Yesterday's Enterprise was on last night, and I had this same thought--the Federation's been at war for twenty years, a period that would have encompassed the entire development cycle of the Galaxy class, and yet the Enterprise is basically entirely unchanged (except they can no longer afford light bulbs, since 60 watts = extra phaser power, apparently). One can suppose that if the Galaxy class looks identical in a world at war, the Trek-Prime universe's Galaxy class was built as powerfully as technologically and economically possible, and the high-minded mission statements and such are hype. It's a warship called an explorer.
That would indeed be my take on it, too. Starfleet took a lesson from the cold war with the Klingons and realized that building uberbattleships with multiple nacelles that had little to do without an actual war except schlepp here and there and take up space while little bugs like the Oberth get routinely blasted to bits on science missions was wasteful.
It's all rather Orwellian, really. Maybe the Klingons were right.
It's a homo sapiens only club.
Instead, Data manages to save it.
