I think the "battlecruiser" that captured Lorca's shuttle was not the "prison ship" he ended up on later.
Someone on
Discovery later mentioned "the battlecruiser where they're holding Lorca" and besides, even if there were two ships, one can see that the design is identical in all exterior shots.
I seriously doubt they put that much thought into it. But, why even call it a D-7, when you could call it a D-6 and people would go "okay".
Indeed. I really cannot come up any other reason for this than an intentional middle finger to the people who care even a little bit about the visual continuity.
Well, one can certainly take it that way, but look at it in context of the "D-7" designation's origins, as related by Gene Roddenberry in his and Stephen E. Whitfield's
The Making of Star Trek, pp. 367-68 of the 1994 paperback reprint from Del Rey:
I WENT ON THE STAGE ONE DAY, AND THEY WERE ALL READY AND WAITING FOR ME, BECAUSE THEY KNEW I WAS REALLY EXHAUSTED FROM SOME LONG RE-WRITE SESSIONS. AS SOON AS I WALKED UP TO THE SET, BILL AND LEONARD BLEW A SCENE, BUT THEY DID IT ON PURPOSE AND BEGAN ARGUING VERY VIOLENTLY. BILL WAS SHOUTING AT THE TOP OF HIS VOICE, "LEONARD! WHAT DO YOU MEAN SAYING THIS IS A D-7 KLINGON SHIP! IT'S A D-6!" LEONARD SHOUTED BACK, "NO, YOU IDIOT, THE D-6 HAS FOUR DOORS OVER HERE AND THE D-7 ONLY HAS TWO!" BILL IMMEDIATELY SHOUTED BACK, "NO, NO, NO—IT'S THE OTHER WAY AROUND. YOU'VE GOT IT ALL WRONG."
WHILE ALL OF THIS IS GOING ON, I'M STANDING THERE, BEGINNING TO GET FRUSTRATED, WATCHING THE MINUTES TICK BY AND MENTALLY COUNTING THE MONEY WE'RE LOSING IN EXPENSIVE CREW TIME, BECAUSE THE CAMERAS AREN'T ROLLING. AND AS THE ARGUMENT CONTINUED, I'M THINKING TO MYSELF, "WHAT ARE THEY TALKING ABOUT? THEY'VE GONE TOO FAR!" THEN I BEGAN THINKING THAT I SHOULD REMEMBER WHICH IS THE D-6 OR THE D-7. FINALLY I COULDN'T STAND IT ANY MORE, AND SO I WALKED IN BETWEEN THEM AND SAID, "COME ON, FELLOWS, IT REALLY DOESN'T MATTER. LET'S GET ON WITH THE SCENE." THEN THE WHOLE CREW BROKE UP LAUGHING. THIS WAS THEIR WAY OF SAYING TO ME, "HEY, TIME IS NOT THAT SERIOUS. RELAX A LITTLE."
Further, if one examines the occasions when the designation, having been taken up in the interim by fandom and eventually official reference books like the Okudas'
Encyclopedia as being the "proper" name for the TOS design, came to be used in onscreen dialogue, one will find that in both prior cases of this, the corresponding visual representation exhibited differences to it. In "Trials and Tribble-ations" (DS9) Greg Jein had subtly updated the detailing of his repilca and it was lit or color-timed to appear green as Klingon ships had come to be portrayed since. In "Prophecy" (VGR) it was represented by a CGI model of the TMP re-design. It is of course obvious that in neither case was the deviation so great as here, but the fact remains that there can be seen something of a tradition that when the dialogue calls for a "D-7 battlecruiser" it's always a "wrong" updated design rather than the "truly" "historically-accurate" one that we actually get.
I think it's likely that people working on DSC are familiar with all of this, and probably knew that among detail-oreinted fans,
i.e. those who would care, surely some would see it as a callous "middle finger to visual continuity" and fall into paroxysms which ironically both mirror Shatner and Nimoy's original put-on and simultaneously miss or invert its aim...and others might see it as a knowing metatextual in-joke that encapsulates in microcosm the divides among fandom over "visual continuity" that were always sure to be exposed in the reactions to the show as a whole.
Because "Bald and brown" are not similarity. The images you just claimed proved your point kills it totally. Nothing about those make ups look alike. Not even "Kinda" alike.
It's more than bald and brown.
I too find the Klingon design in DSC strikingly similar to that of
Into Darkness—which seems to me to also have incorporated the secondary nostrils—although they've clearly gone further with the stylization of the features in the new show, particularly the exaggerated elongation of the head in back. They aren't
the same, but that seems to be where they started from in the process of updating the overall Klingon design. And considering it was their most recent appearance, that's only natural.