I don't expect they'll be eager to remind fans of Trek's least successful series in any way, shape or form (then again, the last movie was packed with ENT references, so what do I know?)
I'd like to finally see them fly by the Starfleet Smithsonian. There could easily be an NX class there.
Make it look like Yorktown, too, with each ship surrounded by an air bubble so that they're easy to access, touch, and smear tags on... Or would that contradict Picard's statement that he never was able to touch the Phoenix before despite it being a museum exhibit? (He's sprouting nonsense anyway, as he's merely pawing the booster rocket that doesn't survive the test flight.) Timo Saloniemi
I would guess Phoenix is either a hanging display or encased in plastic in the direction of the public like the Mercury, Gemini, and Apollo capsules at the Smithsonian. To preserve it against fingerprints and corrosion from said fingers. At least from what I remember.
The CURATOR (as played by Tom Baker): And I saved the multiple universes multiple times and you don't see me touching it either.
Over the last two months or so I've watched the Blu-Ray box sets of 'Star Trek: Enterprise' & 'Star Trek' which I acquired earlier this year and having finished those and having watched the 'Star Trek: The Next Generation' set last summer, I moved onto the films on DVD (next up for me is 'Star Trek: Nemesis', I know pity me). When watching 'First Contact' I was wondering then how Picard could see the Phoenix in the Smithsonian, surely only the capsule that Riker, LaForge & Cochrane rode in returned to Earth. And come to think of it where and how, did it return, parachute into the sea? I looked up Bozeman Montana and it's pretty landlocked, not to mention the logistical problems of an ocean recovery and getting back to Bozeman in time to meet the Vulcans. My best guess is that the capsule separated from the drive section which was left in orbit, came down like a Russian Soyuz capsule on land, near Bozeman and at a later date the stardrive was retrieved from space and the two mated together.
My very first post on this board asked this very question. Since then, I've come up with a solution I like. After the booster falls away we see that there is a large rocket engine on the bottom of the Phoenix. We never see this fire in the movie, so why is it there? It's used to land the ship vertically just like SpaceX is doing right now with its reusable rockets.
Was it fan-wank when Riker's ship in Encounter at Farpoint was an Excelsior class? Was it fan wank when the Klingon ship in the first few TNG seasons was the TMP battle cruiser? Or when they reused the Bird of Prey throughout TNG and DS9? As long as they don't make a big deal out of it, as long as it's just incidental, I think it would be fine. I'm not in favor of it or against, it's just an idle question where it relates to this thread's topic.
It would be a different thing if they used the NX refit, which might have made it to the screen in S5, but is only conjectural now.
To be fair - it's a different Visual effects era. Those models had been used by ILM for all the TOS feature films and they were all perfectly good filming models, so it made sense to use them for TNG to both reduce actual production costs, and make the TNG universe more diverse then TOS had been 18 years earlier with regard to being able to show ship's other than the hero ship onscreen. By comparison creating a CGI model can be done fairly fast these days if it just for a quick or one off shot.
Those are all behind-the-scenes concerns. If a similar scene occurred in the first season, with a crew transfer at a starbase, and an NX-class ship slowly orbiting the station, would it really elicit the same kind of groans as C3PO & R2D2 in Rogue One (the ultimate in fan wank*)? But let's also step back a second and realize Trek has made a business out of what we now call "fan wank." It was the first true "universe" of shows, and so little references, both visual and verbal, to connect various stories have been happening since at least the premiere of TNG. My point here is, if it doesn't distract, and is not a blatant "wink" to the audience, what's the harm? The real question is though, that I have yet to get an answer on, is does anyone think this is a realistic possibility? - - - *Plenty of fan-wank in Trek, but the reason I cite this as the "ultimate" is that it was both completely unnecessary, and it took audiences out of the film during what otherwise should have been a tense moment-- and for more than just a split second.
Nothing against Bruce Greenwood, he did a great job in the movies, but he's a good 20 years too old to be playing Prime Universe Pike. (I could accept Pike being older in the JJ movies because, hey, alternate universe.) Whoever plays him in DSC should be pushing 40... Jensen Ackles, maybe?
For TNG, it was more they needed a ship for those encounters and the Excelsior and Klingon models were available for no real extra expense. The Stargazer was probably the first unneeded, but welcome form of new ship...they were going to just use a redress of the movie Enterprise-A for that ship.
Personally, I don't care about the age discrepancy at all, if they get the chance of more Bruce Greenwood in Star Trek, I say they should jump at it!
Bruce Greenwood? Fine. But who I REALLY would like to see again: Faran Tahir! Best winner of the 'Captain-most-likely-to-punch-you-in-the-face'-award since Benjamin Sisko! (and before that Kirk)