Star Trek Discovery

[Rahul]

I really hope this is just the CGI-equivalent of "concept art" they are throwing around. Like the first Voyager design-study (that looked off), or the very first sketches of the ENT-D (that looked awful).

I like the general shape. I always thought the Ken Adam/McQuarry (spelling?) design would be good for a Star Trek starship, just not the Enterprise.

The proportions are WAY off though. The shuttle bay is only as tall as the nacelle pylons? The neck is as thick as the deflector dish? And I don't like that tha nacelles are on the same height-level as the pylons, they should at least go a little bit upwards, like with the USS Franklin from "Beyond".

The basic idea behind this ship is okay. But all the little details and textures are way too big and bulky. The original Enterprise and all Star Trek vessel always had a sort of swan-like elegance to them. This one looks brute, block-y and bulk-y.

 

[somebuddyX]

Love the name. Back in 2005 I named my fan story universe set in 2405 on U.S.S. Discovery Star Trek: Discovery (I'm sure a million other people have used that name too.).
I haven't watched that footage but I'm not worried about how things look this early anyway. I remember how rubbish the very first First Contact trailer looked and we know that film turned out fine. Things will get tweaked before they're finalised and I have confidence in Fuller and his team to deliver a great product.

 

[Rahul]

Now that I have critizised the hell out of the design, I want to point out what I like:

-I really fraking LOVE the sound design! The engine "roar" of the ship while getting powered up is AWESOME.
-The music is amazing. Especially for a raw teaser trailer! Music was always pretty boring on Star Trek, but Fuller has gone full-out bonkers crazy good in the audio-departement!
-The asteroid base. It's a simple, science fiction-y idea that we have never seen before in Star Trek. More!
-The first shot of the ship from far away. It looked elegant, swan like. Sadly the design in closer look didn't, but if they manage to refine all the details to be as elegant as that, we're in good hands!
-The warp nacelles, and that the saucer is again vertically angled like the original Enterprise. It's not exaxctly better thatn what we have seen before, but different
-The title. It's boring. But it's a good direction. It's far away from "Star Trek: Game of Thrones", or "Star Trek: political intrigue and war". I love the exploration ascpect of Star Trek, something that's always been hard to get right, because there's not a lot of narrative conflict to be found there. This looks like it's going in the right direction


What I don't like:
-The rather "brute" details of the starship design
-the colour of the starship. It's golden. That doesn't look good. Even the NX-01 (who's cgi-model is more than 10 years old by now) had a better, realistic looking metallic vibe

 

[ItIsGreen]

I like the design, I've always been intrigued by the McQuarrie sketches and it's nice to see something approximating them realised. As many have said it's clearly test footage, a low-quality render without final textures etc and no doubt it'll look a lot better in the final show. I have a few issues with proportions (nacelles too large, deflector too small), but on the whole I think it looks good. Like many people, I also got a Klingon vibe based on aspects of the design and the music.

I like people's theories about whether we're looking at the hero ship or the macguffin that drives the plot, and I rather prefer the latter idea myself. It's something different. Kind of reminds me of those episodes of Voyager set on Earth, with Barclay trying to prove that she's still out there and establish contact. Imagine a whole series from that point of view?

My thoughts are maybe it was a ship built by the military intelligence branch of Starfleet (or Section 31?), based on stolen Klingon designs/technology. Maybe something happened to it on it's shakedown or an early mission and it was declared lost, but years later something is discovered - a piece of debris or the Space equivalent of a Black Box recorder, or a faint signal of some description or whatever, and a mission is launched to find it, with the Klingons/Romulans/Insert Alien Race Here also looking for it. Maybe the story is told alternately between flashbacks to the Discovery's voyage and whatever time period passes for the present day - be that post-Nemesis, in those wilderness years between the TMP and TNG eras, or whenever it may be.

I'm digging it, looking forward to the show even more now.

Apologies if I've repeated anything anyone else has said, I skipped like 10 pages of the thread.

 

[Sammael]

I also suspect the series will play at that time. The ship just look oldish. The problem with this is though, that the ship can't discover anything new with being set into the prime universe. Every place they might reach, every race they might meet, should already be known to us thanks to countless episodes playing further in the future. So it will be a canon disaster just like with ENT, which desperately tried to tell stories not contradicting what we already knew, but at the same time obviously wanted to show the viewers new things.

I would have loved a reboot playing not too far in the future, so that the technique isn't too overpowered yet. A fresh start without any canon restrictions. But with it set in the prime universe, I kind of hope now, it plays very far in the future, thousands of years after the Federation has collapsed and humans lost most of their knowledge of the past, and the ship is just an antique relict of a past glorious time they found. And they use the ship to discover the galaxy again and to build the Federation anew. At least then all kinds of changes in the galaxy can be explained with it playing far in the future.

What you just wrote is the most exciting and hopeful strand of hope for the series imaginable. For multiple reasons. One hopeful bit is that the ship shown could simply be the first rotting hulk discovered that could later be ditched for something inspired. Think the pc game equivalent of nexus the Jupiter incident of the starter stiletto ship giving way to the angelwing. The far future would unshackle the series from the past and allow new stories to be told. Mass effect Andromeda redux.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

-The asteroid base. It's a simple, science fiction-y idea that we have never seen before in Star Trek.

A minor quibble, but we did see one in "In A Mirror, Darkly" (ENT) in the Mirror Universe, and one based on the same concept art to boot!

 

[Tim Walker]

Maybe the ship is a macguffin from another timeline? Like In a Mirror, Darkly?

 

[Control Voice]

So we have a name and a ship...

USS Discovery NCC-1031

See Ship here [edit: see post below, cannot seem to embed].



It's...it's the Triangle Phase 2 USS Enterprise design!

 

[Rahul]

A minor quibble, but we did see one in "In A Mirror, Darkly" (ENT) in the Mirror Universe, and one based on the same concept art to boot!

Ha! Indeed, I forgot about this one! Although it was an alien asteroid base (by the Tholians), and we have already repeatedly seen aliens hiding in asteroids (like the Nausicaans in Enterprise, or some species in Voyager and the Dominion in DS9)

This is the first time we see a human outpost in an asteroid in Star Trek!

 

[Overgeeked]

Its amazing how little it takes online to set people off...from Female Ghost Busters,a Gay Sulu or a test CGI shot of a Starship for a series that is still a year away form airing.

1. It's Ghostbusters, one word.
2. Sulu's always been gay.
3. The premiere of DSC is in January 2017. So that's...less than six months away.

 

[MarsWeeps]

This is the first time we see a human outpost in an asteroid in Star Trek!

For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky!!!

 

[Control Voice]

Maybe we're looking at this the wrong way.
Maybe Discovery is a Klingon ship built to infiltrate and strike a devastating blow to the Federation, explaining the broken shield. Since the season is one complete story, the title is "Discovery.' The plot being a Starfleet group is tasked with either capturing or destroying the marauder. Might explain Tony Todd, perhaps cast as the Klingon lead.
Just a guess

 

[Amaris]

For the World is Hollow and I have Touched the Sky!!!

View attachment 1640

That was the Fabrini. Yonada wasn't a human asteroid base.

 

[Lawrence B]

Fil Eisler did the score heard in the new teaser.

https://twitter.com/fileisler/status/756980947409444864

Per Heather Kadin's comments on TrekMovie, it was an audition piece. If they liked it enough to use it in the trailer, probably a good chance he'll be doing additional work for the series proper.

 

[MarsWeeps]

That was the Fabrini. Yonada wasn't a human asteroid base.

They were humans from another world. Humans don't just refer to people from Earth.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

I suppose the Genesis Cave on Regula from TWOK was a kind of human asteroid (well, planetoid) base, but not one for starships.

 

[Amaris]

They were humans from another world. Humans don't just refer to people from Earth.

No, they were the descendants of the Fabrini:

Spock and Kirk make their way to the Oracle Room, and Spock recognizes the writing as that of the Fabrini, a civilization wiped out 10,000 years ago, when their star went nova. He also sees a symbolic map of the Fabrina solar system. Prior to dying out, the Fabrini had lived underground to protect themselves. They had also built this spaceship Yonada and programmed the Oracle of the People, which is actually a powerful computer, to take it to another habitable planet. The people of Yonada are their descendants. Spock manages to open the door, and the two conceal themselves in the temple as Natira enters. She asks the Oracle for permission to marry McCoy. The Oracle grants it, so long as McCoy agrees to join the Fabrini and submit to the instrument of obedience. As she's leaving, however, the Oracle discovers Kirk and Spock and zaps them. They are arrested and sentenced to death.

http://memory-alpha.wikia.com/wiki/For_the_World_is_Hollow_and_I_Have_Touched_the_Sky_(episode)

 

[Tide]

Set between ENT and TOS?
Not... exactly what I was expecting but... okay?

That makes sense. That's how they can say it takes place in the prime universe without conflicting any of the new movies. I wonder if we will see stuff about the Romulan war in this?

 

[uniderth]

2. Sulu's always been gay.

HAHAHAHA!!! Hahahaha!

 

[Stewey]

I've seen this trailer a few times and frankly I'm reserving judgement until I have seen the final design fully rendered.

What will impact my judgement will be the premise of the show. So far I am cautiously optimistic about the show at this point.

I would just like to point out that for some people canon isn't a burden....

....its a joy.

*snip*

Exactly, the main reason I despise Enterprise and its off-shoot jj-verse.

One of the problems with all these reboots in the past 20 or so years is they keep rebooting the reboots as well (spiderman, batman etc).

I sometimes find myself face-palming thinking to myself "just pick a universe and stick with it" everytime I see yet another reboot in film or TV.

Anyway, I digress...

Back to the show, what I would really like is that the show is set post nemesis, where this ship is brought out of mothballs and refitted, for whatever reason.

If they go with the post TOS timeline, I will be happy with that providing that they ignore the entire events of Enterprise and the JJ-verse and stick to the correct prime (there is only one trek universe as far as I am concerned) universe.