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Starship design history in light of Discovery

The Mighty Monkey of Mim said:
(That being said—and no detriment whatsoever with respect to your thoughtful work meant by this—I think it's fair to say that a number of people here might find of subjectively greater value what such production sources suggest than in what licensed tie-in media do, when it comes to interpreting what's onscreen. I only sought to provide that background information as further context to the discussion, for anyone who was interested. No horse in this particular race here. I certainly wasn't implying your interpretation was wrong or unreasonable.)
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Well, sure, but I'm just saying that "older ship" is not the only possible conclusion to be drawn from "Warp 2 engine." That's the most obvious possibility, but that doesn't make it the only one.

Besides, as I've said, my view that the Intrepid is newer is based entirely on canonical information -- namely, the appearance of the ship itself. Since the design actually was kitbashed from components of the NX-01 digital model, that means it looks like a design that was derived from the NX rather than the other way around. There's no speculation beyond canon there, no appeal to sources beyond canon -- it's literally just a matter of looking at the actual ship. Those stupid useless windows directly underneath and blocked by the nacelle caps make no damn sense unless the ship class was mashed up from components that originated as part of a different design and weren't originally meant to fit together in that way.
 
Christopher said:
Besides, as I've said, my view that the Intrepid is newer is based entirely on canonical information -- namely, the appearance of the ship itself. Since the design actually was kitbashed from components of the NX-01 digital model, that means it looks like a design that was derived from the NX rather than the other way around. There's no speculation beyond canon there...
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Well, now you've said something that I'm afraid I can't agree with. Personally, I think there are too many examples in canon of appearance not necessarily correlating to design chronology like that for it to be taken as a reliable indicator without speculation. Again though, not saying that makes your speculation at all unreasonable in this case. The Intrepid could readily predate or postdate the NX insofar as I, and canon, are concerned.
:beer:

-MMoM:D
 
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The Mighty Monkey of Mim said:
Personally, I think there are too many examples in canon of appearance not necessarily correlating to design chronology like that for it to be taken as a reliable indicator without speculation.
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It's not about chronology, it's about design logic and form following function. That window placement serves no function and therefore makes no sense in a design created ab initio as its own independent thing. The only way to explain it is as a side effect of parts being put together in a way they weren't originally designed to go. The awkward nacelle placement seems like another example of that, as if ship components intended to fit within a larger warp bubble were crammed tight in order to fit into a smaller one.

Granted, though, there's a case to be made that some of the details of kitbashed starship designs aren't necessarily meant to be taken literally. For instance, the upper rear saucer of the Constellation class has what are clearly a couple of nacelle-pylon pieces from a refit-Enterprise model kit stuck onto it, a design feature that makes no sense if taken literally. So maybe the "real" in-universe ship that the kitbash represents doesn't actually have that feature. And maybe the Intrepid type doesn't really have those damn windows. Heck, the digital model used in the show doesn't have a shuttlebay either, which seems unlikely. One could choose to believe that said model was just a rough approximation, since it was never onscreen long enough to give us a good look, and that they might've given it some different details if they'd had time and reason to put more care into it.
 
The Mighty Monkey of Mim said:
There is nothing strictly canonical on the age of the Intrepid design, so it's entirely open to interpretation. But FWIW, according to Memory Alpha, the final draft script of "The Expanse" (ENT) referred to it as a Warp Two vessel, which would imply it was initially intended to be older than the NX.

-MMoM:D
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SS Dierdre was a 23rd century ship that was hauling at Warp 2 100 years after the old ECS ships. United Earth didn't have much territory, and the materials and fuel consumption that went into the NX and Franklin types may have been more than they could afford, settling instead on smaller point defense gunboats at strategic areas in the solar system.
 
I would argue that the Intrepid type is older than the NX class based on the impression that the Earth Starfleet seemed relatively new, they didn’t seem to produce different classes of ships concurrently, and that both the Intrepid and the warp delta didn’t have markings (either names or registry numbers) while the newer NX class did. It took years just to build the second NX class ship. I don’t see Earth Starfleet mass producing Intrepids during that time. Ship construction seemed quite slow.

Also, saying that the Intrepid type is newer than the NX class based solely on the fact that it was a kitbash based on the NX CGI model is like saying that the BoBW kitbashes were newer than the Galaxy class based on the fact that they were kitbashed from the Enterprise-D model kit, when they very clearly aren’t newer.
 
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Dukhat said:
I would argue that the Intrepid type is older than the NX class based on the impression that the Earth Starfleet seemed relatively new
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We know that United Earth Starfleet was around by 2136, because that's when Margaret Mullin rejected Jonathan Archer's proposal on the grounds of not wanting to become a "Starfleet widow." So the organization is maybe 15-20 years old at the start of ENT.

they didn’t seem to produce different classes of ships concurrently,
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I don't think there's enough evidence to conclude this. We only saw one class in season 1 because we were focusing on the only ship able to travel into really deep space and didn't see what was going on closer to home. But once we got back to near-Earth space in seasons 2-4, we saw a number of other ship classes.


and that both the Intrepid and the warp delta didn’t have markings (either names or registry numbers) while the newer NX class did.
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Rather, the digital models didn't have markings because they weren't meant to be seen in detail. That doesn't mean they didn't actually have markings. (Granted, I'm using the windows on the digital model as part of my own "evidence," but I've conceded that they might not have "actually" been there if the digital artists had had time to create a more detailed model.) Think of it like how the TOS Enterprise miniature only had markings on the side that was meant to face the camera.


It took years just to build the second NX class ship. I don’t see Earth Starfleet mass producing Intrepids during that time. Ship construction seemed quite slow.
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We saw no more than 3-4 Intrepid-type ships at a time, so we don't know if they existed in large quantities. As smaller ships, they could've been built faster. As such, it's even possible that they could've been designed later than the NX class (hence their "kitbashed" look based on NX components) but put into service earlier, which reconciles both interpretations.
 
Ar-Pharazon said:
Three has always been a "few" to me and several more like five-ish.
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I've always thought of them as overlapping, with "few" sort of being the lower end of "several." Neither is an exact term; indeed, inexactness is kind of their whole point. Anyway, "several" literally means "separate," so technically it can be used for any quantity above one.
 
Syd Shanshala said:
Sorry WHAT? I recall only ever seeing one intrepid type, the Intrepid.
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There have have been two or more in the flotilla that greeted Enterprise and escorted her back to Earth after the destruction of the Xindi weapon. The field of Earth ships was a mixture of Starfleet and civilian-looking designs.

ETA: @Ar-Pharazon beat me to it.
 
Calling the Intrepid a kitbash is of course delicious nonsense to begin with. The only part really reused as is is the basic saucer profile, but applied to create a different half-saucer altogether, with a differently shaped deflector notch, a different superstructure at the centerline, and with a different surface texture that eliminates key NX-01 detail. This baby is instead an Eaves sketch fleshed out in CGI with loving care and with just that one shortcut taken.

But where to place this ship in the fictional universe? Three major differences stand out vs. NX-01: the lack of shuttle facilities, the lack of gunports, and the great size of the warp engines.

The first two omissions go very well with our knowledge that NX-01 is not just the first Starfleet deep space explorer, but also the only one of any worth or future. Starfleet isn't gonna send any Intrepids out to do what Archer is currently doing - "Fortunate Son" has Archer base his whole line of bolster and bravado at the assorted frontier riffraff on the fact that further NX vessels, and NX vessels specifically, are on the drawing board. (This at a time when neither NX-01 nor the Intrepid remain on a drawing board, mind you.)

The Intrepid thus has every right to be a "not NX" in design. She won't need exploration gear such as shuttlecraft if she is not going to explore. She still has torpedo tubes, so fighting is on the menu in some form. But apparently not fighting against deep space pirates, so there might be no need for the Warp Five Engine, either.

What kind of engine does she have aboard? The biggest we have seen so far. Perhaps the best that Old Tech could do. Perhaps indeed an "insurance" type design, a conventional way of striving for warp 5 in case Henry Archer fails. In either case, quite possibly something bolted in place of an older and more reasonably sized engine, thus potentially hogging more space and crew cabin horizons than the original designers intended.

Alternately, this giant engine is not in competition with the Warp Five version in any fashion, and is simply the best fit for the non-NX mission of the Intrepid. It is in that scenario that we can let go of all timeline assumptions and choose to consider the engine (and the ship) just as modern as we wish.

Whatever our assumptions in other scenarios, we can rest assured the Intrepid is not there to replace or even complement the Enterprise. After all, we can see she does neither, during the two seasons of her assured existence as a ship, a design and a class at least three strong.

Timo Saloniemi
 
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