Blimey, kicked a hornet's nest with this one!
Just to clarify – I'm talking about the
consistency of
Voyager's design and the application of what we might call "established Treknology" in its design,
qua the TNG Technical Manual, and the fact that it has decent sets that are a decent size and feel more like they're contiguous parts of the same ship. I certainly do
not regard the Intrepid class as the most beautiful or even the most desirable class of starship. Much as I also love the refit Connie and, well, don't
hate the Galaxy class, neither were designed with modern Treknology in mind, and this has led to some odd retconning of details. Which is fine, and it gives fans plenty to do, but I find that
Voyager has the most comprehensive and consistent hero starship design.
Comparatively speaking, the refit Connie warp and impulse drives clearly don't work in the same way as later became established during the TNG era; the
Enterprise-D interiors looked really spartan on screen with incredibly cramped sets for a starship that was supposed to be the size of a city, and the ship itself had odd details such as an auxiliary navigational deflector that was clearly designed as a window; the
Defiant changed size (and its nose changed shape) from scene to scene, was clearly designed to be larger than it was usually presented, and there's a lot of nonsense about where its impulse engines are that rankles to this day; and we don't really know enough details about the Sovereign or the Akira to comment conclusively, though I will say that they're both more attractive than the Intrepid (I'm not terribly keen on the
Enterprise-E's bridge or main engineering sets though).
