What Enterprise is the better design part 2 ?

[RyanKCR]

With this new design lineage and things getting smaller then explain the Excelsior.

The Galaxy was ugly and just did not look right.

[Gotham Central]

RyanKCR said:
With this new design lineage and things getting smaller then explain the Excelsior.

The Galaxy was ugly and just did not look right.

The Excelsior is easily explained. The Excelsior was not designed as a "normal" starship. It was the 23rd centruty equivalent of a concept car. Remember it was called "The Great Experiment." The Transwarp engine design was meant to serve as a revolution in Warp technology. It was in essence a first generation engine design and thus significantly larger than its predecessors. The experiement "failed" (conjecture) but the overall design was retained. Subsequent starship engines got smaller. Of course it is best that we ignore the travesty that was the Enterprise-B. That ship was the first victim of the art department throwing logic and simplicity out the window in favor of hideous buffoonery. That ship was a crime and had no business being shown on screen.

[CaptJimboJones]

I like them both, although I probably prefer the sleeker E-E. But then, my favorite Enterprise is the NX-01, so what the hell do I know?

[mattwitz]

the Enterprise D wouldn't be so ugly if the oversized head weren't exacerbated by the thin little neck AND the tiny little engines.

And that argument about engines getting smaller doesn't quite work because modern ships like the akira and the saber have nacelles that run almost the entire length of the ship.

[Holytomato]

The Galaxy, aka "The ship not designed by a retard with ADD."

I have ADD. Congrats you insulted me.

These are what the Enterprise-D should have looked like.

The Enterprise-A from the proposed ending of Star Trek the Motion picture. Had a circular saucer, and the TMP refit pylons. not the flipped up TMP K't'nga pylons. Became the Enterprise-C.

The Enterprise-E. This originally was the 1964 Cage pre production design.

1. The bridge module, main sensor dome, impulse engines, secondary hull, curved dorsal, the deflector shield grid on the saucer section, and secondary hull, the vertical lines on the dorsal, swept back pylons, and the horizontal lines on the edge of the saucer were given to the Phase II movie design.

2. Everything from above, and the shortened height, and increased length of the warp nacelles were given to the Phase II tv series design.

3. Everything from above and the full internal main nav deflector was given to the TMP refit.

I gotta nominate the Star Trek XI design as well.

The Enterprise-D design is basically the Excelsior dumped on the proposed TMP ending design, and they screwed with it. GAG.

I was on a website where the Enterprise-C model builders *DENIED* they based the design on anything previous. I was reading "The Art of Star Trek" so I knew this was a lie.

When "Yesterday's Enterprise" was originally on, I covered the Excelsior style pylons. It looked like the TOS Enterprise. When I turned color to black & white. It looked like the TMP Refit. Also the impulse enginess' output color was blue. Not a bridge to the E-D.

[trevanian]

Holytomato said:
I was on a website where the Enterprise-C model builders *DENIED* they based the design on anything previous. I was reading "The Art of Star Trek" so I knew this was a lie.

Not to dispute you on this point, but you shouldn't take THE ART OF ST as gospel, it is riddled with errors. Probert went to the trouble of sending them his artwork numbered in sequence so they would present it properly, and still they screwed it up (I think he prefers the STARLOG SFX v5 coverage, that isn't so caption-impaired.)

I'd give you another 40 or 50 screwups from the book, but I threw mine away so long ago that the memory is thankfully starting to fade a little. Biggest missed opportunity in the history of ST nonfic, for me anyway.

[Kegek]

Well, one obvious error in The Art of Star Trek which comes to mind is the identification of the Defiant as a Valiant class. I had the book, trevanian's assesment is pretty accurate, though it has a very nice selection of sketches and props from all the shows and movies up to Generations. I used to pour over that book constantly, I have fond memories of it...

[trevanian]

Kegek said:
Well, one obvious error in The Art of Star Trek which comes to mind is the identification of the Defiant as a Valiant class. I had the book, trevanian's assesment is pretty accurate, though it has a very nice selection of sketches and props from all the shows and movies up to Generations. I used to pour over that book constantly, I have fond memories of it...

I have more personal reasons for hating it; I spent several months late in 91 and early in 92 working on a huge proposal for THE ART OF STAR TREK: Visualizing the 23rd Century for Film & TV (still have the mockup, I send it out as a writing and organizational sample on occasion), which I then pitched to Pocket's Kevin Ryan, who wanted to see it, saying he hadn't heard that pitch before. I had a hard time believing THAT, but sent it anyway.

Never heard another word, even though I'd phone and mail every four months or so ... at least up until somebody told me Pocket was doing the book with other folks. Couldn't get anybody except John Ordover on the phone after that (he inherited Ryan's office, I think.)

Mine was a totally different concept, structured a lot differently, and focused exclusively on the 23rd century stuff.

I probably had nearly as many pieces of artwork in the proposal as are in the whole damn wretched book, but the signficant difference was that rather than doing a semi-elaborate caption-writing job, which to me is what the text is like, I wanted to interview the designers and builders while they were still around, and create the go-to source for the immediate future.

As is, you need to buy a bunch of unauthorized books, several ST THE MAGs, plus a bunch of CINEFANTASTIQUES and a few other volumes, just to get some idea of who did what and WHY, and it is still very confusing, with lots of spin in many of these tomes.

I'd even contacted STARLOG about getting quotes from the late Mike Minor, so the few folks who at that point had already died would be represented, but the big deal was that MOST of these folks were still kicking and functional.

I pitched the thing as a multi-tier project, with a coffee table book that could be (if pocket chose) amplified with S&S multimedia, like a cd-rom or (my preference) a laserdisk, but I didn't really think they'd bite on that. But I never thought they'd just ignore the whole thing and pretend it never came in.

So some of this is sour grapes on my part, but I really believe they squandered an opportunity to do something significant (even on the PHASE II book, which has worthwhile stuff, there are tremendous errors (mixing up companies on miniatures, misidentifying vger artwork), which leads me to think that while the Reeves-Stevens are among my alltime favorite trek novelists, they are for shit at nonfiction ... even the DS9 book has some goofs.)