I was joking of course. But why shouldn't they? After all, Sir Ken Adam is still an influence in James Bond movies 40-50 years later and in Star Wars they still use Ralph McQuarrie concept art 30-40 years after.
Largely because the job they got paid for isn't Discovery. Work for hire I grant you, designs remain property of yada yada, but ultimately if Discovery is success, using their work as base, they aren't gonna get any benefit from it. It also affects the design industry in the sense you can be paid x, with the prospect of more work etc, project fails....but x number of years down the line, your work is reused and you don't see any credit or benefit (look at fuller dodging the question about that design...even if the reality is it's more like a delta ship from enterprise with a saucer glued on) then it's gonna make designers wary of signing up for projects by the same people or for the same franchises. There's a difference between what we are calling Touchstones and just pulling stuff out a drawer, and it's a fine fine line on this one. The Ralph McQuarrie stuff on Star Wars is different, he set up the whole shebang in 77 , so he will get recognition even when it's just people working in his style on a Star Wars project....I don't expect Matt Jeffries to get credit for recent Trek ships just because he set the design language.
I guess there's a difference between Easter egging a ship, or using a similar ship in extended media as a sort of Easter egg, and just pulling up an old design fans find intriguing. I am normally pro keeping your fan bases happy, but I think this idea is a misfire in that regard. It's one of the negatives on my expectations for the show at the moment. Sort of like when, in the run up to Enterprise, they proudly announced they had saved money by using a car dashboard or something as the main engineering panel. It never bodes well. When Voyager launched, the team were excited about doing new things, new transporter effects, trying out different Matt shots working digitally...the only handmedown they crowed about was having some TOS transporter roundel being a part of the new transporter room set as a sort of heirloom. Everything else was 'look how new and shiny we are, we are spending money on making this the best we can' and then for Enterprise it was 'look how much money we are saving and trying to look a bit shoestring cheesey...just how you imagine TOS was!' And now with Discovery there's an element of that again 'we haven't reallly designed anything new yet, just dusted off some old stuff you fans might recognise! Look! Chair like the movies! Ship like some stuff we threw in the bin but printed in books! Antennae, which will always always look hokey! '
It gives me some concerns about the design decisions being made, regardless of its setting, which makes me not quite as excited as I would be....especially magnified by the new delay, the lack of cast info or any new trailers as yet.
Am not even going to mention the Axanar debacle, as I always thought that looked dull, and was right behind it being shut down....but with the clampdown on fan films, all of which have some overlap with Discoverys setting (at least the biggest ones do, except Renegades) it's all starting to feel a bit....rough round the edges.
I need to see some promo stuff soon, to boost up my inner fan hype and hope reactor....
