Not quite. I will explain my rationale, and then I will cease bringing it up, as I'm quite tired of talking about it.
These production people were saying that Fuller ordered the nacelles not to be round. My response was, why would Fuller care about something so esoteric as the shape of the nacelles, when none of the other attributes of the Starfleet vessels are in any way consistent with each other? Wouldn't Fuller have lots of other, more important things to worry about besides something as random as that? That's why designers are hired in the first place: to design stuff so the higher-ups don't have to. So Fuller had a conniption fit about nacelles, but everything else about those ships were fine, even though they looked nothing alike?
John Eaves has had a history of designing ships that look pretty much the same no matter what organization and time period they belong to. He put Jem'Hadar nacelles on a 200 year old Romulan Bird of Prey in ENT, and then later said that someone else ordered him to do that (which I also don't believe). So it seemed like typical John Eaves to do something like that again. He also made ship designs for STO where the ship's hull evoked late-24th century design aesthetics, but made two versions, one with round TOS nacelles and one with blocky post-Nemesis nacelles. So again I didn't put it past him that he submitted both designs, and the blocky one was the one that was chosen (but wouldn't have if he hadn't submitted it in the first place).
Now, I'm not above admitting that I'm possibly wrong about my assumptions. But it's not like I just pulled this shit out of my ass without past precedent because I'm a "conspiracy nut." I have more important things to do with my time than worry about stuff like this other than posting my opinions about it here.
I'm also not anti-John Eaves. He's a nice guy and I've even chatted with him in the past when he had his blog. But I don't think he's above the occasional fib.
Season 1 sucked ass. But at least it was only 13 episodes.
Except Fuller gave multiple design directives. The following are (a non exhaustive) list, all documented in officially sanctioned sources:
1) Discovery was to be based on the Planet of the Titans Enterprise concept.
2) Discovery was to be gold colored.
3) Other Starfleet ships were to use a subtle gray texturing, and *not* the matte olive-gray of the TOS model.
4) Discovery was to have a registry of 1031 to commemorate 10/31, his favor holiday.
5) Starfleet ships were to be "flat" as opposed to the "tall ship" aesthetic of TOS/TMP.
6) The various ships were to be as different from past Starfleet designs as possible. Especially TOS.
7) The boxy nacelles, except for Enterprise. This was decided early on as a way to represent a "new type of warp drive" from TOS, before the decided only Disco was going to get the spore drive.
8) Klingon ships were to eschew all past design queues in lieu of a gothic, Gigeresque motif.
9) Klingon ships were also to be flat, the designs are practically 2D.
About half of those seem so trivial as to be beneath a showrunners notice, but he noticed anyway. Maybe Fuller is just a hands-on kind of manager.
Eaves, within these constraints, relied on two main techniques: a) use detailing and shaping to bridge the gap between ENT and TMP b) using early jet/rocket age details, proportions and shapes (Discovery borrows as much from North American Aviation XB-70A Valkyrie bomber prototype as it does from Planet of the Titans).
Pretty much ever Starfleet ship has an aviation nod in it. As in, if you know your stuff, you know what model of aircraft he was looking it when he made the ship. I'm not sure of the venn diagram between trek fans and aviation buffs, but if you're in it everything works on another level.