USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

[SevenOfNiven]

I'm a little weirded out by the Enterprise and what it means for Discovery Season 2. It's basically a kitbash of the TOS and movie Enterprises, so on the one hand, seeing it face-to-face with the Discovery is reassuring in that it's clear that the TOS style can and does exist alongside the decidedly different looks of Discovery's ships so far. And all of the elements I would have thought would seem "dated" and calling out for a revision (to the camp that insists that the TOS look is dated, at least) are completely intact: gold deflector dish, round nacelles, orange bussards, TOS decals, etc. But at the same time, it's pretty clearly not the exact same ship model from TOS, which certainly breaks from longstanding Trek tradition.

So what does this mean for Trek going forward? Obviously, the Discoprise (for lack of a better designation) won't get the full Mirror Darkly treatment. But at the same time, even with the design changes in this iteration, it would be difficult to just handwave in existing Discovery sets and costumes costumes and ignore the different production designs between the two ships.

One can't imagine that the Enterprise will be completely rebuilt from scratch; it seems likely that the Shenzhou's bridge will be re-purposed (in retrospect, having two bridge set designs available seems to have been a smart cost-saving measure from both a production and storytelling perspective.) But will it be some combination of the movie and TOS sets, as the Discoprise seems to indicate, or will it be more like the Discovery/Shenzhou? And will we see some version of the TOS or Cage uniforms (as the tie-in novel has indicated) or will the Discovery uniforms be retconned as the "new" pre-TOS uniform for all of Starfleet?

And given that we have two different "looks" for things that exist simultaneously (which had been the exception rather than the rule before Discovery), will this finally allow for more integration of things like the Kelvin and Franklin and even some other 2250s Kelvin timeline stuff as-is into the Prime timeline without fans going "Nope, this aspect of production design could clearly only exist in the Kelvin timeline!"? (I'm guessing the answer is "no", but one always hopes.)

At this point, I've accepted the fact that Discovery will continue to carry on the continuity from the other Trek shows (the use of Mudd and plotlines from Enterprise make this pretty clear, IMO) while not feeling particularly beholden to replicating the visuals the same way we've come to expect. I'm excited, albeit a little confused, at how faithful the Discoprise is to the spirit of the original.

The grouchy old fan-boy in me would still appreciate some kind of temporal cold war hand-wave, though. (I've just about accepted that Voq/Ash isn't going to emerge as the leader of an ascendant Augment/altered Klingon faction and the Enterprise won't be wrecked and rebuilt to her Cage-era appearance at the end of the series. Just about.)

 

[jaime]

I'm a little weirded out by the Enterprise and what it means for Discovery Season 2. It's basically a kitbash of the TOS and movie Enterprises, so on the one hand, seeing it face-to-face with the Discovery is reassuring in that it's clear that the TOS style can and does exist alongside the decidedly different looks of Discovery's ships so far. And all of the elements I would have thought would seem "dated" and calling out for a revision (to the camp that insists that the TOS look is dated, at least) are completely intact: gold deflector dish, round nacelles, orange bussards, TOS decals, etc. But at the same time, it's pretty clearly not the exact same ship model from TOS, which certainly breaks from longstanding Trek tradition.

So what does this mean for Trek going forward? Obviously, the Discoprise (for lack of a better designation) won't get the full Mirror Darkly treatment. But at the same time, even with the design changes in this iteration, it would be difficult to just handwave in existing Discovery sets and costumes costumes and ignore the different production designs between the two ships.

One can't imagine that the Enterprise will be completely rebuilt from scratch; it seems likely that the Shenzhou's bridge will be re-purposed (in retrospect, having two bridge set designs available seems to have been a smart cost-saving measure from both a production and storytelling perspective.) But will it be some combination of the movie and TOS sets, as the Discoprise seems to indicate, or will it be more like the Discovery/Shenzhou? And will we see some version of the TOS or Cage uniforms (as the tie-in novel has indicated) or will the Discovery uniforms be retconned as the "new" pre-TOS uniform for all of Starfleet?

And given that we have two different "looks" for things that exist simultaneously (which had been the exception rather than the rule before Discovery), will this finally allow for more integration of things like the Kelvin and Franklin and even some other 2250s Kelvin timeline stuff as-is into the Prime timeline without fans going "Nope, this aspect of production design could clearly only exist in the Kelvin timeline!"? (I'm guessing the answer is "no", but one always hopes.)

At this point, I've accepted the fact that Discovery will continue to carry on the continuity from the other Trek shows (the use of Mudd and plotlines from Enterprise make this pretty clear, IMO) while not feeling particularly beholden to replicating the visuals the same way we've come to expect. I'm excited, albeit a little confused, at how faithful the Discoprise is to the spirit of the original.

The grouchy old fan-boy in me would still appreciate some kind of temporal cold war hand-wave, though. (I've just about accepted that Voq/Ash isn't going to emerge as the leader of an ascendant Augment/altered Klingon faction and the Enterprise won't be wrecked and rebuilt to her Cage-era appearance at the end of the series. Just about.)

Haven’t seen the ep yet, just the screengrabs, but it’s only the tiniest of structural changes. They may even do TOS-R version 2.0 and Just pop it in there (same for its ENT and DS9 appearances, where it would fit pretty much fine. Those are perfectly post First Contact nacelles.)
Regarding the inside...well..that’s harder, but not impossible. It’s just a bit of polish ultimately, like NuWho Sontarans, and for modern screens.

It’s seemingly still Prime...just the Klingons need reining in, and some hair.

 

[Tosk]

The outside is 40% TOS, 40% Refit, 20% NX-01. I'm expecting probably the same ratio for the inside.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

The outside is 40% TOS, 40% Refit, 20% NX-01. I'm expecting probably the same ratio for the inside.

An amazing result for a mé·nage à Trois. It's a beautiful thing.

And like others have said, it could get a nacelle and pylon refit in the next 10 years, so it could still end up closer to what we saw.

 

[Infern0]

Theres no way they could use the same exact design from TOS, this is 2018 it has to be visually updated.

That said i think they did a beautiful job.

Dont think "that isnt the enterprise" think "is that the enterprise if gene had todays effects at his disposal"

 

[SevenOfNiven]

Haven’t seen the ep yet, just the screengrabs, but it’s only the tiniest of structural changes. They may even do TOS-R version 2.0 and Just pop it in there (same for its ENT and DS9 appearances, where it would fit pretty much fine. Those are perfectly post First Contact nacelles.)
Regarding the inside...well..that’s harder, but not impossible. It’s just a bit of polish ultimately, like NuWho Sontarans, and for modern screens.

It’s seemingly still Prime...just the Klingons need reining in, and some hair.

Given the significant time and expense involved in remastering TOS, I doubt they would do it for the whole series. (I could see new versions of The Cage and Where No Man maybe being put out at some point, which would sort of address the issue.) But I think the outside is a pretty big clue for the inside. It's more than a bit of polish--personally, I'd prefer they took more of a page out of nuWho's book, where we ultimately saw the new Daleks right alongside the old ones, a vague explanation for David Bradley's appearance in the last Christmas episode, etc.

The changes to me appear significant, but I can see where they might be "tiny" for others. My main point is that while it's significantly different from the exact model used in TOS, it's still incredibly true to the style established in TOS and the movies and a significant departure from Discovery's take on Starfleet ships, which makes me curious as heck as to what approach they'll take for the Enterprise sets and costumes.

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

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.

Amazing post, it crystallises DSC's canon problem.

 

[SevenOfNiven]

Theres no way they could use the same exact design from TOS, this is 2018 it has to be visually updated.

People keep saying this, but what I'm surprised at is that they didn't seem to change anything that made the TOS model seem dated--the retro-looking deflector dish is a good example. The most radical thing they've done was to include aspects of the movie Enterprise, which I suppose updates it to 1978, not 2018.

 

[Tosk]

Dont think "that isnt the enterprise" think "is that the enterprise if gene had todays effects at his disposal"

I don't mind the update, but you can't seriously argue that the look of the physical prop was some kind of "This will have to do, pity we can't possibly make it nicer than this" default. They made their decisions at the time based on their aesthetic preferences.

 

[alex08060]

Yeah it finally showed up near the end of season 1.

 

[INACTIVERedDwarf]

In the finest fan tradition, trying to fit it into a visual canon:

2270 - TMP ------------- TMP Refit

2266 - TOS ------------- TOS NEW

2255 - DSC ------------- DSC Refit

2254 - The Cage ------- TOS OLD

Maybe this is a 2256-2258 "war refit"

 

[Tuskin38]

I’m not seeing any visible phaser hardpoints, but it might be the lighting obscuring them.

 

[Timo]

I'd have zero problem with this being the ship before 2264 if we hadn't seen "The Cage". But a quick tither-and-yon "refit" makes even less sense now that we see they also "refitted" the fonts on the pennants and will "refit" them back by 2264...

As for phasers, at least they aren't glowing red... I wonder if the TMP-style neck is now supposed to hold a torpedo launcher at that forward kink? But retractable guns, "In a Mirror, Darkly" style, are the likeliest bet overall.

Looking forward to seeing the interiors. And the shuttles!

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gonzo]

Haven't seen the episode yet but the Enterprise looks fine to me.

Same basic shape, with some changes to the neck, nacelle ends and shuttle bay but nothing that will cause a meltdown on the forum.

Size is hard to judge from the screenshots, it doesn't look tiny but it doesn't look massive either so I would say its maybe 50% bigger give or take, shouldn't look too bad alongside the Discovery as it's length is over 1/3 nacelle.

Wish they would have changed the deflector dish though, a nice blue or red colour glow would have been better and its not like the deflectors are hard to replace and upgrade.

 

[lawman]

Many comments!...

...Although I would like to see its claimed 7 torpedo tubes.
...I mean we see at lest 2 forward, where the others are heck if anyone knows. people are still trying to find the phasers.

I really don't understand your design sensibilities here. What's the big deal about weapons turrets? I always thought one of the nice things about the original Enterprise (unlike so many fictional ships designed in the post-Star Wars era) is that it wasn't bristling with exterior bits and pieces, especially weaponry. It makes sense to me to assume that the Ent's weapons are discreetly recessed. It's not a warship, after all.

It’s currently 2257 (If they don’t got back in time) in DSC, that is also the year most of the crew was killed while Kirk was serving.

The disaster with the dikironium cloud creature happened sometime in 2257, but we don't know when.

Hmm. Why do you both assume 2257 for the Farragut disaster? It was 11 years before "Obsession," which was a second-season episode, hence almost certainly 2267. (It was even broadcast in 1967.) That would put the incident in 2256. (And even if we fudge that, Discovery's 9-month jump puts it pretty late into 2257, so the Farragut disaster is almost certainly already past.)

Weeeelllllll...I have heard the VFX dept has played with the size of the Enterprise. By how much, I don't know.

It really didn't look like it on screen (thankfully). The window placements were almost exactly the same as on the TOS Enterprise (except for the reduced number of rows on the shorter neck, of course).

The purists are going to lose their minds no matter what, and point to the redesign as a reason it's "not prime universe!" "Visual reboot" is a concept lost on them.

The TOS Enterprise is a GREAT looking ship. I fucking love it. But I also understand that it does not fit in with the DSC aesthetic or the modern scifi design expectations.

Condescending much? I consider myself a purist, and I certainly haven't "lost my mind" about any of this. It's a decent reimagining of the ship, not as faithful as I'd like but not as bad as I'd feared.

I will say, though, that the concept of a "visual reboot" is indeed lost on me — frankly, I'd never even heard anyone posit such a thing before this show. An on-screen narrative isn't prose, after all; the visuals are just as important a part of the "canon" as anything else. If you're going to reboot one aspect but not the other, that only invites confusion for viewers. IMHO it's just as weird as it would be to do a show with faithful recreations of the ships, sets, costumes, and makeup, but randomly changing some of the events to suit more (allegedly) "modern" tastes.

Honestly, what are "modern scifi design expectations" anyway? Is there a rulebook for this stuff? Design aesthetics vary wildly from one movie or show to another. Compare Interstellar to Arrival, for instance, or (getting down to Earth) the different futures of District 9, Ex Machina, and Her. There's a certain sort of generic "SF look" that one does see as a semi-recurring thing, but that's usually in more derivative projects, and generic is hardly a synonym for "good." Star Trek has always had a very distinctive, very recognizable visual aesthetic of its own — groundbreaking, even — and it seems a shame to lose that in an effort to follow whatever's trendy.

For that matter, what is "the DSC aesthetic" to you? Aside from insufficient, blue-toned lighting, I'd be hard-pressed to identify any consistent look to the show. From ships to sets to costumes to makeup, it seems wildly inconsistent, as if it were designed by half-a-dozen different committees that didn't communicate with one another.

Imagine if it looked like this...

Ye gods, that is fugly!

I hope the neck is longer than that. The NX 01 concept and the Defiant wireframe both have very short necks.

I was hoping for the same. The original Enterprise was tall and stately compared to a lot of later Trek ships. But no luck on that front, sad to say.

...frankly, there's a reason Star Wars wowed audiences. It created spaceships for the big screen that weren't like things previously seen, and with quite a bit of detail. That gives them a leg up on a TV show from the mid-1960s. What Star Trek designed in the 1960s was far closer to pulp flying saucers that had graced serials for some time prior.

First of all, I think Star Wars designs are overrated; a lot of them are derivative (e.g., the X-wings resemble fighter jets), a lot of others are simply ugly (the Millennium Falcon may be iconic at this point, but that doesn't make it attractive), and what passes for "detail" is often just a lot of random greebles cluttering things up.

Second, calling Trek designs pulpy is an insult to Matt Jefferies and everyone who worked with him, who deliberately and explicitly set out to design ships that looked distinctively, innovatively different from, and more credible than, the fantail rockets and spinning saucers that had been commonplace in previous screen SF. They succeeded admirably. Star Trek's look was instantly recognizable and iconic from the moment it was first broadcast.

TOS and it’s design work are far from my favourite Trek, but I’ve got to agree.
I think it’s because of some kind of...reflected shame or embarrassment for the era?

You may be right, but this baffles me. Why would any Trek fan feel shame or embarrassment at the show that blazed the trail and set the template for everything that followed? (Or for the 1960s in general, one of the most transformative, trend-setting decades in American history?)

to me the most important thing, is that I see it, and be able to say "It's the Enterprise" without any doubt about what it's supposed to be, I certainly want to see something more Faithful than the JJ ship, which had very nice detailing on it, but the proportions were an eyesore

Interestingly, the DSC version seems to have the opposite problem. Design-wise, it's impressively close to the original ship, frankly moreso than I'd been expecting. In terms of realization, though, it just doesn't look quite right. The ship in the Abrams films was misshapen, but it had that sleek, smooth, gleaming, off-white look that the Enterprise should always have. This one (in the few seconds we've seen so far) simply doesn't. (Granted, neither does any other ship we've seen in DSC, but while that's a complaint about the show in general, it's more conspicuously noticeable where the Enterprise is concerned.)

The Starfleet pennant on the sides of the nacelles and the stardrive section look like the TOS pennants. The proportions for the deflector dish and its color look more or less right. The underside of the saucer is almost exactly like the TOS Enterprise...

The pennants are actually slightly different — two trailing ends rather than three. Close, though. To my eye the biggest changes are to the pylons (but admittedly those were always the weakest part of the original design), the neck (too short), and the back ends of the nacelles (really no excuse for the changes there).

...of course, they've also got the problem that the TOS design was already updated once, and it was perfect. That would've been my first step if I couldn't just gussy up the original. "Look at everything that didn't change between the series and the first movie. You can't change that either. Anything else, you can change, but not the same way as they changed it for the movie. Make sure it looks more like the series version than the movie one when you're done. Go."

Heh. Sums things up pretty succinctly!...

 

[Tuskin38]

All the Discovery ships have physical deflectors, except with glowy bits behind them

 

[Gonzo]

All the Discovery ships have physical deflectors, except with glowy bits behind them

Yeah but none of them have the bit sticking out that looks like one of those "special" docking points.

 

[Tuskin38]

Hmm. Why do you both assume 2257 for the Farragut disaster?

I was going by what memory-alpha said. They did the math

 

[Tuskin38]

Yeah but none of them have the bit sticking out that looks like one of those "special" docking points.

What now

 

[Mudd]

Theres no way they could use the same exact design from TOS, this is 2018 it has to be visually updated.

Of course they can't.

They could have done work that didn't suck.

Oh, wait - no, they can't.