I really don't understand how people who do not see these things can even follow Star Trek. Do you get confused in the Original films because you cannot tell Enterprise and Excelsior apart?
Honest answer: broad strokes and context. The
Enterprise is the familiar-looking ship with the saucer and nacelles that our heroes are on, that looks like the ship from the original TV series, more or less. If we see it zapped by a photon torpedo and then the camera cuts to Kirk and crew falling out of their seats on a shaking bridge, I know what ship it is. Pretty much every movie and TV version of the
Enterprise looks more or less the same,
in broad strokes.
As for the
Excelsior . . . at this late date, I'm not sure I could pick it out of a lineup, but in the
context of the stories I guess it looked different enough from those movies'
Enterprise that I could tell them apart--again, with a lot of help from the placement in the story.
If the camera cuts to Sulu at the helm, or that martinet from the third movie, or Uhura announces "It's the
Excelsior, sir!," I can generally figure it out.
And this is, of course, different from a bunch of random ships zipping about the background of an apocalyptic battle scene. In which case, the overall effect is simply "Whoa, look at all those ships! Shit is going down."
I'm not going to be cataloguing what kind of ships, exactly. Especially when all hell is breaking loose onscreen.
