Starship design history in light of Discovery

I can see it now...

"The neck has many box-like armored details instead of being a smooth cylinder like TOS. This clearly means that DSC is NOT PRIME." - Trekyards

 

I do kind of like the idea that D-series is the product of unified Klingon industry. It's a nice explanation for why there's a hundred-and-ten-plus year gap between the D-5 and the D-7; the Klingons were all busy building their own weird bespoke ships (which also helps explain some of the similar-looking DSC Klingon ships, like the Chargh and the Jach, or the Qoj, the Tlhapqa'/Qow, and the Veqlargh. Special thanks to EAS for not only listing all the DSC ships, but also pointing out which ones are kind of samey).

 

The D7 looked pretty much exactly like a TOS-era D7 or a K't'inga except for the slightly different nacelles and the armor plating on the neck. I don't see an issue thus far, and I'm on record for not liking most of what DSC has done with the Klingons.

 

The one benefit to the neck armor is that it actually looks like it provides more reasonable internal clearance for average-sized humanoids (Klingonoids?) to move into the head. It’s always been a little too narrow to do so properly under commonly accepted dimensions and scale, being a tad smaller than a Connie.

 

Why do Klingons live in their bathrooms? At least their designs have bathrooms unlike the Connie's. Romulan humor.

 

Ugh I want more images of the D7.

Anyways here’s the Section 31 ship, all but the last one are upside down.

Spoiler

https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/240485808509812737/540739508199489536/image3.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/240485808509812737/540739507704692746/image2.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/240485808509812737/540739506878545951/image1.png
https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/240485808509812737/540739506454659073/image0.png

It appeared to have some sort of optical camouflage, it wasn’t cloaking the ship traditionally, but the individual hull panels looked like they were obscuring the ship. Like the Helicarrier in the marvel movies. Or Bond’s car in Die Another Day

 

Definitely no registry number, though?

(I suspect that when they want to fake one, they've got multiple "identities" available for use.)

 

Yeah no name, no registry, not markings at all from what I can see.

Which makes sense, they're covert.

 

Except just about every VOY-FC era ship featured compound curves to evoke a fusion of technology and organic forms. Everything in DSC is hard and angular and always a little out of proportion. The hard angles emphasize the ships are purely mechanical (and therefore conveying "less advanced than TNG-era" ships) while the proportions make them less elegant (and thus suggesting less advanced) than TMP era ships with their fine proportions and "unnaturally" thin structures.

John Eaves knows the art of design and he knows the design history of Star Trek. The DSC ships are all very deliberate in their shaping and detail to fit in the assigned era. Round vs boxy nacelles are probably the least important design feature.

 

Plus he needs to go with what the high ups tell him to do.

I'm sure he could design a TOS Style ship if requested to.

Some of the concept art that comes with the Eaglemoss models have some good designs they could look like something out of TOS or pre-TOS.

And there are several pieces of DSC Connie concept are that looks a lot closer to the original.

 

Oh, I have no doubt that Eaves could give us a beautiful TOS-style starship if he wanted and was given permission. The Enterprise may have her detractors but she's still the prettiest ship in the series by a light-year and since we can't blame the angled pylons on Eaves then that means she would have been even better looking before the DSC digital effects team got their hands on his design.

 

I'm not sure many of those TOS-ish concepts would've looked good in 3D given Bryan Fuller's dictate to flatten all the starships. That squashed the Enterprise pylons from ~40 degree angle out from the hull down on the original to ~25 (just eyeballing those numbers). I'm pretty sure the Enterprise pylons were swept back because they had a "splayed out chicken carcass" look from some angles.

If the production team was given a different direction, the result could've been more or less continuous with established Trek designs, including TOS. However, it's damn hard to seamlessly connect the design language of ENT, TOS and TMP+. As finalized, the DSC Enterprise does a decent job of bridging the slightly-clunky Atomic-styled NX-01 with the graceful Art Deco NCC-1701-A.

 

The diagram of the enterprise in episode 1 that people were gawking over was one of the last renders done before being sent to the VFX team. It was beautiful.

It’s in the Eaglemoss booklet.

I don't think the neck on the new D7 neck is ribbed, it appears to just be segmented. Looks more like a spine.

 

It's been 25%'d like the Enterprise.

 

Good, because the old design looked flimsy as hell.

 

With all the First Contact changes moving forward, meeting all the 2233 changes coming back through time, smacking the Defiant from both sides and sending the Disco version to the MU instead, creating the version that Lorca is born into, coming to the Prime universe and changing it a 3rd way, maybe "25%" is all that's left of what we knew.

 

I do really like the idea that Disco is the trashed remnant of the prime universe after Nero, the Borg and that ENT time war feat. Nazis in the white house. It doesn't really work (like, why would Klingons be HR Giger-ified?) but it's a very cool concept.

 

I think we're finally seeing the aftermath of the Temporal Cold War. A nuclear wasteland of a universe where no one thought not to use time travel to fuck things up.

 

Unfortunately, I disagree. I think he can stick a pair of TOS nacelles on a ship that looks nothing like it came from the TOS era, but that's about it.

Case in point:

https://johneaves.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/trekkkk1.jpg

https://johneaves.files.wordpress.com/2009/03/armada-starfleet-vessel.jpg

 

It's like a D7 and a 24th century Negh'Var-class warship had a baby but the baby took a lot more after the former than it did the latter. I'm still fine with it based on what the hologram looks like.