No purchase necessary. Regular readership also unnecessary. Winners will be contacted through Twitter. I’ll need a decent head shot which will not be posted on the web. Caricatures will not need the approval of the contest winner.

Peace in Our Time is coming to a close soon. To celebrate what’s been the most widely read serial this comic has done yet here’s the original sketches for the main characters. It includes a pant uniform for Jin and a design for a detective character that was in an earlier draft of the script.

When the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) introduced the DY-100 space carrier in the late 1980’s it shocked the world. A symbol of the super-science being produced in southern Asia by the Singh regime, the DY-100 was now Earth’s most sophisticated (and only manned) interplanetary vehicle. With a cargo capacity many thousands of times that of the American STS or the Soviet Buran and capable reaching the moon in only two hours, it was hoped the DY-100 would kick-start a massive space mining industry. Unfortunately the series of conflicts that would later be called the “Eugenics Wars” halted their production and no further resources were available for an orbital support platform. Only three DY-100 carriers were ever built.

After the war’s end the United States and the Soviet Union each commandeered a single DY-100 carrier. The third was never accounted for. Even with their captured units, the two superpowers were unable reverse engineer them for the several decades before the start of World War III. The lesser Mir and International Space Station facilities had to be retrofitted to dock and receive cargo from the more advanced ISRO ships.

Our local school is having its yearly fundraising auction and it just happened to be TNG themed. I immediately volunteered to do artwork for the event, eventually being assigned a large size print to put up for auction. With the help of the organizers I came up with what could have been the cover of Byte magazine back when The Next Generation was first on the air.

The first two years of TNG maybe not have always been the best written, but they were the best looking. I love those streamlined Theiss costume designs and Troi’s hair. I also love Tasha Yar. Riker should be beardless, I know, but my audience won’t be as nerdy as the rest of us, and Riker is more recognizable with a beard. I also prefer Pulaski to Crusher, but, again, who needs a dozen comments asking “Who’s she?” Wesley? No one’s noticed Wesley’s missing yet.

As I was sketching the poster out we all learned that Leonard Nimoy had passed. The organizers wanted to know if I could squeeze Spock into the composition. To me that would have been sacrilegious (not to mention too crowded), but I offered to make a second print in honor of Nimoy. The drawing is based on Spock seeing the Romulans for the first time in Balance of Terror. That shot is quintessential Spock: Curiosity mixed with a bit of confusion wrapped in a package of understatement that would be inappropriate for any human character. And, as a friend of mine pointed out, the ear is exceptionally prominent.

Both prints are one of a kind and will be up for auction tomorrow night.

I took a number of liberties with the previous ship charts, pretty much drawing them free-handed according to my own sense of shape and proportion. As I looked up references for the Tholian ship I realized no one ever got it right. So it became my mission to make the most accurate schematics I could, looking at both screen shots and photos of the model itself.

There’s no specs on the ship anywhere. I had to guess at it’s size by finding an in between based on the ship in front of the Enterprise and behind it and comparing that to known features on the E like the bridge. I guessed, considering the Tholians are unlike any life ever seen that their materials (which have to contain massive amounts of heat and still function) where also like nothing we’ve ever seen. The ship is small, but it’s 100,000 tons heavier than the Enterprise. It has no decks as we understand them. Despite its size the crew is 200 strong because who knows how big a Tholian is (ignoring ENT). Certainly if they were human proportioned no realistic amount of them would fit in a ship this size with a plasma cannon and a web spinner plus all the other engineering requirements.

There is no doubt that Jefferies was a master draftsman. The Tholian ship was done on the cheap, with a relatively simple design – no protruding engines, windows, or differentiated hulls. Just three fins. Still, Jefferies made sure the shape was complex and unique. The fins of the ship thicken and taper creating all kinds of contrasting angles. Tilt the ship in any direction and you get a new, unexpected silhouette. Looking at it in this kind of detail makes me even more miffed that it was replaced with the much more generic looking design in the Remastered edition of TOS.

A giant, print-ready, poster-sized version is now available to download. Get it here!

Living in the Bay Area, ground zero for the anti-vaccination movement, I’m especially disturbed by the recent outbreaks of preventable diseases like whooping cough and measles. I don’t just worry for the kids, but for people like my mother who received the measles vaccine twice and still doesn’t carry the necessary anti-bodies. Parents who don’t vaccinate put my mother in danger of a very serious illness.

And for what? Discredited claims of autism? Trace amounts of elements and chemicals that are already naturally present, in higher concentrations, in the fruits we eat? It’s time we grow up. There’s no common cold in the 23rd century. There’s a reason for that. Vaccinate your kids. Mr. Spock says so, dammit.

For more information check out the World Health Organization’s Myths and Facts page.