Constructed and designed at the tail end of the 24th century alongside a near complete refresh of Starfleet’s forces, the Sagan Class was the first in a n0ew initiative to incorporate technology both inspired and reverse engineered from Borg Technology.
The first Sagan Class placed into service was the USS Stargazer, named in honour of Admiral Jean Luc Picard’s first command. Much like the original Stargazer, the Sagan Class mirrored the old constitution class in being a quad-nacelles ship with similar design layout.
Thanks to joint research with the Romulans on ‘The Artifact – a captured inactive Borg Qube – new technological advancements allowed for a whole new type of Starship. Aside from the new developments from the Borg technology, the Sagan Class was also built for the “Fleet Formation” protocol; an emergency program that would take control of an entire fleet in order to create a coordinated attack autonomously.
Both experiments came with various problems. Mostly almost destroying the Federation. Twice. Which was a bit of a whoopsie. In 2401 the first of the Sagan Class ships put into service, the USS S the USS Stargazer found it’s Borg-derived base technologies made it vulnerable to Borg assimilation. Whilst investigating a strange anomaly, the ship was completely taken over by Borg attack and only had a lucky escape due to the attacking Queen being Agnes Jurati leading a peaceful Borg faction of her own thanks to some time travelling shenanigans.
Later in the year, during the 250th Frontier Day celebrations, the actual Borg Queen was able to adapt organic assimilation to infiltrate Starfleet and control Fleet Formation in a near devastating attack on Earth involving a handful of Sagan Class ships including the USS Explorer.
Both upgrades were objected to by Commodore Geordie La Forge at the time, and following the Frontier Day attacks significant changes were made. An easy task with previous generations of engineers being able to work together with The Jurati to build a stronger, classical inspired line of starships such as the Constituion-III class USS Enterprise.
As one of the more unique designs in Starfleet, The Sagan class mirrors the old style Constellation in style but with modernised design and expanded layout. Combioning the primary and engineering hulls into one physical space, the condensed design makes for a more efficient build internally.
The slightly elongated saucer has a small, thin deflector dish built in on the lower side while the bridge sits atop like most Starfleet ships on deck one. The rear of the ship hosts two large shuttle and cargo holds leading to a main exit on deck seven. Unlike the constellation class which had two larger hangers either side of an impulse drive, the Sagan has three stacked hangers on it’s aft with bulky Impulse emitters either end. The rear of the saucer is far bulkier as well, bulging out from the rear of the saucer to low more storage, shuttle and engineering space.
From the bulky rear, a small section hosting the ends of the warp core extend from the top and bottom of the rear drive section towards a set of pylons on either side to host the quad nacelles. While it may seem like a simple design choice, this allows for each set of nacelles to be running half powered on a full capacity warp core which allows the Sagan to run at cruise speed for twice the amount of time than a standard dual-nacelled starship. The Sagan Class was also equip with a dual-warp core facility for a well balanced yet powerful performance.
While uncommon, a handful of other designs – including the mid 23rd century Cardenas Class and mid-24th century Cheyenne Class shared similar qualities.
The top central pylon leading to the nacelles had easy access to the internal components through large secured doors leading to the matter/anti-matter tanks and war core for ease of accessibility during any refit or repair. To add a bit of flair, the compartment was partially transparent using shielded transparent alloys that left the bright lights of the warp cores energy to shine through. The lower pylon was slip with the central space cut out to allow ease of access to engineering and cargo facilities.
Central to the ships operations was a large and streamlined multi-level bridge. With two sprawling consoles on each side of the bridge to operate science, engineering and tactical stations, the operations and flight control were stand alone as standard ahead of the command centre.
Looming above those forward stations, the Captains Chair sits central flanked by first and second officer positions. At the rear of the bridge weas a large, often open, door leading to the briefing room. At either side of the briefing room entrance were exits to the turbolift and captains ready room.
Aside from all the usual amenities provided in a ship of it’s calibre, the Sagan was equip with mission adaptable science facilities that wallowed the design to host multiple uses from long range exploration to tactical arrangements or evacuations. Switching the ships function was fairly straight forward, particularly with it’s defensive systems allowing a complete 360 degree firing range from any angle
At only sixteen decks tall, the flattened layout of the Sagan – which measures around 540 meters in length – may not seem like a powerhouse but between it’s dual core engines, top of the line computer systems and strategic frame, the Sagan is one of the more impressive classes to emerge following Starfleets rebuild towards the turn of the century.
In the production world the Stargazer was designed to be the successor to Captain Picard’s original command and s nice link between the worlds of The Next Generation and Picard’s Second Season with the Admiral back in uniform for the season opener. In terms of design, the ship really was a team effort with Picard production designer Dave Blass leading a team including legendary Trek artists Doug Drexler and John Eaves and Star Trek Online artist Thomas Marrone.
Blass also led the design team for the internals of the Stargazer including the bridge and wider corridors which would go on to be redressed and re-used for the USS Titan in the third and final season.
In the SFC world, the Sagan Class has been adopted into our repository of available ships for both new and existing units offering an impressive new and modern starship into the ranks of the home fleet!
You can see more of the Sagan Class through Doug Drexler’s official Facebook page as well as on Dave Blass’ own website which includes concept art from all seasons of Picard.
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