Mapping La Sirena @mappinglasirena - Tumblr Blog

Intro & Masterpost

Welcome One and All to the Mapping La Sirena Project!

If you are a fan of Star Trek: Picard, and you would like to know more about the show’s most prominent starship, this is the place for you. On this blog, I try to collect and analyse any information about La Sirena I can get my hands on. There are (very occasionally) deep dives into different sections of the ship and I endeavour to answer any questions you might have about our favourite Kaplan F17 Speed Freighter.

Follow me below the cut for the mission statement of this project and an overview of the content so far.

#star trek picard #la sirena #cristobal rios #about the project #masterpost #housekeeping #welcome!#and thanks for tagging along #i hope reading this will bring you as much joy as writing it does me #(I told you a new masterpost was coming ;9 )#(the regularly scheduled obsessing over deck plans will resume shortly)

"So what do you do for procrastination when you should be studying for an upcoming exam self-care?"

"Oh, I spend about a day modeling the bulkheads of my most beloved little speed freighter in painstaking detail. How about you?"

#star trek la sirena #star trek picard #la sirena #upper deck #3d model #sketchup #or rather: modeling one specific part of one bulkead and it's mirrored twin on the other side of the upper deck #will i ever finish at this rate?#probably not #do i care?#also no #this is too much fun and actually does help with poor brain weather #also: i need some more work to show off at this party i'm going to on saturday #where all guests were invited to do little demonstrations or presentations #of some skill or hobby they might have or an area where they have particular knowledge #apparently the last time they did this someone gave a lock-picking demonstration and there were multiple power points #and when i tried to come up with some hobby of mine to show off the first thing that came to mind was my 3d modelling...#i should probably do a screenshot dump at some point of all the disjointed pieces i've modelled so far 🤔#it's starting to be quite a collection

scathstudios

La Sirena | Soft Pastel on Paper | A5

Fun little activity done with a friend, playing with pastels together in a small bubble of peace from the outside world.

#look at this beauty!#stunning work op!#art #@scathstudios #not mine #not mapping

Hello there,

I'm just wondering if someone was going to build this ship 1:1 scale would you be willing to provide input on size and design renders of furniture etc and provide expertise on Details

Hi, nonnie!

Sorry I only got around to your message now, it's been a busy few weeks 😅

I'd be absolutely delighted to help out with any info I can! I have a bunch of 3D modelling done already that might help and am always happy to brainstorm on all kinds of things.

If you want to come off anon and send me a message about any details on how I can help, I'll make sure you won't have to wait as long for a reply this time :D

This sounds like an insanely cool project, honestly. It's such a shame the original set was used so little in season 3 and now doesn't exist anymore. If I have my behind the scenes trivia right, it was one of the most expensive parts of Season 1 because it was such a huge contiguous set. But in my opinion, that definitely added to the sense of place and reality.

Anyway, yes, if someone was going to sit down and build this ship (I'm assuming as a 3D model? 😅), I would be thrilled to be involved!

#asked and answered #@anonymous

So I'm catching up on following this with interest. What brought me to it, though, is that I'm looking to see if anyone has come up with an either static (or even better video) of the bridge view looking straight at the captain's chair, fairly close up, in a way that could be used as a Teams / Zoom / etc. background. I found a Constitution Class version of this and love it... but would love to have myself in La Sirena's captain's chair for my meetings - just geeky enough that people might have to ask. (Where everyone recognizes the original NCC-1701...) Any thoughts or know of any other resources? (And BTW, LOVE the deck plans as you have them!!!)

First of all, thank you so much for the compliment, I really appreciate that 💗

As for the image, I'm assuming you're looking for something like this, except more zoomed in and without the people?

Because I was looking for something similar myself a while back, specifically for a phone and laptop wallpaper, but unfortunately, I came up mostly empty.

One of the issues is that the ship is really deep, so when you have the bridge in focus, the background is really blurry.

It's already not great in a medium shot like the one above. If you have a close-up the way you'd need for a zoom background, it starts looking like this:

That is not very recognizable, alas.

In general, there are very few images of the upper deck viewed from the bridge, without someone sitting in the captain's chair.

This one comes to mind, but it's fairly zoomed out and in quite a bit of post-crash disarray 😅 (Also: Raffi and Rios are standing by the engine lights, but they're not super noticeable, because, again, very far away.)

So, you'd probably have to take a bunch of images of the upper deck, especially the engine lights at the back and the railing at the front, and then do some photoshop magic to try and splice them into a coherent image without too much blurriness. But I'm afraid that goes beyond my capabilities 😅

Perhaps someone else knows of any scenes or screenshots that could be helpful? Or some promo pics that show the empty upper deck with enough resolution to be useful?

(Something like this, excpet from the bridge, basically...)

#star trek picard #star trek la sirena #la sirena #upper deck #bridge #screenshots #asked and answered #(well. asked and forwarded to the collective Tumblr Trek community for possible answers)#@somethingscifi #(thank you for the opportunity to dig through my screenshots! I haven't done that in way too long and it's been a very enjoyable half-hour #even if I wasn't able to come up with the sort of image you were probably hoping for #i'll have another look around soon to see what might be some candidates for cropping and collaging together into a possible background #but i'm not too hopeful. There are very few glamour shots of this gorgeous ship sadly.)

procrastinatorproject

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 😁

#reblogging my main to add to have this question on here as well #cargo #cargo spaces #spacetrains #wallenberg class #design #eaglemoss #mark yang #asked and answered #@carfreemaine-blog #maybe someone else can help out?

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!

#star trek picard #star trek la sirena #la sirena #cargo spaces #design #eaglemoss #rogue elements #rob johnson #mark yang #long post #asked and answered #@voightkampffsblog

mappinglasirena

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?

#reblogging for time zones #it's not a full deep dive #but it's the first proper mapping post i've been able to do since... january?#so i'm celebrating 😁