Ziz said:
The NX is fine as it is. The problem isn't the ship, it's fans' linear mentality towards continuity. They don't know how to look at real scientific and technological progress as a basis for comparison.
No product that has evolved over the years from what it started out as to what it is now has followed a linear progression. Everything had that one or two side-tracks where someone tried something different that, while it might not have necessarily been a bad idea, just didn't seem to work out at the time.
So, to put that into Trek context - the Connie class, and the general design attitude of Starfleet during those years - smooth painted hulls - was one of those diversions. Not that it was a bad idea in and of itself, just that, upon reflection in later years, was decided that there was no real benefit to the extra labor and materials involved.
All that extra hull plating and gallons upon gallons of paint added considerable mass to the ship, decreasing warp efficiency and increasing general power needs. That's why it was a faster trip to Kronos in Archer's day, but longer in Kirk's time. The distance didn't change, the ship's nominal cruise speed changed. Decreased warp efficiency during the TOS years would also explain why the warp chart was re-calibrated during the TNG years. It wasn't changed and re-calculated for the hell of it, it was just corrected BACK to what it was prior to 100 or so years ago.
The fan base as a whole used to be WONDERFUL at creating their own fiction to fill in the blanks in the continuity. Ever since the late TNG years though, when so much "official" source material started to show up, they've become a bunch of whining crybabies who want every last detail planned out ahead of time and served to them on a silver platter. They don't want to THINK any more.
Sorry,
Ziz, but this lumps fans and critics alike together into an amorphous group, as often happens (I've found) when someone simply disagrees with them, and neither acknowledges nor distinguishes their motives.
Many fans
do think - if anything, I'd say that
Trek fans are more guilty of/capable of this than practically any other group. And as far as NX-01 goes, you've left out the single most glaring factor between the "creativity" whose loss you bemoan and the "whining" with which you characterize the critics (and on a side note, please refrain from this sort of name-calling - it's perilously close to trolling):
Yes,
Trek fans have demonstrated incredible creativity in filling in the blanks, but in the case of NX-01, what you describe as creativity is largely
rationalization, creating excuses for the
lack of creativity on the part of B&B and Paramount. Let's face it, the ship's design is
entirely the result of expediency,
not creativity, nor a commitment to the concept. They borrowed its design, as they borrowed everything else in the show, in order to
avoid committing themselves to anything creative, anything new, and I don't think anyone deserves to be dismissed simply for pointing this fact out.
Many fans, myself included, are far less concerned with issues of continuity, whether visual or technological, than with the fact that ENT and its centerpiece ship were somewhat (okay,
very) cynically assembled as a pre-fab attempt to bypass the fans' critical minds and hit them in their more-vulnerable memories, to trigger recognition of concrete elements rather than appeal to the
abstract concepts that are truly the foundation of
Star Trek. They treated us as a commodity and as a consumer, slapping "new and improved" labels onto a product that was neither, and hoped the gloss of the packaging would make us ignore that we were getting a watered-down product.
Had they gone the extra mile and maybe looked outside their existing creative pool, maybe
Trek's fans would still be using their famed creativity to expand the universe, rather than to explain away all of its mistakes and missteps; wouldn't it be more fun to think about the ship's technology if it weren't also such a blatant copy of a ship that a vocal group of fans had expressed an interest in, giving TPTB their perceived license to cut that particular corner and hope they could "count on us" for support because of it?
I don't personally want every detail planned out in advance and served up, but that's
exactly what we got, so it's inaccurate to say that's the basis of fans' dissatisfaction. TPTB didn't accidentally modify
Akira, they didn't accidentally pick "Enterprise" for its name recognition, in the face of contrary facts established within the franchise, nor did they accidentally tell story upon story upon story that was either a slight variation on one already told, or a forced back story of a well-known tale, technology or concept. It really doesn't get more coldly calculating than that. What was missing was the effort to plan something
unique, to show us things and tell us things that we hadn't imagined, or expected, things that might
truly have sparked our creativity.
For many of us, it's not what NX-01 looks like that is the problem, but what it
represents.
.
