I feel the need to point out that the
Foolerprise shown at the top of page 1 of this thread was never intended to be a serious design, it was intended to do exactly what it did, make people gasp in a sort of fascinated horror at the thought that it just might be real. When Anthony Pascale first proposed the idea to me, the plan was to create a fairly typical, blatantly ridiculous April Fool's joke of a starship design, but I thought it would be more fun to create something with just enough plausibility to it that people wouldn't immediately know it was a joke.
There was a lot of speculation at the time over what the new ship might look like, much of it driven by cynical expectations that Abrams and company would screw it up in some outrageously fanboyish way. I deliberately set out to play on those fears, incorporating as many of those speculations as I could into the
Foolerprize, everything from TNG-style warp grills to battleship-like phaser turrets (you can imagine my amusement when the
Kelvin was first revealed and turned out to have an array of weaponry not unlike battleship gun turrets!). I didn’t just Frankenstein it all together, though, I tried to make it look like something that at least a small, deranged segment of the fan base might actually like. I consciously mimicked John Eaves’ graphic style with a smattering of others thrown in for some added ambiguity, then staged the photograph to look like a janitor or some other passerby might have snapped it with a cell phone. I even altered the time stamp to place it during the lunch hour when such an opportunity might be more likely to occur. Anthony and I figured a few people might be taken in by it but I think we were both surprised by the reaction and the controversy it kicked up, even from some people within the industry.
So, in answer to the question posed by the original poster: Yes, it still looks that bad, as it was meant to.
Personally, I’m not 100% thrilled with the new Ryan Church
Enterprise but it has grown on me since I first saw it. I respect his artistic talents and design sensibilities, even if the direction he went is not quite the one I would have chosen. I’m sure many of you have seen my own take on an updated TOS
Enterprise design (click for larger versions):
Obviously, I have a more traditional view of what the
Enterprise should look like, at least when I’m not trying to pull an April Fool’s joke with it. I do have to mention, though, that if you look very closely, you may notice that the warp nacelles are nearly identical to the
Foolerprise, minus the glowing grills on top. Sometimes you find things you really like in unexpected places, something everyone would do well to keep in mind as they go off to see the new movie.
