The design is an apt distillation of the show's approach to canon and why I find it all frustrating.
I find the whole "sort of canon" approach of the show tiresome. They should just shit or get off the pot. Either go full on reboot or stick to canon properly within the confines of modern abilities. What I mean by that is I do accept that some things would have to be updated. I get that. But there is necessary updating and then there is just playing with shit for the sake of it. This Enterprise looks nice. It's vastly superior to the JJPrise. But the showrunners have made a rod for their own backs by insisting this is prime universe, and in that respect some things just don't fit. Case in point, why go to all the effort to make the ship largely faithful, such as the deflector dish and strobing bussard collectors, but then just randomly add different shaped pylons, impulse engines and fancy extensions near the shuttle bay? It's such an inconsistent approach, like how they go to the effort of designing props like the phasers, with a clear TOS influence that would make sense, and then just shit the bed with the Klingons. The Klingons could be made to work in canon with such little effort. All it would take would be to show different species and have a few hairy Klingons in the background. Job done. Same with The Enterprise. This ship and the level of detail could've been just the way it is and yet retained the original shaped pylons, impulse engines, etc. There is nothing old fashioned looking about them with the updated surface detail and certainly no more out of date than the bussard collectors. The whole thing comes across as little more than "because we can" and I find it all a bit sad given the efforts of the previous Trek spin offs to fit together as seamlessly as possible.
Discovery in so many ways gives with one hand and takes with the other. If they want to piss around with things then they should just be honest and do full reboot on instead of telling those of us who enjoy canon, and the remarkably consistent world the franchise was until now, that this somehow all fits in, when it clearly doesn't.
