That's a staple of TV and film, though. The apartment in Friends is far larger on the inside, and a somewhat famous example. The Statue of Liberty is often depicted larger than it's actual size in movies, because it's a famous landmark all by itself, with a larger-than-life reputation and comes across as small when suddenly put next to buildings and skyscrapers.
It's all about creating an illusion, not building an actual giant starship.
The difference is that with StarTrek the starships*
really could have the correct size! The ONLY thing standing against that are some stupid non-canon sources plastered all over the place. There is really no loss in throwing out what isn't supposed to be applicable anyway. Especially considering the benefits
of actually making sense.
*not applicable for things like shuttles or the Millenium Falcon, where they have to built a real-life mock-up for the actors - those things are
always going to be "too small"
This makes no sense. What is the "correct" size for an exploration vessel? Or the correct size for an engine of destruction? Beyond certainly showed that size isn't everything.
Interstellar starships are always going to be both. If you can achieve faster than light travel, you can achieve planet wide destruction by the very same means. Scale is definitely not a factor regarding the engines.
What IS an important distinction, is between a starship that has a crew to operate the starship. And a starship carrying
hundreds of thousands of troops with no obvious purpose
. The latter one is
always going to be suspicious. Because why would anyone want to park an entire friggin' Army without anything to do right next to your doorway?
In the Star Trek (and Star Wars) universes where space on starships is pretty efficiently distributed, something the size of a stardestroyer (or the JJprise) is always going to be suspicious: Yes, even a smaller ship could blow you to pieces as well. But
THESE ships can leave a permanent occupation force right on your planet as well.
In the "Alien" universe sizes scale a bit different. A ship like the Nostromo or the Prometheus might be the same size or much bigger. But in these fictional universes, those ships carry only a handfull of personal - Sure, they could blow you up. But they can't realistically occupy you, so they don't look like an invading force. The same way the classic TOS Enterprise, a crew of 400 simply isn't enough for a hostile take-over, especially if the majority are needed for normal ship functions anyway. Those are believable as "exploration" vessels, not primarily "military" ones.
An interesting instance is the Enterprise-D: Because, just purely from it's size and capability of transporting people - she
absolutely could be a threat as well. But the designers made a clever choice, and pretty much plastered the entire ship with windows from top to bottom. That way the ship looks more like a city in space, less than a single-purpose craft like, say, the klingon ships or the traditional Connie (or even the Voyager). That easily gives a good "justification" for carrying so many people without coming across as threating.
Also, all of this is very vague, and with many exceptions. But I hope I could make my line of thinking a bit clearer with that.
Thanks for fixing it.
The Rec room could have been used to play indoor sports...
