Reactions to the Kelvinverse Enterprise

The 09 Enterprise caused quite a ruckus, as I recall. I got used to her pretty quick, and liked her enough in that form that the Beyond modifications looked odd. And don't get me started on the -A.

 

While I like the original design, i think the Beyond struts and smaller engines gave the ship a little more gracefulness and i think they flowed a bit better with the secondary hull (not as much of a fan of the revised neck). It also reminded me of the weird way Gold Key and other Trek things of the 70s rendered the ship occasionally.

 

What does everyone think of the A?

 

It was original in 1984 and derivative in 2016.

 

I'm not a huge fan, but we've barely seen it so it's not had any exposure to grow on me.

 

Barely saw enough of it to form an opinion. But from fanart I've seen it looks amazing from some angles.

It also seems a little odd that the successor to the 1701 evokes the original 1960's ship in my mind more than their version of the original.

It's also a bit of a sore spot, since I know there's pre-vis and preproduction art of her and her interior sets sitting around at Bad Robot, likely not to see the light of day for years.

 

^^^ Yeah, we need to see that art, and Bad Robot need to send their CG model to EM, so we can get a diecast of her forthwith!

 

That first picture they chose to reveal the final design was such a bad angle. I remember immediately hating the engineering section beyond belief. It looked like the neck's front part connected far too far behind, making the entire frontal part of the engineering section stick out in front like a not-well-hidden erection. The aft part of the neck extended so far back as well that the end where the shuttlebay is looked awfully pointed, also because the nacelle pylons connected to the same weird endpoint. Never minded the nacelles themselves, though. But everything except the saucer looked oddly unbalanced and as if it was weirdly put together by someone who had no clue what they were doing.

 

i wasn't all that into it, primarily because limited screen time and not great concept art was all we had to go by for a while. it wasn't until @PixelMagic posted these renders that i really appreciated what a nice design the ship is:

i'm fascinated that (according to MA) it's supposed to be the same class of ship as the previous iteration, just yet another refit.

 

Too big and the nacelles are too close together. It ruins the proportions

 

What’s funny is the original 60s 1701 neck also connects pretty far back, the way the front of the engineering hull behind the dish is detailed makes it seem closer to the front than it is - i.e. the concentric narrowing rings (can’t think of how to best describe them) on the original make the eye think the front of the hull is closer to the neck than the smooth more unbroken hull of the ‘09.

 

totally. it's a cool shot, but the shapes of the primary and secondary hulls seem to conflict from that angle.

if they had released an image with just a slightly different angle, i think people wouldn't have immediately hated it like they (we) did. i mean, just look at these two shots from 09 and into darkness:

 

Absolutely agree, I want to see the J.J. 1701-A interior sets art.

 

One interesting observation about the saucer of the Beyond Refit and the 1701-A:

The Refit has angled lines which runs diagonally alongside the central saucer spine) as per below:



Looks triangular (tapering towards the impulse array) and almost tear drop (where it meets the central circle surrounding the bridge).

In the Refit, these are simply strut lines - however, when you compare that saucer with the one the 1701-A has, these ‘lines’ form the edge of a much wider saucer spine) as per below amazing image from PixelMagic:

So these strut lines on the Refit are almost like ‘blue print’ / floor plans for the next upgraded fatter saucer spine, that we see on the Ent-A.

If this is the case, then the Beyond Refit could be seen as an intermediary step along the evolution of the Kelvin 1701, insofar as the saucer progression.

 

This may be a bit heretical, but if the Kelvin-verse Enterprise is suppose to be radically different from the Prime Timeline's version, perhaps they should have gotten the designer of the USS Aegis (Star Trek: Bridge Crew) to design the Enterprise. That ship is more of an exploration vessel that has the correct proportions.

 

Wait, but in that case, why not amp up the heresy and focus on Kirk’s Academy days and first mission on the Aegis itself, without shoehorning 2267 into 2258? No Chekov, McCoy, Pike, Scotty, Spock, Sulu, Uhura; just Finnegan, Marcus, Mitchell, Ruth and other characters that make sense. Isn’t that some impact Nero supposedly had on the timeline?

 

After reading through three pages I am not seeing much of a cogent set of reasons why the JJ Prise design is good from those who like it vs. reasons why it sucks from those who hate it.

The older I get the more I feel as though I'm becoming sort of an aesthete, or a snob as it were. While taste is subjective, certain elements of design seem to link up with certain universal notions of proportion (like golden mean) that create a sense of balance and harmony to the eye. The reasons listed here about this or that being too big or small or pushed too far forward or back are articulating this without knowing the mathematical basis behind all of this. It's just one of those things that most people sort of feel in their gut. While there will be outliers, at the end of the day, if you have to hang a label on it, I think it's fair to side with what most people say.

Along those lines, the comment about outrage over the TMP refit is really apples and oranges. We didn't have social media back then so I can only go based on my own opinion and things I read in Starlog or the general vibe via word of mouth, but I don't remember anyone criticizing the design based on its own merits, just that it took time to adjust to the break from the mid-60s car aesthetic of the TOS enterprise over to something that seemed informed by 2001/Star Wars with a dose of art-deco and late-70s angular car designs.

The larger problem is I don't think the 21st century HAS much of a clearly defined style to it. The only common thread I see in design is for things to be busy and chaotic. I first started noticing that in sneaker designs, but you can definitely see that in the JJ Prise or in how superhero costumes are put together (like the newest Flash) or the Bay Transformers. Outside of Apple or Tesla, the 21st century seems to have a more-is-more ethos to it that I don't think will age well.

 

this is a valid observation. modern production design has adopted complexity, multiple articulated pieces, layering in place of simple, defined silhouettes. there's been sort of a shift away from that very recently, see bumblebee vs the preceding 5 transformers films' designs, shazam's suit vs the man of steel costume, etc.

to my taste, the most notable vehicles in film in the past ten years have been the ones a kid could draw: the bubble ship from oblivion, the lightcycles from TRON: legacy, krennic's shuttle from rogue one, and yes the enterprise from the kelvin timeline films. you compared the enterprise to an over-complicated sneaker, i see the opposite. one of the few examples of clean, simple, discernible design in cinema in this era -- this is obviously in the tradition of the clean style star trek has always had, but abrams and ryan church's embrace of this is also why the kelvin enterprise is so successful.

even the USS vengeance, which skews way more closely to the bay-formers style is still simpler, cleaner, more readable on screen than say the first order star destroyers from the force awakens.

 

You're not seeing what I'm seeing, then. For instance, the diagonal beams inside the shuttlebay are a great example of complexity for the sake of complexity, putting form over function. Then you have the brewery engine-room, etc... I mean, I can post screenshots and draw circles around things that don't make sense that seem sort of grafted on to provide more detail but I guess you will disagree.

This thread is hardly new and I recall commenting on it with a few general examples which I WILL repeat, just general design trends, old vs. new:

Here is the Onitsuka Tiger (aka Bruce Lee / Kill Bill) sneaker.
https://asics.scene7.com/is/image/asics/DL408_0490_SR_RT?$otat-product$
This is a study in restraint compared to an image with a caption "Biggest Sneaker Trends of 2019".
https://static.fashionbeans.com/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/sneakers-2019-1.jpg
Some of these shape and color combinations look like they were chosen by a random number generator. It's completely nonsensical/incoherent. That is what I think epitomizes the art department ethos during this decade. This was taken to new heights of excess in Discovery where they were bragging about using 3D printers for the costumes. Arrowheads--arrowheads everywhere! And the overblown gothic excess of the sarcophagus ship and the steampunk transporter room, etc... Just a complete lack of restraint and (dare I say it) good taste.

I mean, when the guitarist in Cheap Trick pulls this out, you know it's a gag, but today's artists don't seem to realize when they're taking things too far.

https://i.pinimg.com/originals/4c/62/12/4c6212a7564b65a9706b21c6e2a37fac.jpg

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