Yes, properly designed. Unlike most of Eaves' Starfleet ships.
So first off, Eaves's ships are properly designed. I really enjoy them aesthetically.
Now, I would have
preferred that he employ a more retro-futurist design aesthetic if DIS were to be set in the TOS era. But 1) that is a subjective preference that does not actually impact the quality of the show, and 2) that is actually not fully Eaves's choice.
See, thing is, it's the producers of DIS who decided they wanted Eaves's basic design aesthetic of straight lines, harsh angles, line intersections, darker hull livery, etc. Eaves is a TOS fan from way back; he knows his shit. I'm 100% sure that if it were up to his tastes alone, he'd probably design something more Matt Jeffries-looking. But it's not -- he's hired to deliver the particular aesthetic the producers want.
So, it's really not fair or appropriate to say things like, "Eaves's ships aren't properly designed." They
are properly designed. They're just not a design aesthetic you subjectively prefer.
Well apart from the ugly Nova class but I'm going to assume that's another Eaves ship.
No. The design that became the
Nova class first appeared in
The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine Technical Manual as a fictitious "first draft" of the
Defiant-class design. Sternbach created it, and then he adapted it for use on VOY in "Equinox, Parts I & II." Presumably he was using those harsher lines and cutaways as a way to suggest an evolution into the
Defiant-class design James Martin created.
And TNG had better ship porn than Discovery or Picard combined.
For Starfleet ships? Well, obviously your mileage may vary, but I don't tend to think it's a fair comparison, since PIC is not about Starfleet and only introduced a new class briefly in the season finale, and since we're comparing a show that lasted seven seasons to a show that's only had one season so far.
I do think it's fair to say that TNG starship porn was stronger than PIC though. For Starfleet, TNG introduced, that I can recall, five Federation starship classes: the
Constellation, the
Galaxy, the
Ambassador, the
Nebula, and the
Olympic. Of those, the
Olympic appeared once and the
Constellation twice. The
Galaxy and the
Nebula, who are basically a TNG version of the
Constitution/Miranda dynamic, are the only ones to be used extensively. The
Ambassador appeared once or twice more in TNG, and then only appeared in DS9 during the Wolf 359 flashback in "Emissary, Part I;" it was never seen during the Dominion War.
(And no, I do not count barely-visible, three-quarters-destroyed kitbashes like the
New Orleans class, nor do I count obvious modifications of a prior design like the
Soyuz class from "Cause and Effect.")
Of these four, the
Galaxy and the
Constellation were the only ones to appear in the first season. The
Ambassador came in S3,
Nebula did not appear until S4, and the
Olympic only appeared in the series finale.
So, by this point in TNG's run, we'd had the
Galaxy and
Constellation -- that's two against the single Starfleet design we've seen, the
Inquiry. I think the
Inquiry is a solid design that's on par with the
Constellation. TNG wins by default, but the
Galaxy class is a classic design that's hard to compete with.
If we expand the field to include alien starships, TNG's starship game gets pretty phenomenal. The Ferengi
D'Kora class (which was criminally underused), the Romulan
D'deridex class, the Klingon
Vor'Cha and
Negh'Var classes, the Cardassian
Galor class, and the Borg Cube are just classic designs that would be hard for any show to compete with. Especially one that is a more narrowly-focused character study instead of a broader-scoped military space opera.
Having said that -- we should bear in mind that most of the time, when we saw another starship on TNG, it was a reuse of the
Excelsior or
Miranda, and that does cost TNG some major points in terms of starship creativity.
La Sirena is growing on me; I wasn't into it at first. I happen to like the
Inquiry class, but I think they look too small. I liked the Romulan ships that surrounded the Artifact and that were part of Oh's fleet; they fit in nicely with the design lineage of smaller Romulan ships that we've seen in previous TNG-era shows -- you can see a direct lineage from Sternbach's scout ship for "The Dector" to Doug Drexler's shuttle design for "In the Pale Moonlight," and they also seem to draw from the
Valdore design Eaves created for NEM.
Anyway, yeah, I'd say TNG broadly did starship porn better than PIC (but PIC also isn't interested in starship porn, so it's not really a fair comparison).
I flat-out reject the assertion that TNG did better starship porn than DIS. Setting aside my subjective preference that TOS-era ships have a retro-futurist aesthetic, those ships are gorgeous. Eaves clearly made an effort to give them unique profiles that stand out from a distance; they have a sense of weight and size, and they all look like they have distinct mission profiles. DIS does damn good starship porn.
Notice, a common design language, similar hull colouring, standardised nacelles, hull markings etc. Alien concepts to John Eaves.
Eaves does all these things. He just doesn't do the versions of them you want to see. Hell, he doesn't do the versions
I want to see, but there's a difference between subjective preference and claiming he doesn't do quality work.
You think it's realistic that a Starfleet that has for decades been shown to have dozens of starship classes at their disposal, to suddenly turn up with 200+ of the same class?
I think a lot of scenarios are plausible here, up to and including, "Starfleet has lost so many ships between the Dominion and the Mars Attack that they've been mass producing nearly identical ship types for a while."
Look, I get it. You love Star Trek and you want to love everything Star Trek they give you. But believe me, it's ok to say "Hey, I really enjoyed Star Trek Picard, I had a great time, but yeah I can see what people mean about that fleet scene. That could have been better."
That is what I and plenty of others have said! I wish there had been more ship types. It would have been really nice to see a
Sovereign or a
Galaxy or a
Defiant or whatever mixed in with the
Inquirys.
What I (and, I suspect, others) are reacting to, when we seek to defend PIC against the people attacking it for the use of a single ship class in that scene, is the
completely disproportionate reaction of some fans to that frankly small disappointment. The vitriol over it is just
bizarre.