Who would like to see this? The infamous Klingon Battlecruiser in Unexpected replaced with the original design for a D4: It seems unlikely that they will - but TOS had ships outright replaced in the Remastering. "John Eaves and the rest of the team, understandably exhausted after the Enterprise pilot, were asked to do yet another design at the last minute. Eaves did, labeling it an Early Klingon Battle Cruiser, the D-4 designation later given to it at Foundation Imaging." "Yet, the producers said that "its windows weren't prominent enough", a fact Eaves was very unhappy with." "Due to time constraints, they ended up reusing the battle cruiser model that was built for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, and had previously appeared in another discontinuity in VOY: "Prophecy", as a D7 class battle cruiser. A CGI model was built at Foundation, but was overruled. As Rob Bonchune recalled the situation, "The only other original design that was also chopped (that I remember now) was the John Eaves Klingon D-6 or D-5 [sic] that I included in my calendar image for 2006. It was originally done FOR FREE for Star Trek: Enterprise by Koji, who stayed up 36 hours to do it for the show. It looked great, but then the "producer(s)" said, "put more windows on it". "
ENT isn't being remastered in any way. It's just being released on Blu-ray. Big difference. (ie: There's no way in Sto-Vo-Kor that they'll change it.)
Yeah, that's what I feared. I guess the K'tinga class served in the Klingon fleet for 250 years, and is older than the D7 then...
I never got the fanrage that the old D7/K't'inga in "Unexpected" caused. I actually really liked that they kept the classic design! The other designs of Klingon ships in ENT were nigh-on identical to the ones seen in the 23rd and 24th centuries anyway. The ship interiors looked exactly the same throughout Trek, with the exceptions of TOS (redressed Enterprise corridors) and STIII. I say the planned D4 design looks virtually identical to the D7, except for holes in the nacelles and some (for lack of a better term) scaffolding along the wings. Not different enough to bother with. See also my post here about visual continuity in Star Trek, and how little I believe such visual minutae should matter. Similarly, the re-used Star Trek: Nemesis uniforms on the Romulans or Ki Baratan city in season four doesn't matter, IMO.
I think the fanrage was because the ship was a K'tinga. People have the impression that the K'tinga was a refit of the D7, contemporary to the Constitution-class refit. So, a plain old D7 would have gone down better - but a K'tinga was really out-of-place - and because people take on screen information as gospel in our beloved franchise, there was no way to ignore it - it became part of canon the moment it came on screen. There is another possibility: Maybe the K'tinga is an older model than the D7 - but that means it's use in DS9 as a front-line ship, is all the more weird. I suppose old battleships have sometimes served for 80 years in the Navy, but 250 years of the same hull being refitted comes off as pretty unbelievable.
The other major thing hat I remember peeved people at the time, was the Romulans, Suliban, and Xirillians having cloaking technology - directly contradicting Spock in one of the most famous TOS episodes of all time - then either Berman or Braga admitting they had never watched TOS in their life, was some of the worst fan publicity you could hope for. As it happens, I like ENT a lot more now, so I like what Berman and Braga ultimately did with the show, but saying something like that was pretty incredible.
I say the K'tinga and D7 are the same design. The only difference is the level of detail that was not possible on The Original Series' budget. The biggest difference is the hull plating detail - which was added to the CG Klingon ship in TOS-R and on the model in DS9's "Trials and Tribble-ations"
I'm certian they saw "Balance of Terror" - they simply chose to ignore a couple of lines in one episode to better serve their stories. Remember that TOS rewrote it's own history a lot too! Spock was originally a "Vulcanian" with "a human anscestor" - but nowadays we ignore that and know him as a Vulcan with a human mother. Again, it's little details that don't matter much. Think about it this way: Spock's amazement at the cloak in "Balance of Terror" was really to explain to the audience of 1966 that there IS some scientific basis to the idea of invisible spaceships. Fast forward to 2001, and it's a very well known concept.
Unfortunately, people who analyse ship designs in detail, note that the models are different - people like Bernd Schnieder at Ex Astris Scientia, and even official people to have worked on the show, like Rich Sternbach would probably agree they are different. I would like to take the view you are saying. But if anyone writes a new edition Star Trek Encyclopedia, they are going to have to list it as a K'tinga The only way I can think of explaining it 'officially', is to say that the Klingons have used multiple designs of D7 type battlecruiser side-by-side, and the K'tinga is the original class - the D7 was a variant only used during TOS/TAS.
As some sort of way to ease our trubbled fan minds... I'll suggest that the Klingons aren't really using 200 year old ships, but merely sticking with a general design that works for them. A diesel submarine from 50 years ago is fairly similar in appearance to a nuclear submarine today, at least in outward appearance. Yet we know that propulsion and weapons and systems are vastly different. And a 50 year old aircraft carrier, say USS Midway, is again generally similar in appearance to a modern day nuclear carrier like USS Reagan. I'd think the Klingons are more interested in strong workable warships that get the job done, rather than cutting edge innovation for the sake of innovation. If Klingons can get a faster, stronger, more deadly vessel and it looks the same as the previous warship, what do they care? Plus we've since learned that Klingons are big on tradition and history so perhaps there's some honor is keeping an historic design.
I distinctly remember one of them saying they had never seen TOS - I might look round for the quote - it struck as absurd that a producer would not watch the foundation material of a franchise they were custodian of.
As Tosk points out, it's not a remastering, so the FX will be unchanged. We've got a great interview with the producer of the Enterprise Blu-Rays coming soon which should answer all questions. I'll post it here when it's up!