USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

[lawman]

I love Art deco for instance, but I always know what it is. Lawman, for instance, keeps ignoring what I m saying about the art style. Claming I am using a logical fallacy because I pointed out it used a clashing art style.

I'm not ignoring what you're saying. I'm disagreeing with it. I maintain that the design aesthetic that Matt Jefferies originated in TOS, and later refined for Phase II/TMP, is not based on, does not resemble, and is not of a kind with the post-war/"space age" aesthetic represented by, say, Forbidden Planet or Lost in Space or The Jetsons or umpty-zillion magazine covers from the era... no matter how you try to conflate the two. It is qualitatively different and distinct.

In other words...

I don't dispute that the Enterprise doesn't match current sci fi styles, but I haven't seen anything else from the '60s that looks anything like it. If the features of the Enterprise are quintessentially 1960s, where are the other ships that have them?

Hear, hear.

I agree, for the most part [the refit] did a fantastic job on the old girl. But some people simply can not accept reality that it has features which date it and do not flow with modern designs.

As I've already stated, IDGAF about the stuff you're categorizing as "modern" designs (although that's a word with a specific, period-based meaning far more than "retro" is, so you should be careful about using it casually). Most of those, let's call them, "21st-century" designs you're celebrating are not particularly inspired or memorable. They're not any less likely to look dated over time than older designs; they're very much of their time. Nor are they more aesthetically pleasing than older designs; in fact many are downright ugly.

As I've said, for instance, I don't care at all for John Eaves' design for the Enterprise-E. On the other hand, I'll concede that the Ent-E looks downright elegant compared to the kludgy mess that's the Shenzou, and the Discovery itself isn't much better. Of course, both of those are still head and shoulders above the godawful hideous Klingon ship designs we've had foisted on us.

So how are these designs better? What advantages does this newer aesthetic offer, aside from being recognizable as the current trendy thing? (Indeed it's not even clear how that's an advantage, as it just makes these designs indistinguishable from designs in non-Trek properties; indeed many of them wouldn't look out of place in nuBSG or Dark Matter or The Expanse.)

...Just as someone designing ships and such today would use modern stylings and likely not even think about it.

Well, if that's what they're doing, that's a problem. I want them to think about it. I want something better than just another variation on the theme that every second designer in Hollywood is already playing.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

Nope. And NX is a century earlier, so it hardly matters. Styles will change pretty much completely in hundred years.

\
The NX is a modern design, the NX's dish is a newer style. This dish looks older than the NX and every other ship on DSC. That was the issue. The Shenzhou is also an issue you see. Its Older than the Constitution class, but its Dish is so much newer in styling. The dish they used simply does not work, it looks like something early 21st century because its more dated then the NX dish, which is what the others are based off of.

You are hitting the issue but do not want to accept it. The NX is new style, but older than the Connie, so the connie should look newer. And really it does, except the dish. Which as I said is why it sticks out to me.

 

[Longinus]

Agreed. The art deco nacelles and boring boxy neck are the only dated looking features. The secondary hull and saucer for the most part would still look fine as a modern scifi object.

That ship is just perfect as a whole. You don't (hopefully) go to the art museum thinking 'Oh we totally need to change this and that about this Pre-Raphaelite painting to make it look more contemporary. '

 

[Mirror Mirror]

I'm not ignoring what you're saying. I'm disagreeing with it. I maintain that the design aesthetic that Matt Jefferies originated in TOS, and later refined for Phase II/TMP, is not based on, does not resemble, and is not of a kind with the post-war/"space age" aesthetic represented by, say, Forbidden Planet or Lost in Space or The Jetsons or umpty-zillion magazine covers from the era... no matter how you try to conflate the two. It is qualitatively different and distinct.

Yes you are simply ignoring. The TOs and TMP designs are nothing alike. You are trying to lump them togather, but they are not the same design or the same styling. The TOS does indeed use "Space age/ atomic age" styling. The TMP ship uses , not fully the modern post Star wars styling, but hits it in many ways.

As I've already stated, IDGAF about the stuff you're categorizing as "modern" designs (although that's a word with a specific, period-based meaning far more than "retro" is, so you should be careful about using it casually). Most of those, let's call them, "21st-century" designs you're celebrating are not particularly inspired or memorable. They're not any less likely to look dated than older designs; they're very much of their time. Nor are they more aesthetically pleasing than older designs; in fact many are downright ugly.

Retro future or retro is what the TOs style is called man. You can dislike the word but that is what it is. And we have been trying to explain to you, this is not a Star Trek thing. It is a sci-fi thing, not limited to Star trek. And they are not 21st century, but the ones you bring up 20th century really as they were made before the year 2000.

And yes, they are less dated, because the style is still in use.

Well, if that's what they're doing, that's a problem. I want them to think about it. I want something better than just another variation on the theme that every second designer in Hollywood is already playing.

And they are, but not on a gut level. Designers tend to go with the style of the time. Its how your trained, its in the objects you take inspiration from and so on. A designer from say the 1990's is not gonna default to a style decades old, but the current trends. The same goes for modern designers.

 

[Mirror Mirror]

That ship is just perfect as a whole. You don't (hopefully) go to the art museum thinking 'Oh we totally need to change this and that about this Pre-Raphaelite painting to make it look more contemporary. '

That is not really what he is saying. He and I, are simply saying some design elements date it. The TMP design is simply lovely, but it was not all forward thinking, it kept some dated stylings, which will always peg its age. I mean, a 66 impala is a work of art IMO, but your never gonna think its anything but a classic car.

 

[Longinus]

That is not really what he is saying. He and I, are simply saying some design elements date it. The TMP design is simply lovely, but it was not all forward thinking, it kept some dated stylings, which will always peg its age. I mean, a 66 impala is a work of art IMO, but your never gonna think its anything but a classic car.

So? This is about 23rd century. 2018 style is not inherently more appropriate than 1979 style.

 

[lawman]

So? This is about 23rd century. 2018 style is not inherently more appropriate than 1979 style.

Precisely. Up until now, Trek shows have never had a problem acknowledging that previous designs for ships, uniforms, etc. varied from era to era (however much some of those things may, as a matter of opinion, have evoked certain 20th-21st century styles of design), but stayed consistent with themselves. The TOS Enterprise always looked like it had always looked, no matter what show was depicting it, and the same was true for other "flashback" elements. This makes sense.

It's only in DSC that we're suddenly confronted with the impulse to change what has gone before, as if it were somehow anathema to acknowledge that it went before. This does not make sense. (And to the extent that ENT or DSC's "newer" designs seem out of keeping with the prequel eras they're set in, well, obviously, that's a problem with those shows, not with the previous works that established the visual parameters for those eras. IRL the later designers have all the information they need to accommodate the settings they're working in.)

 

[Mirror Mirror]

So? This is about 23rd century. 2018 style is not inherently more appropriate than 1979 style.

The 1960 style went out in 1979 for trek. Nothing on that dish is from 1979, its space age/atomic age styling. And was tossed by trek over 40 years ago. It simply does not work with the style of DSC or really anything post TMP or Post ENT. They had tons of other options that could have worked, but went with one that just looks wrong. It simply does not match the design or the ship linage we have seen on DSC. The Older Shenzhou has a more advanced and detailed freaking deflector, as does every other ship we have seen on the show.

Over all, I dig the update, but they dropped the ball hard on the Dish.

 

[Ithekro]

So. Apparently there are situations were having two long prongs on your navigation deflector are not better than having just one shorter prong. USS Enterprise is certainly newer than the USS Shenzhou, just by the nature that Shenzhou was called an old ship seven or eight years prior to the current time in series. USS Enterprise shouldn't be much more than 13 years old in the Discovery present day. It could just be better for a long range explorer than the usual in Federation patrol ships and science vessels.

And as most races would probably point out, humans are weird, and will just resign stuff to look different because they can, while other races will just stick to something for generations.

 

[jaime]

Pulp Fiction was decent
(and by decent I mean one of freaking Top 10 movies of all time)

I liked it, had the poster, the soundtrack, did the dance when pissed in clubs, that sort of thing. But as time went by.....I went off it. I found Kill Bill amusing in some of its stuff, but some of it....not so much, again as time went by. I like Jacki Brown in the cinema, but haven’t really rewatched it and so haven’t gone off it yet. Though I remember some stuff with DeNiro that seems ickier in retrospect.
Pulp Fiction seemed better at the time basically.

 

[jaime]

The balls look even sillier. If there's one thing you expect in that era of sci-fi, it's spheres and saucers and rockets. And give me a break with tech manuals. Those are fun but ultimately pointless.

But there are no rockets in TOS. Which is...pretty great actually. It would date it.

 

[jaime]

Are you saying a baby can run the whole ship?

See Rascals.
And the TNG tech manual.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Guys, remember that weird fin on the USS Defiant's secondary hull? Some people thought it was the fin from the nacelle behind but it was too big compared to the other one. But I think I figured it out.

It's the connector for the TMP-style pylon we see on the Disco-Enterprise. They deleted the pylon and put a new bent TOS version but didn't delete the connector. I guess they hasily modified their Discoprise not to give away the design for their final episode.

 

[lawman]

The 1960 style went out in 1979 for trek. Nothing on that dish is from 1979, its space age/atomic age styling. And was tossed by trek over 40 years ago. It simply does not work with the style of DSC or really anything post TMP or Post ENT. They had tons of other options that could have worked, but went with one that just looks wrong. It simply does not match the design or the ship linage we have seen on DSC...

Now you're the one who's ignoring what I've been saying. There's no reason TOS styling should dovetail with TMP (which came years later). There's no reason TOS styling should dovetail with ENT (which came over a century earlier... although it should have looked more primitive than it did). As for DSC, insofar as it presents a "design lineage" that seems out of sync with TOS, then that's a problem with DSC, not with the original show. We know what the 2250s and 2260s looked like in the Trek universe. If DSC's producers chose that setting, yet chose to put on screen a look that doesn't match that setting, then the fault is theirs.

(FWIW you also ignored my question about the uniforms in DSC. That wasn't rhetorical, I'm genuinely curious what you think of them... because IMHO they're more flagrantly anachronistic than anything from TOS.)

Bottom line, for all the back-and-forth here, it comes down to this. You just don't like the visual aesthetic of the original Star Trek, and you're trying to rationalize that. For my part, I just don't like (most of) the visual aesthetic of DSC, and I'm trying to rationalize that. (Both of us should know better, because de gustibus non est disputandum, but we're doing it anyway.)

In this conflict, you have on your side current Hollywood design trends. I have on my side the entire history of Star Trek. I think that makes me the winner, pretty clearly. I'm sure you'll find some way to argue otherwise, however.

 

[Belz...]

Its really not opinion man, its a set art style.

That doesn't mean that it looks dated when most people look at it. And what about the nacelles is art deco anyway? If there is, then it was dated in '79 anyway, so what makes it more dated now?

Its just how it is, the current modern art styles do not use things like that. So things that do, hearken back to an era when they were in use. Like Car Fins.

Well, I guess when fins come back on cars they'll look dated, eh?

And sometimes, dated is good.

You are hitting the issue but do not want to accept it.

What's with the condescension?

Guys, remember that weird fin on the USS Defiant's secondary hull? Some people thought it was the fin from the nacelle behind but it was too big compared to the other one. But I think I figured it out.

It's the connector for the TMP-style pylon we see on the Disco-Enterprise.

No, it's the fin. It's actually pretty obvious. The wireframe is miles away from the 1701, so they didn't have to delete anything; they built it from scratch.

 

[Belz...]

Now you're the one who's ignoring what I've been saying. There's no reason TOS styling should dovetail with TMP (which came years later). There's no reason TOS styling should dovetail with ENT (which came over a century earlier... although it should have looked more primitive than it did). As for DSC, insofar as it presents a "design lineage" that seems out of sync with TOS, then that's a problem with DSC, not with the original show. We know what the 2250s and 2260s looked like in the Trek universe. If DSC's producers chose that setting, yet chose to put on screen a look that doesn't match that setting, then the fault is theirs.

I don't get that attitude. You'd think Star Trek fans would be familiar with the concept of retcon.

 

[Tuskin38]

No, that dis no longer fit for a redesign when the NX was made. The other ships all fit. This dish is the odd ball.

The NX was designed as a predecessor to the Connie which is why they share elements

 

[Tuskin38]

the NX's dish is a newer style

No it isn’t. Why do you keep saying that? The NX’s deflector is exactly the same as the Connie’s except in shape

The Connie’s deflector would work better then the NX’s because it has a larger surface area.

 

[Longinus]

NX-01's dish looks bloody stupid. It is just deformed Connie dish. I always hated it. They fixed that on Columbia, its dish actually look like it is designed to go into that ship.

 

[Prax]

So I'm just going to comment on posts from pages and pages ago, as I can't keep up.

The Discovery is pretty retro and art-deco itself, at least on the outside. Tim Burton would be proud.