Well, the Shepard is just the Walker flipped over, with some modifications to make it look like a different class.
Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard
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The Discovery era ships are among my favorite Stafleet ships, and it's not even close with regards to other eras, aside from the TOS era which has limited ship presentation to begin with.
Yeah, based on this piece of Shenzhou concept art... I still think it looks better than the Walker somehow.
Yep. Fuller didn't want DSC to look like a TOS prequel, but something that appealed to today's audiences. So if the ships looked like they came after TNG or VOY, that was okay, I guess.
Well none of them did, they look like a design language set between the 2240s and the 2270/80s
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The designs could have worked as post-VOY ships, especially in light of the designs in PIC Season 3.
More like after the NX 01 but before the Constitution.
None of them have 24th century ship details. They have more in common with the late 23rd century ships.
I disagree. They have post-constitution details. (Both pre-refit Connie designs)
Not so much that, but an altogether different design aesthetic. TOS and the TOS movies generally had tall ships, while the ships in DSC were more flat. As we've seen with PIC, however, traditionally round saucer sections eventually came back in style.
By the 24th century and beyond, they can be both =D
Several of those DSC season 1 ships could have been right at home as background ships in Star Trek: First Contact. They even used the Cardenas class along with the late 24th century Nova class in storyboards for PIC ( set in the 25th century), and used the Magee and Zimmerman classes in the PIC Short Trek Children of Mars, along with a DSC shuttle. No one who hadn’t seen DSC would have been the wiser.
It's amazing how much the addition of cylindrical nacelles changes the overall appearance of the Discovery ships. Here's a few I quickly through together.
I still stand by my beliefs that the ships are perfectly fine representations of ships built in the post-NX, pre-Constitution era. Had they had cylindrical nacelles to begin with, I doubt there would have been anywhere near the huff we had when they were first presented.
I still stand by my beliefs that the ships are perfectly fine representations of ships built in the post-NX, pre-Constitution era. Had they had cylindrical nacelles to begin with, I doubt there would have been anywhere near the huff we had when they were first presented.
Now see, that really makes all the difference in the world.
I think they also missed an opportunity to include a few Kelvin-era ships at the Binary Stars. I’m sure they would have had a few still putting around on active duty, much like the old creakers they pulled out of mothballs at Wolf 359.
I think they also missed an opportunity to include a few Kelvin-era ships at the Binary Stars. I’m sure they would have had a few still putting around on active duty, much like the old creakers they pulled out of mothballs at Wolf 359.
Yeah, the cylindrical nacelles help a lot, and it would've been even better if they'd brought back a Kelvin-era ship to go along with them.
I don't know if there are any issues that prevent the TV shows using movie vessels, but it would've made all the sense in the world to have some of the older Star Trek '09 USS Kelvin kitbash ships around, seeing as the film was set around the same time as Vulcan Hello and the design of the Kelvin is presumably the same in both universes.
You can absolutely make an argument that nacelle shapes define an era of Trek. They probably could've made a ship with a wacky hull design but put TOS nacelles on it, and it would've felt right.
Outliers can happen, of course. The TMP nacelle defines the 2270's-2350's era perfectly, but then you have the Excelsior or Oberth.
Outliers can happen, of course. The TMP nacelle defines the 2270's-2350's era perfectly, but then you have the Excelsior or Oberth.
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The only TOS ships we saw with cylindrical nacelles were IIRC the Enterprise and her shuttles (and sister ships). We all think that’s a TOS design aesthetic due to the FJ work and fanon down the years, but on screen there’s a lot of time in-universe between the launch of the Constitution and the refit in TMP.
The Disco ships actually slot in there quite nicely as a bridge between the TOS and TMP aesthetic. The SNW Enterprise is a good example of this.
If you look at the Constitution as the outlier instead - the culmination of that first gen human warp technology that began with the Phoenix, and carried through to the NX-01 - those Disco designs have their place.
The Disco ships actually slot in there quite nicely as a bridge between the TOS and TMP aesthetic. The SNW Enterprise is a good example of this.
If you look at the Constitution as the outlier instead - the culmination of that first gen human warp technology that began with the Phoenix, and carried through to the NX-01 - those Disco designs have their place.
In my imagination, most of the DSC nacelles are "hot-rodded" cylindrical nacelles, with a lot of extra parts around them to get more performance out of them, so you can only see the tip of the dome of the core engine sticking out of the front. The SNW/TOS nacelles have improvements to the fundamental design, so they can get better performance without a bunch of additional stabilizing components wrapping them up.
Not quite. As @HotRod mentioned, you still have to take into account other productions, if TPTB insist that it's all one universe. Therefore (in roughly chronological order):
1. ST:FC: First warp ship Phoenix - round nacelles
2. Early warp ship, SS Valiant - round nacelles
3. ST: Voyager: "Friendship One" probe - round nacelles
4. ENT: NX prototype, NX class, Intrepid type, Warp Delta type, Conestoga type, J-class, Y-class, Emmette type, Archer's model ship - round nacelles
5. DS9: Daedalus class desktop model - round nacelles
6. Kelvin timeline pre-Nero: USS Kelvin and sister ships - round nacelles
7. TAS: SS Bonaventure, cargo drones, Huron type, aquashuttle, Copernicus shuttle, heavy shuttle, Carter Winston's ship, Cyrano Jones's ship - round nacelles
8. PIC: Pioneer class USS Pioneer NCC-1500, Radiant class USS Stargazer NCC-1578 - round nacelles
9. SNW: Archer type, SNW Constitution class, Sombra class, Farragut type, Kelcie Mae type, ore freighter type, SNW shuttlecraft type - round nacelles
10. TOS: Constitution class, shuttlecraft, SS Aurora (original and remastered), Medusan ship, SS Antares - round nacelles
So in fact the Constitution class is not the outlier, but rather just one example in a long line of round-nacelled ships.
Now I need to take this opportunity to state that there's more going on here than just a general debate about 'round' nacelles versus 'square' nacelles. The nacelle types shown in DSC season one do not remotely resemble the TMP-era ship nacelles, despite people wanting to lump them together in a vague category of 'square' nacelles. There's no clear design lineage bridge between the round nacelles of the above ten examples, and the timeframe of TMP. So we will agree to disagree about the DSC season 1 ships being that link.
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