Those add-ons being shuttlebays have a similar issue as impulse engines, but going in the opposite direction. Shuttles would have one hell of a time making landings, particularly hands-on emergency landings, trying to maneuver around the nacelle tips to get in. I have the same problem with the central pylon supporting the Nebula class' delta pod. The Phoenix-variant's twin supports makes a little more sense, but blocking the path to and from a main shuttlebay, needlessly making landings and launches more difficult than they should be, never seems like a well-thought-out idea to me. In short, I think the E-B would have been fine with the secondary hull add-on, but would have been served better not to have included the extra "boxes" (whatever their purpose) on the primary hull.
The Nebula is a good example of some of the dangers of kit-bashing, even if you're TPTB. That main shuttle bay should have been flipped around to exit in the front of the ship, but that would have cost them more money to design and produce. Look at the less elegant Ambassador we got in place of
Probert's. It's okay-looking (and I really wish we saw it more during the Dominion War at least), but it was rushed for the episode.
A Federation ship without a saucer, from forthcoming fanfilm
Pacific 201:
I can't wait for Pacific 201. Not how I imagine the era, but, who cares, it's really thoughtful stuff. Ditto that Velocity ship. It looks a little too primitive for me (like someone strapped nacelles on to part of the ISS), but I'm still excited to see the film.
They did the same thing earlier in Generations with the Enterprise-B. In fact, it was even more perfunctory then, since the original Excelsior model already had fairly large impulse engines that sat clear of the nacelle intakes. They added those huge freakin' extra impulse engines (that some people early on mistook for shuttle landing bays...that glowed red), in addition to the original ones, that blew their whatever-exhaust-they-blow directly into the warp engines. One of the most useless redresses of an existing filming miniature in all of Trek history, IMO.
Yeah, as
Richard Baker mentioned too, they were initially shuttle bays and problematic there too. I first saw them as such in the graphic novel adaptation of William Shatner's novel
The Ashes of Eden. (It was pretty good btw, and I hear the novel was good too -- not as deifying of the character as his later ones.) Maybe if the bays had doors on the sides instead? Maybe if they were cargo bays, not concerned with speedy in/out? Or if they were just additional saucer space?
I didn't like the additions to the Excelsior model at first. I thought they ruined the elegance of the original. The cheesy finned Bussard Collectors with their blue(?!) Cylon eyes I thought ruined the sleek Art Deco lines of the original. But it's grown on me in its weird, bulky, way. I kind of think the deflector addition is inspired in a way. It's a
little like they added a second saucer to the secondary hull. We've seen starships with
multiple secondary hulls; despite the title of this thread, I'd be curious to see one with multiple saucers.
We never learned that impulse engines would be "chemical exhaust". We didn't even get told they would be rockets. They have an exhaust, but it's likened to that of tailpipes, not of jet engines. So their red thingamabobs "pointing" in arbitrary directions is fine.
Except, come on. It's obvious what those fire red and orange exhaust ports are supposed to be, and we've heard impulse described in such terms in the lit and by people working on the shows. I'd prefer impulse be some futuristic EM technology like something out of
The Matrix, or something else (Where's all the exhaust? Doesn't it need a lot of fuel? Did we ever see them moving backwards at impulse? How's
that happen without additional engines? Etc.), but that's more or less what's suggested.
(Maximum impulse isn't anything specific, either. Probably it isn't even a speed. The TNG Tech Manual suggests ships might avoid going past .25c in standard operations, but we have no idea whether Kirk or Picard ever tried to follow the suggestion.)
Because without the warp bubble, time itself slows down and you're moving slower than you want to be? I dunno. I kind of think sublight techs reached their apex a while ago. We see HUGE glowing engine add-ons to designs because they're supposed to appeal to our hips more than our brains. Berman said he wanted the E to look like a Porsche. It's smaller, more gaunt, probably has no families, and a lot of fans call it a battleship. I'm not moved.
