A completely different situation. Deliberately keeping a design aesthetic unchanged over 225+ years of canon vs. recasting a character. Which explains the ENT Bird of Prey and everything else I pointed out pefec-- oh, wait. I get that you wish Klingon technology showed a clear evolution, but it doesn't. What's wrong with citing a Ishmael's backstory which actually fits what's seen?
Oops, sorry... I wasn't trying to be a jerk and nitpick the difference between lights and windows. I had actually forgotten you said that, and was attempting to elaborate on the line in Christopher's post in the quote where he said "they didn't like the design they were offered". But, yeah, agreed that it was a silly (almost inexplicable from my POV) decision.
It's a matter of record that the producers wanted NX-01 to be based on the Akira, for no reason I can comprehend. But to me, they're extremely different variations on the theme, no more resembling each other than a thoroughbred racehorse resembles a hippo. (NX-01 being the thoroughbred in this instance.)
IMO, the NX-01 more resembles the fan-designed Akyazi class perimeter action ships than it does the Akira. Here's a pic: http://www.shipschematics.net/startrek/images/federation/perimeteraction_akyazi.jpg If you look up the specs, the NX and Akyazi classes are even the same approximate size and carry similar numbers of crew-folk.
^Actually that reminds me more of the Intrepid type (like the Pioneer in Rise of the Federation), what with the half-saucer design.
Actually, it was confirmed by Doug Drexler that the producers originally wanted the NX-01 to be the Akira class ship. Apparently they thought that the ship, just being in the background in FC and DS9, wouldn't have been recognizable by their obviously moronic and not-nitpicky-at-all viewers, never mind that the design looked like post-TNG anyway. Doug of course knew this was ridiculous, so he took it upon himself to make changes to the design to make it look more like something from the 22nd century. That's why the ship looks so much like the Akira.
I've never understood the belief that the Akira is "just a background ship." For a ship that's not a lead ship, it's pretty prominent even before the design got usurped into the NX-01's. It's an Akira which flies by the exploding Borg cube in First Contact, which is one of the movie's signature shots. Akira class ships are displayed quite prominently on screen in a number of DS9 episodes and even a Voyager episode. It was even on the front of the box for the old Dominion War video game. Sorry, didn't mean to rant, and I do know you're just reporting an established fact. This is just something that irritates me. The Norway class is a background ship. The Sabre class is a background ship. The Akira is not.
Yes, I completely agree with you. But I was stating what the producers of ENT believed, not what the fanbase knew. Keep in mind that these were the same people who wanted a rock band of-the-week on the ship in a pathetic effort to boost ratings with tween viewership, since their just-as-pathetic soft porn decon gel scenes weren't attracting the creepy pervert male viewership.
^IIRC, it wasn't the producers of the show who wanted the rock bands, it was the executives of the network. Those are two separate, often adversarial groups.
Huh, this is the first I've heard about shipboard rock bands. That just sounds terrible, so glad that idea never went anywhere.