I can be as pedantic as anyone here or in the fanbase if I want. I just choose to be less of one these days.
Easier on the blood pressure.
Easier on the blood pressure.
Does the current state of Star Trek say anything about what fans want?
- Thread starter Citiprime
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I find it interesting in short bursts or understanding how the made up tech of the week in theory works and how that fits in with the story, or seeing the odd thing around why one type of cloak is different to another (and why the Emperor's new one seems not to be there at all) but I can't get excited over why 25th cent tech isn't advanced enough compared to 23rd as that isn't what gets me going - but for those who do then please keep on enjoying it.
I do enjoy some good ship porn but only so much as the E-E swooping in to save the Defiant was cool or the fleet battles in the Dominion War arc were spectacular - especially compared to what had come before. That said, I don't lose enjoyment (Enjoyment Disfunction if you will...) if a ship looks a bit wierd.
Same, but I also don't have the great big love affair with ships that many do. Different strokes for different folks, but most ships are just ugly to me. I'm someone who has built models, and Lego ships, and basic editing to do kit bashes and that's about it. Ships and their evolution don't draw me in to it from an enjoyment standpoint. If you want to talk about living on a starship, different facets of daily life, and duty shifts and the human element then I'm all for it. Another ship variant does not move my enjoyment meter.
Behind the Scenes.What is BTS?
Like, the boy band?
Ah mate - I used to love building ships (both Trek and Wars) back in the day out of K'Nex
Used to build whole fleets of them with the people who lived down my road when growing up
Here's how I view my ship porn: I have always felt that there should be a clear chronological design lineage when it comes to showing ships from a certain time period. The TOS Enterprise and other miscellaneous Federation vessels shown in TAS should be the templates for designing ships during the period of the 2250's-'60's. The TMP Enterprise refit, the Reliant, and the Constellation class should be the templates for design attributes of ships from the 2270's-'80's. The Excelsior, Curry, Raging Queen, Centaur, etc. have design attributes for the beginning of the 'Lost Years' (i.e. 2290's-2320's), while the Ambassador class would be roughly around the 2330's-'40's. Then around the 2350's you have the beginning of ships using Galaxy class components (BoBW kitbashes, Nebula class), culminating in the Galaxy class in the 2360's. By the 2370's ship designs transition to the Sovereign, Nova, Intrepid and Prometheus classes, which was the last time we saw the 24th century until PIC in 2399-2401. We're now seeing the 2380's time period in shows like LDS and PRO, where ships like the Obena and Parliament seem to be starting the trend of 'throwback' designs, while the Protostar, the Dauntless and presumably the Voyager-A shows the logical progression toward more organic lines. Even the Inquiry class shown in 2399 makes sense design-wise as an advancement of the Intrepid and Sovereign class.
However, some of the design choices lately just don't seem to work for me. The DSC season 1 Starfleet ships seem far more advanced than they should be for the design lineage of the TOS period (although this seems to be getting corrected for SNW). The PIC season 2 ships (minus the Stargazer) were just STO updates of older ship classes which don't make much sense to me lineage-wise. The worst offender was the Leondegrance, which was a design meant to be contemporary to the Sovereign class, as a ship commissioned in the 2280's! (Since it was just artwork, I'm hoping it will be retconned later to a more contemporaneous TMP-era design.) And now we have the Titan-A, which makes zero sense to me design-wise, as there is no logical reason for a Starfleet vessel to have a 'throwback' design, and I don't buy any of the offered reasons I've heard for it. Based on the design lineage, Starfleet vessels should be super-sleek with arrowhead saucers and a more organic feel to them by the start of the 25th century. Instead we get a ship that looks like it came from 100 years before. I'm sure it works just fine for other people, but it doesn't to me.
The trouble with that ship is that it's so conspiciously out of step with design trends that it's begging for a character to comment on it.
I think the Titan-A works better for 2301 than 2401. Obviously it doesn't interfere with my enjoyment of PIC Season 3, but the observation stands.
Likewise, I think the Discovery works better for 2276 than 2256. It even lines up with the original concept design being sketched in 1976, if we take "TOS" (and Planet of the Titans by extension) as having been "Present Day + 300 Years".
Likewise, I think the Discovery works better for 2276 than 2256. It even lines up with the original concept design being sketched in 1976, if we take "TOS" (and Planet of the Titans by extension) as having been "Present Day + 300 Years".
I agree wholeheartedly with everything you said.
For me, the DSC ships feel like a natural evolution of the NX class - certainly the linear plane of the Crossfield class feels like an evolution of the NX (ignoring the refit giving it a secondary hull)
I don't mind the non angular ships (Obena, Neo Con) as there is no need for them to be streamlined in space and it is just an aesthetic choice.
I guess the key for me is that they don't pull me out of the moment - in real life my favourite car is a 2005 Honda Civic because it is pure "get from A to B" and could fit my drum kit in the back so I am really not an aesthetics guy.
I will admit to being a bit of a simpleton with these things - rule of cool and memberberries do it for me as I don't watch the space scenes for their realism.
If I was to get into that side of it then I do think @Lord Garth has it summed up perfectly but my enjoyment of the show will rarely (if ever) be spoiled by these things
The only design that evoked the NX class to me was the Engle class. The Walker was also sorta similar, but there was far more about it that looked more like a ship built post-TUC rather than pre-TOS. The rest of the ships (Discovery included) ranged from a bit more advanced than the TMP Constitution class all the way to something that looked so advanced that they could have used it for one of the Star Trek: First Contact ships in the 2370's.
I think this is where the debate over expectations for how they should look goes down the old favourite of fidelity to TOS or update for where the world is now and capabilities of technology etc
Obviously we differ in how important the lineage is/how easily explained away it can be but your view of it doesn't stop me enjoying it, hopefully my views don't ruin it for you (if they did then I have much more power than I ever realised and I will use it for evil) and we live and let live
I think I'm the only person that liked the original design of Discovery they first teased in 2016. It fits closer to the TNG/ENT era aesthetic. The shorter nacelles look and flow better with the design than the long ones the production design has. And I like the saucer being complete, instead of having negative space.
You're probably right. I thought DISCO was the ugliest design imaginable and this coming from a person who thought 1701-E was a shit stain to behold.
No, you're not the only one. I liked this design a lot better than the one we finally got in the series itself.
To me the actual series ship was a step down in quality.
Indeed. The ships of DIscovery flow well from the NX to the KELVIN to various Starfleet ships. The Crossfield is the only outlier and I don't like it one lick.
Which is making me agree with those who say they should just do a series set during either the TOS movie era or the Lost Era between TUC and TNG. After all, they seem to love designing ships that fit with that timeframe, might as well have a show set there rather than keep shoehorning those ships into other eras.
For my own curiosity, do you consider throwback designs just generally unlikely (which, for my part, I will usually agree with depending on context) or do you generally just not like such designs at all? I'm curious because in some of the non-Trek series I follow, chiefly Battletech, such designs are relatively common even though it's a much different setting than Star Trek. BT is an ongoing war game, where in some eras advanced designs are practically nonexistent and in other eras, some designs or upgrades are less common due to specific circumstances. Maybe there's a legal problem between manufacturers creating the next generation of a design, or in acquiring the imported parts essential for it, or some other factor. Maybe some of the variants become less common for a time because the factories needed to assemble their components were destroyed and have to be rebuilt. Some of the more advanced structural composites designed by the Star League became lost technology for a few centuries, because creating them required a zero-g orbital environment that avoided problems caused by gravity.
And there's also the problem that more useful and technologically advanced components tend to raise the price tag for a design, even if some of those parts aren't necessarily ideal. An extra light engine saves weight and space by making its shields thinner and lighter, so you can mount more weapons on the unit without compromising the engine's speed or performance. The drawback is that these thinned shields make the XL engine much more vulnerable to ammunition explosions or critical hits that could take out the whole machine, in addition to being pricier. Some pilots don't feel the increased risks always balance the advantages.
The art issues related to the franchise are sort of their own separate discussion, but there have been cases where designs were deliberately throwbacks to older models, or where the artists just combined elements of existing designs in a way that looked cool. The most famous example of the latter is the Clan Timber Wolf, which is arguably the least original visually out of the original Clan units. It's basically the hull of a Catapult artillery mech with the arms from a Marauder pegged on, and a lot of internal differences.
It's known as the Mad Cat in the Inner Sphere because initially targeting systems thought it was either a Catapult or a Marauder and couldn't quite decide how to classify it.
Catapult
Marauder
Timber Wolf
Mechanically, the Timber Wolf is a much different machine than the Catapult and Marauder, and far more powerful since it is an omnimech with modular weapons configurations. By the time the Clan War started in 3049, the Clans had already relegated older non-omni designs to second line units or simply decommissioned them. Some of the other early Clan designs are clearly influenced by other classic mechs, like the Summoner (Thor) omnimech being a descendant of the Thunderbolt series. But the visual differences are much stronger otherwise. And the Timber Wolf is in ways a consistent progression with how the Clan militaries evolved. They never lost the Star League industrial base and even improved on it in some ways.
The first model of the Timber Wolf entered service in 2945, almost a century and a half after the Clans were organized (2807). The Catapult was a pre-League design (2561) and the earliest Marauders were a mid-League design (2612). The Marauder was popular enough that several other designs were in progress, but wouldn't see proper construction for a few centuries after the League collapsed.
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Not sure if this is just intended as a pun (in which case it is totally above my head) butWhat is BTS?
Like, the boy band?
BTS = behind the scenes
(Yes, it’s also a k pop band name)
I’ve shot bts for productions before. It’s nice because it’s not as stressful as actually working on the show.
That sounds like a judgement.
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