A couple of anti-centiments: -I'd think the ship does have shields, but of the TOS/DS9 type where piercing hits against the hull are transformed into harmless gasoline explosions by virtue of skintight shielding. Otherwise, those missiles/fighters would be really impotent, worse than TOS movie photon torpedoes. Of course, that is possible if the intent is to remake Star Trek into something more closely resembling nu-BSG - but I think the Makers are not inclined to drop certain Trek icons such as shields, phasers and transporters even if aiming to make the show more "realistic" (that is, more easily dated as the world moves past 2008/9). -The lack of windows might reflect either a general inability to build lots of holes into the hull, or a preference for fully virtual view, not necessarily an intent to armor the ship. The same would probably go for the nearly windowless TOS hero ship. -The pop-up turrets are IMHO the likelier point defense weapons: the Makers would want their CIWS to resemble today's systems which fire a lot of ammunition very rapidly in the hopes that something would hit the fast and tiny incomings. The red beams of the phasers are likely to have a lower rate of fire, in purely aesthetic terms, and thus are less likely candidates for CIWS, again in purely aesthetic terms. Timo Saloniemi