USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

The Shenzou is beautiful.

Get away from my ship she's beautiful

 

It just doesnt fit the design lineage at all, who on earth thought it would be a good idea to design the ship upside down.

If we ignore the upside down aspect it works as an evolution of the NX but then hits the brick wall of every other ship we have been shown in the show since we first saw the Shenzou.

Its just odd thats all.

 

Georgiou's ship is a literal "growth version" of Archer's, and as such extremely fitting. It's just that starship design must have moved forward in the meantime, so that by the 2250s there are many schools of design to compete with the "Akira style"...

I could easily see the Shenzhou originally sporting more ENT-like, shorter nacelles on a simpler set of pylons, but at some point receiving a refit to this pair that stylistically immediately precedes the eventual boxy style fashionable in the 2250s. The vessel works fine with stubbier engines, too. And her advanced age is not in dispute - only the extent of that age! What makes her "old"? A launch date of 2222 or perhaps 2192?

Some of the gaudy paint job might be recent. Has the ventral bridge been added later on, too? Or are non-saucertop bridges only slowly becoming the standard? We do see both the prominent four-nacellers of DSC "still" refusing to carry their command centers topside, whatever we may think of it.

Timo Saloniemi

 

Hey those upside down nacelles function as landing gear.

Well that's my own personal headcanon

 

The Miranda and Akira.

Starfleet has always had ships with nacelles on the bottom.

 

The Discoprise is the show's idea of what the 1701 looks like.

 

CBS can make changes on a whim, as they play fast and loose with continuity, so there's no guarantee of anything.

 

Yeah but they also have a lot of aspects that clearly make them a part of Starfleets design lineage.

The Shenzou just looks like they flipped a bigger NX class upside down, whereas the Miranda has its nacelles under the hull just like the Nebula which looks fine.

The Akira nacelles are more or less directly behind the saucer section, it was a bit off the wall as designs go but it still fit.

I didnt know what to make of the Shenzou when I first saw it.

Its probably because they wanted a signature ship for Georgiou and have it be a bit different to set itself apart from the rest of the fleet, which is understandable, especially if they had gone ahead with each season being about one ship and its crew before moving on.

Bottom line is the Nebula and Akira both fit within the design lineage but the Shenzou really doesnt.

Would have been better off if they had just used an actual NX refit instead and shown it to be the last of its kind in a final fight with the Klingons, shame it couldnt have been the Enterprise NX01 but that would be too big a stretch with the 1701 already in service.

I love the work they did with all the other ships we have seen in the series with the Nimitz class USS Europa (the less said about the Admiral the better) and the Cardenas class USS Yeager, that includes the changes to the Enterprise 1701 as well, question marks as to why the USS Enterprise had the same hull texture as the Shenzou but perhaps that was also an attempt to make it stand out as a signature ship.

Not really necessary though.

 

The Connie's size according to one one definition of canon is still 289 meters long, because it appeared on a screen in Discovery Season 1, and a barely readable screen in TOS.

If you believe that things written on screens shouldn't always be canon, than the Connie doesn't have canon length.

The size of almost every ship in Star Trek isn't canon, a majority of ships aren't given sizes on screen, they come from BTS materials.

 

Which is why I think it fits. I know it looks odd, but that doesn't mean it doesn't fit. Well, maybe it fits as well as the Oberth class. Which, in my opinion, is the oddest of odd ducks to ever duck in Starfleet.

No, but fanon and BTS material are hard to break out of at times.

 

The Shenzou put me off a bit when I first saw it, which was made worse when I saw the rest of the Starfleet designs and how well they fit together, but not as much as the bloody Klingon ships did.

Ah yes the Oberth, Starfleets workhorse but it can be forgiven as it is one of the oldest designs in the Star Trek universe.

Cant say that for the Shenzou, personally I think it was the result of "too many cooks" syndrome and the extensive changes that occurred both before and during production.

It must have been a right mess behind the scenes.

 

Shenzhou certainly has many elements which might not be so era appropriate. However, it is a great design. It is one of the best looking ships in the entire franchise, or indeed in any franchise. It is weird how much better this tangential ship is than the actual hero ship of the show.

 

The Shepard-class are the next-best in DSC after the Constitution-class. TOS Movie and TNG Era lines(except for the prerequisite way-too-pointy nacelles) and a smooth, refreshingly familiar saucer look without too many greeblies poking out all over the place just so it can look more like, say, the Shenzhou.

 

Personally I like the Discovery a lot and had no problems with it when it first appeared, I dont mind that its a bit off the beaten path design wise as it doesnt stray too far, its a test bed for many technologies not just the spore drive so it makes sense that Starfleet would make ships based on the needs on specific experiments but with the room to fit additional secondary labs or workspaces.

No doubt it was built specifically for the spore drive experiment as its primary purpose.

The failure of the spore drive also explains why we never see ships like these ever again.

 

Discovery's ultra-long nacelles no longer bother me the way they once did. I just rationalize they look that way so that a starship equipped with an experimental spore hub drive can maintain a wider and larger warp field.

 

The thing is, though, nobody in-universe has ever remarked on the Discovery being exceptional-looking. And the spore drive is but an experiment, part of the arsenal of 300 experiments these ships are capable of running - yet it's supposed to fit aboard every Starfleet vessel eventually, regardless of design.

The shape doesn't go away with NCC-1031, either, as its original inspiration, the Planet of Titans study model, is "later" seen at Spacedock in ST3:TSfS...

Timo Saloniemi

 

That was my take as well, perhaps they had to be thinner to work with the spore drive and were made longer to have enough internal space to fit all of the necessary components.

Then again it would have been better if they hadnt bothered with the spore drive idea at all, it could have been a very early attempt at transwar, no need for the spinning saucer at all.

Like I said, too many cooks.

 

Yeah, since both Scottys in the Prime and Kelvin Timelines appear to have dabbled in transwarp theory earlier in their careers it might have been better to go with a dangerous and very unstable form of transwarp propulsion that made Discovery "jump" into different sectors of the galaxy purely by accident but that would also have opened up the can of worms as to why transwarp drive sounded so new and revolutionary in TSFS almost thirty years later.

You can't win either way.

 

True but thats not ST3:TSfS fault as it was thought up over 30 years ago.

This is what happens when producers/writers/cable companies start releasing new shows set before previous shows.

You have to be really on the ball to ensure you dont screw established show history and technologies.

 

They neednt have called it that at first either, it would have been a cool reveal and call back later on in the show giving us some background on how Starfleet came up with the Excelsior experiment in the first place.

Once they realised what they had and that they werent ready for it they could have buried it pretty easily, especially as they wouldnt need ships with spinning saucers.

If they had gone this route there would be no need for the MU stuff or the time travel, Lorca could have just ended up as a member of S31 if they still wanted a bit of intrigue.