I'd like to momentarily deviate away from the character development and instead focus for a short period of time on ship-design. I don't really plan to alter the USS Enterprise in any major way like how J.J. Abrams did in Star Trek XI, but I was thinking about the various ship designs seen in Star Trek.
I've generally noticed that in Star Trek, and many science fiction series there's this weird tendency for each species to design their ships in their own peculiar ways almost centered on ideology rather than practical concerns.
For example in Star Trek
- Starfleet generally designs its ships in a highly modular fashion with a generally clean, well-maintained look about them
- The Klingon Empire generally designs its vessels with the main hull featuring a large bulky wing with nacelles on them, a long skinny neck and some kind of "head" with the bridge in it.
- The Romulans in TOS designed the BoP with wing-like pylons, but a hull that was either saucer shaped or toilet-seat shaped. Because of it being a winged-design, and the fact that the BoP had a large bird like creature painted along the ventral side, many later designs were depicted with bird-like features.
In the actual design of ships, aircraft, and submarines, you'll find that there are differences from nation to nation, but without a trained eye, one could easily mix up a number of frigate and destroyer designs operated by multiple nations as they all have a number of fundamentally similar traits. Submarines are even more confusing
(especially the attack-subs) as they're all teardrop shaped
(admittedly certain ones are more streamlined, particularly certain Russian designs which have the conning-tower/sail very nicely blended into the hull). As for aircraft, there have been many aircraft designs that easily could have been mistaken as being from a number of different countries. Admittedly there are certain designs such as the F-117, B-2, and F-22
(though the Russians and Chinese are working on stealth too now)
Now, I'm not saying I want there to be Federation ships that look like Klingon ships, but I wouldn't mind there being some Klingon and Romulan designs that didn't look stereotypical. There's a lot of options here especially when you consider that in TOS there were only one large Federation Ship-Class shown
(Constitution Class); only one Klingon ship shown up-close
(D-7); there were two Romulan ships shown
(one, however was a Klingon D-7).
That means that there are so many line vessels that would include the following
Federation
- Scout
- Frigate
- Destroyer
- Light-Cruiser
Klingon Empire
- Scout/Corvette
- Frigate
- Destroyer
- Light-Cruiser
- Dreadnought
Romulan (especially post TOS)
- Frigate
- Destroyer
- Indigenous-Cruiser Design
There are also shuttlecraft that each of these civilizations would have as well so there's even more options than that.
I wonder if anybody likes where this is going?
