You're going to have to be more specific as to which design elements actually "clash" with each other, else you might as well argue that Selma Hayek is ugly because her fingernails are inconsistent with her tits.
I was. I did. You need to read entire paragraphs to understand their content. But like I said, I'm not the only one to notice this:
Gabe Koerner, a professional 3D artist associated with Battlestar Galactica, Speed Racer, and other productions said,
"It's a bit of a pastiche. I like the shapes of the individual components: The turbine-esque nacelles, the reinforced neck, and the neuvo-TMP saucer. But the engines and the saucer look a bit foreign from one another."
Rick Sternbach, a man who has been involved with Star Trek longer than some members of this board have been alive, says
in this very thread,
"... I still have a problem with the pylons and the nacelles; the shapes still don't feel right to me, maybe because they don't seem to be done in the same style as the saucer or the neck ..."
Andrew Probert, who has actually designed various starship
Enterprises for a living, referenced in a (I hope cathartic) rant against the ship also posted in this thread,
"What was up with the bizarre stylistic collision of the ship's exterior?"
So given these decidedly expert opinions that the ship's design is self-contradictory, who are you to twist my posts into my "personal opinion presented as expert analysis"? When you are facing the kind of expertise I've documented above saying the same thing, don't you think that maybe there's a possibility we're seeing something you can't?
Having established that there
is a consensus among production experts that the ship has a platypus persona, I'll try to reiterate a third time, that it isn't my point that the ship is self-contradictory ... my point is simply that this self-contradiction may be intentional and part of the storyline. I'm not asking you to care that the design doesn't make sense, that's probably a bit much for you if you genuinely feel,
Similarity between hull elements has WHAT to do with aesthetics? Really, the only similarity that counts is all the parts being the same color.
I'm trying to gauge opinion on the thought that the mish-mash itself is deliberate.
When we couple this with building the ship in Iowa, I wonder if Nero previously attacked the San Francisco yards and the saucer is all that remains from the original
Enterprise. It has then been coupled with a whole new stardrive section. I have zero interest in arguing that I don't like the new ship. I've made my peace with it, however reluctantly. I'm now speculating about why elements that have experts puzzled are being used.
AFTER EDIT:
It don't think that, when we see this new ship in the film, it will look nearly so mismatched as it does now -- that released photo is really bad. I'm not sure why they'd release an oddly cropped and clearly distorted image as the first one, but they did. The lighting is quite bad too, showing the saucer details quite dramatically, but no any on the secondary hull. But the design looks better in the trailer...
The idea, though, that nacelles are designed and built by different contractors and then simply bought pre-assembled by Starfleet and slapped onto their vessels dates back at least until Shane Johnson's Mr. Scott's Guide to the Enterprise. He chalked up many of the differences between the TOS and TMP Enterprises as well as those between the Enterprise & Reliant and the Excelsior & Grissom as different contractors working on the project.
So even if the design still looks "mismatched" in the final film, I don't have too big of a problem believing that, say, the nacelles and saucer were designed by different contractors.
SonicRanger, I'm sorry for having overlooked your post. I hope you're right about the ship in the movie. You're certainly right about the trailer, but the views we do see of the ship are mostly blurred and obscured by effects.
And Shane Johnson wasn't the first to propose the idea of common parts used in various designs. Wouldn't it have been Franz Joseph? And then there was the Ship Construction Manual associated with FASA's Star Trek: The Role Playing Game ... I spent hours swapping different engines from different manufacturers in and out on ship designs under that system.
BTW you're really barking in the wrong direction going after PSION -- he is one of the good guys here (there are VERY few on trekbbs)...
Thanks! I appreciate that.
) 
