I'm new to Trek fandom and Trek BBS, so please forgive me if I'm rehashing topics that have already been discussed to death.
I like the Enterprise E, but don't love it. Here are the issues that prevent me from embracing it more fully.
1.) The impulse engines are too big. Generally speaking, as technology evolves and gets more powerful it simultaneously gets smaller. (Roddenbery pushed this idea, arguing, correctly, that the smaller the tech, the more futuristic it looks.) Yet we went from the single small horizontal impulse engine on the D to two giant squares on the E. Consequently, the E's impulse engines look less sophisticated, as though impulse tech devolved.
2.) To drive home the point that TNG took place ~75 years after Kirk's era it need a drastically different design language. (An incrementally different design language would have suggested the passage of a mere decade, not three-quarters of a century.) Roddenbery achieved this by approving an organic, curvilinear design for the D. That makes sense. In the real world, the more advanced tech becomes, and the more consideration is given to its form, the more likely it is to adopt an organic appearance. Think of the evolution of a candlestick phone from the 1930s to an iPhone is 2026. That's why the design language of the E, geometric and angular, strikes me as a step backwards. It looks like a streamlined version of the B/Excelsior, which is nice looking, but only incrementally different from Kirk's era. Consequently, it doesn't look as advanced as the D.
To put it yet another way, the E has conventional good looks, but conventional doesn't suggests futuristic. The more futuristic something is, the weirder it would look. That's why the D, with all its glorious weirdness, looks more futuristic.
3.) I dislike that the E looks agressive and is intended to be more of a battleship. The premise of Star Trek is a group of scientists exploring the galaxy, not the space army policing the galaxy. I understand there's an in-universe explanation (the E was designed in the context of conflicts with the Borg and the Dominion). So? That just means they used a storyline to rationalize changing the underlying premise of the franchise. As a result, they made the Star Trek universe less unique and more cliched.
I've seen people argue that Roddenbery was inconsistent on this point. I disagree. Yes, there was more of a military feel to TOS, but Roddenbery regretted that and made a point to move away from it in TNG. And yes, despite that, there were still elements of militarism in TNG. But pointing to a handful of examples of militarism in TNG does not mean Roddenberry was inconsistent. He never disputed the idea that Starfleet serves a defensive function. He just wanted it to be secondary and de-emphasized. That vision allowed for there to be some militarism in TNG; it was just meant to preclude defense from being Starfleet's primary mission. Inarguably, once you change the Enterprise from a research vessel into a battleship, defense becomes its primary function and drives the stories.
I like the Enterprise E, but don't love it. Here are the issues that prevent me from embracing it more fully.
1.) The impulse engines are too big. Generally speaking, as technology evolves and gets more powerful it simultaneously gets smaller. (Roddenbery pushed this idea, arguing, correctly, that the smaller the tech, the more futuristic it looks.) Yet we went from the single small horizontal impulse engine on the D to two giant squares on the E. Consequently, the E's impulse engines look less sophisticated, as though impulse tech devolved.
2.) To drive home the point that TNG took place ~75 years after Kirk's era it need a drastically different design language. (An incrementally different design language would have suggested the passage of a mere decade, not three-quarters of a century.) Roddenbery achieved this by approving an organic, curvilinear design for the D. That makes sense. In the real world, the more advanced tech becomes, and the more consideration is given to its form, the more likely it is to adopt an organic appearance. Think of the evolution of a candlestick phone from the 1930s to an iPhone is 2026. That's why the design language of the E, geometric and angular, strikes me as a step backwards. It looks like a streamlined version of the B/Excelsior, which is nice looking, but only incrementally different from Kirk's era. Consequently, it doesn't look as advanced as the D.
To put it yet another way, the E has conventional good looks, but conventional doesn't suggests futuristic. The more futuristic something is, the weirder it would look. That's why the D, with all its glorious weirdness, looks more futuristic.
3.) I dislike that the E looks agressive and is intended to be more of a battleship. The premise of Star Trek is a group of scientists exploring the galaxy, not the space army policing the galaxy. I understand there's an in-universe explanation (the E was designed in the context of conflicts with the Borg and the Dominion). So? That just means they used a storyline to rationalize changing the underlying premise of the franchise. As a result, they made the Star Trek universe less unique and more cliched.
I've seen people argue that Roddenbery was inconsistent on this point. I disagree. Yes, there was more of a military feel to TOS, but Roddenbery regretted that and made a point to move away from it in TNG. And yes, despite that, there were still elements of militarism in TNG. But pointing to a handful of examples of militarism in TNG does not mean Roddenberry was inconsistent. He never disputed the idea that Starfleet serves a defensive function. He just wanted it to be secondary and de-emphasized. That vision allowed for there to be some militarism in TNG; it was just meant to preclude defense from being Starfleet's primary mission. Inarguably, once you change the Enterprise from a research vessel into a battleship, defense becomes its primary function and drives the stories.
