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.
Season 2 of Star Trek: Picard is upon us, and I have barely had time to read any of the myriad of new fics that have arrived in the AO3 tag in the last couple of weeks. So many new stories! So many new names! I am so incredibly happy to see you all joining us on this wild ride 😁
It’s been a while since I’ve done some self-promo for this blog, so I thought now would be the right time.
Welcome to the Mapping La Sirena Project!
I started this little blog a couple of years ago, because I was writing fanfiction for Star Trek: Picard, and at the time, we didn’t have any floor plans or layouts of the main location the series takes place in: Captain Cris Rios's Kaplan F17 Speed Freighter La Sirena.
In the intervening years, the production team have been incredibly generous and have given us glimpses of official set plans, construction photos and all kinds of other resources you could use to answer questions like:
“If Rios is sitting on the bridge, can Agnes get his attention if she shouts loud enough from the mess hall?” (Yes.)
“Where is a dark corner for Raffi and Seven to make out in, if they’re too... preoccupied to stumble all the way back into their quarters?” (Blind corridor behind the holodeck.)
“Is there a way to get to the back of the ship from the mess hall that doesn’t involve going up the stairs to the bridge, running along the entire length of the upper deck, and going down the stairs near the engine lights?” (It’s complicated. On the set? No. In universe? Probably, because there is enough space for corridors to go past the sides of sickbay, and not having at least one corridor there would be ridiculous.)
“Is it just me or is the ship bigger on the inside?” (🙈 I’m afraid so.)
And so, so much more.
I have made it my mission (or rather my hobby to an obsessive degree 😅) to collect this information and make posts exploring this little ship. Partially because I have absolutely fallen in love with her and want to know each of her bolts and fittings blind, but also because I want to create a resource for writers like me, who have questions about the location where their Picard fanfics are set.
If you have a question about La Sirena, be it about what we saw of her in season 1, what we’ve seen of her in season 2 so far, or what the beta canon has said about her, but you don’t want to trawl through hundreds of Trek Core photos or reddit threads or TrekBBS forum posts, you have come to the right place!
In my masterpost (pinned post on the blog, I’m not gonna link it here, because I want this post to show up in the Picard tags 🙈), there are links to most of the more involved posts I’ve written so far. I don’t have a masterlist of my tags yet, but my tagging system for this blog is pretty meticulous, so if you want to check if I have mentioned the mess hall in a post that’s not mentioned on the masterpost, just click on the tag under the deep dive and see what comes up.
And if you have a question that I haven’t covered (or you don’t currently have the time, energy, or spoons to go rooting around the archives), my ask box is always open! No question is “too silly” or “too small” or “too nitpicky”. And I’m happy to answer the same question over and over again, if it gives me a chance to talk about this ship!
A Quick Note on “Accuracy” in Fanfics
I don’t want anyone to use this blog as an excuse to police other people’s fic writing (or their own writing, for that matter). From what I’ve seen of the Picard fanfic writing community, all of you are incredibly lovely people and would probably never dream of something like this, but I feel it deserves to be said nonetheless.
If you couldn’t care less about the precise size and layout of La Sirena, that is perfectly fine! I, for one, will love reading your fic/headcanons/meta/what have you anyway, because you're brave and generous enough to share your passion for this world we all love. Who cares if you give the ship a few extra rooms she doesn’t have in canon? I’ve certainly done that before 😋
This project is not a callout or attempt at gatekeeping or a plea for people to care more about accuracy in their fics or whatever. It’s just a resource (or source of entertainment, if you’re into really nerdy, detail-obsessed starship observations) for those who think they might enjoy that.
So, I hope I’ll be able to help some of you in the future and share my joy about the absolute beauty that is 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!
This is not strictly a mapping post, but I felt it should go here, anyway.
While taking new and imporved screenshots of La Sirena from season 1 of Star Trek Picard, I have made a discovery!
There is a small-ish case Rios keeps in his chest of Starfleet things. It sports a very fetchiing ibn Majid decal and I always assumed it contained more ship’s mementos that we just never get to see.
I took a bunch of screenshot of this scene in ep8, “Broken Pieced”, today, and now that I finally have all of these episodes in 1080p bluray resolution and am staring at them in that sort of detail, I realized something: This is not a simple case! This is Captain Vandermeer’s record player!
You can see the cover with the ibn Majid sticker lying behind the case, and you can see the handle at the front.
And just to verify this discovery, I went looking for the original model, et voilà:
This is the Vestax Handy Trax USB Portable Turntable!
It doesn’t look like these are being produced anymore, but if you have a bunch of vinyl records and are desperate to listen to them the exact way Rios does, you know what to look for in second hand markets ;)
@cristobalrios: Feel free to add this observation to our collection of Sirena props. I’m pretty sure you have the most complete record of all of our collected discoveries ;)
Having seen the end of Picard season 2... are you okay?
That is an incredibly sweet thing to ask, thank you <3
(And sorry for only replying now, I always miss my Ask notifications 🙈)
Um... a bit of personal stuff and some season 2 opinions after the cut.
I’m okay, mostly. It will probably come as no surprise to anyone following my main blog that the end of season 2 left me somewhat heartbroken.
This blog has never been about plot or character analysis (apart from the occasional Extrailervaganza), so I’m not going to go into it in too much detail here. At some point, I’ll probably do a full write-up on my main blog, but the main gist is that I fell in love with Star Trek: Picard because it was different from the other Trek shows. I loved the new, non-legacy characters, I love La Sirena with all my heart, and I thought their approach to examining the Federation and Starfleet from an outside perspective was daring and much needed. By contrast, season 2 felt very different to me. From the start, it skipped over a lot of character development and reconciliation with Starfleet, and it dropped us into a new status quo that, in my opinion, didn’t follow naturally from season 1. And the development of the season only widened this disconnect for me.
I am glad for everyone who found the ending of season 2 meaningful and who enjoyed the character arcs we saw this season. Opinions differ, and that is okay! Personally, I felt that while some of the endings fit the characters established in season 2, few of them felt like they worked for the versions of the characters we got in season 1. And since I already found the jump from season 1 to season 2 jarring, seeing these endings has left me feeling very disillusioned.
Again, I don’t begrudge anyone who enjoyed this season. There was a lot to enjoy, and I’m not here to tell you how you should read characters or which parts of the story you should prioritize. This is merely how I personally felt after watching season 2.
Unfortunately, this season finale has happened at a point in time where I really, really could have used something uplifting. There is a lot of stuff going on in my personal life right now that makes finding motivation to do anything creative or fannish very hard to begin with. So, while I was hoping to get through these weeks by leaning on a show that has given me so much joy in the past, I am instead left with (almost) all my favourite characters unceremoniously written out of the franchise.
This might also be a reason my perspective is extra bleak at the moment. If I were in a better place, I would probably be writing fix-its or happily working on “Picard season 1.5″, i.e. “let’s build out the story for the characters we got in season 1″. Instead, I am finding it hard to get back into this world at all.
I’m sure I’ll get back to it in due time.
Season 2 gave us a ton of truly beautiful shots of La Sirena, as well as some fascinating new details to analyze and pick apart. And whatever you might think about the writing this season, you can’t argue that the people working on this show didn’t give it their all. The sets, the visual effects, the costuming, the acting - there were incredible amounts of pasison and skill on display in these ten episodes.
I want to honour all the hard work the various creators put into the season, and I want to celebrate the beauty they gave us. And eventually, I’ll get back to a place where I can do just that. I’m just not there yet.
My personal life should move into slightly calmer waters in a couple weeks or so (knock on wood), and then I think I’ll start a rewatch of season 1, to get back into the mood for exploration and mapping and squeeing over this stunning little world of ours. I will definitely discuss the season 2 version of La Sirena, both her prime-universe alterations and everything we know and learned about the CSS La Sirena in the alternate timeline. But I think my heart is always going to live on the season 1 version of this ship, captained by Cris Rios, with his crew of five unruly holograms, joined by a bunch of loveable misfits with deeply compelling characters.
On this blog, I probably won’t go into any discussions of my hangups with season 2 after this. For that, you will have to endure the chaos that is my main blog 😋
But if you give me a few weeks to recover and find my joy again, I’ll hopefully be able to return to celebrating our beloved little speed freighter and her Motley Crew. I’m already planning how to put my latest new hobbies (GIF-colour-grading and 2D animation, because why not?) to use to bring you all the stunning views and fascinating new info we got of La Sirena in season 2.
And in the meantime: My ask box remains open! I’ll try to keep more of an eye on it so I don’t miss any questions, but it’s definitely still open and I’m always happy to bring out the screenshot collection to answer questions!
Yes, season 2 questions as well.
Which exit did Raffi and Rios use to drag [spoiler] off the ship after Agnes [spoiler]? Does CSS La Sirena have holo emitters throughout the ship? Did I actually say on twitter that we got confirmation of the bunk beds in the new crew quarters?
These questions and more will eventually get answered on this blog! But if you have a burning need to know about one of them now, don’t hesitate to drop me a line, and I’ll do my best to answer in something resembling a timely fashion. External motivation is always helpful when the intrinsic motivation has crumbled due to Life(tm).
I want to end this semi-coherent (and, of course, way too long) ramble by saying: I am so, so grateful for all the wonderful people I have met through this project and this show in general! Your enthusiasm and passion continues to inspire me and make me feel so happy to have embarked on this slightly insane adventure.
Whatever your opinions might be of season 2 or the writing of PIC in general, whether you’re a die-hard Starfleet fan who burst into tears at the sight of all the uniforms in episode 1, a casual fan who's just here for the compelling characters and stunning visuals, or a season 1 afficionado who feels disillusioned by the last few months and is looking for some remnants of the show you fell in love with to hold on to, I hope you will feel welcome here on this blog. Having all of you around really means a lot to me.
So, pull up a bench (or a crate, or go nick a chair from sickbay, I’m sure Emil won’t mind), grab some cake from the replicator, and join me in relaxing in the mess hall and having kind discussions, until I rebuild the energy to go running around this ship yelling about floor plates. There is always room for more ;)
Are you still around for season 3 of Picard? La Sirena's still in the trailers.
Hi there, Anon!
Thank you very much for asking, it's nice to know people haven't given up on this blog yet 😅
Yes, I am technically going to be around for season 3. Even though Sirena is clearly gonna take a bit of a backseat (not least because we've seen her lower deck redressed as a different set in the trailers already), she is still there and I will definitely try to do some blogging about her, at the very latest once the season airs.
Unfortunately, I've been struggling with a fun array of health issues for the last few months, which is why the blog has essentially gone dark for now. I can't tell yet when things are gonna let up, but I sincerely hope I'll be able to get back to blogging in the not too distant future.
The one fannish thing I have been able to keep up with recently has been my 3D modelling in Sketchup. I really need to try and occasionally throw some screenshots of that on here, but I also know better than to make promises 🙈
So, in the spirit of anticipation of Things To Come Once I Get Better (hopefully soon), have a bit of a screenshot dump to tide you over ;)
I think way back when, I already shared a bunch of my furniture models? But here they are again! (I'm still re-doing the bed, so that one's not in this collection yet)
I also recently decided to tackle the holodeck, since that is a bit like a standalone component that was added into the ship after the fact, so I didn't have to struggle with the support beams, which have become the bane of my existence 😅
The most large-scale part of the ship I have been working on are the stairs from the bridge to the lower deck, the lower deck walkway, and the stairs at the back of the ship.
Last night, I started adding the floor of the bridge itself, but the model is now getting too complex, so I'll probably be working on the the parts individually going forward.
And finally, I've also started to experiment with rendering, though that one still has some ways to go (not least because it's hampered by the fact I'm working on a laptop with no graphics card 🙈 But I'm hopeful I'll have a remedy for that soon(ish)
So that's the update from mapping world. I really hope I'll be able to get back to things soon, and I will make an effort to answer questions if you want to send in any, though again: I'm afraid I can't make any promises.
Thank you for sticking around! And I hope you're all doing okay in these uncertain times <3
Welcome to the Star Trek: Picard Season 2 Extrailervaganza!
I.e. your humble host has had a bit of fun over-analyzing the trailers for this show (because what else are you going to do if you’re under the weather?).
This is not strictly mapping, though some observations about La Sirena and her fate in season 2 are included in parts of this endeavour. Still, I hope some of you will have some use for any of these posts.
I am going to add the links to these sections as I post them, and I might add additional bits to this masterpost as my analysis continues.
As we all know, tumblr doesn’t update reblogged posts if the original is edited. So, if you see this in a reblog, it might be worth checking out the original post (by clicking on my blog name (not icon) at the very top of this post) and see if anything has been added.
Season 2 Extrailervaganza Masterpost
Shot-by-shot transcriptions and screenshots of the six trailers released before 22.02.’22
Trailer 0 (First Teaser, Released First Contact Day, April ‘21)
Trailer 1 (Second Teaser, Released June ‘21)
Trailer 2 pt 1, pt 2 (First Full Trailer, Released Star Trek Day, September ‘21)
Trailer 3 pt 1, pt 2 (Second Full Trailer, Released January ‘22)
Trailer 4 (Third Teaser, released on Twitter and then deleted again January ‘22)
Trailer 5 (Fourth Teaser, released and then deleted again, February ‘22, officially released 3 March ‘33)
Trailer 6 (Fifth Teaser, released at the end of ep 1) [Coming Soon]
Links to other Promotional Material (but only a few because there is A Lot)
Detailed introduction to season aired on the Ready Room
Full scene from episode 1, also aired on the Ready Room
