Especially considering the "NCC-1648" that appears on the Europa I'm thinking at this point the registries actually mean something more specific than that and probably aren't really sequential. Maybe anything that starts with 0 is a deep space pioneer/exploration vessel, anything that starts with a 1 is a multi-purpose cruiser type vessel, and registries starting with 2 are colonial support vessels meant to help distant outposts far from Federation space stay self sufficient.
I wouldn't call that a "mistake." At the time there was no rationale to registry numbers. 1017 was as good a number as any. The FC ships were designed by Alex Jaeger, not John Eaves. The only instructions Jaeger was given was that none of the designs must look anything like the new Enterprise-E, so the audience wouldn't be confused as to which ship was on the screen. He was not told to make the ships "older" or "newer." As far as the low registries, like you said, think that was more a disconnect between the VFX guys and the Art Department guys (i.e. the VFX guys making the registry number on the Prometheus (from VOY's "Ship in a Bottle") NX-59690 as opposed to Okuda's dedication plaque reading NX-74913.) You mean the Greg Jein extrapolation from the Court Martial chart? Agreed.
Should have posted this with my other posts. In combat, those four small connections in the saucer seem like a weakness easy to exploit by an enemy.
Not really. A photon torpedo can blow straight through the hull of an unshielded ship anyway. What chances of them all being blown out? And even then, it would be more important to worry about a torpedo hitting the warp core. The outer ring is still attached to the main spine of the ship. At worst you've lost a turboshaft, a slight inconvenience in battle. File this along with conventional fan wisdom that the Enterprise's neck was vulnerable, or the nacelle pylons, or the bridge. Yet literally never are any of these a concern in combat... Until Beyond that is, but even then everyone is aghast at such an unthinkable tactic being used on them.
That would be great cinematically, and maybe save the ship from major damage. For an offbeat idea, blow the connections and use the central saucer as an escape craft?
Somebody went to an awful lot of trouble to make sure the three parts of the Discovery primary hull all look like they could never leave the ship. That is, the thick spine of the ship connects to all three, seemingly seamlessly... Timo Saloniemi
Well, we know the leaked turbolift MSD must be an early photo or outright wrong, showing a 10 deck ship with the bridge on deck 7. The Shenzhou is now at least a 15 deck ship, with about 10 in the saucer, since they make a point of the Brig being on deck 9 which is not the lowest deck up there, putting the bridge and first deck of engineering at about 11 or 12.
Since the Deck numbers to the right of the graphic don't really align with the ship picture, we might say that Decks 1 through 10, the ones listed in the diagram, are all in the saucer. Turbolift A just doesn't go lower than that, its lower terminal being at the Bridge level which is Deck 10. That still leaves Decks up to 15 in the lower parts of the ship, accessible via Turbolift B Port and B Starboard... And the ship cutaway just zooms in on passing decks, enlarging them and obscuring others - explaining the "ramps" towards the stern, the varying heights of the decks, and the seeming lack of three out of the 10 decks in the picture. Timo Saloniemi
I just looked at the image again and there are only 6 decks in the saucer, someone has pressed "Deck 7" and the bridge is lit up in the same blue glow. Yeah it was from further back in production when the ship was smaller, the deck listing at the side is lined up with the 10 decks there were at the time. But it's just a graphic and we never see it used in the episode, so either it was scrapped or replaced before airing.
...Supposedly it is visible inside the turbolift nevertheless? We don't need to deal with the detail if we can't see it, but we can pretend that the blue on the bridge just indicates it's the target while the blue on "Deck 7" means nothing at all except that the lift happens to be traveling through Deck 7 at the moment. Timo Saloniemi
So nobody's going to comment on how awesome it is that Shenzhou's bridge is on the BOTTOM of the saucer? Like, for 10 years I've been looking at starship designs from the TMP refit to the Nebula class and thinking that for half of those designs -- maybe even ALL of them -- the bottom of the saucer is a much more logical place to put the bridge. The hanging gondola puts the bridge in a much safer position, deeper within the deflector shield envelope, not to mention (in most designs) in a position closer to the line of sight for the photon torpedo launchers as well as the ship's actual centerline of flight, which aids navigation, maneuvering and target acquisition. Plus, the bridge in that position has a much better field of view, particularly for anyone standing near the windows, since a natural human posture has a greater comfort in looking down than up (thus a downward slanted window naturally has a more comfortable visual field than than upward-slanting one). It's also the best place to make planetary observations for a starship in orbit, since half the time the ship will be orbiting deck-down towards the surface for some reason. It's CERTAINLY a better place for the bridge if the ship is doing low-altitude flight or even landing operations, situations in which the only thing you really need to see is the ground. Most importantly, for MOST starships, the docking ports and mooring stations are all below the saucer's midline, which means that docking maneuvers at a space station would have to be guided by visual aids that more closely align with those below-deck docking ports. All in all, the Gondola Bridge is probably the most sensible thing that Star Trek has ever -- FINALLY! -- shown us. Too bad Shenzhou isn't the hero ship.
In three dimensional space (even without the use of guided weapons) the bottom bridge is as vulnerable /dangerous as the top bridge.
With photon torpedos being able to penetrate an unshielded hull with ease, NOWHERE on board is safe once the shields go down.
I really liked seeing the bridge at the bottom. I wouldn't want it as a regular thing in a bunch of designs, but it was a cool feature on a good looking design.
I think the "cupola" style bridge on the bottom of the saucer was a pretty cool idea. But then I also think bridge windows are probably the coolest thing this new era of Star Trek has introduced. I just wish they would have thought of some window shutters to also make it possibly to fly with closed bridge.
I'd like to see a ship with a retractable bridge module. But I think (and this has been made clear in those two episodes) Starfleet ships are not built for combat, but exploration.They simply don't worry about compabt enough to not place it on the outside. John Eaves probably designed 1/3 of all Star Trek ships so far, and he's still able to pump out some really interesting designs. He mentioned on Facebook that he intended the nacelles to be round but got overruled by the producers (not sure if it was purely a design decision or if there was a real reason, like the ability to tell them apart from the Constitution). The whole argument about the ship(s) looking too advanced is somewhat intriguing to me. We know nothing about manufacturing starships or how their design is influenced by their function. If anything, those arguing that Eaves' Star Trek Online ship designs look too similar to this got a point (and I suppose this is where the argument is coming from?): STO designs simply don't look advanced enough for the late 24th century. As for this timeframe, Shenzhou looks like a rust bucket compared to a much sleeker Constitution design. No issues with the ship designs here. But anyone from the 'too advanced' camp, feel free to tell me why exactly you think they look like 24th century ships. As for Klingons, I do like the ancient look of the sarcophagus ship. The rest was kind of difficult to make out, so I'll pass judgement once we get a better look at them. But hey, at least they didn't recycle the D7 again.