Constitution Class appears on a computer screen in Space Seed.
No, it really doesn't:
In terms of a slide that actually says "Constitution Class" you may be thinking of this slide:
But that wasn't seen until The Trouble With Tribbles and even then it's far from legible on screen:
The confusion no doubt arises because that graphic was actually created for "Space Seed" (it was that episode's script which first specified the "
Constitution class" designation) even though it didn't actually show up onscreen until "Tribbles"! (But of course, "Starship class" still came first, being on the bridge dedication plaque and used in the script for "Mudd's Women"!)
Similarly, the scale comparison of the 947-foot "space cruiser"
Enterprise alongside the Klingon/Romulan battle cruiser were first published in
The Making Of Star Trek, before they were seen onscreen (and on a screen, no less) in "The
Enterprise Incident" (TOS). Of course,
also similarly, they would never, repeat NEVER, have been
legible on anyone's TV set in 1968, even if they might be ever so slightly moreso remastered in HD:
This isn't a fix, it's a re-imagining.
Why can't it be both? I think they've quite shrewdly left it entirely open-ended at this point, and a bit of a Rorschach test of sorts. As ever, they're going to do what they want with things no matter what; yet, they know that
Trek has a rich history of one writer's re-imagining giving way to another's fix, and vice versa, one sometimes even
becoming the other, and so on. And they know that if prominent historical precedent is anything to go by, you may get 26 years or more of free-range feeding before any bill comes due, if it
ever does!
I'm sure you know as well as I do that whether we're talking about interiors vs. exteriors or relative sizes of one ship to another, starship scales have always, repeat ALWAYS, been subject to arbitrary "cheating" based on what looks aesthetically and dramatically satisfying to the show/filmmakers when it comes to any given shot of any given miniature, or the practicalities of building a given set in such a way as to accommodate a given camera setup, or what have you.
It isn't only the TOS
Enterprise sets that wouldn't fit at the scale "originally" intended by one or more of the artists involved at one or more points during production—one which, despite eventually being technically-but-illegibly shown onscreen as noted above, in reality wasn't settled on (to whatever extent it was) until after the second pilot at the earliest, when the details of the filming model and the crew complement were finalized, and probably not even until during the second season, at the outset of which the writer's guide still boasted that the rear hangar deck could house "a whole fleet of today's jet liners" and during which
The Making Of Star Trek was compiled. The
Galileo shuttle's interior also would not fit within its exterior, to say nothing of how little room there would be for that exterior within the hangar deck of a 947-foot
Enterprise! And the list goes on.
Bernd Schneider eats this stuff for breakfast, or used to anyway:
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/defiant-problems.htm
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/excelsior-size.htm
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/oberth-size.htm
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/akira-size.htm
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/delta-size.htm
http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/bop-size.htm
If one is the sort of person who needs to see it all as "real" down to
that level of concrete detail, rather than a loose artistic depiction of a written screen/teleplay, then in that pursuit, paradoxes will inevitably arise, and compromises will have to be made, because that's a bar rarely (if ever) entirely cleared by any past
Trek production. They
all fudged various things, multiple times, to one extent or another. Not a novel phenomenon by any stretch. To be expected as a matter of course, really.
If TMP could give the
Enterprise and the Klingons a total makeover, with each of its sequels in turn doing more or less the same with various elements, and the series that followed could be as selective as they were in following up on those and take their sweet time about doing it, and then the TNG movies could be as liberal as they were with details of their parent show, and then ST'09 could totally re-imagine everything again, with only the thinnest of narrative conceits (because that's already more than sufficient!), and then they could go back and redo all the visual effects in TOS itself, swapping out entire ship designs even, and all without shattering their glass houses...then who among us can really feel justified in casting stones at DSC's efforts? Bernd Schnieder and
@King Daniel Beyond, for once in agreement, apparently. (No offense intended and best regards to each of you, BTW...I hope it's obvious that this is all meant rhetorically. I don't really mean to single you two out, as neither of you stands alone, even beyond each other.)
Prime in terms of the narrative continuity, perhaps. But none of the showrunners are stating that the Enterprise, ships, tech, alien makeup and other assorted visuals are going to somehow morph into the forms seen in TOS - because that would be clearly ludicrous, not to mention impossible.
The way I see it, if the
Enterprise can, in-universe, readily go from looking as she does in TOS to looking like she does in TMP within a period of only
eighteen months, then of course within a period of
thirteen years she can just as readily go from looking as she does in "The Menagerie" (supposedly, if we can indeed trust the illusion, as we are ostensibly told) to looking as she does in DSC to looking as she does in the series proper again! There's even room to throw a couple more variations in there if desired!
Of course I don't mean that I think she literally grows and shrinks dramatically in size between refits...I just think scale is a relatively minor and mutable detail of both the narrative
and the visual fiction, and always has been, even where those two were not in disagreement, which is to say rarely. As noted, if VFX are to be taken literally and not allowed this kind of artistic license, then those keeping track will note that a whole host of ships are constantly expanding and contracting in fits and starts throughout the franchise!
And don't try to tell me they haven't given any in-universe consideration to any of this...it's plain to me that they did. Their tease at what a Connie could or might look like on this show was the wireframe of the
Defiant in "Despite Yourself"—in close proximity to which was placed a conspicuous mention of another ship
undergoing a refit! That line was there to remind the audience that
this is a thing that happens in
Star Trek, both in- and out-of-universe. It's a deliberate nod and wink.
Furthermore, they had a specific rationale in mind for why the
Defiant herself would look different from the last time we'd seen her in "In A Mirror Darkly" (ENT) and from the Enterprise—one that should have been perfectly obvious even if Ted Sullivan hadn't
publicly confirmed it, given that story from its beginning had the ship being "stripped to the bulkheads" by the Tholians, only to then have it be seized by Terrans explicitly espousing plans to "tear it apart" in order to "reverse-engineer its systems," "learn its secrets," and "figure out how to put it all back together" again! Also, there was mention by John Eaves that in updating the
Enterprise for DSC he thought about how certain components like the nacelle struts could be modified or swapped out over time to more closely resemble the TOS version, so whether any of his
specific individual ideas about that carried through to the final product or not, we can see that such notions are indeed at least circulating behind the scenes, so it would be foolish to summarily dismiss them altogether, whether one personally
requires them in order to enjoy the show or not.
I'm honestly a tad bewildered by the division here, because my own view is that DSC presents and inhabits an ideal place for both camps to meet in the middle. There are things that will never work
perfectly any way one slices it, but
they don't need to, as that is only par for
any course. I do not perceive anything shown thus far on DSC to require significantly more suspension of disbelief and fudging than any number of previous "re-imaginings" and subsequent "fixes," nor as creating any significantly greater contradictions. The "magical tapestry of fiction" (to co-opt a phrase from
@Refuge in another thread
) offers a multitude of graces to cover a multitude of sins, is infinitely malleable, and quite resistant to breakage. It'd take a heck of a lot more than what they've offered up so far, that's for sure. If it's "ludicrous" and "impossible" then what we were shown in previous productions was every bit as much so.
Is TNG era design considered untouchable?
Why would it be? It never has been before. Just look at Data's emotion chip in
Generations (vs. its original size and appearance in "Brothers"), or Locutus' cybernetic components in
First Contact and the
U.S.S. Melbourne in DS9's "Emissary" (vs. "The Best Of Both Worlds"), or the
Enterprise-D's turbolift in ENT's "These Are The Voyages..." for a few examples that come immediately to mind! No doubt there have been, and will be, others.
-
MMoM
The one in Mark Of Gideon was a dedicated viewing room that Kirk takes Odona to in order to gaze at the stars. The visuals show an external hatch folding away (as well as an internal one) when Kirk opens up the shutters, suggesting that viewports are normally kept shielded (which is very sensible in deep space)
You called?
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