If using the Titan was meant to be a "nod" to the Titan novels, then it's even more confusing they created a new design rather than using the Luna class. You know, from the Titan novels.
I mean, what it boils down to is that the impulse to make the hero ship of PIC S3 a ship that Riker had previously commanded is in conflict with the impulse to make it a ship that the audience wasn't already emotionally invested in so as to make rechristening it as the
Enterprise an emotionally satisfying ending. Matalas tried to circle that square by making it the
Titan-A rather than the
Titan and by rationalizing the link to Riker by implying either that Riker had commanded the
Titan-A or that components from Riker's
Titan were used in the construction of the
Titan-A, but either way it's just weird and awkward. Making it the
Titan-A is especially awkward because it comes across like saying, "Well, the
Titan legacy was amazing enough that it gets a letter suffix just like the
Enterprise, but not amazing to
keep its letter suffix."
It would have been better to
either have the hero ship be a different ship Riker had commanded after the
Titan, or to make it an entirely new ship with no connection to Riker. Personally, I think the ship that eventually became the new
Enterprise in "The Last Generation" should have been the same ship that Picard and company encountered the Jurati Borg on in S2 -- and that that ship should not have been named
Stargazer and should not have been designed to look like a modern version of the
Constellation class. Make Rios's ship from S2 a
Constitution III-class, and give it a name that registers as vaguely annoying or at least unmemorable -- the USS
Edward Jellico for instance, or the USS
Jaresh-Inyo, or the USS
William Ross. That way, rechristening it as the
Enterprise would feel like an upgrade rather than an insult to prior name. You still get the benefit of a sense of the vessel having a history with Picard when he and Riker board it at the start of S3, because Picard will have already commanded it in S2. Also it would have brought the budget of S3 down a bit by assigning the cost of designing the ship and building the model to the S2 budget.
Also, side note: Get rid of the goddamn
Odyssey-class. There was no reason to make the
Enterprise that Shelby commands the F. The
Enterprise that Shelby commands and which the Borg commandeer in "Vox" should have been the
Enterprise-E, and the hero ship of S3 should have become the
Enterprise-F. There was no reason to introduce an entirely new
Enterprise and then have it last for two-point-four seconds before introducing yet
another new
Enterprise. And making it the 1701-E -- and explicitly establishing that Sol Station destroyed the
Enterprise-E in defense of Earth -- would have just added a tad more of a feeling of tension for the audience, since it's a ship that people who don't play
Star Trek Online would actually recognize from the three motion pictures it featured in.
But the only thing it had in common with the novels was the design of the ship and the fact that Riker was captain and his wife was a crewmember (the latter we already knew from Nemesis.) None of Riker's crew from the novels were serving on the ship in LDS.
Yeah, but the fact that
Lower Decks used the
Luna-class design is the big thing here.