No, nothing is confirmed, as it hasn't been written. That, and notice the smiley!
Yeah, I have been pushing the "aliens" thing as Series 2 of 5, but most other members here aren't buying it, or don't like it, for some reason. With a major plot anchor needed for each series of 15 or so books, several of us threw out a few ideas. The one I rode hardest is aliens, considering the scale of the galaxy. You can find it in some old posts, but they have now stretched 100 light years across our galaxy. That is a huge amount of space, but the Milky Way is over 100,000 light years across. Plus, adding the third dimension means there are even more stars to encounter. That makes for lots of (hopefully) habitable planets.
Since we have seen alien plants and animals so far, that would imply that eventually you'd run into something higher up the food chain. Reavers, Puppetmasters, Vorlon, Borg, whatever. Something that might or might not agree to a peaceful federation.
At the beginning I also saw them as bulky, functional and mostly rectangular, with loads of weapons. Never meant to be Aerodynamic or Aesthetic. Just making most of the space, getting as many square rooms out of it as possible.
Like that:
- but uglier.
After that I have seen the Aurora design on this page I imagined them to be a bit more like the Sophons Ships from the Game - Endless Space.
Good pic's there that kind of explain it out the differences. The reason for the differences is probably due to the need to be able to hide the weapons, the ability to reflect laser's somewhat, and how the jump drive works. If it wasn't for those 3 reasons, Earth would probably still be building the block designed ships.
Bischof, that looks more like a Light Sabre than a defender... I like the idea of the BS Glactica. does it matter? the Jung destroyed all of them.
Eric
I also kind of felt like it didn't matter, since they are all gone now. What matters is what will come next, along with what is out there now.
Cool pics, though.
I'm thinking that BV01 and 02 were not technically "lost" without firing a shot. I'm thinking that they my be out there beyond the Oort Cloud being used as "test beds" for other types of FTL drives and they are still trying to figure out what to do next.
My guess is that they were witness to the battles via telescopes viewing "old Light" and had standing orders to not reveal themselves in order to protect whatever technology they have on board.
The way that the Aurora and Celestia were compartmentalized into parallel projects seems to me that they may have done this with the Defender Class ships with a possible upcoming upgrade for them.
Or I could be just blowing smoke and letting my imagination getting away from me... but, you never know!!! 🙂
It would be hard to justify sending BV01 and 02 out on a classified mission, when you only have a total of 6 ships. Without further information on how they were lost though, we can speculate on the cause.
Hey Guys,
It looks likes some concept images were uploaded yesterday of the Defender class. It's pretty cool, check it out at 
I really like the BV-01 & BV-02. I really hope they somehow appear in the story.
I’m thinking that BV01 and 02 were not technically “lost” without firing a shot. I’m thinking that they my be out there beyond the Oort Cloud being used as “test beds” for other types of FTL drives and they are still trying to figure out what to do next.
My guess is that they were witness to the battles via telescopes viewing “old Light” and had standing orders to not reveal themselves in order to protect whatever technology they have on board.
The way that the Aurora and Celestia were compartmentalized into parallel projects seems to me that they may have done this with the Defender Class ships with a possible upcoming upgrade for them.
Or I could be just blowing smoke and letting my imagination getting away from me… but, you never know!!!
It seems possible that they were test beds. However, I think the two existing test beds for improved FTL are probably enough given that one focused on getting it working and the other focused on maximizing it's capability. A key thing to consider is that Earth was certainly researching more than just improved FTL capability. The jump drive was discovered by trying to improve shield technology, that line of research likely continued even as it was forked to develop the jump drives. Therefore, I'd suspect they would be test beds for experimental offensive and/or defensive capabilities. This makes sense the Aurora's class is intended to be fast, while the defender was intended to hit hard and defend, and the Defender class ships are larger and thus could carry a wider variety of weapons.
I would imagine they were in the process of testing those capabilities or perhaps getting them installed if there was at least one hidden facility located in the Sol system (perhaps the Oort cloud), perhaps in the Oort Cloud when Earth was attacked. Now that Earth has been liberated, it seems likely that if they do still exist, they will show up in the next episode or two.
On the note of the Oort Cloud and the possibility of hidden facilities. The reason for this is that if the two defenders are test beds, then it's not clear if the technology could have been installed at the main orbital ship yard or really any that are close to Earth. This is because it's unlikely that the changes in appearance would go unnoticed, although that assumes that they were offensive/defensive test beds. There is also the case that Captain Scott's dad hasn't mentioned them, which means if they are test beds, then either the father has been waiting for Earth to be clear of Jung to bring it up or it's anther group entirely that handled the research. Assuming the father knows anything, it'll probably come up in the next episode unless he decides to wait until after reinforcements have been repelled. Although it seems like it would be rather unpleasant for the Defender crews to wait much longer, so hopefully whoever knows about the Defenders will bring it up or the Defenders themselves will decide that the coast is clear.
Based on the pictures, it seems like BV-01 and BV-02 might of been better built or at least built for a different purpose. Looking at the difference between the two artistic drawings, 01 and 02 are more sleek, where the later defenders had all of the sleekness removed from them and possibly more armor added in place. So maybe 01 and 02 were made for heavy shield platforms, but the shield tech wasn't developed by the time 02 was completed and 03 had her frame built out. If that is the case, they may of changed the later models to have more armor to compensate for the lack of shields.
If we can assume that rear of the Defenders are all engines like the Aurora, then defender will likely have 3 times or more the crew capabilities of the Aurora. That many EDF personnel missing would of been noticed pretty easily, so they might of reported that the ships were lost in accidents to hide the missing EDF personnel. Would of been an easy way to get the ships out on spec's ops runs that way.
I am sure we are going to have more information on the BV-01 and BV-02 coming in the future installments of the series. Next episode would be a good way to get the information out about them though. Since the Aurora is likely going to be just getting repaired, and the Celestia is going to get built, Mr Brown could start to explain the original purpose of the Defender class of ships. Would explain the appearance of the artistic rendering of the ships.
Episode 9, location 4073 (or right afterwards):
President Scott: "After losing two Defender-class ships without so much as a single engagement, we knew we were trying to move too quickly."
BV-01 and 02 are gone. Not hiding, but gone.
The prosecution rests.
As far as President Scott knew at the time, they were 'lost'. That doesn't mean that they were destroyed. Were they lost attempting to create FTL? Or, was Senate Scott (assuming that he held that position during the time) fed the same story as everyone else to hide the FTP Defender ships from the Jung? The later defenders were good ships, but they were not able to defend earth that well by themselves. I would assume the idea was to have 4 ships on defense around Sol, and another 4 (BV-01, BV-02, Aurora, and Celestia) FTP capable ships as an offensive fleet.
What you really need to ask yourself, is why do BV-01/02 look slightly different in the artistic rendering than the later Defenders? If they were gone, and would not be mentioned later, why make them look any different? To take the time and money to make 2 different artistic renderings for the same class of ship, you have to assume that there will be a story behind it. Either what happened to them, or their resurgence into the story line at a later date.
The could have collided in a training maneuver.
My thought is they were built for FTL and then someone did the math and concluded that by not having the FTL you could run more weapons etc. This would have also been about the time buckeye started as well.
I would not be surprised if at least one shows up later. It would be more believable that one popped and they mothballed the other as part of buckeye and/or possibly because it was not cost effective to refit it for a few years because of the build schedule at the platform.
I had always thought that the defender class ships would look like the alliance dreadnoughts in mass effect...
