I found it interesting that the Kerala was originally the Curie & was going to be a ship that was experimenting with new warp technology that caused it to become deformed. That storyline line morphed into what happened with the Glenn.
It then got used for the Battle of the Binary Stars because originally there were six ships & when Eaves read the script saw they were naming all these ships so needed to throw other models in.
That's interesting!
First of all: "Experimenting with new warp technology" sounds a HELL of a lot more convincing than "surfing on an intergalactic shroom network". Also, that it wasn't supposed to be the sister ship of the Discovery in the first place.
I always thought the monumentally stupid shroom drive (the stupid is the
shroom-part - the "immediate jump" part is actually interesting) was part of Fuller's original idea for the season (because Stamets was a shroom scientist, and Fuller was still in place when he was cast). If we find out that whole shroom drive storyline actually WASN'T part of Fuller's story treatment, I would both be really surprised and actually much more horrendously shocked about how the producers messed the series up.
The battle of the binary stars originally only having
six(!) Federation starships is also much more in line with the timeframe of the show and the (assumed) size of the Federation: Immediately having Dominion war sized fleet at your disposal was a late DS9/VOY- thing - even in TNG it usually took a while until they asembled half a decent fleet. It would also have been a much more intense (because more
intimate) battle than the "smash starships together untill the screen is filled"-apporach we actually got in the final product.
Regarding the model:
I like it. But the color is IMO a little off-putting. The ships appear all way darker on screen, this white-ish paint is unfamiliar, and makes the windows hard to see. Also, it's an upside-down Shenzhou. I don't havve a problem with that. But it would have been better to just turn it back around, and sell it as another configuration of the same class.