USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

[Belz...]

What?

The Enterprise often looked a bit greenish on the show. That's why the TNG Enterprise model is painted light green. They wanted to get the same look, but it turned out gray on screen.

See here for an example: https://scifanatic-wpengine.netdna-ssl.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/02/tos-pilot-nacelle-caps.jpg

Change the nacelle design and I'd agree with you.

Why? Warp nacelles have always had various shapes. Rectangular or round or whatever. So long as they share design elements, components and plating, that looks fine to me. And again this is where the TOS Enterprise sticks out.

The USS Kelvin and the USS Shenzhou have literally nothing in common with each other

Now you're just being contrarian. They have plenty in common, down to the plating and general designs.

Indeed. What some posters here (and the designers for the show) don't quite seem to grasp is how much more that asks of fans.

I think you're confusing "fans" with "purist fans". I'm a colossal Star Trek fan and I'm fine with the new ships. Because although I do care about continuity, I'm not a purist.

That's an impossible test to execute, obviously.

Impossible? You put pictures together on a JPG and show it to people, and ask them the question. How is that impossible?

Well, this is certainly about what I like...

I'm not interested in what you like and I suspect you are not interested in what I like. That's why I'm discussing something else; namely what constitutes design continuity in Star Trek. Subjective, yes, but it's not just down to personal likes and dislikes, where you can't actually make arguments.

Bottom line, you're saying that one way or another, audiences are being asked to mentally edit something they've seen.

What are you talking about? No one's asked to edit anything. It's not as if your TOS DVDs are going to be altered or that you have to imagine it to be different when you're watching the show. Everything stays the same, but Trek from now on assumes that the ship looked this way from the get-go. Hell, the Klingons have changed in 1979, 1984, 1987, 1991, 2013 and 2017. That's a lot of retcon, and you can pick your favourite, but you don't have to imagine that Kor looks in TOS like he looks in DS9.

 

[Tuskin38]

Now you're just being contrarian. They have plenty in common, down to the plating and general designs.

Have you looked at the Kelvin lately? I'm staring at it right now and they have little in common other then the weapon ports.

 

[Ronald Held]

How do you insert imsges into posts?

 

[Belz...]

Have you looked at the Kelvin lately? I'm staring at it right now and they have little in common other then the weapon ports.

Lately? My dear sir I look at these ships all the time.

I guess we're just going to have to agree to disagree, or find some sort of standard by which to communicate what we find is "similar" or "dissimilar".

 

[cooleddie74]

The Kelvin is the most TOS ship in the entire Kelvin timeline. That's one of the main reasons I like her.

 

[Belz...]

One way or another, even if you think the designs have no continuity, the TOS design still sticks out, and can't be used as-is, because it lacks detailing that would give it scale. At a minimum they'd have to add plating, a few more details on the hull, and perhaps the nacelle/impulse glow. Otherwise it just looks like a very nice plastic model.

 

[lawman]

The Enterprise often looked a bit greenish on the show...

I don't necessarily agree that it looked that way on-screen, but it's true about the actual paint used, at least. Here are a couple of sites nailing down color matches for modeling the Enterprise, including the restoration of the Smithsonian model:

https://culttvman.com/main/what-color-is-the-classic-enterprise-by-paul-m-newitt/
http://scifimodelaction.com/sfmaforum/index.php?topic=6508.0

To quote Richard Datin, who designed the original 11-footer, "It was a flat finish–a light grey color with a light tint of green."

Modeler Paul Newitt adds important commentary, though: "Grey (or Gray) is a very elusive color. It’s probably the most difficult color to match in a situation like this, because it ABSORBS anything near it, giving it a bias to that influential color next to it, such as bluescreen, or studio lights with colored gels, etc. ... If the surface was a silver–whether metallic or not–it would REFLECT those same colors, and not appear as we know it."

Why? Warp nacelles have always had various shapes. Rectangular or round or whatever. So long as they share design elements, components and plating, that looks fine to me. And again this is where the TOS Enterprise sticks out.
...
Now you're just being contrarian. They have plenty in common, down to the plating and general designs.

What is this recurring preoccupation with hull plating?

(Adding layers of it seems to be one of John Eaves's favorite things. Just one of my pet peeves about his design sensibilities.)

Impossible? You put pictures together on a JPG and show it to people, and ask them the question. How is that impossible?

What you wrote was "Take every Starfleet ship ever put to screen and show them to someone who doesn't know Star Trek." That's an awful lot of JPGs, and it's awfully difficult (at least in the US) to find someone who's never seen any of them. And it would take a reasonably large N of such people to draw any generalizable conclusions about this. Unless you've actually done it, your conclusion is sheer speculation.

What are you talking about? No one's asked to edit anything. ... Everything stays the same, but Trek from now on assumes that the ship looked this way from the get-go. Hell, the Klingons have changed in 1979, 1984, 1987, 1991, 2013 and 2017. That's a lot of retcon, and you can pick your favourite, but you don't have to imagine that Kor looks in TOS like he looks in DS9.

I specifically said "mentally edit," and that's what a retcon asks audiences to do. That's what the second clause of the highlighted sentence is all about, and that's why the sentence pretty much contradicts itself.

(As for the Klingons, as has been discussed ad nauseam the last few months, the only really serious redesign before DSC was the one in 1979... all the film and TNG Klingons are plausibly related to that. And thankfully it was eventually explained in-story, so we don't have to imagine that Kor in TOS looked like he did in DS9.)

One way or another, even if you think the designs have no continuity, the TOS design still sticks out, and can't be used as-is, because it lacks detailing that would give it scale. At a minimum they'd have to add plating, a few more details on the hull, and perhaps the nacelle/impulse glow. Otherwise it just looks like a very nice plastic model.

FWIW, it was never plastic. Anyhow I think it has more than enough detailing to give it scale, but a slightly greater level of detailing just to be visible at today's screen resolutions would be perfectly understandable... that's not the same as a design overhaul. Indeed that's exactly what they did when they recreated it (physically) for DS9 and (digitally) for ENT, and I'd have no quarrel with that. (Aside from the "plating" part... not sure what you have in mind there.)

 

[Belz...]

To quote Richard Datin, who designed the original 11-footer, "It was a flat finish–a light grey color with a light tint of green."

I'm not saying the ship was actually green. It just looked a lot greener in some shots, which doesn't help sell the illusion of a real spaceship.

What is this recurring preoccupation with hull plating?

I thought I had made it clear: because it helps give scale to the ship, and sell the idea that this is a real vessel built from parts and components. Like if you look at the hull of a ship you see the plating.

(Adding layers of it seems to be one of John Eaves's favorite things. Just one of my pet peeves about his design sensibilities.)

There's no question that adding too much detail hurts the flow of a Federation design. You don't want it to look like a Star Wars ship. The TMP Enterprise had quite a lot of details but they didn't stick out of the hull too much, which is key imo.

What you wrote was "Take every Starfleet ship ever put to screen and show them to someone who doesn't know Star Trek." That's an awful lot of JPGs

No need to take things so literally. So take 20 ships instead. Get non-fans to chime in. They don't literally have to never have heard of Trek. I'm sure you get my point.

I specifically said "mentally edit," and that's what a retcon asks audiences to do.

No, it doesn't. It explicitly shows you the change. You don't need to mentally edit anything.

(As for the Klingons, as has been discussed ad nauseam the last few months, the only really serious redesign before DSC was the one in 1979... all the film and TNG Klingons are plausibly related to that. And thankfully it was eventually explained in-story, so we don't have to imagine that Kor in TOS looked like he did in DS9.)

And that was one of the most pathetic fanwank-to-canon moments in the history of fiction. A single line from DS9 sent fanboys into a tizzy and the folks who made Enterprise for some reason felt obliged to explain it in detail rather than blow it off as an obvious joke. There was no need for an explanation: they retconned the Klingon look.

FWIW, it was never plastic.

I know, I know. The point is that it doesn't look as real and large as other UFP ships.

Anyhow I think it has more than enough detailing to give it scale, but a slightly greater level of detailing just to be visible at today's screen resolutions would be perfectly understandable... that's not the same as a design overhaul. Indeed that's exactly what they did when they recreated it (physically) for DS9 and (digitally) for ENT, and I'd have no quarrel with that. (Aside from the "plating" part... not sure what you have in mind there.)

Actually, it still looks like a model on DS9 because they stuck too close to the original, for obvious reasons. For me, the ideal would've been working backwards from the TMP model to achieve a TOS look, but with better scaling and details, so that you can imagine one being refit into the other.

 

[lawman]

I'm not saying the ship was actually green. It just looked a lot greener in some shots, which doesn't help sell the illusion of a real spaceship.

I'm not sure what difference that makes. Are you saying some colors are more likely than others on real-world starships?

I thought I had made it clear: because [plating] helps give scale to the ship, and sell the idea that this is a real vessel built from parts and components. Like if you look at the hull of a ship you see the plating.

Interestingly enough, I was thinking of the same sort of example to make exactly the opposite point. If you look at real-world Navy ships or Air Force jets today, you can't necessarily see the hull plating, at least not unless you look really really close. (It's certainly nowhere near as blatant as on the Shenzou or Discovery, for instance.) I'm not going to post examples in-thread, but you can easily see a bunch of them here and here.

(And that's not even taking into account improvements in fabrication technology over the next 300 years... which is the reason why Doug Drexler has said he always found the TOS ship's smooth surface to look more advanced.)

There's no question that adding too much detail hurts the flow of a Federation design. You don't want it to look like a Star Wars ship. The TMP Enterprise had quite a lot of details but they didn't stick out of the hull too much, which is key imo.

On this we agree, at least.

And that was one of the most pathetic fanwank-to-canon moments in the history of fiction. A single line from DS9 sent fanboys into a tizzy and the folks who made Enterprise for some reason felt obliged to explain it in detail rather than blow it off as an obvious joke. There was no need for an explanation: they retconned the Klingon look.

On this we definitely don't agree. Again it's been discussed to death lately, but to recap: the line in DS9's "Trials" episode didn't send anyone "into a tizzy," it just humorously lampshaded a long-standing question in fandom that the episode in question couldn't sidestep, but also couldn't answer in that story. A few years later, a different story was able to answer it. So, yay! Something long-unexplained now had an explanation. How is that a problem for anyone?

I know, I know. The point is that it doesn't look as real and large as other UFP ships.

How so? In terms of detailing and scaling, I'd say the TOS Enterprise actually gave a lot more attention to getting it right than a lot of later Trek ship designs. It has a bridge module that matches the size of the bridge to the scale of the ship. It has window placements that match the number of decks. It has a shuttlebay door that's to scale inside and out. It has running lights, and a deflector grid, and textured nacelle pylons, and hatch outlines, and concentric rings and bevels surrounding the deflector dish, and painted UFP pennants, and tiny text labels, and radial lines on the saucer, and the impulse engine shape at the rear of the saucer, and a really snazzy lighting effect in the nacelle caps, and intercoolers and other details along the nacelles, and on and on. It has a lot more details than can be seen on a 20th-century TV. Matt Jefferies was no slouch. Exactly how much more detailing do you need?

 

[Mudd]

Wait until they show the bridge and the inside of the Enterprise when Season 2 starts. You think the blood in these threads is bad now? We'll be flipping the tables, taking dumps on the rug and running around like a drunken Yankees fan on game day.

Only if the design work is as bad as the rest of STD.

So probably, yeah.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Well it was a collaboration between Eaves, another designer and the modeller. Eaves could have been the one to did the angled pylons.

Considering those angled pylons with the weird cut-out in the middle are also seen on one of John Eaves' NX-01 concepts, it would be an AMAZING coincidence if it wasn't his idea.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

But srsly, if you look at all the other designs of that era - the shuttles, space station K7, all the models from the TOS Remasters (although those are iffy) - it's a cohesive design language...

Which, to be sure, is something you almost never see in real world military aviation or naval architecture. There are trends in form and function that are similar as different designers come up with similar solutions, but those trends only ever last a decade or so before they're superseded by new ones and new innovations.

Really, to say there is a clear "design language" for early 23rd century starships is like saying there's a "design language" for early 20th century aircraft. But half a century is actually a really LONG time to expect design conventions to remain totally unchanged; in fact, the same span of time between "Enterprise" and "Discovery" is similar to the span of time between the Sopwith Camel and the F-22 Raptor.

John Eaves is ON RECORD as saying that he had exactly this in mind when he designed half the ships in Discovery. They don't have the same design language because they're from different design ERAS, spanning the (admittedly huge) gap between NX-01 and NCC-1701. In that sense, it's kind of amazing that Star Trek technology has changed as little as it has since the first time Jonathan Archer decided to launch a casket-shaped photonic torpedo.

 

[TrickyDickie]

I have read all of the posts here with interest, considered all of the points, and have done some relevant research.

I have come to the conclusion that there is a lot within the design of pretty much anything that you can name that doesn't necessarily follow 'continuity'. Because it's not necessary. Whether it's furniture or cars or starships or whatever, the idea that something from one era has to 'evolve' into another so that there is 'smooth transition' is subjective, not vital.

In terms of of appearance, the stealth aircraft represent a distinct and abrupt departure from the looks of all other aircraft that preceded them. There was no design progression over time. That's why their appearance seemed so radical by comparison.

Designers often incorporate styling elements from the past to pay homage or to appeal to nostalgia or for other reasons. In other cases they come up with something that has no resemblance to what has come before. That might set a precedent or it might be largely ignored by what comes later. But, it's really all good. Because too much emphasis on continuity can box up the imagination and impose artificial limitations.

Different people like different designs. No one is wrong.

Another thing worth keeping in mind is that starship design is not limited by terrestrial aerodynamics. A Borg cube works just as well as the sleekest ship that anyone can imagine.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The USS Kelvin and the USS Shenzhou have literally nothing in common with each other, except both having bridge windows. But both are clearly part of two diverging continuities.

And this is a good example: they're clearly two parts of diverging DESIGN SCHOOLS, in the same sense that the B-52 and the B-2 come from different design schools and are built for different missions (and the latter is also considerably older than the former).

I haven't had a good look at Shenzhou's dedication plaque, but I half expect some of the differences in starship designs in Discovery could actually be categorized and traced to design choices by individual design firms and/or shipyards. Utopia Planitia definitely has a singular style when it comes to starship design, as does San Francisco Fleet Yards. Suppose Shenzhou and some of its contemporaries were actually developed by, say, Chekov Heavy Industries at Baikonur Cosmodrome? (Corporate slogan: "Chekov Industries - Meant to be used!")

 

[Belz...]

I'm not sure what difference that makes. Are you saying some colors are more likely than others on real-world starships?

Huh? I'm saying that the TOS ship often looked green on screen. No other Trek ship looked green, and ... I don't know, I find it odd to paint starships green in-universe.

Interestingly enough, I was thinking of the same sort of example to make exactly the opposite point. If you look at real-world Navy ships or Air Force jets today, you can't necessarily see the hull plating, at least not unless you look really really close. (It's certainly nowhere near as blatant as on the Shenzou or Discovery, for instance.)

You're entirely correct. However there's a bit of an exaggeration to be made if you want to see it on-screen. It's cheating, essentially, as what appears to be realistic to the brain might not be, actually, realistic.

On this we agree, at least.

Yay!

On this we definitely don't agree.

Boo!

Again it's been discussed to death lately, but to recap: the line in DS9's "Trials" episode didn't send anyone "into a tizzy," it just humorously lampshaded a long-standing question in fandom that the episode in question couldn't sidestep, but also couldn't answer in that story.

Well, I remember the tizzy. When the episode came out, the early internet started to talk about it as if there was some big mystery, even though no one cared about the change until then.

A few years later, a different story was able to answer it. So, yay! Something long-unexplained now had an explanation. How is that a problem for anyone?

Because it's a solution to a non-existent problem. They found a half-decent answer, but it was unnecessary.

How so? In terms of detailing and scaling, I'd say the TOS Enterprise actually gave a lot more attention to getting it right than a lot of later Trek ship designs. It has a bridge module that matches the size of the bridge to the scale of the ship.

I meant the illusion of size, not the consistency of its actual size. On that you might be correct. The Excelsior is an example of a ship that should be much larger than its official size, as is the Oberth.

 

[fireproof78]

I think ships with a TOS Style would look great. Here's some examples I posted not too long ago.
This TOS Miranda class looks really neat. very majestic.

Not sure the class of this fan ship, but I'm a fan of this USS Polaris.

Those are kind of interesting.

Of all the visual redesigns of the classic Constitution class - this one is actually my favourite! Partially probably because it doesn't do the super obvious changes (shoertened and thickened neck, TMP-style pylons, ...) that everyone else doess on his tumbler-fan-arts. It's unique, and IMO quite beautiful.

On this point, we agree.

What you wrote was "Take every Starfleet ship ever put to screen and show them to someone who doesn't know Star Trek." That's an awful lot of JPGs, and it's awfully difficult (at least in the US) to find someone who's never seen any of them. And it would take a reasonably large N of such people to draw any generalizable conclusions about this. Unless you've actually done it, your conclusion is sheer speculation.

I'll have to work with my wife. She generally hates science fiction for the most part, so this could be a fun experiment.

On this we definitely don't agree. Again it's been discussed to death lately, but to recap: the line in DS9's "Trials" episode didn't send anyone "into a tizzy," it just humorously lampshaded a long-standing question in fandom that the episode in question couldn't sidestep, but also couldn't answer in that story. A few years later, a different story was able to answer it. So, yay! Something long-unexplained now had an explanation. How is that a problem for anyone?

Because it felt unnecessary, tacked on and poorly executed is why. It didn't expand upon the lore, and felt out of place, like the TMP Klingons did from TOS Klingons.

Yes, it is a problem for people. FASA RPG handled it better.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Yes, it is a problem for people. FASA RPG handled it better.

How did FASA RPG handle it? I must have missed a post.

 

[Belz...]

I second that question. I had the old FASA RPG but not that.

 

[fireproof78]

How did FASA RPG handle it? I must have missed a post.

I second that question. I had the old FASA RPG but not that.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

This is my new headcanon.