I thought I'd share my thoughts on the Aventine. I had gotten the mental image of something quite Dauntless-esque, but with it's own sort of flavour. The saucer is a curvy arrowhead, sort of like a stretched Nova.
*That* is what I don't like about the Intrepid bridge. Not only do I not think the first officer should have a seat (I've always thought ENT and TOS made most sense here: the XO should always have another position, such as science officer), but it just looks weird to have two seats in the middle of the bridge like that. Neither of them is in the exact middle, which is IMHO where the captain should be.
Ugh... personally, I'm getting tired of streamlined starships. Space is a vacuum -- there's no need for streamlining. It's a purely superficial way of making a ship look "fast" and "sleek" to the viewer's eye. My preference would be for ships that look less like aircraft or darts and more like something that's a practical design for a vessel operating in weightless vacuum. That's what Matt Jefferies gave us with the original Enterprise, and nothing since has lived up to that brilliant, elegantly simple design. That makes no sense. First officer is a full-time job in itself. The XO is responsible for overseeing the execution of the captain's orders, for managing every aspect of ship's operations, for supervising all the ship's personnel and overseeing every shipboard activity. If anything, it's totally implausible to have a first officer doing a second job at all. I can accept someone like Spock being able to manage that double burden, but it would be grossly unfair to expect a mere human to be able to balance the extensive and time-consuming responsibilities of a first officer with a second full-time job.
In fact, ENT and TOS made nothing like sense in that regard. On ENT, you could get away with it to some extent, given the small crew, but it was pushing it. On the Defiant or the da Vinci, the XO can double-dip, but on any ship that has a complement of three figures or higher, the notion that the first officer would have time to do anything other than be first officer is completely ludicrous. XO is a more than full-time job.
I seem to recall reading (I believe it was in the Star Trek: The Magazine Technical Guide for the Intrepid Class) that the streamlining of the ships had something to do with the variable geometry warp nacelles. It worked to help stem the subspace damage that was discovered in TNG Season Seven for high warp travel.
What about vessels designed to land on planets, meaning having to go atmospheric? They have to be at least partially streamlined to glide through an atmosphere like the Intrepid- and Nova-classes were designed to do. As for starships that don't need to go skinny dipping through the atmosphere, it is aesthetically pleasing to have a "sleek" ship. Would a ship designed more like the battlestars of BSG look better to you, Chris?
Then I repeat my question...why have a seat for the XO, then? If they're so busy, they shouldn't have any time to sit down on the bridge. And I also repeat that it just looks bad to have two seats in the middle like that. The captain's chair should, IMHO, be dead center (not necessarily from front to back, but definitely from side to side).
Streamlining is basically the artist's way of showing progress, since audiences have seen modern technology become sleeker and pointier, aircraft for example. In all honesty, the Enterprise-D didn't need to be a big piece of sculpture, but Starfleet did build it that way. The Constitution-refit didn't need to be the prettiest ship in Star Trek history, but Starfleet did build it that way. I don't know why they do these things, I think they just want to make their ships look pretty. Maybe the Constitution refit could be considered the "Buick Y-Job" of the future, the first ship meant to have a stylistic impact on someone.
Not really, no. I wanted to leave as much leeway as possible in case the editors wanted to hire an artist to dream up something cool later on.
But aesthetics are shaped by experience. We ground-dwellers find sleek, aerodynamic, compact designs aesthetically appealing because they remind us of forms that are dynamic and graceful in the air or the water. A culture with centuries of experience in space may discover whole new aesthetic standards, perhaps based more on openness, lightness, structural minimalism, and the like. (For one thing, given the need for heat radiator fins on spacecraft, I suspect we might see a design aesthetic evoking the age of sail in some respects. The larger the ship, the bigger the radiator fins/sails would need to be.) Definitely not. Aside from the militarism, that's a design very much rooted in Earthbound thinking, very flat and heavy and blocky like a structure designed to deal with gravity. The brilliance of Jefferies' and Guzman's Enterprise design is that it looks like it's meant to exist in weightlessness -- it's top-heavy, it's made up of rounded modules with slender connectors, it would fall over or collapse under its own weight if you laid it unsupported on a flat surface. An XO at least needs a console/workstation to give information about the status of the ship. And it might as well be a sit-down station next to the captain, so that the captain can confer with the XO without needing to look up.
I liked the opposite captain and XO seats on the Voyager bridge. It seemed to slightly undermine the hierarchical nature of Starfleet in giving the captain and her first officer equal space. Fictitiously yours, Trent Roman
Because some things NEVER go out of style, like tailfins and bubble domes. And you can never find a horn when you need it. And I want it to play "la cooka racha"[/quote] The Homer Class, the starship built by Homer for Homer.
And that is my only problem with the Intrepid-class bridge. While I'm not in the "XO shouldn't have seat" camp, the captain and the first officer aren't equals. I like how the bridge of the Sovereign-class puts the captain on a raised dias at the center with the XO and counselor on either side. Although I could do without the counselor on the bridge, but that is for another thread. Aaron McGuire
Well that seat is supposedly for guests or advisors, Picard valued her input and let her sit there. In that one TNG ep with the alien dude disguised as the Executive Officer, you can see Riker sitting in zat chair IIRC.