Well, to be fair:3D Master said:
Mariner Class said:
Brutal Strudel said:
TeutonicNights said:
I love Skippy's design.
http://img144.imageshack.us/img144/9673/earlyentglowuv7.jpg
I like it too. I like Gabe's as well (not nearly as much, I must admit). But I like them as fan art. The original is more than just a sweet design (it is--damn near perfect) but it is also iconic and has strong sentimental value to a great many people. I just can't see how a rational cost/benefit analysis which takes that factor into account along with the likelihood that most non-fans won't care one way or the other yields up: "Hey, I got a better idea! Let's sex her up!"
I'm the crazed old-skool fan who would squeal with absolute ecstasy if Vektor's 1701 glided onto the silver screen.
If she's going to be "updated," let a genuine artist take the reins. As was the case with the original.
Ugh, that's ugly! That's exactly what I do NOT want to see. For one thing, the original Enterprise has no blue strips of sequential warp coils - the red tips and white tips at the end, are the space-time sinks, aka warp coils.
1) Vektor put this up as his April Fool's joke... and he intentionally did things that were examples of what everyone has been afraid would happen (TNG-ization of the design, battleship plating, big turret cannon, etc). He just did it so well that many people BELIEVED it. (His work here was intended to copy, and nearly flawlessly did so, the work of John Eaves, the guy who did the 1701-E among others.)
2) The idea that the globes on the original 1701 are "space-time sinks" or whatever isn't supported by anything other than F.J's (non-canonical) work and by a lot of fan-fiction. As far as the original production staff was concerned, the engines were just "big mysterious powerful thingies."
I,personally, agree (at least in part) with your take, however. I've always accepted that the front end was a bussard collector (with some invisible force-field cone projected forward from each nacelle). But I've always believed that the sphere we see off the tail end is a the subspace field generator.
Doesn't matter what you or I believe re: that, however... since (1) none of it is REAL, and (2) no such science exists now, and (3) the production staff on TNG made a concerted effort to promote the idea that it's all based upon a totally different concept (linear coils).
I'll always believe that the original engines were something else. But there's no support for that other than my personal wishes.