Except for the Enterprise which they call a garbage scow.
New Unnamed Discovery Ship Analysis
- Thread starter Philip Guyott
- Start date
Maybe the larger size of some ships is a sign of primitive-ness, i.e. being unable to fit all the tech for long-term missions into a small vessel because it requires so much maintenance (unlike a Connie, presumably). Or the tech cannot be miniaturised - compare torpedo launchers in the NX-class, which are actual rooms, to the automated tubes we see in the TOS movies.
The Federation surely has the resources to build big ships.
The Federation surely has the resources to build big ships.
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No, it should be hauled away as garbage.Except for the Enterprise which they call a garbage scow.
I found their entire discussion a bit weird to be honest. So far we have seen one canon ship from the era and that's the constitution class (the Franz Joseph designs and TAS don't count!), so I don't accept the argument that the nacalles don't fit the period's style because we really don't know if there even is "a style". Everytime we see federation ships from roughly the same era on screen together we get a bunch of different looking nacelles. The connie refit, the oberth class and the excelsior class all have completely different nacelles and in the next gen era we get the D nacelles, the internal defiant nacelles, the tiny voyager nacelles, the gigantic Enterprise E nacelles, the various First Contact designs ...
I admit the nacelles on this new ship do look a bit too modern on the render but that could be in part due to the glow and that is made up by the artist! The glow is primarily associated with the 24th century so narurally our brains will immediately jump to that era when we see a blue glow but that might not be there on the actual show design.
I don't have a problem with the ship's size either if the gigantic version is actually correct because we don't even know the ships purpose!
In the real world we have cruise ships that are significantly larger than military vessels. Maybe that's what this is, a giant saucer filled with ball rooms, restaurants, swimming pools, a zoo, theaters, luxury cabins etc. to ferry around people on space vacation that want to see nebulas, red giants, white dwarfs etc. up close. A larger ship doesn't have to mean it's more advanced, maybe it just means "room for five rollercoasters".
The nacelles being longer might be a result of the ship not having access to the most modern technology, maybe it needs gigantic nacelles to even be half as fast as a constitution class?
I also didn't like how they put the new ship between the Enterprises as if that means something. Yes, it looks out of scale there and but so would Voyager if she were placed between the D and the E. Just because the Enterprises were designed to become larger (or longer considering the E is much smaller than the D going by internal volume) doesn't mean there can't be ships that break that pattern by being larger just like there are ships that are smaller.
I admit the nacelles on this new ship do look a bit too modern on the render but that could be in part due to the glow and that is made up by the artist! The glow is primarily associated with the 24th century so narurally our brains will immediately jump to that era when we see a blue glow but that might not be there on the actual show design.
I don't have a problem with the ship's size either if the gigantic version is actually correct because we don't even know the ships purpose!
In the real world we have cruise ships that are significantly larger than military vessels. Maybe that's what this is, a giant saucer filled with ball rooms, restaurants, swimming pools, a zoo, theaters, luxury cabins etc. to ferry around people on space vacation that want to see nebulas, red giants, white dwarfs etc. up close. A larger ship doesn't have to mean it's more advanced, maybe it just means "room for five rollercoasters".
The nacelles being longer might be a result of the ship not having access to the most modern technology, maybe it needs gigantic nacelles to even be half as fast as a constitution class?
I also didn't like how they put the new ship between the Enterprises as if that means something. Yes, it looks out of scale there and but so would Voyager if she were placed between the D and the E. Just because the Enterprises were designed to become larger (or longer considering the E is much smaller than the D going by internal volume) doesn't mean there can't be ships that break that pattern by being larger just like there are ships that are smaller.
Sorry if the following line of questioning is now totally redundant:
wasn't there an earlier suggestion / theory that Discovery might cover multiple points along a trek timeline eg: TOS, TNG, Refit-era, etc - and focus on different ships / crews - with some overarching connecting narrative?
was this ever a thing?
I ask, only in light of the discussion around the differences between the uss discovery and the 'wireframe' starship.
wasn't there an earlier suggestion / theory that Discovery might cover multiple points along a trek timeline eg: TOS, TNG, Refit-era, etc - and focus on different ships / crews - with some overarching connecting narrative?
was this ever a thing?
I ask, only in light of the discussion around the differences between the uss discovery and the 'wireframe' starship.
I agree with this, and have mixed feelings about Trekyards - I've watched a couple of their things and felt their method of analysis sometimes had too many assumptions in. But I respect them for being earnest fans who love to analyze things like we do.
In real life, a design, say of a plane or a space capsule, can come from the same era, but be quite radically different in overall appearance. This is because you can have multiple lineages of design philosophy and theory running side by side. Technological design is not a single line; its a series of lines like an evolutionary family tree in a way. While one shipyard may be building a project commissioned in 2245, another may be building a project from a different design team from 2238 still. The later project may even make it into space first. There may be an economic advantage to sticking with a proven nacelle on some projects. In rocketry for example sometimes an entire production line will be established for a certain rocket and it might be more economically feasible to "spin-off" a new design based on this old tech, that design a new rocket - this is why for example, Starfleet still built Miranda class ships and Constellation class ships, both featuring Connie-refit nacelles, with their existing infrastructure, even though they had Excelsior-era tech.
I've mentioned before on TrekBBS about how Trekkies sometimes fall into the trap of trying to make designs progress like a linear evolution, and I used to pic below to illustrate the bad way of thinking - design does not work like a gradient, conveniently bridging two appearances - it works based on what is practical in a given era - even if the practical appearance looks quite odd compared to a previous design. I feel that post-TNG ships (non-canonical mainly) became horrible like this, becoming a series of smooth blobs with roughly similar shapes to the Sovereign class.
Awful ^
Now its true that a lot of fifth generation jet fighters look similar, since they are all trying to achieve stealth, and aerodynamics forces certain shapes - but starships are different - they are build and/or function in an environment of micro-gravity, and don't need to follow any kind of shape in a vacuum - they are therefore going to look as practical as the specific race feels they should be - with each new design team getting together at San Francisco or Utopia Planetia and coming up with a different shape, based on the needs of the time.
Therefore a space station is probably a better comparison with a Starfleet ship - aside from maintaining the same general philosophy of keeping saucer, optional engineering section, and nacelle(s) separate, they can probably follow a number of different nacelle configurations in a single era, based on which particular design team was commissioned to build the class, and what they were thinking - Discovery fits perfectly into Trek's design lineage - the Shenzhou(?) is harder to place (my feeling is that it might be an antique class from closer to Archer's era owing to the similarity to the NX-01).
Um, where in that highly conjectural blog post does it say that?
Yeah I was gonna say, why the hell has that been posted as a fact, when it's a rumor?
It sounds utterly stupid, unless I read it wrong, hope it isn't true.
It sounds utterly stupid, unless I read it wrong, hope it isn't true.
It refers back to the Discovery design as seen in the second teaser, and
if the USS Shenzhou is damaged, repaired and renamed USS Discovery then it would mean the "wireframe ship" design (which is supposedly much larger) is an outright replacement for the Discovery we've seen so far.
I guess it's inferred rather than said.
I guess it's inferred rather than said.
Not sure why you're bothering with spoiler codes for some fan theory that has actually been brought up on this very forum. Besides, it's very fan-wanky and unlikely true.
Well, I had a gut feeling this might be a plot for it, but you never know, it's early. Seems plausible, even if conjectural.
Search for the following paragraph in the article.
"But, sources close to TSI have revealed that the Shenzhou.. wait for it.. IS the USS Discovery". Come to think of it, maybe the ship they want to create is an amalgam of the wireframe and the USS Discovery we've seen after the initial announcement, who knows.
Rebuilding a destroyed hulk into a completely different class of ship sounds like such fanwank.
I might believe sources close to the production, but sources close to the blog have no credibility!
Yet in the USN graphic, the Arleigh Burkes equate to the Constitution, They are ships that the US would send into fly the flag, not a carrier or a gator carrier. They are not the largest ships in the USN.Its hard to say whether Star Trek follows Navy-style size classes like Star Wars, but she is beginning to look less like a Battle Cruiser/Heavy Cruiser, and more like a Light Cruiser or Destroyer. The impression I think most of us had, was that being a "flagship" in Star Trek VI, and being sent on important missions like "Balance of Terror", the Constitution-class represented the best the Federation had.
But maybe ships in Star Trek are more like NASA vehicles - size would not necessarily correspond to importance. Perhaps a connie can wipe the floor with a Shenzhou-type.
In a Show that does more science into the fiction, explaining tends to be a thing.
Which makes sense considering the mission profile and the older tendency to call the TOS Connie a heavy cruiser.
And to be fair, the guys at Trekyards do have a direct line to John Eaves.
Has anyone ever heard of this blog before? They don't seem to be an entertainment industry oriented blog, but they may well be a blog in need of traffic.
So, a friend went to a convention this weekend where Meyer was a guest and reports that Meyer had nothing to say about the series and was asked nothing about it. Said friend remarked that he didn't get the sense that most people at the con either knew or cared that a new Trek series was coming, and that the percentage who hadn't seen Beyond was pretty high.
I'm kind of encouraged by that.
I've skipped Trek conventions these last couple of years, You know those hot young things doing Trek cosplay on Instagram and such? Well, their grandparents make up a big percentage of the crowds and are no less fond of wearing Spandex.
So, a friend went to a convention this weekend where Meyer was a guest and reports that Meyer had nothing to say about the series and was asked nothing about it. Said friend remarked that he didn't get the sense that most people at the con either knew or cared that a new Trek series was coming, and that the percentage who hadn't seen Beyond was pretty high.
I'm kind of encouraged by that.
I've skipped Trek conventions these last couple of years, You know those hot young things doing Trek cosplay on Instagram and such? Well, their grandparents make up a big percentage of the crowds and are no less fond of wearing Spandex.
Yeah, it's not the size. It's how you use it right?
