[opinion] The lack of creativity in current Trek design

[Sci]

Starships on DIS are plenty creative. OP just doesn't like them.

Nowadays, you have some guys behind a computer who whip up some generic ships in no time. Gone are the constraints of working with pre existing crap, digital assets for the win!

I'm pretty sure visual effects are a bit more complicated than that.

Current star wars has the same issue, other than the old classics, who honestly remembers any of the new ships. I mean the prequel trilogy got a lot wrong but who can forget the giant space dohnuts

I think the dreadnought and the Resistance bombers were pretty memorable. Most of the other ships have just been variations on old ships though.

People these days need to be ENTERTAINED at FULL VOLUME. Subtlety and depth are for grandparents.

Oh, pish-posh. People have been saying crap like that since our grandparents' times. "Kids these days just want loud crap like Bonnie and Clyde and Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid and Rosemary's Baby!"

Sorry, but if you wanna talk subtlety, I'll put damn near any episode of DIS up against episodes like "Let That Be Your Last Battlefield" or "The Enemy Within" or "The Doomsday Machine." TOS had a lot of virtues, but subtlety was not one of them.

And nobody can watch DIS and claim it lacks depth if they're being honest. You may not like it, but it's got plenty depth.

Viewers are only interested in the pew pew space battles with lots of slo-mo 'splosions so they can talk about how nifty they look.

I guess I'm old. The more I watch of TOS, the more impressed I am about the craftsmanship and creativity.

I'm sorry, but this is the same TOS where minor diplomatic issues turn into causes for murder in "Journey to Babel?" Where one episode is about how Spock is so horny from his alien biology that he must fight Kirk to the death? TOS had more than its fair share of relatively unmotivated fight scenes and attempts at spectacle over substance.

DIS is not less deep or less subtle or more action-driven than TOS. You just don't like it.

 

[BorgMan]

Starships on DIS are plenty creative. OP just doesn't like them.

[BM blabbering about lack of creativity]

I'm pretty sure visual effects are a bit more complicated than that.

TL;DR: pizza's with hotdogs attached to them.

I'm pretty sure as well. The effects, that is. Because I find the designs themselves quite lacking. If we, for example, compare the ships in the DSC pilot with the plethora of ships we saw only at the beginning of First Contact (and only sparsely reused after that), you will see that the ships are way more varied. We saw three established ships (a Nebula, Miranda and the Defiant), four new ones (Akira, Saber, Norway and Steamrunner), and the brand spanking new Sovereign as star of the show. The four new ships are all very distinct from one another. Nacelle shapes, saucer shapes, overall silhouette... These are quite different ships. I know we're talking a movie here, with a bigger budget, but still; these ships could be re used later on, so the money was well spent. The overall shapes of these vessels were so interesting to see, with all the curves going on.

Let's now compare to the DSC pilot. Two Engle's with their visually interesting double-pylon close-to-hull nacelles, two stubby Hoover's, two equally stubby Malachowski's, a Magee with integrated nacelles, the four-nacelled Europa, at least two Shepards, the four-nacelled Cardenas... and the hero ship Shenzou. Breaking it down, most ships in this list feel... flat. When you compare them to a Constitution and Daedalus, it feels squished together. Flipping the Shenzou over to create the Shepard and tacking other nacelles on is a bit more what I was thinking about; I like repurposing your assets like that. However, the aft of the Europa feels like an afterthought, we've got two variations on the Miranda form factor (the Hoover and Malachoswki), the Engle already is sliding down the "what were they thinking" slope (and the tacked-under box feels really out of place) and the Magee is totally bonkers. There was a chance here to make a ship named Shran into something a bit more Andorian, to show us the influence of their design language into Federation building ethos... But that was not meant to be. The Magee, IMHO, is an awful design, even worse than a Defiant which had its nacelles at least separated from the main body, instead of being integrated so totally as this one has. And even though the Cardenas has four nacelles, it still feels flat. I'll give the Europa that: it at least felt a little bit as if they were using more 3D space, even though it still looks like a pizza with hot dogs underneath and on top. There were so much designs the design team could borrow from, scores of published material, the aforementioned Daedalus with its spherical primary hull, more use of the other Federation member worlds for design languages... That's what disappointed me the most. Even the Hiawatha looks squished, but the way the nacelles connect both to an upper deck and a diagonal pylon to, I really, really hope, a secondary hull housing a deflector, you're more into actual use of space above and under the main center line.

And those nacelles. Those bloody, blocky nacelles. It makes everything look the same. A bit of a change there would also make a ton of difference. One can see how much different a Constitution is when compared to the other ships, even though the Europa and the Constitution are only about 50 ships apart, if all the registry numbers are actually used. I have a hard time wrapping my head around that.

And this is why I think the design team could use a little bit more creative freedom and a better look into what's out there, to give us more visually interesting ships.

 

[plynch]

When Discovery does its spinny thing it reminds me of Scooby Doo's legs gathering steam with the bongo drum sound effect before he gets going.

 

[valkyrie013]

Well I think start up design peaked with Enterprise! Almost only 1 had a a saucer and sticks while the rest was alien, great andorean, Vulcan ships, alien of the week were interesting.. Cgi but with the old designer flair..

 

[Prax]

When Discovery does its spinny thing it reminds me of Scooby Doo's legs gathering steam with the bongo drum sound effect before he gets going.

It reminds me of sonic the hedgehog. You know, when you hold the down button and tap A a bunch of times to rev him up, then release and he zips away really fast

 

[KennyB]

TL;DR: pizza's with hotdogs attached to them.

Isn't that pretty much every fucking Federation ship design back to 1965? If you don't like them, that's fine, but I think John Eaves is doing some great stuff.

 

[Prax]

Maybe starship designs are just oversaturated after so many years. There's probably not much left that hasn't been done

 

[Rahul]

Well I think start up design peaked with Enterprise! Almost only 1 had a a saucer and sticks while the rest was alien, great andorean, Vulcan ships, alien of the week were interesting.. Cgi but with the old designer flair..

ENT might have plenty of faults. But it's IMO peak Trek production value overall.

Don't get me wrong - I like TOS and TNG a lot more. But Trek never looked better than on ENT, and that includes DIS. Hell, a lot of JJ Abrams Trek straight up re-used ENTs design language! From orange sky-beams hitting the water next to the San Francisco bridge, to how the Narada looks very much like the Romulan Drones on ENT and nothing like the traditional Warbirds. And that was a slick looking movie!

 

[BorgMan]

Isn't that pretty much every fucking Federation ship design back to 1965?

No, they're not. Constitution classes utilize a lot of "3D space", if you like to call it so. Living areas (pizza) are seperated from the engineering section (can of beer) by a neck (no analogy), while the nacelles (hotdogs) are seperated from the engineering section by pylons (straws, I guess). You could build a Constitution from materiald in your kitchen cabinet... And I did when I was young. All kinds of ships, by the way. There was a lot of fun to be had. And the curve on the underside of the saucer looked so awesome... That's all gone. It's flat, and boxy. Don't get me wrong; Eaves is doing a great job, working with (what I think) are restrictions placed upon him. But I still have less love for these ships than ENT era ships.

 

[The Wormhole]

Isn't that pretty much every fucking Federation ship design back to 1965?

Nah, Voyager was more of a calzone with mini-hotdogs attached.
#attentiontodetails

 

[KennyB]

Nah, Voyager was more of a calzone with mini-hotdogs attached.
#attentiontodetails

breadsticks!

 

[mswood]

Well in fairness to at least the pilot of Discovery versus other films or pilots, it featured substantially more vessels then any trek two hours. Not to mention that the producers had some very specific parameters for the designers to work with. For the vast majority of trek, ship design was very limited on both the number of designs and limited by the need to either keep existing ships still active or having to fairly closely update an existing design.

Motion Picture basically had two updated designs and 4 new ships (one of which wasn’t really ever seen).

Khan we got a kit bash design and no other original ship.

Search we got 4 new ships, and that was a lot.

Voyage Home - zilch

Final we got a redesigned shuttle craft.

Generations - we got a modified excelsior and one other ship.

Contact we got 7 new ships, and one redesign.

Insurrection we got 6 new designs

Nemesis we got 4 new ships.

Pilots

TNG we got 2 ships.
DS9 we got one ship (and a station, but haven’t been including those).
VOY we got 3 new ships and a modified shuttle.
ENT we got we got 4 new ships.

Discovery we got about 20 ships.

Just with the quantity I would naturally assume that many of the designs are going to repetitive.

 

[F. King Daniel]

The Disco ships kinda remind me of the old DC comics Trek series

Middle top looks like the larger Section 31 ships at the end of season 2. Top left looks like the Hoover-class. Bottom right could be the T'Planna-hath class.

 

[Prax]

 

[SolarisOne]

It's still my favorite design.

 

[yotsuya]

What I had a problem was all the discovery ships are very derivative. Discovery is based on the Planet of Titans concept art (which I never liked and has to be the single worst Trek ship design) and the Enterprise is pretty much like the original (resulting in the best ever redo of the original design), but most of the rest just looked generic. FASA did a better job. I actually love the Shenzhou. It is a nice variation of the Reliant and Nebula designs. It is actually very close to the Centaur Class kit bash, which I also like. But the other ships during that battle sequence at the start of STD were just.... blah. Too much of the same design feel without enough shape variation. They were all pretty flat with either 2 or 4 nacelles and not much else to distinguish them.

 

[KennyB]

What I had a problem was all the discovery ships are very derivative.

Too much of the same design feel without enough shape variation. They were all pretty flat with either 2 or 4 nacelles and not much else to distinguish them.

So kinda like a real fleet of ships?

 

[valkyrie013]

Well, as I'm 3d'ing the Magee class Shran, That ship was just thrown together in probably a day.. and is missing Alot of stuff.. On the model there is no Shuttlebay, no defelctor dish.. pretty much a throw away ship.. Now I can understand that it was in the background and maybe 20 pixels to fill in a fleet.. but I would hope somebody would come back to it and detail it out abit..
Discovery hamppered itself with its design constrants by management.. basically they said.. It must be flat! so you have a load of designs with a saucer and 2 sticks but no beer can.. or the beer can is incorperated into the saucer.. On one doesn't have to have an active imagination to see it doesn't leave much design wise to play with.. so.. they all look the same to a point.. If John and Comp. were given free reign.. then hey!

 

[BorgMan]

So kinda like a real fleet of ships?


View attachment 11160

Not entirely. That's a battlegroup, where each ship has a role and is designed as such. Having multiples in a battlegroup of the same design is, thus, logical. The fleet that got scrambled is no battlegroup, and thus could have had a lot more variation in designs to make it visually appealing.

 

[Arpy]

My problem with DSC ships (though I love the show) is how hyper-stylized they (and the show) are. I enjoy the hell out of the spectacle of it (one of the few good things about ENT, imho), but I never buy it as real.