• Welcome! The TrekBBS is the number one place to chat about Star Trek with like-minded fans.
    If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

The New USS Discovery....

Personally, I would rather a TOS Connie look more like this
latest


Its a bit dark, and I would lighten it more personally, but its a good mix and closer to what comes later.
It looks like the Mirror Universe version of the Kelvin timeline Enterprise.
 
Really not sure how you got this. Rhey would look the same, maybe with those sweet ENT era decals though.
They only look the same in TOS and ENT for budgetary reasons, which wouldn't be an issue in a blockbuster movie. Read Diane Duane's "Dark Mirror", which describes a far more fearsome Mirror Universe Enterprise-D for the kind of Prime/Mirror differences I'm imagining.
 
They only look the same in TOS and ENT for budgetary reasons, which wouldn't be an issue in a blockbuster movie. Read Diane Duane's "Dark Mirror", which describes a far more fearsome Mirror Universe Enterprise-D for the kind of Prime/Mirror differences I'm imagining.


Fair point. IIRC this one predates the Kelvin connie. And they dont look much alike really. Really though, the galaxy class would be much nastier as a pure warship
 
If the Mirror Universe had the Constitution-class USS Defiant since the 2150s, even stagnating, they would probably come up with a more aggressive hull shape in a hundred years. The USS Enterprise, under Captain Kirk, could easily have been one of their ancient first block "Defiant-class" cruisers that they kept in service simply because, until the 2260s, nothing locally could really outmatch the Empire's tech.
 
Or 5 minutes after the end of mirror, mirror the defiant was blasted out of the sky by planetary defenses.
 
If the Mirror Universe had the Constitution-class USS Defiant since the 2150s, even stagnating, they would probably come up with a more aggressive hull shape in a hundred years. The USS Enterprise, under Captain Kirk, could easily have been one of their ancient first block "Defiant-class" cruisers that they kept in service simply because, until the 2260s, nothing locally could really outmatch the Empire's tech.
"In A Mirror, Darkly" was meant to have sequels in season 5, I read somewhere that one of which would have destroyed the Defiant before it could be replicated.
 
My tuppence:

TOS was designed to reflect what an advanced future may look like using the technology and budget they had to hand at the time. TNG was designed to reflect what an advanced future would like using the technology and budget they had to hand at the time. DSC is now designed to reflect what an advanced future would like using the technology and budget they have to hand at this time.

At no point was Star Trek a 'retro'-themed show. It only looks retro now because it was made so many years ago. Star Trek is a show that largely reflects the themes, technology and social issues in the time in which it was made.
 
On the other hand, retro is in fashion, and being fashionable is more fashionable in the TV world than ever before, too. The new movies reveled in retro, and there was no observable drawback to it. I'd find it curious indeed if the makers of DSC found actual pressing reasons not to go with that flow.

Timo Saloniemi
 
There's no way to imagine and portray the future in 200-400 years time. Especially one so advanced as that of Star Trek.

When you try to portray the future with state-of-the-art contemporary technology it becomes dated 10-20 years later no matter the budget.

If you try it with a "retro" aesthetic you have a chance to achieve a timeless look.
 
Which some argue they have with Star Trek by the occasional reuse of the old Constitution-class USS Enterprise design all the way up to the very last episode of Star Trek: Enterprise around 40 years after that model was made.
 
Unseen tech is more advanced; technology gets smaller. What kind of antenna does your smart phone have now? Remember when cell phones had small antennas? Remember back when mobile phones had large antennas? How many phones have battery packs now? Or removable SIM cards? If I try to open my phone, I've destroyed it. It's a sealed unit. When I get a new phone, I can wirelessly transmit contacts and media from old to new. Consider the TOS data storage card. Looks like a cheap square of thick plastic, no external details. No user interface, no visible antenna, no battery pack, not even a USB port. It's the cell phone version of the floppy disk. When our smart phones look nothing more than a pane of bendable glass, will we say our old flip phones were more advanced because they looked like technology? They had buttons, and moveable parts—that's an indicator of high tech? No.

When I see TOS, I see tech that is higher than TNG, because we don't see discernible technology festooned upon the hull. We don't see hatches, we don't see antennas or sensors, we don't see reaction control thrusters. In and of itself, we must surmise it's technology has advanced well beyond our understanding.

Then came Star Wars and the great greebling, and if you weren't cluttering your hulls, you weren't keeping up with the direction the art was going. When TMP came out, they had to redesign the Enterprise to reflect expectations, and dumbed down the tech in the process. Same with TNG.

The NX-01, no matter what it looks like, we know it's not as advanced as the TOS Constitution class. I think it looks appropriate. What doesn't fit to me, is everything that came after TOS.
 
And with designers, someone's 'retro' is tomorrow's future. Its like being the future again because people liked it and sort of expect it. It sometimes happens more than once over the decades.

In other cases what is considered "future" today or even just today's design styling looks horrible to people who liked the older, now 'retro' looks. Several people I encounter find today's cars all too same-y and uninspired, and have felt that way since the mid-late 1990s when wind tunnel designing started to make almost all the cars look like barely stylized jelly beans in shape and color. Though it is somewhat of an improvement on the straight up boxes that some of the 1970s cars had and into the 1980s. And while the fins of the 1950s are very much retro, they are considered to be stylish even today.
 
Unseen tech is more advanced; technology gets smaller. What kind of antenna does your smart phone have now? Remember when cell phones had small antennas? Remember back when mobile phones had large antennas? How many phones have battery packs now? Or removable SIM cards? If I try to open my phone, I've destroyed it. It's a sealed unit. When I get a new phone, I can wirelessly transmit contacts and media from old to new. Consider the TOS data storage card. Looks like a cheap square of thick plastic, no external details. No user interface, no visible antenna, no battery pack, not even a USB port. It's the cell phone version of the floppy disk. When our smart phones look nothing more than a pane of bendable glass, will we say our old flip phones were more advanced because they looked like technology? They had buttons, and moveable parts—that's an indicator of high tech? No.

When I see TOS, I see tech that is higher than TNG, because we don't see discernible technology festooned upon the hull. We don't see hatches, we don't see antennas or sensors, we don't see reaction control thrusters. In and of itself, we must surmise it's technology has advanced well beyond our understanding.

Then came Star Wars and the great greebling, and if you weren't cluttering your hulls, you weren't keeping up with the direction the art was going. When TMP came out, they had to redesign the Enterprise to reflect expectations, and dumbed down the tech in the process. Same with TNG.

The NX-01, no matter what it looks like, we know it's not as advanced as the TOS Constitution class. I think it looks appropriate. What doesn't fit to me, is everything that came after TOS.

^ This! :techman:
applause.gif
:beer:

Now cue in the fatuous "but they're called tapes" argument. :lol:
 
When I see TOS, I see tech that is higher than TNG, because we don't see discernible technology festooned upon the hull. We don't see hatches, we don't see antennas or sensors, we don't see reaction control thrusters. In and of itself, we must surmise it's technology has advanced well beyond our understanding.
See, for me, I see something made in the 1960s. And *I* surmise the show didn't have the budget and/or production capabilities to make things that were more realistic. But that's just me.
 
...Has the term "tape" gone out of fashion? I doubt any sort of tape or other reelable material has been involved in recording whatever President Trump had to say to people he shouldn't have been speaking with, but I also doubt there will be a single newspaper or other news medium opting for a term other than "tape" to describe those recordings-in-potentia.

I trust people will still be saying "tape" long after they have stopped saying "turnpike" for that thing that never turns and has no pikes. Will that extend to the 2260s? Considering how other 20th century phenomena were faring in the TOS take of that era... no doubt! But ITRW, it's not unlikely, either (regardless of whether recordings at that day and age even involve a "medium" at a conceptual level, never mind what the nature of that medium).

Timo Saloniemi
 
If you are not already a member then please register an account and join in the discussion!

Sign up / Register


Back
Top