waist and legs, possibly to secure away team equipment. The Borealis still has power, for internal lights, and to light up the exterior markings; I wouldn't think the red bussards or blue warp vents
should be lit, but it does look cool glowing through the crushed undergrowth.

The centerfold is a cutaway of the Romulan Bird of Prey. Quite a joint effort: cutaway by Matt Cushman against a starfield by Ali Ries, blueprints by Gay Kerr and Petri Blomqvist, dimensioned front and side elevations and size comparison to a Federation
Heavy Cruiser. It seems a bit smaller than the 1/2500th kit, but quite a bit bigger than the first fan blueprints. In a nod to those blueprints the plasma torpedo machinery is the biggest single item in the ship; including a spherical chamber the
height of which is four of the ship's six decks. Landing struts are called out as folding down from the wing.

July the NX-01 Enterprise faces the Klingon D-5 by Matt Boardman.

August:
"Active Planetary Breakup Survey at M4747" Yeager with four nacelles, Ex Astris Scientia points out a Yeager in the Discovery series, and it looks a bit like this, but the calendar ship has much less angular nacelles. A near-TOS refit? Another ship is
helping in the survey, an NCC-1110. I can only describe it as another take on the Ralph McQuarrie "Planet of Titans" redesign, but making what was angular now curved. The nacelle design of the two ships are different Although I can't read the number
on the Yeager, I see the pinstriping around it is two thin red lines at the top and bottom of the letters; that of the 1110 (the name is under the shuttlebay at the rear, under the TOS green/yellow/red lines (it never occurred to me before that they were
landing aids for aiming the shuttle at the doors!) I can only make out the letters "ASTE", odd that the TMP-style lighting makes this less clear) the pinstriping around the NCC-1110 is a thick red line at mid height of the letters. This could be a
meeting between two generations of ships. Possibly TMP era as reimagined from the Discovery reimagining? I prefer to think artist Dan Uyeno is playing in his own alternate universe.

September: "Planetary Breakup Debris Field Survey at M4747" Okay, it must be the editor having fun making up titles. Bill Krause is reusing the shuttle Shackleton, NCC-5235/2 out of the Endurance, that was in last year's calendar. It is with what I'm
guessing to be its mothership here, though no name is visible and the numbers on the saucer are nearly legible. The ship itself is odd. A very wide neck reaches up to grasp the saucer in Akira-type catamarans. The secondary hull is of an angular cross-
section. The nacelles follow (or lead) those of the shuttle.

October: "The Dominion Conflict Goes Hot" by Tobias Richter. A dramatic view of the Akira, from behind the pod on it's rollbar and over the bridge between those catamarans. It's attacking the huge Dominion battleship, which is in turn shooting a
Centaur-class ship.

November: John Eaves's contribution. Smithsonian Air & Space Museum, I would guess, they have The Spirit of St. Louis, the X-1, an X-15, and
SpaceShip One hanging from the ceiling, and Mercury and Gemini capsules, an LEM, a black and grey delta shape craft with the markings
NX-K'OS AL 'ZHIISH, and, center, the Phoenix - its capsule, rocket stage, and deployed nacelles. This reminds me of my questions about the post-warp phase of the flight. It is all explained in a poster behind the Phoenix... if I could only read it!

December: Three k'tingas

Franchise scorecard:
TOS 1
TMP 3
TNG 1
DS9 2
VOY 0
TGF 1
ENT 4
ALT 1? 2?

Amazingly, THE Enterprise gets no renders, but it does appear in the form of a pair of line drawings to scale the Bird of Prey. The E-D makes no appearance; not a first (the all-TOS 40th anniversary calendar) but rare.

--
-Jack

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