In my original design of the Khoruysa Brimia, the front strip in panel 1 was meant to just consist of random sensor equipment and lights. The main guns were the two rotating turrets on the front top of the ship and just behind the cockpit. But then I had the characters refer to “forward guns.” Since the turrets can rotate 360 degrees, they didn’t really make sense as directional “forward guns”, so I decided at the last minute to include a battery of guns in the front strip. Hurray for nondescript widgits!
This sequence is my obvious homage to the scene in The Empire Strikes Back when the Millennium Falcon escapes the jaws of the giant space slug in the asteroid belt.
As I mentioned earlier, I replaced the pursuing police ships with automated drones because of this sequence. I knew the hatch doors were going to slam shut with the Brimia just barely making it out, but I figured if the police were chasing them at top speed, they would crash right into the closed doors. Originally, that was going to be shown in the art, and since it felt wrong to have a number of cops die in pursuit of Roka’s ship, I decided to replace them with unmanned drones.
As it turns out, I didn’t end up including a shot of the pursuers crashing into the doors. I found that the sequence was all about Roka’s crew escaping the city, so once they got through the hatch, the last shot should be them high-tailing it out of there, not what was going on in the tunnel after their escape. In the end, the troublesome content of the pursuing ships crashing wasn’t even shown, so I guess I could have stuck with the police ships.
Aand another place they won’t be welcome back to.
Ah well.
I’m sure the police would be very happy to welcome them back… right before they toss them in the slammer!
the escape is actually closer to the Enterprise-D escaping from the Dyson sphere in “Relics”
Ah, “Relics.” That was a fun TNG episode. I had forgotten about that one. Now that I really think about, there was also a ship blocking the doors and and holding them open in that episode so that the Enterprise could make an escape. Dangit. I have to say I didn’t have that in mind when I wrote this scene. But now it will bug me forever. 🙂