Okay, I would have weighed in on this sooner but I’ve been sick as a dog for the better part of a week and I wanted some time to digest the new Enterprise and decide what I actually thought of it without succumbing to knee-jerk reactions.
First impression: Someone made a Bugs Bunny Road Runner sketch of the TOS Enterprise, made a wax sculpture of it and then left it too close to the heater vent. The proportions are whacked, especially the angle of the nacelle struts and the way the deflector region juts so far out in front. Certain features actually do look slightly melted, like someone was going for an organic flow but got a little sloppy with the flow part. Some obvious nods to the TMP refit. I figured right away that the nacelle domes were glass (or transparent aluminum or whatever), not chrome, and that we were simply seeing them unlit. I couldn’t help feeling disappointed that they had decided to alter the original design so drastically.
Second impression: Looks like the ship shown in the teaser trailer was pretty accurate after all. We can’t see the top of the primary hull but the bottom looks just about identical. Ditto the warp nacelles, allowing for the addition of the clear domes. I also remember commenting about the oddly upright angle of what appeared to be a nacelle strut in the teaser trailer, the one with the welder perched atop a scaffolding tower with the saucer in the background. That, too, seems to match with this new image and the struts that form a much narrower ‘V’.
Third impression: After looking at it for a couple of days, I have to admit it’s growing on me. I still get a heavily stylized, almost cartoon-esque vibe from it, mostly from the exaggerated shapes and proportions. It reminds me of the portraits you can have drawn of yourself by street artists where your head is huge in proportion to your body and your most prominent features are exaggerated to comic degrees. And yet, the longer I stare at it, the less distorted it seems and the more intrigued I am by the thinking that must have gone into the design. Would I ever have done it this way myself? Probably not. Question is, who’s boundaries does that say more about, mine or theirs? Regardless of what I think of it as the TOS Enterprise, I have to admire the audacity of the design.
So what do I think of it as the TOS Enterprise? Short answer: I can live with it. I long ago accepted the fact that this movie was not going to look exactly like the TV show from the ‘60s, not that I ever really wanted it to. I was always in favor of a certain degree of updating, whether or not it was rationalized by alternate timelines and such. Beyond that, I’m simply not a hardcore purist. Sticking closer to the TOS aesthetic would have brought a certain… validation to some elements that I consider classic and timeless, but Star Trek was always about so much more than sets and costumes and ship designs.
I’m off to see Quantum of Solace in about an hour. Assuming my local theater is not so stupid as to forego the Trek trailer, I should have at least another glimpse or two of the new Enterprise from different angles and be able to form a better judgement.
... Please God, don't let this be the real thing, for the proportions of the thing are asthetically retarded and extremely offensive! Just for starters, the neck is as long as the ship's body! What the hell were they thinking?!! Talk about topping arse over head! I could go into justifying the terrible proportions and connecting points of the ship's main features, but really I cannot be bothered waisting my breath on the very rude and poor dynamics of the design! 
