Starship design history in light of Discovery

[STR]

Everyone keeps asking about a Constitution showing up, I'd be curious if any JJTrek ships ever show up. Given that they're Paramount IP, my guess is "no" and that we might as well toss them into the Kelvin timeline with the Enterprise and everything else.

The new Discovery designs pretty much fill that time period anyway.

A couple quick points.

1) The Constitution was the only TOS-era ship seen until the insertion of the J-class and the Daedalus-like Medusan ship for the remaster. The Saladin/Hermes, along with the Ptolemy and Dreadnought, were excommunicated because Roddenberry had a snit about royalties. This means that we have only limited insight into where it fits in the grand scheme of things. It may be the last holdover of the cylindrical style of nacelles.

Doesn't matter what GR said. Those ships showed up on the WoK displays. That counts as much as anything.

2) The Andorian Nacelle Consortium finds your inclusion of the NX but not other pre-Federation starships insulting.

And what if those pre-fed design lineages continued? Maybe that's why there are 2 or 3 different nacelle types in operation concurrently?

What if the Walker-type nacelle descended from the angular Andorian traditions? The rounded Oberth type has Tellarite heritage? Constitution clearly traces its design back to the Phoenix. The idea that the human design would entirely supercede that of the other 3 races so quickly seems counter to the central concept of the Federation.

And maybe that's why the TMP refit drive was so temperamental: it was the first try at unifying the best parts of the previous design lineages. It kinda looks like a combination of the other 3.

 

[INACTIVEUSS Einstein]

I have wondered, and I guess we have all wondered at some point, what the first purely-Federation designed starship was like, what its design goals were, and what it's mission was like.

I really like Eric Henry's design for the fanfilm Pacific 201, he seems to have put a lot of thought into making it genuinely practical like a NASA capsule - before ENT I imagined early ships might have lots of features from current space stations, like handholds for spacewalks, etc. I kinda wish ENT had gone a little more Babylon 5 like, with space vessels that looked closer to the apocryphal image of the SS Valiant, maybe needing to spin for gravity - I think a lot of us imagined that from Spock's comment about the Romulan Wars being fought with primative atomic weapons, with no quarter.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

@Christopher, thanks for the clarification, I get where you're coming from much more now. I guess I've become a bit defensive because these conversations tend to all bleed together for me a bit, and I can't ignore the context of a lot of people around this board and others incessantly making comments to the effect that DSC indeed does look "wrong" because it looks different from TOS. There's also the context of "apocryphal" being a term that's seen by many as derogatory (having been associated with Roddenberry's de-legitimization of TAS and denigration of TFF/TUC, to say nothing of its real-world ecclesiastical applications) when contrasted with "canon." But I should have known that wasn't your view specifically, since you write apocryphal works yourself! (I mean that in the same sense as you, there, of course.)

The Constitution class was supposed to be the elite class of the fleet, but I don't recall coming across the idea that its specific shape was meant to be unique. Of course, TOS doesn't give us enough information to judge one way or the other.

What about "by configuration, a Starship" in "The Doomsday Machine" (TOS)? Of course, there were already some noticeable inconsistencies in the use of that term by that point, and there only came to be more as things went further along. So it's admittedly not very much to hang one's hat on, really. Nonetheless, I'd still maintain that there is at least a grain of truth, even within the technical inaccuracy, to what @The Librarian said. We really weren't given any reason to think that the Enterprise wasn't an outlier in terms of appearance, not at the beginning. We got some later, but not that much. But, to paraphrase a certain Time Lord (who may in fact be half human?), as human beings we're always wanting to see patterns in things, even when they may not be there.

I get sort of a TMP vibe from some of the Discovery sets, myself, FWIW. To me it seems like they were specifically going for a ship that, despite the show's earlier setting, was quite explicitly more recent and advanced than, and thus deliberately stylistically different to, the TOS Enterprise—and not only due to intervening changes in production values (what with color and HD now being well-established standards) but for in-story reasons.
IMO they've succeeded in conveying that impression. But to each one's own.

-MMoM

 

[Kor]

I find many 23rd-century designs of both the KelvinVerse and STDSC to be inelegant, clunky, brutish, overly busy, and too angular in comparison to the sleek, slim and minimalist lines of the original 1701. Here's hoping we get more ships with smooth hulls and slimmer profiles in the near future.

Kor

 

[Christopher]

What about "by configuration, a Starship" in "The Doomsday Machine" (TOS)?

Well, since Spock reports that just after they pick up the ship's disaster beacon, he could've simply meant that he was picking up the entire ship as the source of the beacon, rather than just its jettisoned marker buoy.

But just for the sake of argument, the word "configuration" is defined as "the relative disposition or arrangement of the parts or elements of a thing." So two ship designs that have a saucer, engineering hull, and nacelles could have two different configurations of those parts, just as, say, the Galaxy and Sovereign classes do.

Nonetheless, I'd still maintain that there is at least a grain of truth, even within the technical inaccuracy, to what @The Librarian said. We really weren't given any reason to think that the Enterprise wasn't an outlier in terms of appearance, not at the beginning.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I would say, rather, that there was no indication either way, so either interpretation would be an equally valid extrapolation from what little we knew. Indeed, it made perfect sense to expect other starships to be shaped similarly to the Enterprise, for the same reason that we expect airplanes to resemble other airplanes and boats to resemble other boats. It's reasonable to expect form to follow function. Although I suppose the Romulan Bird of Prey established the precedent that more integrated, "flat" saucer/nacelle configurations were functional too.

 

[Ronald Held]

I wonder if it is the humans which do not standardize the configuration of all Starfleet vessels. I might have taken that idea from Christopher's ROTF novels.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Well, since Spock reports that just after they pick up the ship's disaster beacon, he could've simply meant that he was picking up the entire ship as the source of the beacon, rather than just its jettisoned marker buoy.

But just for the sake of argument, the word "configuration" is defined as "the relative disposition or arrangement of the parts or elements of a thing." So two ship designs that have a saucer, engineering hull, and nacelles could have two different configurations of those parts, just as, say, the Galaxy and Sovereign classes do.

Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence. I would say, rather, that there was no indication either way, so either interpretation would be an equally valid extrapolation from what little we knew. Indeed, it made perfect sense to expect other starships to be shaped similarly to the Enterprise, for the same reason that we expect airplanes to resemble other airplanes and boats to resemble other boats. It's reasonable to expect form to follow function. Although I suppose the Romulan Bird of Prey established the precedent that more integrated, "flat" saucer/nacelle configurations were functional too.

Agreed.

Just a note for the benefit of anyone who wasn't aware—though I'm quite sure you must be, no further argument with what you've quite reasonably said above intended—the Romulan BoP's configuration from "Balance Of Terror" (TOS) was originally intended to have been the result of the Romulans having stolen and/or attempted to copy technology and/or design elements from a ship like the Enterprise. Even though we now know from "Minefield" (ENT) that the Rommies were already using ships of the same overall layout a century earlier, I'd still like to believe that the specific details of the TOS design might be a result of that.

It's an interesting coincidental parallel to the Klingon BoP from STIII originally having been intended to be a stolen Romulan ship. And in that case too, it was later shown on ENT that the Klingons had very similar ships by the 22nd century already. Yet it makes sense that, being established as sharing borders, the Romulans and Klingons—and the Orions too, for that matter, whose interceptors from "Borderland" (ENT) bear a strong resemblance to many Romulan designs, and whose vessel from "The Pirates Of Orion" (TAS) similarly bears some resemblance to Vulcan vessels seen in First Contact and "For The Cause" (DS9)—would have had some degree of technological exchange (whether willingly or by espionage and piracy) going back Gene-only-knows-how-far. Food for thought. Sorry all for the momentary digression from thread topic.

-MMoM

 

[pst]

I'd be curious if any JJTrek ships ever show up. Given that they're Paramount IP, my guess is "no" and that we might as well toss them into the Kelvin timeline with the Enterprise and everything else.

i think the kelvin timeline stuff is safe to exclude, the USS franklin as well. i think we really need to regard everything that appears in kelvin timeline films as part of a distinct universe, per simon pegg's statement about it being a new universe going forwards and backwards from nero's incursion. the franklin may fit into a design lineage that includes the warp delta and NX-class, but it probably only exists in the kelvin timeline. same with the kelvin, despite its destruction being a previously considered a turning point.

but i love @USS Einstein's revised list. it never occurred to me to include the square-nacelled discovery-era starships after the TOS-era starships. definitely resolves the headache, even if this probably isn't the producer's intent.

 

[STR]

^^^ Fine with me then. Lock that trash in a box and drop it in the ocean. Particularly the Franklin, that thing is every bad design idea wrapped into one.

Though, [why?] do you have a problem with Starfleet using two different "styles" of engine at the same time? The 1701-A is contemporary with the NX-2000. The Akira is roughly contemporary with the Galaxy/Nebula style, the Defiant/Chaffe nacelle and the Sovereign/Intrepid/Prometheus type. There's also the "marker" nacelles from the BoBW hulks. Having multiple design familes makes a lot more sense (and fits better) than fundamentally reworking everything every 5 years.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

i think the kelvin timeline stuff is safe to exclude, the USS franklin as well. i think we really need to regard everything that appears in kelvin timeline films as part of a distinct universe, per simon pegg's statement about it being a new universe going forwards and backwards from nero's incursion. the franklin may fit into a design lineage that includes the warp delta and NX-class, but it probably only exists in the kelvin timeline. same with the kelvin, despite its destruction being a previously considered a turning point.

I accept Pegg's premise and think it makes sense both from an in-and-out-of-universe perspective, but even so I don't see what reason there is to think the Franklin "probably" only exists in the Kelvin Timeline. Why do you say that, particularly?

Though, [why?] do you have a problem with Starfleet using two different "styles" of engine at the same time? The 1701-A is contemporary with the NX-2000. The Akira is roughly contemporary with the Galaxy/Nebula style, the Defiant/Chaffe nacelle and the Sovereign/Intrepid/Prometheus type. There's also the "marker" nacelles from the BoBW hulks. Having multiple design familes makes a lot more sense (and fits better) than fundamentally reworking everything every 5 years.

I certainly agree with this much, if not with the slur on the Franklin, which as I've said I think makes fair sense design-wise in context of ENT.

-MMoM

 

[Tuskin38]

Given that they're Paramount IP, my guess is "no"

They're owned by CBS as they were made under the Star Trek license.

But I doubt they'll use any movie designs as to not confuse the viewers/timelines.

 

[STR]

I certainly agree with this much, if not with the slur on the Franklin, which as I've said I think makes fair sense design-wise in context of ENT.

-MMoM

A Franklin-like ship makes sense in the timeline, sure. However, I'm not slurring or slandering it. There are rules on proportion and balance, honed by centuries of study. All that stuff that one learns in art or design schools. Fugly Franklin breaks those rules and as a result looks clunky and unbalanced. Amateurish, even.

They're owned by CBS as they were made under the Star Trek license.

Citation required. Every publication and product has treated JJTrek as a unique property distinct from "CBS Trek". Several people have stated they've had to consult Bad Robot on product launches as well. We do not know the terms of the license between Viacom's two subsidiaries, nor the agreement between Paramount and Bad Robot. CBS may "own" the properties, and yet have no control over them due to veto power given to the other entities.

Corporate ownership at this level is extremely complex and proprietary.

 

[Christopher]

Just a note for the benefit of anyone who wasn't aware—though I'm quite sure you must be, no further argument with what you've quite reasonably said above intended—the Romulan BoP's configuration from "Balance Of Terror" (TOS) was originally intended to have been the result of the Romulans having stolen and/or attempted to copy technology and/or design elements from a ship like the Enterprise. Even though we now know from "Minefield" (ENT) that the Rommies were already using ships of the same overall layout a century earlier, I'd still like to believe that the specific details of the TOS design might be a result of that.

Yes, that's actually part of what I was thinking. If we assume it was derived from similar engineering principles to Starfleet tech, then that reinforces the idea that its design can be used as a precedent for the functionality of Starfleet designs. It's actually kind of ironic that so many Starfleet designs from the Reliant onward have basically been following the precedent of the Romulan BoP.

It's an interesting coincidental parallel to the Klingon BoP from STIII originally having been intended to be a stolen Romulan ship.

Well, originally the villains in ST III were Romulans. Then they decided to make them Klingons instead, perhaps to avoid confusing novice viewers with the Vulcan/Romulan resemblance, and they basically just swapped out the species names and kept everything else unchanged, which is not only why Klingons suddenly had Birds-of-Prey and cloaking devices, but why they were suddenly talking about honor when that was more the Romulans' deal in TOS.

i think the kelvin timeline stuff is safe to exclude, the USS franklin as well. i think we really need to regard everything that appears in kelvin timeline films as part of a distinct universe, per simon pegg's statement about it being a new universe going forwards and backwards from nero's incursion.

Okay, first of all, that didn't originate with Simon Pegg. He was the first one to publicize the idea, but a couple of months later, we saw that it was included in the text of the newly revised Star Trek Encyclopedia by the Okudas. Since it takes well over a year to create a book, probably even longer for a comprehensive reference text like that, it follows that the Okudas must have come up with the idea first. I expect that Pegg got to see an advance copy of the book and that's where he got the idea from.

Second, the Okudas' proposal wasn't meant to definitively state that nothing in the pre-2233 Kelvin timeline was shared with the Prime timeline. It was just a suggestion that some individual details here and there might have been altered by temporal ripples propagating backward, as a handwave for any inconsistencies that couldn't be easily explained by changes after Nero's arrival (e.g. the overly large starships or the overly built-up San Francisco). It naturally stands to reason that most aspects of the timeline would still be the same, since of course it still has a Federation, a Starfleet, a Kirk, a Spock, a Sarek, etc.

There is no reason the Franklin can't exist in the timeline of Star Trek: Enterprise; it's no greater a retcon than the existence of NX-01 itself (when previous shows and films repeatedly stated that NCC-1701 was the first starship Enterprise). Apparently the behind-the-scenes intent was that it was a MACO starship project developed in parallel with Starfleet's Warp 5 ships, presumably using knockoff technology similarly to how the US military was working on its own space shuttle knocked off of the NASA version's technology. I think that adequately explains why it was never brought up in ENT, which was focused mostly on Starfleet.

They're owned by CBS as they were made under the Star Trek license.

But I doubt they'll use any movie designs as to not confuse the viewers/timelines.

Well, yeah, theoretically CBS owns all the concepts from the movies, but Paramount still has a copyright on the films themselves and a claim to their original elements. So the makers of DSC might have to pay residuals or something if they used characters or plot points from the Kelvin films. I'm not sure if that would apply to design elements like ship classes, though.

 

[Kor]

I like the Franklin better than the NX-01.

Kor

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Well, originally the villains in ST III were Romulans. Then they decided to make them Klingons instead, perhaps to avoid confusing novice viewers with the Vulcan/Romulan resemblance, and they basically just swapped out the species names and kept everything else unchanged, which is not only why Klingons suddenly had Birds-of-Prey and cloaking devices, but why they were suddenly talking about honor when that was more the Romulans' deal in TOS.

Quite so. Thanks for that clarification, as I had forgotten that completely. The idea of the Klingons having stolen it from the Romulans was apparently from an intermediate draft, before all reference beyond the designation itself was then dropped from the final version of the story. Harve Bennett said they felt justified in keeping the name because of the apparent exchange of equipment that had been seen between the two powers in "The Enterprise Incident" (TOS), even though ENT shows us that any such exchange as concerning this type of ship in particular must have occurred much earlier.

 

[pst]

Okay, first of all, that didn't originate with Simon Pegg. He was the first one to publicize the idea, but a couple of months later, we saw that it was included in the text of the newly revised Star Trek Encyclopedia by the Okudas. Since it takes well over a year to create a book, probably even longer for a comprehensive reference text like that, it follows that the Okudas must have come up with the idea first. I expect that Pegg got to see an advance copy of the book and that's where he got the idea from.

Second, the Okudas' proposal wasn't meant to definitively state that nothing in the pre-2233 Kelvin timeline was shared with the Prime timeline. It was just a suggestion that some individual details here and there might have been altered by temporal ripples propagating backward, as a handwave for any inconsistencies that couldn't be easily explained by changes after Nero's arrival (e.g. the overly large starships or the overly built-up San Francisco). It naturally stands to reason that most aspects of the timeline would still be the same, since of course it still has a Federation, a Starfleet, a Kirk, a Spock, a Sarek, etc.

There is no reason the Franklin can't exist in the timeline of Star Trek: Enterprise; it's no greater a retcon than the existence of NX-01 itself (when previous shows and films repeatedly stated that NCC-1701 was the first starship Enterprise). Apparently the behind-the-scenes intent was that it was a MACO starship project developed in parallel with Starfleet's Warp 5 ships, presumably using knockoff technology similarly to how the US military was working on its own space shuttle knocked off of the NASA version's technology. I think that adequately explains why it was never brought up in ENT, which was focused mostly on Starfleet.

the reason i cited pegg and not the okudas is that pegg co-wrote the last kelvin timeline film. his, doug jung's, and justin lin's intentions - being the last people to shepherd that storyline - are most relevant.

i wasn't suggesting this is definitive, just the best explanation for why the kelvin timeline films' specific starships likely won't be showing up or being mentioned in star trek: discovery. it's possible they'll throw in a reference to the kelvin or the franklin, but until they do, their total absence from the prime universe productions is easily explained as absence from the prime universe itself.

I accept Pegg's premise and think it makes sense both from an in-and-out-of-universe perspective, but even so I don't see what reason there is to think the Franklin "probably" only exists in the Kelvin Timeline. Why do you say that, particularly?

i say this because it presents a minor discontinuity with enterprise and has yet to be mentioned on discovery. if references to the franklin exist solely in the kelvin timeline films, it's reasonable to imagine it exists only in the kelvin timeline.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

i say this because it presents a minor discontinuity with enterprise...

It doesn't, really, not unless one wants to get real nitpicky about the registry...and registry oddities abound in Trek. She was written deliberately to fit with and around what's shown in ENT. The Franklin was stated to be the first Earth vessel capable of Warp Four. The NX-01 had explicitly already gone Warp Four prior to "Broken Bow" and no one was talking about her there as if she were already an historical success by that measure. Rather, they talked about her as if she were yet to prove herself that, though she was expected to in short order. So it only makes sense that some other ship did it first. The Franklin's transporter was only approved for cargo, and Scotty had to modify it to make it safe for bio-transport. The NX-01's had already been approved for that application. MACOs being carried aboard a Starfleet ship was a novelty in "The Expanse" (ENT), yet several of them had received training in various locations around the Solar system. So it makes sense that they could have had their own ship, but one not so fast as Enterprise (and thus unusable for the urgent purpose required there, which was daunting even at Warp Five). There's a whole current thread about this here. Out of curiosity, what do you feel is the discontinuity per se? It must be very minor indeed.

...and has yet to be mentioned on discovery. if references to the franklin exist solely in the kelvin timeline films, it's reasonable to imagine it exists only in the kelvin timeline.

I don't think that follows. Why would they refer to a ship lost almost a century earlier for no reason on DSC? And there hasn't been any other Trek than that since Beyond.

-MMoM

 

[STR]

Trying to fist the Franklin into the tiny gap given in "Enterprise" strains credulity far more than simply ignoring it and leaving it in the JJverse where it belongs (and where it was intended to be). I read the case for the Franklin here and the other thread and it,

For reasons logistical and legal, that stuff is off in its own universe and probably always will be unless Viacom re-merges the companies.

 

[The Mighty Monkey of Mim]

Trying to fist the Franklin into the tiny gap given in "Enterprise" strains credulity far more than simply ignoring it and leaving it in the JJverse where it belongs

There is a gap of five years between 2145, when Duvall broke the Warp Three barrier in the NX-Delta—which, by the way, if we want to speculate a hypothetical, it's even possible to think the Franklin was originally, before being donated to the MACOs by Starfleet in preparation for the inevitably-foreseen need of the United Earth Military in space, since that's not what Starfleet was supposed to be initially—and 2150, when the NX-01's keel was laid per "First Flight" (ENT). As for why Archer didn't specifically mention the Warp Four barrier being broken separately there, maybe he wasn't personally involved with that particular part of the project. Or maybe it only happened after NX-01's construction began, but before she was finished enough for engine trials and thus capable of Warp Four. Maybe a lot of things.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Trying to fist the Franklin into the tiny gap

Giggity!

For reasons logistical and legal, that stuff is off in its own universe and probably always will be unless Viacom re-merges the companies.

Honestly, I still feel like this is the only real reason they insisted on the show being in the "prime universe." They could easily have made this show a spinoff of Star Trek Beyond -- maybe taking place while the Enterprise-A was still under construction -- and nobody would know any difference.