Different design for the NX-01

[The Wormhole]

Actually, the reason we never saw any Sovereign class ships on DS9 or Voyager is because Paramount forbid it, wanting it to be a movie-exclusive ship. Apparentally there were heated arguments where DS9's staff wanted a Sovereign class in the battle in What You Leave Behind, and Paramount refused to allow it because they only wanted the ship in movies.

I don't know why we didn't see many other Intrepids. There obviously weren't rules against it, given we do see the Bellerophon on DS9.

 

[Irishman]

Word of God from Doug Drexler himself, one of the production designers on the show, confirms this as fact. I think his blog entry was the first place this was ever mentioned, actually

It sounds a lot like Drexler is doing the good old not letting the facts get in the way of a good story thing. I mean, I'm sure the big brass came to Zimmerman and pals with a picture of a starship and said "we want this", but I'm also sure they didn't literally mean that. It's the paid job of the art department to create acceptable art out of such suggestions, not some sort of saintly service to the fandom and continuity. I'd be much more surprised if TPTB bothered to spell out "we want this, with modifications" to these people who should know better from the start.

Timo Saloniemi

We don't have to guess what was said. You can read Doug's posts on it.

 

[Timo]

I don't need to believe him, though. I mean, it is a good story. And those usually aren't literal truths.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

Well, I believe him, mainly because a) he has no reason to lie, and b) his sentiments about the producers' decisions were mirrored by other VFX people who worked on the show, such as Adam "Mojo" Leibowitz.

 

[Timo]

I actually think those two points count in the opposite direction: 1) lying is better drama than sticking to the dry facts, and 2) he's agreeing with people's sentiments rather than impartially reporting dry facts...

Dunno. I'll just go and ask, soon enough. (Not tonight, tho. A Pink Party awaits managing...)

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Unicron]

Actually, the reason we never saw any Sovereign class ships on DS9 or Voyager is because Paramount forbid it, wanting it to be a movie-exclusive ship. Apparentally there were heated arguments where DS9's staff wanted a Sovereign class in the battle in What You Leave Behind, and Paramount refused to allow it because they only wanted the ship in movies.

You know, this has always seemed like bizarro thinking to me. Does Paramount think that because they used a couple of unnamed Defiants in an ep of VOY, people would forget about the USS Defiant's key role in DS9? I've never understood this mentality, except that it seems to stem from Gene Roddenberry's preference for the TMP Enterprise to be a "refitted" version of the original ship, rather than a new vessel or a new Enterprise.

 

[Glacial]

Anywho! I went and dug up some of Drexler's Tech Briefs for the NX from his blog -- you can see some of the detail and thought the guy put into that ship. Sadly, none of it ever really got used, or even shown in the series.

I remember him being disappointed when Reed was sent to spacewalk out to that mine in 'Minefield,' because he'd designed the ship with a network of tracks for EV service cabs to roll around on, and that sort of situation was exactly what they were for. Still a great episode, though.

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/04/21/nx-tech-briefs-02/ Nacelles and docking system, also note awesome dish comm arrays

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/04/20/nx-tech-briefs-01/ Engineering EV staging area, swappable warp core, impulse engines and RCS thrusters!

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2009/04/22/nx-tech-briefs-03-bridge-module/ Bridge module and environs.

You can really see the guy poured his heart and soul into that model...

 

[ChristopherPike]

You can really see the guy poured his heart and soul into that model...

I totally agree with that. I've saved a huge number of ENT images from that site, just in case it ever disappears. There just isn't enough 22nd Century stuff out there for my liking.

I'm still gutted these guys called it a day and never finished their gaming mod:

http://www.enterprise-tcw.com/website/

I can't even begin to grasp the amount of work that must've gone to its creation.

 

[Glacial]

I'm still gutted these guys called it a day and never finished their gaming mod:

http://www.enterprise-tcw.com/website/

I can't even begin to grasp the amount of work that must've gone to its creation.

That sucked indeed. I used to drop in every season or so to see how they were doing, disappointed to see them close up shop. Oh well.

The project director even did a passable Jonathan Archer!

 

[The Castellan]

We might think that a ship of ENT's timeframe shouldn't look as polished, but in the end, the ship has to do its part in selling the series. If the ship is too ugly, people won't watch.

Worked for Star Wars, though.

 

[Gotham Central]

I think one of the things that some people miss in the Akira vs NX debate is not so much that they used a 24th century design...to me the issue was that they used a clearly Federation design.

One of the big issues that I had with Enterprise was that it did not take the time to establish Earth as a unique entity culturally from what would become the Federation. As it stands, on a purely asthetic level alone, none of the alien members of the UFP brough anything to the table when they established the Federation. The implication was that everyone simply agreed to adopt Earth technology and designs for their new alliance. To me that sort of undermined the philosophical foundation of the Federation.

Given that the Phoenix was shown with modified warp nacells, froma design perspective that should have been Earth's contribution to federation starship design. I would then expect that perhaps the separate engineering section from the Vulcans, the Saucer from the Tellarites and perhaps that high level bridge from the Andorians. In essence we should have seen parts of the Enterprise in all of the ships on the show, not just the Earth ships.

 

[Yug]

I think one of the things that some people miss in the Akira vs NX debate is not so much that they used a 24th century design...to me the issue was that they used a clearly Federation design.

One of the big issues that I had with Enterprise was that it did not take the time to establish Earth as a unique entity culturally from what would become the Federation. As it stands, on a purely asthetic level alone, none of the alien members of the UFP brough anything to the table when they established the Federation. The implication was that everyone simply agreed to adopt Earth technology and designs for their new alliance. To me that sort of undermined the philosophical foundation of the Federation.

Given that the Phoenix was shown with modified warp nacells, froma design perspective that should have been Earth's contribution to federation starship design. I would then expect that perhaps the separate engineering section from the Vulcans, the Saucer from the Tellarites and perhaps that high level bridge from the Andorians. In essence we should have seen parts of the Enterprise in all of the ships on the show, not just the Earth ships.

It's always been my guess that the Federation was a human concept from the get go. Earth entered space with all the familiar alien races already knowing of each others existence. The Vulcans and the Andorians have been feuding for centuries, Klingons and the Romulans apparently have had conflicts before we ever set foot in space. My point is, Earth entered the arena late, but wanting to bring all races together (since us humans are so evolved, tolerant, and naturally a peaceful race ) and so a lot of what we see of the Federation is totally human. We've rarely see an "alien" Captain, or Admiral (Spock the only that comes to mind, but we've never really seen him command a crew as such, and Oh, by the way: he's half human) ... Earth is considered sector 001, Federation Headquarters are on Earth. Very allegorically "American" as the super power of the planet, and in Trek terms, the super power of the known galaxy. We've been a unified country for a very short time, but consider ourselves the police of the world, same as reflected in Trek, Earth is the peacekeeper, Earth is the center of the galaxy... and often they throw the aliens a bone by making the Federation president something other than human. So I think the NX is a Federation design because it's Starfleet that is the greater human component of the Federation, the ships would reflect that design ethic.

The NX looks like a Star Trek ship... it's a Star Trek show, it makes sense to me. As far as the Akira debate, many posters here have proven that the NX, while does have hints of a retro graded Akira, it's far beyond just that ship turned upsidedown. If you look at the Akira from different views (side, rear, underside) you can see just how different it really is from the NX. You can find all these views of the Akira and the NX on the Drex Files blog, including Doug Drexler's comments on the debate... but regardless, the NX is nowhere near a "rip off" of the Akira design. It's a Star Trek design.

 

[Glacial]

One of the big issues that I had with Enterprise was that it did not take the time to establish Earth as a unique entity culturally from what would become the Federation. As it stands, on a purely asthetic level alone, none of the alien members of the UFP brough anything to the table when they established the Federation. The implication was that everyone simply agreed to adopt Earth technology and designs for their new alliance. To me that sort of undermined the philosophical foundation of the Federation.

Given that the Phoenix was shown with modified warp nacells, froma design perspective that should have been Earth's contribution to federation starship design. I would then expect that perhaps the separate engineering section from the Vulcans, the Saucer from the Tellarites and perhaps that high level bridge from the Andorians. In essence we should have seen parts of the Enterprise in all of the ships on the show, not just the Earth ships.

From the TV series and movies, we see that 99% of the people who do the exploring in Trek are human. Hell, in TOS the Enterprise is often referred to as an Earth ship. The Galaxy class was designed on Mars, etc etc. Sounds like most human-built ships followed the NX model, which was likely influenced by Cochrane seeing the 1701-E in FC...

Also, humanity's knack for starship building is mentioned in ENT season 4, with Soval telling Forrester that the Vulcans took a thousand years to go from Warp 1 to Warp 5, and humans did it in 90.

I think most of the ships we see in Trek are human-designed, -built, and -crewed, and we like saucers and nacelles. The Klingons certainly don't, nor the Vulcans or Andorians or Gorn, etc.

 

[Voyagerian]

I do like the Conestoga, but I don't see it personally as a mainline exploration vessel for Starfleet. Perhaps it's because like so many, I've grown up with the traditional saucer mode...and NX-01 as shown would seem simply the first of a long design lineage-a natural progression. And, yes, I get the 'Akiraprise' connotation easily enough; when I first saw an image of it, in ST:The Magazine mentioning the TV Guide article in 2001, I did think, 'Huh? That looks familiar.' But I accepted, and liked it...but she was better when Trip and Malcolm finally butched-up the girl with phase cannons! In a non-trek world, sure, I can see the colony ship as an exploration craft, though. I may get phasered for this, but, I won't say I hate the Daedulus-not alll tastes are the same, and let's remember-in case anyone's forgotten, or hasn't a copy of 'The Making Of Star Trek'- Matt Jeffries has a prelim design for our iconic 1701 right there among the sketches-which may be found to great extent at Trekcore's massive pic library, as well.One has to start somewhere. There are even sketches that are reminiscent of the Probert 1701's nacelle-forwards...

 

[Yug]

 

[Nerys Myk]

The NX is a better design.

 

[Vanyel]

Yug, no one is denying the similarities between the Akira and the NX. But I ask you, in a real world scenario, is there the possibility that two ships from two different era's could look similar.

 

[Yug]

Yug, no one is denying the similarities between the Akira and the NX. But I ask you, in a real world scenario, is there the possibility that two ships from two different era's could look similar.

Actually, Vanyel I totally agree with you...I'm displaying this graphic to depict how much the NX is NOT like the Akira, how the NX is in fact a BETTER design and is more a departure from the Akira than it is similar. To that end, I made no additional notes in my post even though this thread is full of my opinions on this debate for purpose of allowing others to see a true comparison... I just posted the image to let people decide for themselves. After all the talk, a visual was needed. AND, I think (IMHO) it's clear that the NX is NOT the "Akira up-side down", and that Doug Drexler did an AMAZING job making the NX an extremely cool and unique starship worthy of being the central hero ship of a Star Trek series.

 

[Fer]

Yug- thanks for posting that image. Not only is it beautiful to look at, but I agree, it shows just how different the two ships really are.

 

[Evil Ezri]

I like the different design but it does look more like a 23rd century starship.