USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

[TrickyDickie]

When I first saw NX-01, I thought WTF....because in the TNG Technical Manual a page near the end had illustrations of concepts of what future Enterprises after the D might be expected to look like. And NX-01 looked mighty similar to one of them.

Over time, I have thought about how designers often bring back something from the past and make it 'new' again. Sometimes more purely due to nostalgia, but other times for other reasons.

Form does not always follow function. Sometimes the reverse can be true. You could have two warp nacelles that, from the outside, look identical, but the inside engineering could be completely different.

I relate that to this: Someone says that phasers are not real. They are just a static, dead prop with no actual function. Someone else promptly picks up one which that clever guy outfitted with a working 8-watt laser and burns a hole in the backside of the first one's britches.

The very reason that the 2005 re-design of the Ford Mustang was so successful was that, stylistically, it incorporated many of the design cues from the 1964 1/2 original. But the mechanical aspects were very much up-to-date. Form was retro, but function was modern.

I have no problem with a window and a viewscreen being blended. We know that they have transparent aluminum, but who knows what else they have? The idea of windows in the future being just as strong or stronger than the structures surrounding them is not a big stretch of the imagination.

 

[cooleddie74]

He's an enginner, he can design a lifesupport tank that has a whiskey reserve built in.

*scratches chin*

No one steal that idea!

It better have a beer bong attached or no sale.

 

[TrickyDickie]

In my opinion, this video demonstrates that the Enterprise-E only looks good from certain angles, mostly from aft:

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It looks awful from this angle, for example:

No neck at all is not the way to go.

The Excelsior and Enterprise-B have a neck that reminds me of this:

Not my cup of tea.

I think this comparison has finally sold me on the idea that the TOS neck was really too long.

I think halfway between the TOS neck and no neck is good. The larger and more flattened saucer of the Discoprise is not an improvement, though, in my opinion.

 

[Belz...]

When I first saw NX-01, I thought WTF....because in the TNG Technical Manual a page near the end had illustrations of concepts of what future Enterprises after the D might be expected to look like. And NX-01 looked mighty similar to one of them.

I have that book. To which of those four designs were you refering to?

In my opinion, this video demonstrates that the Enterprise-E only looks good from certain angles, mostly from aft:

It looks awful from this angle, for example:

I think it looks fine from that angle, but no neck hurts this design a bit, though not as much as the excessive levels and spokes on the bottom of the saucer.[/QUOTE]

 

[TrickyDickie]

That angle always makes me think of this:

 

[TrickyDickie]

I have that book. To which of those four designs were you refering to?

I just looked it up and it was this one. I think at the time what created a skewed impression was seeing it only from the single, overhead angle. (And that it was memory, because between the time that I let that book go and 'Enterprise' premiered was a significant amount of time.) Today, I don't feel that they are all that similar.

 

[Mudd]

I think halfway between the TOS neck and no neck is good. The larger and more flattened saucer of the Discoprise is not an improvement, though, in my opinion.

Nothing about that kludge is an improvement, which is really sad. The TMP ship, the Enterprise D, and the original JJPrise all brought new takes and new elements of note to the Enterprise. The STD is yet another completely derivative Eaves special.

 

[Belz...]

I just looked it up and it was this one. I think at the time what created a skewed impression was seeing it only from the single, overhead angle. (And that it was memory, because between the time that I let that book go and 'Enterprise' premiered was a significant amount of time.) Today, I don't feel that they are all that similar.

I'd say not similar at all. Someone's made a CGI model based on that design here:

http://stexpanded.wikia.com/wiki/Insignia_class

Nothing about that kludge is an improvement, which is really sad. The TMP ship, the Enterprise D, and the original JJPrise all brought new takes and new elements of note to the Enterprise. The STD is yet another completely derivative Eaves special.

To be fair, Trek hasn't been particularily imaginative in ages. At least the Discovery design makes the TOS ship fit with the other Trek designs since that series.

 

[Tuskin38]

Eaves doesn't know how to be subtle, and most of his ships look like some has stepped on them.

That explains the Pancakeprise and the fritter formerly known as the Europa.

According to Eaves, the direction to flatten the ship designs came from Fuller, so it was just a coincidence that Eaves designed more flat ships for DSC it seems.

Nothing about that kludge is an improvement, which is really sad. The TMP ship, the Enterprise D, and the original JJPrise all brought new takes and new elements of note to the Enterprise. The STD is yet another completely derivative Eaves special.

The DSC Enterprise looks 5 times better then the Kelvin Timeline Enterprise, and a lot closer to the TOS design then it was.

 

[lawman]

But, phaser to my head, if I had to explain what I like about the E it’s mainly the sleek profile that incorporates the necklessness of the intrepid class...

You put your finger on something important here: necklessness. Eaves quite clearly doesn't like to give his starships necks. I like a neck. It gives a ship stature. Without one, IMHO a ship just looks like a couple of amorphous blobs smushed together. I like a saucer section that looks like a saucer, distinct from whatever it's attached to.

In relation to the DSC Enterprise redesign. I don’t like the fins on the underside of the nacelles, the recessed bit where the registry is with the floodlights (although in a universe where every ship has a freaking window at the front of it, headlights to blind the enemy make all the sense), the 100 year old nacelle design that harks back to the nx class for no reason other than the fact that ENT was a thing, and the larger impulse engine assembly are all things that I find unnecessary in the design.

I think Jefferies’ head was in the right place when he designed a smooth, clean starship unemcumbered by greeblies and gave Star Trek a visual identity for its ships - federation and alien (the prime D7 and romulan BoP were also smooth as an android’s bottom), and so were the TMP refit and Enterprise D for that matter...

Good points all. I agree 100%.

the changes Eaves has made (or been made to make) do nothing for the design other than to make it align with the rest of the DSC aesthetic (which looks like it belongs in the 24th century anyway)...

I think you're doing an injustice to the rest of 24th-century design. I don't think it really fits in any Trek era.

Given how much he's contributed to Trek aesthetics in the last TWENTY years I'd say he grasps it pretty well.

That undergirds my whole point, actually: there hasn't been a good Trek ship design in twenty years. Eaves took things in a visibly different direction from what Trek ship aesthetics had looked like prior to that time, and it was a bad direction.

I have no problem with a window and a viewscreen being blended. We know that they have transparent aluminum, but who knows what else they have? The idea of windows in the future being just as strong or stronger than the structures surrounding them is not a big stretch of the imagination.

But what's the point of it? It provides zero added value. It doesn't let the crew of the ship see anything they couldn't see better on a viewscreen.

 

[Tuskin38]

But what's the point of it? It provides zero added value. It doesn't let the crew of the ship see anything they couldn't see better on a viewscreen.

Unless the sensors get knocked out.

If the Reliant or the Enterprise had a window in the Mutara Nebula they could have been able to see through the static, at least in front of them.

 

[XCV330]

The STD is yet another completely derivative Eaves special.

It looks nothing like Eaves prior work to me.

 

[Tuskin38]

It looks nothing like Eaves prior work to me.

Well it does have a few similarities to his NX-01 Concept art

 

[cooleddie74]

Nothing about that kludge is an improvement, which is really sad. The TMP ship, the Enterprise D, and the original JJPrise all brought new takes and new elements of note to the Enterprise. The STD is yet another completely derivative Eaves special.

I'm less of a fan now than when I first saw her. In their drive to make almost everything "kewler" and "sexier" for the short attention span viewers in 2018 they've largely forgotten how to design good-looking starships or at best pretend they still can by throwing some bones to the audience in the form of a couple of cylindrical warp nacelles and a round TOS-style deflector dish.

She's still the prettiest ship on DSC by a mile, but sadly that doesn't say nearly as much as it should.

 

[CaptainMurdock]

I don't care for the excessive diagonal lines along the back of the secondary hull and nacelles.

 

[XCV330]

Well it does have a few similarities to his NX-01 Concept art

my mistake. for some reason I thought that was a Drexler design

 

[TrickyDickie]

I'd say not similar at all. Someone's made a CGI model based on that design here:

http://stexpanded.wikia.com/wiki/Insignia_class

Agreed.

I looked up some additional renderings and it is very distinct....

 

[fireproof78]

But what's the point of it? It provides zero added value. It doesn't let the crew of the ship see anything they couldn't see better on a viewscreen.

If there is zero added value why not add it?

 

[F. King Daniel]

I'd say not similar at all. Someone's made a CGI model based on that design here:

http://stexpanded.wikia.com/wiki/Insignia_class

And tying into what was said earlier, IDW used that as Captain LaForge's future Enterprise in Waypoint #1.

 

[Groppler Zorn]

Eaves quite clearly doesn't like to give his starships necks.

I’m trying to think of the last ship to have a neck proper - there wasn’t anything in the VOY era to have one. The Prometheus was neckless, as was the equinox. I think the last ship to have an actual neck was the Pasteur - otherwise we’re talking about the Enterprise C. Were they both Sternbach designs?

I don't think it really fits in any Trek era.

Unless it’s a reboot proper then it’s whatever it wants to be (can open, worms everywhere...!)

Unless the sensors get knocked out.

If the Reliant or the Enterprise had a window in the Mutara Nebula they could have been able to see through the static, at least in front of them.

Ok, so... in that case why didn’t admiral Kirk, the great tactician, send one of his crew to one of the many windows on the bow of the Enterprise to look for the reliant?

Probably because the distances between the two ships in space would have made them tiny to the human eye and the reliant would have shot them to bits by the time someone had actually physically laid eyes on the ship.

Also it’s a well known fact that the gases in the mutara nebula cloud up transparent aluminium windows. So the ship’s sensors relaying data to a monitor is clearly the way forward - and probably why a smart person in the 60s designed the Enterprise to have a screen not a porthole. Maybe they were a time traveler themselves who knew how much we’d rely on screens in this decade?