Spoilers 31st/32nd Century Ships Revealed

[Tuskin38]

Since the Sphere Builders were ultimately defeated in the 22nd century,

They were only in the 22nd century to recruit the Xindi and stop the formation of the Federation, because they saw the future where the Federation defeats them.

I’m just saying I don’t think the Expanse in the Ent-J timeline started in the same area as it did in the Prime Timeline. Because of the existence of Xindi on the Ent-J, and how close it was to Earth.

Why? It's no more canon than the novels.

Markonian seems to blur the line between canon and non-canon.

 

[David cgc]

With all these advancements that Doug envisioned for this ship, the stuff we actually got with Disco’s 32nd century technology (ostensibly 6 centuries later) is significantly lower-tech than what was supposed to happen by the 26th.

When you're committed to keeping the familiar Trek tropes and concepts established in the '60s and '80s, the future just ends up being tighter spandex and smaller tricorders. I mean, it'd be challenging to depict a lot of those ideas on TV (though less so as budgets have gotten bigger and production techniques have gotten more flexible), but even if you did, it'd mean sacrificing a lot of stuff that makes Star Trek superficially star-trekky. Which is why I think a ground-up remake would've been the most creatively healthy choice, taking basic remit of a serious extrapolation of the future from the perspective of today and using that as a setting for a socially-aware, character-focused action-adventure series, just with "the future" being stuff we can imagine in 2021, not 1964.

 

[Markonian]

Sorry, I didn’t mean to stir up a discussion about canonicity. Which is why I prefaced the reference to licensed, non-canon material with “Taking STO into account”.

 

[Dukhat]

Stipulated.

Daniels appeared to see the Battle of Procyon V an important part of history. A history to led to his existence and to the 31st century he know. Because he isn't wiped from existence after Archer & Co defeat the Sphere Builders, certain bits of future history must remain the same.

But Nero and Spock didn’t get wiped from existence when the timeline changed to the Kelvin timeline. At best, Star Trek has no hard-and-fast rules when it comes to time travel.

There’s also the possibility that Daniels doesn’t come from the same future as the Prime universe, or at best the Temporal wars messed everything up to the point that the future is different than it was in Daniel’s time.

Because we have generally little in terms of "future" (now "The Lost Era" 2399-3069) design, I wouldn't want to throw the J out. Plus, STO has brought additional 26th century Federation ships to fill in gaps, and established that classes familiar from the 23rd-24th century remain in service as late as 2769 (e.g. USS Centaur at New Khitomer).

My point is, I'd love to learn more about the "future past" and see ships to fill in the gaps between the Enterprise-E (Enterprise-F to include STO) and Voyager-J.

Don’t get me wrong, I’ve always liked the Enterprise-J and would have liked to see it in future Trek productions. I’m not keen on erasing it from history either, but the fact that it uncannily resembles the NX-01 makes me believe that the intention was that it came from a different timeline in which all the other Enterprises between them were also some variation of the NX class form factor, because it came from a time where the Sphere Builders were not defeated in the 22nd century and continued to expand the Expanse over the intervening centuries to where the Federation was in constant war with them.

 

[Tuskin38]

makes me believe that the intention was that it came from a different timeline in which all the other Enterprises between them were also some variation of the NX class form factor

I swear I read/heard somewhere that the final design only resembled the NX-01 because the producers wanted the audience to recognize it right away, it has nothing to do with what you suggested, but I can't find that now. Maybe it was in the TrekYards interview.

According to Memory-Alpha the ship's look wasn't described at all the script.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Universe_class#Background_information

 

[Dukhat]

I swear I read/heard somewhere that the final design only resembled the NX-01 because the producers wanted the audience to recognize it right away, it has nothing to do with what you suggested, but I can't find that now. Maybe it was in the TrekYards interview.

According to Memory-Alpha the ship's look wasn't described at all the script.
https://memory-alpha.fandom.com/wiki/Universe_class#Background_information

The first Enterprise-J design came from John Eaves. He made a sketch of a very long, thin, almost shark-like ship. This design was rejected, and Doug Drexler was instead given the task of designing the ship…the same Doug Drexler who designed the NX-01. So he obviously wanted a link there between the two ships.

The problem with the idea of the ‘audience recognizing it right away’ was that we never got a good look at the exterior of the ship in the episode. And what we did see (part of the underside of the saucer through a window) does not actually match the CGI model Doug designed, which only made an appearance in an oblique view diagram (the same view that appears in the SOTL calendar.) A viewer would have had a hard time recognizing that the two ships shared similar attributes just by what we saw in the episode. I’m not saying you’re wrong; just that if that was their intention, it didn’t work all that well.

 

[Tuskin38]

The first Enterprise-J design came from John Eaves. He made a sketch of a very long, thin, almost shark-like ship.

That's the first I've ever heard of this.

Edit: I found it. He apparently posted it on his facebook at one point, and it reposted by a Trek Ships Tumblr account

https://startrekships.tumblr.com/post/85649487633/enterprise-j-concept-by-john-eaves-the-ship-was

The problem with the idea of the ‘audience recognizing it right away’ was that we never got a good look at the exterior of the ship in the episode.

Manny Coto said they originally planned for an exterior shot, but budget got in the away and it was dropped.

 

[Dukhat]

That's the first I've ever heard of this.

It looks like his first side-view sketch of the Enterprise-E:

https://intl.startrek.com/article/john-eaves-on-designing-the-enterprise-e

 

[Tuskin38]

The source says facebook, but it was deleted yeah.

 

[Dukhat]

The source says facebook, but it was deleted yeah.

Sorry, I edited my post once you found the picture of the concept art.

 

[Vale]

That's the first I've ever heard of this.

Edit: I found it. He apparently posted it on his facebook at one point, and it reposted by a Trek Ships Tumblr account

https://startrekships.tumblr.com/post/85649487633/enterprise-j-concept-by-john-eaves-the-ship-was

Manny Coto said they originally planned for an exterior shot, but budget got in the away and it was dropped.

How interesting! I've never seen or heard of this Eaves concept before. I'd say it looks more suitable as a potential F than a J though...

 

[F. King Daniel]

Lots of interesting stuff in that interview with Doug on the E-J. Great interview (although I was irritated by the British guy’s need to continually talk over his guest). A few of the key take-aways:

• In the 26th century, the English letter “J” might not necessarily mean the same thing as it does in the 22nd-24th centuries, so it may not represent the 10th in the line (although this notion may have been superseded by all the other letter-based postfix letters seen in Disco’s 32nd century fleet).
• Ship’s computational abilities augmented with the neural network provided by the very existence of the ship’s crew itself - that is an amazing concept to me, one that probably should have been explored in Disco’s future. It actually sounds akin to the Borg Collective unimind with all the participants’ minds connected together by a central processor node. Further postulation suggested that the ship itself may be self-aware because of this advanced neural net. We see something of this in Zora.
• Doug felt that, by the 26th century, humanoids would be more like Organians, using their minds and internal energy to defend themselves than from conventional beam weapons that we’re used to seeing.
• Doug thought that early Starfleet ship design should have had more spherical shapes (akin to Daedalus types) but the studio suits thought that was too much of a deviation from the Starfleet look, so they kept the saucer for the NX class.
• The E-J’s mission was universe exploration, a multi-generational city ship, hence the name Universe class.
• E-J’s hull might have been organically grown, as opposed to having been built by conventional means.
• Holodecks will be replaced with direct neural implanted virtual experiences (facilitated by the minds of the people on the ship linked directly into the ship’s computer).
• Shuttles and other small vehicles don’t take up any space in a physical hangar - they’re instantly replicated/materialized on-demand prior to launch.
• Doug predicted a day where starships would have non-connected components, just like what we see in Disco.

With all these advancements that Doug envisioned for this ship, the stuff we actually got with Disco’s 32nd century technology (ostensibly 6 centuries later) is significantly lower-tech than what was supposed to happen by the 26th.

How sad, thinking what might have been...

Doug works in the art department, he's not a Star Trek writer. So his advancements for the Enterprise-J mean as much as all the new weapons ILM designed for the USS Vengeance, or Voyager's second warp core and computer core, or the Defiant's landing gear, which were never seen/never really existed. Unless the Enterprise writers envisioned it, it never would have made it to the screen. Just the artist's imagination.

 

[137th Gebirg]

A shame. His ideas for that ship and that future were pretty awesome.

 

[Timo]

"New weapons for the Vengeance" seems to be one of those things the VFX folks very much did bring to the Trek universe, without requiring writer prompting for that. Phaser bolts that curve madly were supposed to be a cool way of portraying warp exchanges of phaser fire, but JJ Abrams liked those so much that he wanted them in the lunar standstill fight, too. We got to see the detachable fighting drone as well, even if only briefly, and an atypical turreted weapon was prominent. None of that made a difference in plot terms, but they added to the plot by giving the black hat ship a flavor of her own.

"Writers imagining it" is not much of a requirement otherwise, either. The transporter came to be because of budgetary issues. Intriguing revelations about mystery characters like Spock or Data were made possible because the writers originally refrained from doing any imagining, leaving the sandbox covers off for the next bunch of kids. And actors have input on the characters that sometimes makes all the difference even when not appearing to make any originally (never pinches, say). Not to mention they have output: they are the characters and the story, and they are the ultimate judges of the fictional universe. Anything caught in their filters fails to become part of that universe; anything given a specific hue when going through those filters remains that hue, rather than any the writers might originally have intended. The same with VFX, set design, costuming: unless the writers perform a last-minute intervention (and they never do), input/output from those sets of professionals supersedes writer intent.

So far, ship VFX in DIS has been pure set dressing, with no plot implications. We haven't even seen any 32nd century ships in real action, demonstrating 32nd century ideas and practices (those Earth guardians perhaps notwithstanding, and the flavorless chase scene with Voyager-J in the lead very much withstanding). The first inkling of ship design that might matter, and might have character, would be the Voy-J having this new drive system that in theory could be plot-relevant in a way the fancy detached nacelles really aren't. And then there's the upcoming Discovery-but-not-quite ship that probably is plot-relevant and might be spore-driven, and her recognizable shape would then very much be another case of the VFX artists participating in telling the story. But we'll see.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Lakenheath 72]

We see a new ship, the USS Credence. I am able to read, I think, half of its registry, the 2864; however, I am having trouble with reading its prefix. The interior set we see of this ship looks like a redress of a Discovery set.

 

[Ar-Pharazon]

We see a new ship, the USS Credence. I am able to read, I think, half of its registry, the 2864; however, I am having trouble with reading its prefix. The interior set we see of this ship looks like a redress of a Discovery set.

Definitely one of those odd 4 way intersections that seem to be used more as a room.

 

[Tuskin38]

STO's Saturn Class

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[Saul]

A shame. His ideas for that ship and that future were pretty awesome.

When I saw the Angelou class it reminded me of something Doug had said about the Universe class. It would be like a city on the inside of the saucer and the hull would be transparent when viewed from the inside.

 

[Markonian]

We see a new ship, the USS Credence. I am able to read, I think, half of its registry, the 2864; however, I am having trouble with reading its prefix. The interior set we see of this ship looks like a redress of a Discovery set.

Just seen the ep. Registry looks like NCC-2504 to me.
Images: https://twitter.com/markonolan/status/1466689144470523908?s=21

The ship looks like a rectangular engineering hull leading directly into a hamburger-looking saucer. A detached half saucer is around the main saucer. On the secondary hull, one nacelle is above and one below connect via pylons - these are the first pylons we see in Starfleet ships native to the era. Two smaller sections flank the secondary hull, detached. A pair of large, detached nacelles hang below and to the sides.

 

[TimeIsAPredator]

Just seen the ep. Registry looks like NCC-2504 to me.
Images: https://twitter.com/markonolan/status/1466689144470523908?s=21
https://twitter.com/markonolan/status/1466689144470523908?s=21
The ship looks like a rectangular engineering hull leading directly into a hamburger-looking saucer. A detached half saucer is around the main saucer. On the secondary hull, one nacelle is above and one below connect via pylons - these are the first pylons we see in Starfleet ships native to the era. Two smaller sections flank the secondary hull, detached. A pair of large, detached nacelles hang below and to the sides.

It's a mess. Way to much going on