Early-TNG Ethos Fan Designs?

[Arpy]

Watching Trekyards' new anniversary video on the Galaxy Class, my mind started drifting to earlier TNG design thought, and I'm wondering if anyone has links to early Galaxy Class era starship designs. Or designs more elegant and beautiful than blunt and gooney.

The organic majesty of the Enterprise-D remains with me as something really interesting, when Trek wasn't overly preoccupied with appearing tough and blowing up baddies of the week/war. When we really do get deep into outer space, we're not going to be warring with endless alien baddies but really trying to do something out there, in the vast empty space. The action/combat stuff really works for me when it's sprinkled-in threatening the other stuff, more than when it's just contemporary Flash Gordon phaser in your pocket and monster at your throat.

Even the Enterprise-J, which I really don't like, seems at least with its spindly nacelles to suggest a design ethos not overly concerned with looking mean or cool, knowing that you could probably ram an Imperial Star Destroyer into their weakest point and it'd only accomplish slicing itself in half.

 

[publiusr]

The old GEC logbooks had lots of great designs--I don't think they have made it to the web yet.

 

[Arpy]

I think TNG ships are harder to design (when done well) because the organic shapes don't lend themselves as easily to kitbashing. I also wonder if the D's overall more sober design (it's a starship first and a battleship when needed to be) also doesn't immediately inspire the typical war fleet imagery...it seems wrong to crowd it with other ships or to throw it around, getting blown up left and right like all those Mirandas.

Though, this may be personal bias on my part, and I really thought it looked wrong seeing the Mirandas being sacrificed like fighters in tightly packed fleet battles in the Dominon War. You got the idea earlier in Trek that when a warp core blew it was dangerous to be anywhere near it. And when phasers fired, they were powerful radiation streams that put nukes well in the past. The special effects limits of TOS made it seem as ships were many kilometers apart during battles as their weapons ranges, speeds, and again, explosive capabilities suggest.

I'll try to find a copy of this one kit bash I did years ago of a Galaxy Class era Constellation-like ship. Like the Cheyenne Class, only larger like its dreadnaught version - ironic I know as I'm poopooing warships. But I was going for the organic grace of the Galaxy in a mega deep-space explorer design. Practically a mobile starbase. It had a thicker saucer like a Galaxy era's Constellation version of the Constitution's (but angled more sleekly, elegant despite its bulk), two long Galaxy necks leading up and down to full stardrive hulls (the upper housing more shuttles and transparent storage bays maybe for various deep space finds, and the lower the typical deflector apparatus), and four broadly-arced nacelles, dangling toward each other in graceful oval-like configuration.