Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[Lord Garth]

At least we dont have Akiraprise arguments anymore. I remember those on here when they first showed the ship prior to Broken Bow airing.

Ah, yes. The good old days (not really ). "Newbies" don't know what they missed out on here. And they're all the better off for having missed out on it. Flame wars galore, posters on both sides on the rampage, moderators in full-force, threads closed left and right, warnings handed out like hot-cakes, high staff turnover... All because of things like the NX-01 looked like the Akira.

 

[Tarek71]

Was thinking the same thing. Almost wish they stuck with (maybe an upgraded) Merchantman design. But hey, whatcha gonna do?

I am guessing they wanted a wide open visual, and not small cramped compartments of a small ship. But the end result is a ship that is not well thought out in terms of space utilization. Not well suited for cargo or passengers. How does this guy make a living with this thing? I showed on a deck layout that you could fit alot of room for either or both on a two-deck 40m+ ship. But they said F that!

 

[thribs]

Nothing wrong with that. Look at the Connie Refit in the TOS movies.

Still had the general shape though.

 

[DaveyNY]

That isn't needed now that we have the Discovery version.

I'm thinking that the NX-01 upgrade would have been used during the Romulan Wars Years which was a heck of a lot earlier than the time period of DISCOVERY.

Ah, yes. The good old days (not really ). "Newbies" don't know what they missed out on here. And they're all the better off for having missed out on it. Flame wars galore, posters on both sides on the rampage, moderators in full-force, threads closed left and right, warnings handed out like hot-cakes, high staff turnover... All because of things like the NX-01 looked like the Akira.

It's nice to have survived that mayhem with only a warning or two for myself.
But it did turn me off from regularly hanging around here for quite a long time.

 

[Dukhat]

I'm thinking that the NX-01 upgrade would have been used during the Romulan Wars Years which was a heck of a lot earlier than the time period of DISCOVERY.

I think his point was that the DSC Enterprise looks like it came between the NX-01 and the TOS Enterprise.

 

[DaveyNY]

I think his point was that the DSC Enterprise looks like it came between the NX-01 and the TOS Enterprise.

There's way to big a time gap for that to really make sense.
The NX upgrade would have been in existence going into the Romulan Wars while the DISCOVERY Enterprise would have come long after the war was over.

 

[Dukhat]

It’s not about the time period. It’s about how the ships look.

 

[cooleddie74]

The DSC Enterprise looks like an echo of Enterprise NX-01 but not an evolutionary midpoint. It's basically the TOS Enterprise with an NX-01 finish and flavoring.

 

[Dukhat]

The DSC Enterprise looks like an echo of Enterprise NX-01 but not an evolutionary midpoint. It's basically the TOS Enterprise with an NX-01 finish and flavoring.

I would say that’s that’s exactly what makes it look like an evolutionary mid-point.

 

[cooleddie74]

Except MUCH closer chronologically to TOS and not a starship launched around 2200.

 

[Dukhat]

Except MUCH closer chronologically to TOS and not a starship launched around 2200.

Again, I wasn’t referring to any specific period of time between the decommissioning of the NX-01 and the launching of the NCC-1701 (which was, like, an 80 year span of time of which we know virtually nothing about what Federation starships looked like until DSC, and even then, that’s only ten years before TOS.) It could very well have been a design for an older class of ship two decades or so before TOS. But for all we know, the DSC Constitution was exactly what Federation ships could have looked like in 2200.

 

[Alan Roi]

I am guessing they wanted a wide open visual, and not small cramped compartments of a small ship. But the end result is a ship that is not well thought out in terms of space utilization. Not well suited for cargo or passengers. How does this guy make a living with this thing? I showed on a deck layout that you could fit alot of room for either or both on a two-deck 40m+ ship. But they said F that!

He offers the Federation's only charter service for claustrophobics and therefore can charge a premium from those grateful for not being crammed into the cramped compartments one finds on most federation ships.

 

[Dukhat]

I am guessing they wanted a wide open visual, and not small cramped compartments of a small ship. But the end result is a ship that is not well thought out in terms of space utilization. Not well suited for cargo or passengers. How does this guy make a living with this thing? I showed on a deck layout that you could fit alot of room for either or both on a two-deck 40m+ ship. But they said F that!

It’s the same ‘kewl’ factor that gave us turbolift roller coaster rides in the Discovery and the Enterprise. Which makes little sense either.

 

[Timo]

Again, I wasn’t referring to any specific period of time between the decommissioning of the NX-01 and the launching of the NCC-1701 (which was, like, an 80 year span of time of which we know virtually nothing about what Federation starships looked like until DSC, and even then, that’s only ten years before TOS.) It could very well have been a design for an older class of ship two decades or so before TOS. But for all we know, the DSC Constitution was exactly what Federation ships could have looked like in 2200.

Exactly. Accepting that Kirk's ship in TOS is a relic out of her historical context just adds a nice new dimension to the show, and to Trek in general. Imagine a slightly more diverse Earth, with our Horatio Hornblower commanding a pre-dreadnought-era protected cruiser in WWII, only refitted with oil-burning boilers and turbines, that newfangled radar thing, and (after the first couple of adventures) a pair of choppers in place of Y Turret.

If not for the visuals of "The Cage", cutely reinforced in DSC, it would be easy to accept NCC-1701 as a late example of the NCC-1000 class, in TOS recently refitted with more compact cylinder engines on simpler, straighter pylons for her final sortie under young Kirk, launched into the unknown so that more modern ships could go toe to toe on Klingons closer to home. The general aesthetic would be there, the lineage from ENT cylinder engines through to the TOS ones impeccable, the Box Nacelle Era heralding the Art Deco Nacelle era of two timelines, and everybody being in awe of the heroes who dare sail out in a bucket of bolts that ought to be hauled away as garbage.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[STR]

I'm assuming that you consider them disproportional, due to the fact that they were larger than what we believed the proper size should have been?

I was in that boat for awhile, but I realized that it was taking me to the Island of Conclusions and I eventually figured out that it was too far a swim back.

Nope. I'm talking about the relative positions, scale and style of elements within each design do not follow the rules of proportion (or break them in creative ways) they're also anachronistic in a bad way.

The result is amateurish, and is likely another byproduct of JJ & co. simply not giving a damn about the details.

I don’t think that’s what @STR meant. Look at the nuEnterprise. The ridiculously huge nacelles attached to flimsy-looking pylons seems completely out of proportion to the rest of the ship. And the secondary hull suffers from being far too front-heavy. I’ve mentioned this before, but if I didn’t already know better, I would think that three different people were tasked with designing the saucer, secondary hull, and nacelles, without consulting the others about what they were doing, and then each part was just cut-and-pasted together like those really bad ship GIFs that fans would put together in photoshop from years ago.

Also this. One element doesn't really go with the other parts stylistically.

It’s the same ‘kewl’ factor that gave us turbolift roller coaster rides in the Discovery and the Enterprise. Which makes little sense either.

I also hated those shots, but since they were brief I can at least ignore them.

 

[Jesse1066]

Exactly. Accepting that Kirk's ship in TOS is a relic out of her historical context just adds a nice new dimension to the show, and to Trek in general. Imagine a slightly more diverse Earth, with our Horatio Hornblower commanding a pre-dreadnought-era protected cruiser in WWII, only refitted with oil-burning boilers and turbines, that newfangled radar thing, and (after the first couple of adventures) a pair of choppers in place of Y Turret.

If not for the visuals of "The Cage", cutely reinforced in DSC, it would be easy to accept NCC-1701 as a late example of the NCC-1000 class, in TOS recently refitted with more compact cylinder engines on simpler, straighter pylons for her final sortie under young Kirk, launched into the unknown so that more modern ships could go toe to toe on Klingons closer to home. The general aesthetic would be there, the lineage from ENT cylinder engines through to the TOS ones impeccable, the Box Nacelle Era heralding the Art Deco Nacelle era of two timelines, and everybody being in awe of the heroes who dare sail out in a bucket of bolts that ought to be hauled away as garbage.

Timo Saloniemi

Worth noting: Horatio Hornblower's first Ship of the Line, HMS Sutherland, was described as "the ugliest and least desirable two-decker in the Navy List," and even that was a big step up from the ships he'd commanded previously. Like Kirk, Hornblower greatly overcame the shortcomings of the ships he was given.

 

[Timo]

Look at the TOS Enterprise. The ridiculously huge nacelles attached to flimsy-looking pylons seems completely out of proportion to the rest of the ship. And the secondary hull suffers from being far too front-heavy. I’ve not mentioned this before, but if I didn’t already know better, I would think that three different people were tasked with designing the saucer, secondary hull, and nacelles, without consulting the others about what they were doing, and then each part was just cut-and-pasted together like those really bad ship GIFs that fans would put together in photoshop from years ago.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Look at the TOS Enterprise. The ridiculously huge nacelles attached to flimsy-looking pylons seems completely out of proportion to the rest of the ship. And the secondary hull suffers from being far too front-heavy. I’ve not mentioned this before, but if I didn’t already know better, I would think that three different people were tasked with designing the saucer, secondary hull, and nacelles, without consulting the others about what they were doing, and then each part was just cut-and-pasted together like those really bad ship GIFs that fans would put together in photoshop from years ago.

Not sure why you felt the need to quote me verbatim and take my quote completely out of context at the same time, but I don’t find your post to be at all as clever as you seem to think it is. Not to mention that you’re 100% wrong.

 

[Timo]

Not my loss. But the TOS ship is as butt-ugly as the rest of them, in absolute terms of "balance" or "proportion". It just happens to have seniority to its side.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

I respectfully disagree.