Can you show me some examples? Because all fan designs I've seen are either kitbashes or heavily influenced by canon ships, there's little to no originality in them.
I'm not in love with Discovery yet but at least it's not more of the same.
Why the Ralph McQuarrie-inspired USS Discovery is an incredible design
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
- Start date
I'm not in love with Discovery yet but at least it's not more of the same.
Don't forget the Enterprise-E. Take another look at it. Triangles all over it. Eaves used it liberally to give the ship a direction and make it look fast while standing still.
YUP. Squint with your eyes and the TOS Enterprise, the E-D, NX, the Defiant, Reliant, Excelsior all remain distinct. The original Klingon battlecruiser and Romulan Bird of Prey were also deliberately distinct from the Enterprise to avoid confusion despite tiny, fuzzy B&W TV sets of the day. Discovery is very much in this vein. It passes the squint test.
Voyager and the E-E are harder to discern for each other and the other designs. But they're deliberately postmodern remixes of the past. They're attempts to streamline the past, not redefine it.
Last edited:
Some of them are quite good but they do stick pretty close to the established design vocabulary...which is in the nature of fandom.
No, I will not.
If originality is the criterion you'd be hard pressed to do so.
The Discovery design is superior to McQuarries. Where did you find the bottom design. That actually kind of makes me like it. THe problem with McQuarries is that the saucer is way too small compared to the main hull, the nacells are too small and both the nacelles and saucer raise up gracelessly vertical when you look at it from the front.
The engines are the "legs" or "wings" of the ship. You need big legs to run quickly. McQuarrie's engines simply don't look capable of streaking through the cosmos. The saucer is way, way too small compared to the drive section. Like why even bother with it? Actually, an arrowhead hull with nacelles wouldn't be that bad. McQuarrie isn't bad, it's just that his work could all use additional love. Like how Vader's mask needed refining from those original organic angles or how half of the ships in Star Wars (X-wings, Y-Wings, Falcon, Vader-s TIE, Victory Star Destroyers) are just ugly.
Anyhoo, at least the Discovery has powerful engines,
I have to once again point out that the "McQuarrieprise"s drawn by RMQ were based on sketches done by Ken Adam. And it appears Adam was leaning in the direction of the smaller bodied bigger engined ship as seen in RMQ's asteroid concepts, not that wide-bodied small engined thing everyone always drags out and which the Discovery is based on.
I like the McQuarrie renderings best of all these versions.
In reality, relatively large engines usually denote small vehicles and vice versa - look at the engines on a 747 - and often mostly enclosed within the body of the vehicle. How big is the engine of an aircraft carrier or nuclear sub? It's hard to tell by looking at the ship itself; you only see the exhaust or screws, which are relatively small.
Jefferies probably stuck big engines on Enterprise because of the then-associated huge fuel tanks used to launch manned space missions in the 1960s.
In reality, relatively large engines usually denote small vehicles and vice versa - look at the engines on a 747 - and often mostly enclosed within the body of the vehicle. How big is the engine of an aircraft carrier or nuclear sub? It's hard to tell by looking at the ship itself; you only see the exhaust or screws, which are relatively small.
Jefferies probably stuck big engines on Enterprise because of the then-associated huge fuel tanks used to launch manned space missions in the 1960s.
Last edited:
Also, the lineage of the Star Wars ships is more complicated than just attributing them to Ralph McQuarrie. The first person Lucas hired to start visualizing his script was Grant McCune who built a series of prototype models including the Star Destroyer, X wing, Tie Fighter, Millennium Falcon and Land Speeder based on Lucas' verbal descriptions.
When McQuarrie was hired to do the initial production paintings, he used McCune's models as reference but often beefing up and modifying details to give the ships a more unified look. As the ship designs were changed (sometimes based on input from McQuarrie or Lucas or further development from Joe Johnston), McQuarrie updated the paintings to reflect the new designs, which is why there are two versions of the Millennium Falcon painting, one with the old design that eventually became the Rebel Blockade Runner, and the second with the revised saucer shape. These aren't two separate paintings but the same painting with one ship painted out and the other painted on top.
I hate criticizing my beloved Star Trek, however the design of our hero ship in Discovery has made me cringe every time I see it. This won't cause me to not watch the show, but I'll cringe if it looks like what I've seen so far.
Cringe and bare it I guess
Cringe and bare it I guess
Last edited:
Thank you for this, I wasn't aware, and we should give proper credit.
However this isn't the first time Starfleet has used a delta or V shape:
Courtesy of Trekyards:
Another interesting take on the design http://www.christopher-doll.com/project/concept-enterprise/
That one looks good too, but he loses a little credability when he referes to Phase II.
Because beauty is not purely a function of itemizing parts. It goes a lot deeper than that.
An AMC Pacer has all the same elements of many other cars (4 wheels, a hood, two headlights) but how it's proportioned and shaped is just plain ugly.
A big problem with Discovery's triangular shape is the brutalism of those simple straight lines and flat pancake surfaces. It looks like an early 90s low-polygon game object that a kid whipped up in a few hours in his basement in 3DS Max. Federation ships tend to feature arcs and curves and organic boat-like hulls.
The only other ship I can think of that has such straight lines and crisp edges would be the Excelsior, but even that still has plenty of curved surfaces to balance out the 80s-isms.
Really like that. Only thing is the nacelle pylons angle is too abrupt. I would like to see them more rounded. Otherwise it's really good.
Maybe this was Starfleet's Bauhaus phase? The Reliant and the Stargazer are pretty "ugly" and angular in style.
I see where you're coming from, but the look of the ship is largely irrelevant to the quality of the series.
So if it looked like this, nobody would tune out?
Production design is part of the reason why people watch a sci-fi show. They want suspension of disbelief, to get swept away into another world. It may not be the decisive factor, but it is A factor. Plus, if the ship looks completely turd-like, people won't buy toys and model kits of it.
But many people like brutalism.
And those boat like hulls you refer to are more of a post-TNG feature.
