Yes, but the art style they went with is pretty crappy. The super baroque design works for T'Kuvma's ancient relic ship, it doesn't work for the Klingons in general.
"Choose Your Pain" Klingon ship (Visual spoilers?)
- Thread starter Cranston
- Start date
I dunno, I think designs like this always were generic - the designs that matter most to me personally are ones that suggest purpose - whereas when I look at those, I just see a bored concept artist with no ideas making a generic shape, and then seeing how many ribs they can fit onto it - "take five isosceles triangles, drop them randomly on a table to make your spacecraft, then add a shit-ton of lines, ridges, ribs and surface details to them". The result:
Would anyone recognize that silhouette as Klingon if it turned up randomly?
The original Enterprise, Romulan Bird of Prey and Klingon D7 on the other hand were designed to be instantly recognizable from their silhouette alone. Gene Coon and Gene Roddenbury were WW2 veterans - their directive was to make ships distinguishable from one another at a glance - like a WW2 airplane recognition chart.
A ship like the connie suggests utility - it's pods have some reason behind them even if you don't know the exact reason, you can guess they are engines - the shuttle-bay seems to be in a logical place - the nacelles are offset from the hull for some reason, etc. The enemy ships have similar features to suggest commonality of technology.
The Klingon ship at the top of this post has no discernable bridge, engines, shuttle bay, weapons, or anything - it's silhouette is so generic it could be a Delta Quadrant alien-of-the-week that Janeway runs into.
For this reason, elaborate for it's own sake, has never been a good idea to me.
Only when it's elaborate for a reason for intricacy do I like it - like a Warhammer 40,000 ship is suggestive of a Gothic Cathedral - perfect for a galactic empire that can barely understand it's own technology anymore - and has regressed into a Catholic/Nazi totalitarian theocracy where people believe electricity is the will of god:
The Klingon ship above just looks like something from a modern Hollywood B-movie, like Skyline:
To me (a person who, as you all know, was fed up of the way Klingons were in DS9, and advocated for their change) - the crux is not their visual appearance, but their intangible culture - the thing that most needed re-imagining about the Klingons was not their ships, tricorders, disruptors, or any other material prop - it was their society, their character, and other intangible things like that, which had grown into a boring stereotype through lack of thought - the fact they all talked in a stupid raspy tone of voice, and were apparently universally incapable of going five steps without taking offense, was grating and obnoxious - the obsession with words like 'honor, bloodwine, kahless' in every sentence of dialogue was atrocious.
So, some people might say, "hey, USS Einstein, arn't you the one who has been saying for years on TrekBBS that the Klingons needed a huge reboot"? But I never had a problem with their beautiful starships - their canonical appearance - there was no need for their most common ship to suddenly look nothing like it has for 50 years (yes, the D7 has looked the same in appearances from 1969's "Day of the Dove" to 2009's "Star Trek" !!!) - the problem was purely in their writing.
^^^^THIS.
The original D7 shape (and the more detailed K'tinga variants) might be the single most well-known and recognizable alien starship in all of pop-culture, if you discount the classic saucer shaped UFO. It's such an iconic design, it's a core element of Star Trek for over 50 years now. Why the fuck would you change that NOW?
It is the reality we have. Its not narrow, it is how it is. I do not even know if I like the design, because they don't give us good looks( something I have an issue with, more ship porn damn it!). But this is the D7, we can like it or hate it, but that does not change it is now the D7. People hated the Nx was not the round hull, but it is what it is. The NX is now pre federation earth design. Hate it or love it, This is the same thing. Maybe they will switch later, maybe they will not. But as of now, this is the D7
I thought the design did work for his house, he and his people are more or less stuck in the past. They are a very religious cult who sticks with medieval ways and practices. The other ships do not look like his, but they do look very much like the art direction klingons had been moving toward 20 years ago.
Oh yeah, they have that right. I am just saying claiming "This is not a D7" is wrong and pointless. Because it is the D7, not what I would have done and not what you would have done, but it is done.
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Gonzo
Guest
I just think its a shame and a missed opportunity to create hype for the show, the promos would have had more impact if there had been recognisable Klingon vessels participating in the battle with Starfleet.
Clearly the former. If they couldn't change it, it wouldn't have been changed. They DID, ergo, they CAN.
Perhaps you should rephrase: there are things you should change and there are things you shouldn't. This probably falls under the latter.
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Gonzo
Guest
I don't think so it would be all over the boards if they had.
There seems to be a disconnect between the writers and the vfx-guys going on. Maybe has to do something with the sheer unbelievable high number of producers in the credits, who could all overrule a mere "writer" in the decision making process?
Anyway, for example during the battle of the binary stars, after the Shenzhou is taken out, there was one(!) vfx-shot where a whole bunch of new klingon ships drop from warp, and destroy the entire Federation fleet. Yet a few seconds later, the destruction of the "Europa" is treated as a single, shocking event by the Shenzhou bridge crew.
During "the butchers knife..." the klingons look at the remains of the fleet - and it is said that the Shenzhou wreck would be the only Federation ship complete enough to have a functioning Dilithium reactor. Yet, in the vfx-shot of the graphic depiction of the debris field, we can clearly make out a whole bunch of other Federation starships, almost completely intact!
And now we have this, where the writers clearly included a nod to the fans and a classic design, yet the vfx guys just inserted one of the random klingon background ship models they had from back from the pilot episode.
There might be more examples, but it jut does seem that the transformation process from script -> vfx houses -> screen doesn't work yet at the same level as TNG-ENT-era Trek production managed back in the day. Might be one of the results of a mostly fresh crew being in charge of a Trek show for the first time in decades, so there is hope they will improve in this regard, once they got more experience doing those things.
Anyway, for example during the battle of the binary stars, after the Shenzhou is taken out, there was one(!) vfx-shot where a whole bunch of new klingon ships drop from warp, and destroy the entire Federation fleet. Yet a few seconds later, the destruction of the "Europa" is treated as a single, shocking event by the Shenzhou bridge crew.
During "the butchers knife..." the klingons look at the remains of the fleet - and it is said that the Shenzhou wreck would be the only Federation ship complete enough to have a functioning Dilithium reactor. Yet, in the vfx-shot of the graphic depiction of the debris field, we can clearly make out a whole bunch of other Federation starships, almost completely intact!
And now we have this, where the writers clearly included a nod to the fans and a classic design, yet the vfx guys just inserted one of the random klingon background ship models they had from back from the pilot episode.
There might be more examples, but it jut does seem that the transformation process from script -> vfx houses -> screen doesn't work yet at the same level as TNG-ENT-era Trek production managed back in the day. Might be one of the results of a mostly fresh crew being in charge of a Trek show for the first time in decades, so there is hope they will improve in this regard, once they got more experience doing those things.
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Gonzo
Guest
We know there were problems in development with a strong possibility some of those issues were located in the writing room, I suspect that some of the CBS execs may have been a bit heavy handed in places.
In "The Butcher's Knife ...", after the Discovery makes her jump to Corvan II, Keyla announces "The Birds are at 1,000km and closing." The visuals had just shown the Discovery hovering right over the colony with two Klingon ships directly ahead and under, probably no more than a couple hundred meters. A few seconds later another officer says, "Birds of Prey closing in at 500 kilometers" and the very next visual shows them circling the ship and firing upon it. A few seconds after that, we see three Klingon ships skim over the hull of the Discovery and Lorca says, "I need them closer, wait ...."
Haha, I think I forgot about that one, because it has always been this way on Star Trek!
You say that like the writers and VFX guys were ever connected in the first place. That hasn't been the case since at least The Corbomite Maneuver.
i'm trying to remember one particularly brazen example from TNG where somebody quoted a range of like 4000km for a Klingon bird of prey and the exterior shot, like 10 seconds later, showed the Klingon ship maybe five ship lengths away from the Enterprise.Haha, I think I forgot about that one, because it has always been this way on Star Trek!
Either way... yeah, this is pretty much business as usual. Another example of the fact that the rule "Objects in frame are farther away/smaller than they appear."
It's tiring to pointing the production fault in here and there, complaining about different arts, canon violation, and even analyzing and find plot holes in a show. So I decide that this Star Trek is a re-imagining verse, and I'll enjoy it whatever it is. I don't want to over analyzing it anymore, because I don't want to break my mood and hate my long waited TV Show. As long as I like it, I will continue. And if I become bored of it, I will do what I did with The Orville. Stop watching and live go on.
Usually, in the past, they were really friggin' good at it. When they said "three Romulan warbirds decloak", than usually we saw three Romulan Warbirds in the next effects shot. Not two. Not four. Not klingon ships. But three Romulan Warbirds, exactly as was said in the script. The only thing they always got wrong were distances, because they wanted the different ships in the same shot. But even then, their relative postition to each other was usually pretty much what was said in dialogue or on their tactical screens (blue and red dots moving around).
DIS currently isn't at that level of adaption.
I think that might have 3 different reasons:
1) This is a new producer's crew, they still have to learn some of the neat tricks in adapting Trek scripts correctly that the old guard figured out during all these years
2) This was a very troubled production early on. The need to get something on the screen was bigger than to get every detail right. ALso, this big a number of producers as being seen in the credits can't be good for creative freedom
3) There are just SO MANY vfx-shots compared to older Trek. It's much easier to get something wrong when you need to finish a dozen different vfx before a deadline, compared to when everyone (producers, writers, vfx-guys) are working together to get than one new vfx shot in the episode right (TNG).
Actually, it does have a discernable head and neck that seem to be recessed into the armored hull, and rather "classic" looking nacelles tucked up underneath. Wouldn't it be wild if, as with the Ferengi marauder from TNG or Voyager or the Scimitar from NEM or the Klingon (!) BoP from STIII or indeed Discovery herself, this design incorporated moving parts that changed configuration in different operational modes, with an extendable neck and unfolding wings, which when revealed would bring it more into line with the traditional Klingon battlecruiser layout? The main hull is certainly the right general shape to start from. Of course, if it had such a "predator mode" then I guess we might have expected to see it deployed at the Battle of the Binaries, but just maybe they're saving it for an "o ye of little faith" reveal! Not that I actually expect this in the slightest, but it sure would make for a nerdgasmy moment eh?
The design was apparently already seen in the 'Binary Stars.' It has no neck or head, nor engines on the tips of the 'wings'. It looks about as much like original D7 than Millennium Falcon looks like original Enterprise. This is obviously not an update, nor it is even a redesign. It is a thing being replaced by a completely different thing.
And in turn are directed by the suits.
Is this:
A) A wraith ship from Stargate: Adlantis
B) A Narn-ship from Babylon 5
C) The "Destiny" from Stargate: Universe
D) A ship from Star Wars
E) A Goa'Uld ship from SG-1
F) The new Viper-model from nuBSG
G) Alien re-design of the Delta-Flyer
H) An insectoid ship from Lexx
or
I) This iconic ship:
Your guess!
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