It's wildly different, in the sense that Eaves is a hack who hasn't designed a single attractive-looking ship in his entire career.
This was equally true of Jeffries until he worked on Star Trek.
But I meant that Eaves is an artist with a limited skill set and very strong opinions about what his project should look like, opinions which are not usually shared by his production team. Again, just like Jeffries.
First of all, just to repeat this for the Nth time, designs are not the same thing as the VFX used to realize them.
So you're splitting hairs, then. Some visuals are part of continuity and others aren't? Some sets have to be consistent all the time and others don't?
When Sinclair's ship takes a hit on its starboard wing, does it roll to the right or to the left? And how is it that two contradictory versions of that battle don't create continuity problems while Discovery officers wearing blue uniforms does?
Or could it be that the visuals don't actually matter all that much except to represent the the actions of the narrative? I for one am not going to loose much sleep over the fact that none of the characters in Discovery are ever going to emulate William Shatner's fighting style.
aside from a few post-pilot modifications, the changes JMS made to B5's designs over its run are frankly negligible.
I love how you can refute your own argument like that and not even notice!
As for Lucas, his incessant tinkering with the visuals of the original trilogy was less negligible, but I think pretty much every Star Wars fan would agree that he didn't actually improve anything.
Some of his changes undeniably were, particularly the more explicit ones. Witness, for example, the change in the design of the corridors of Cloud City.
What are you talking about? TOS-R was incredibly faithful to the original look of TOS.
What color are the phaser beams that strike the hull of the planet killer?
Better question: is the color of the phaser beams more or less important than the color of Disocvery's uniforms?
I think we read that phrase differently. The VFX in 1951's The Day the Earth Stood Still or Rod Serling's original Twilight Zone aren't "impressive" compared to contemporary productions, either (and they're black-and-white to boot — horrors!), but that hardly means either one "hasn't aged well." They're every bit as enjoyable to watch as they ever were.
Yes, they're VERY enjoyable. And yes, they haven't aged well. You can't watch either of those things without being fully mindful of the fact that they were great special effects
for their time.
One of my favorite movies is the original 1944 "The Uninvited." I would compare that movie favorably to almost any modern horror film, even that godawful almost-remake from 2009. But the few really unsubtle special effects they used for the ghost in that movie did not age well, and as a consequence aren't impressive by modern standards. It doesn't matter much because it's still a fantastic movie, well written and well acted, that sold the point of its narrative without having to rely on flashy special effects.
Nowadays, the effects are part of the overall presentation so we expect them to be impressive in their own right. We lessen that expectation for an older show that can't be judged by the same standard. TOS is one of those shows. It's not impressive because it's up to modern standards, it's impressive
for something that old.
At no point have I ever suggested that DSC shouldn't utilize current production values, nor AFAIK has anyone in this thread. That would be silly. What I've said is that those production values should be put in service of executing designs that resemble the design language of the 2250s-'60s recognizable from previous Star Trek.
And I'm saying that's exactly what they've been trying to do. It's just that the design language of the 60s was influenced as much if not more by technical limitations and lack of experience with alternate options as by any conscious choices the producers might have made. This is particularly obvious in the design of the bridge: the LAST thing they wanted were static unchanging displays in the upper viewscreens, they wanted diagrams and dynamic images and data analysis like we've seen in all of the TMP movies and again on Discovery. If they had had their way, those screens would have been broad black panels with graphics constantly moving across them and Spock would interact with most of them with hand gestures and voice commands (as we see in "The Cage" when they first get the distress signal).
It's not like they designed everything exactly the way they wanted it to be; they designed everything exactly the way they COULD design it and still make it convincing. Discovery captures the general design language to a huge degree and leaves out a lot of things that are the way they are only for lack of a better option (example: the chairs).
the actual arrangement of those workstations would work just as well as it ever did
You mean the Discovery's bridge should be tilted slightly off-center for no discernible reason?
