First View of SOTL 2011 NX-01 Refit Diagram

[Starlock]

Doug Drexler has put up plan views of the NX-01 Refit for the 2011 Calendar.

http://drexfiles.wordpress.com/2010/04/25/nx-01-refit-diagram/

Could it be that the Akiraprise curse is finally lifted...?

 

[Gagarin]

Yes, but it got the curse of the ugly stick instead.

 

[sojourner]

That's not the first view, he posted another image some months back. This one is much clearer though.

 

[AstroSmurf]

Yes, but it got the curse of the ugly stick instead.

I am very embarrassed to say this but I agree. People have been aggravating me to death wanting my opinion since Mr. Drexler first posted about it. I have managed to keep my big trap shut about it until now.

I LOVE the design of the NX and thought she was just fine the way she was. The ship was balanced and clean. But this... not so much. She just looks a little to "kludged" for my tastes. If there was some way to balance the new hull's contact points with the original warp farings, things would look better. The original deflector dish needs to be removed as well.

Edit to Add: After looking at the drawings again, if the new secondary hull was moved back and the interconnecting neck was reduced, I think things would flow together better. And from the front she looks awesome. It is the side profile that is bugging me.

 

[publiusr]

I might have had a new vessel. A wider, thinner saucer, longer nacelles, etc.

This allows for a better, more elegant side view.

 

[Captain Robert April]

You're expressing the thoughts of the folks who came along after the NX and advanced the process to the Daedelus and on the line down to the Constitution.

In other words, quit your bitching, it's supposed to be butt ugly!

 

[Warped9]

Although I'm surprised to say so that refit NX-01 looks light years better than the actual design used. With some tweaking it could actually have looked like something genuinely pre TOS, although not mid 22nd century. Something around 2220s maybe.

 

[Timo]

The fun thing about this is that the modifications look treknologically plausible. The new hull is bolted on where there already exists a bolt-on point: the shuttlebay opening. The new warp core seems to bypass the old booms and their supposed plasma recharger thingamabobs and to directly access the nacelles via all-new pylons - a "cheap shortcut" future engineers might well take.

Basically, it seems that the designers followed the original (Drexler-explicated) approach where new and better warp cores would be swapped through the aft doors of the saucer, took that to its limits, and when the newest core types no longer fit inside the saucer, they created an all-new slot for them...

This sort of suggests that the vessel remains a propulsion testbed, perhaps a unique specimen, and probably sees little operational use because Starfleet no longer is short on non-prototype ships.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Hartzilla2007]

You're expressing the thoughts of the folks who came along after the NX and advanced the process to the Daedelus and on the line down to the Constitution.

In other words, quit your bitching, it's supposed to be butt ugly!

You know that is a good point, I mean just look at the Daedalus.

 

[Starlock]

That's not the first view, he posted another image some months back. This one is much clearer though.

Oh, I know that...

But to me it counts as a real "first view" in that we can finally make out the actual frakkin' details.

 

[BolianAuthor]

The NX refit is an unoriginal and uninspired hack-job. But that vertical Warbird is beyond beautiful... Mr. Probert outdid himself.

 

[Timo]

Dunno - looks a bit sketchy. But I like how it's not just the familiar version rotated, but more like rotated and doubled in size and impressiveness. Each engine nacelle has a "doubled" ramscoop, the bird head has two "ears" that look like gun emplacements, the head is wider and more complex...

It's a good call to show her in company with the two lesser birds.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[ALF]

You know what? I really admire Doug's work and always have, but the refit is an example of fixing something that's not broken.

I always liked the NX01 from the start. Don't care that it looks like the Akira. It has similarities to the constitution class, kind of like with the bottom sawed off and that's the reason I liked it.

Having said that... the vertical double hulled Romulan warbird is A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

 

[caisson2delta]

You know what? I really admire Doug's work and always have, but the refit is an example of fixing something that's not broken.

I always liked the NX01 from the start. Don't care that it looks like the Akira. It has similarities to the constitution class, kind of like with the bottom sawed off and that's the reason I liked it.

Having said that... the vertical double hulled Romulan warbird is A.W.E.S.O.M.E.

My sentiments exactly. I always loved the design and thought it was perfect for the show and what it was supposed to represent. I never thought it looked too futuristic and was a great precursor to what was to come later in the lineage.

 

[Unicron]

I suppose I'm the opposite in regards to the vertical warbird. It's an interesting concept, but it doesn't gel as well for me as the official horizontal version.

 

[David cgc]

The thing about the Warbird that gets me is that it's just too damn big. I mean, you could probably fit the Enterprise-D inside of the head without any of it sticking out. For a Trek ship, something that size that isn't some kind of Exotic Alien Monster Ship, well, it almost looks like it shouldn't be able to move under it's own power at all. It's probably a bit bigger than Deep Space Nine, or at least in the same range.

 

[USS Jack Riley]

I suppose I'm the opposite in regards to the vertical warbird. It's an interesting concept, but it doesn't gel as well for me as the official horizontal version.

Actually, the vertical aspect was the original design. Unfortunately it was too alien () so they made Probert change it the horizontal configuration. Personally I like the vertical arrangement as it was something different that we didn't get to see very often.

YMMV

 

[Unicron]

I think the warbird was scaled better later in the show, when it seemed to be roughly the same size as the Galaxy or Vor'Cha. The only ep I can recall where it looked really huge was in "The Neutral Zone." And I've never really liked the effect because of the scale differences.

 

[Captain Robert April]

The rearrangement had nothing to do with how "alien" the design was, it had to do with the dimensions of your tv screen and the practicality of using that design for a tv show. To see the whole thing in frame, they'd have to zoom out so far it'd look ridiculous. Not to mention that if you put the Enterprise-D in the same scene, it'd be so small that it'd be almost unrecongizable.

 

[Timo]

...Which might be very good for certain types of drama, actually.

But the "pull out till you see the vastness of the thing" trick is extremely difficult to do with physical models, so it would have wait for the adoption of CGI in Star Trek photography. Perhaps these ships could have joined the Romulan fleet for the Dominion War?

Timo Saloniemi