Starship Concept Art - Battle of Binary Stars Fleet

[Michael]

I don't know if this is the same one he is referring to, but the only MSD-like drawing I saw was the turbolift indicator map as Saru and Burnham were riding up to the bridge during the battle simulation.

I think they meant this one, which we saw later in engineering …

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

One of the reasons I would like a few more callbacks to Horatio Hornblower/Jack Aubery style The Wrath of Khan battles or TNG style battle effects is that it's nice to retain some aspects of previous visual styles when you are onto a unique thing - it would be nice to see two ships slug it out against each other like 18th century warships at some point - it's kinda Star Trek's "thing" - the way WW2 dogfights are Star Wars's "thing". It's nice to establish a visual style unique only to your franchise, especially if you aren't aiming for absolute realism. Star Trek isn't, it just means to be close, say 85% realistic, with a few liberties taken.

Star Trek is meant to be set in our own future, as someone pointed out, so there is pressure to update anything archaic looking - a pressure which does not exist in a pure space fantasy like Star Wars. But in reality, there is quite a bit of slack in how Star Trek portrays things like phasers - since we don't actually know how particle weapons would be used 200 years from now. Missiles and rail guns and possibly lasers sending huge barrages controlled by computers with split-second interception would probably be the norm in the near term - so unless Star Trek suddenly became like The Expanse, it is not going to be 100% adhering to plausibility.

A good thing, is that weapons in Star Trek have become more obviously computer targeted - definitely an improvement on when photon torpedoes used to miss their target at close range - but that can easily be explained away, in terms of things like electronic warfare jamming guidance systems. It would be nice to occasionally see classic 'beam' phasers and 'flare' torpedoes updated with impressive modern effects. By Star Trek, the Federation uses particle beams and antimatter explosives. The JJ Abrams films chose to make them almost look like a flamethrower, sort of fuzzy, and had them fire in bolts.

But wouldn't it be nice to have a few full beams shown vaporizing their way through someone's hull, then cutting to an internal camera shot where the beam is correspondingly huge, and looks like a fire hydrant spray of particles, incinerating it's way through entire decks and internal structures? Pulse phasers that have become vogue since JJ Abrams, and some episodes of TOS/Wrath of Khan used them too, but I hope to see some ships fire beams again, the way Landry switched her phaser rifle into beam mode in episode three.

 

[Tuskin38]

I think they meant this one, which we saw later in engineering …

Ohh a cross section. 8-9 decks in the Secondary Hull + neck

 

[Longinus]

Ohh a cross section. 8-9 decks in the Secondary Hull + neck

Except, as noted, it doesn't match the shuttlebay scene.

 

[Tuskin38]

the shuttle bay looks too decks to me on that image.

 

[Mad Jack Wolfe]

Except, as noted, it doesn't match the shuttlebay scene.

Well, bollocks. Not much point in me criticising continuity when they can't keep the size and deck arrangement of their own toy ships straight.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Well, bollocks. Not much point in me criticising continuity when they can't keep the size and deck arrangement of their own toy ships straight.

Trek often has issues with this. Well most sci-fi really.

 

[Tuskin38]

The designers have said they’ve worked out internal layouts for the writers to work from, but have admitted if the story needs it (or set construction needs it) not everything will fit perfectly.

Just like how the interior of the Millennium Falcon in Star Wars would not actually fit in the exterior design

 

[Timo]

...Well, not "just", because all the Falcon rooms can easily fit in there, in the indicated relative positions even. It's just that the corridors curve slightly wrong, meaning the ends don't meet, the parallel walls aren't parallel, and a few corners push just a tad through the hull.

In contrast, Trek starships often feature rooms or corridors that would necessarily jut out through the hull in their entirety. In the earlier spinoffs, this may have not been obvious (Picard's Ready Room on the E-E is a fairly inconspicuous offender, say). But the Discovery has windows. And in almost every set that features windows, those are on the "side" walls, while the "end" wall has a door that opens to a transverse corridor, meaning one end of that corridor goes right through the wall that has those windows and thus into empty space.

It's a nice thing, then, that the saucer has those spokes connecting the sections, because they are the one way to perfectly accommodate "corridors into empty space"...!

Timo Saloniemi