Starship design history in light of Discovery

[Timo]

I think it's interesting that the Shenzhou was still outfitted with phase-cannons and not lasers.

As far as we can tell, Starfleet starships were never armed with lasers.

TOS "A Private Little War" makes reference to "old style hand lasers", and apparently the three-barreled phasers seen in the early TOS episodes featured at least one laser barrel which the excited Tyler there mentions as having failed to cut through Talosian doors.

(That other Tyler, from DSC, might well have had a laser barrel in his three-barrel tool of trade, too, but the only time he explicitly used a laser was when it was mounted on the manipulator of his workbee. Technically, this would be a spacecraft-mounted laser, but it didn't appear to be a weapon. Also interestingly, it is the only laser in the history of Star Trek that does the thing no laser should ever do, that is, glow in vacuum!)

Nobody ever specifies what kind of a beam weapon (if any) Pike's starship had in "The Cage". Also, nobody tells us what kind of a beam weapon was ultimately used to blow the Talosian door (and hilltop!) to smithereens. But later Trek artists have taken the double-bubble structure of that pedestal projector and applied it as their symbol for the shipboard phaser emitter in the Master Systems Display artwork; also, the colorful beam effect of that projector would thereafter be used for the beam of Kirk's explicit phaser rifle. So presumably the pedestal device was a phaser gun or a phaser drill. And presumably Pike's ship also had phaser armament, since ships before and after that one did - but there's no other data on Pike's ship-mounted death rays on that fateful day, so we might theoretically ponder doing hypothetical speculating...

From its blend of the NX and Starship-class, it's at least thirty years old by the time of the first episode of DSC. So, maybe the powergrid can't support anything newer than twenty years old or so. But, on the other hand, it's clearly been refitted with the newest warp-nacelles as they look almost TMP-era.

Or then the newest news is the boxes on every other ship seen, and they in turn will next be replaced by the art deco things first spotted in ST:TMP. The Shenzhou nacelles might fall in between the ENT era cylinders and the DSC era boxes; perhaps their odd, even alien shape is due to Starfleet adopting some off-Earth technologies in the aftermath of the formation of the Federation, and then giving those up in disgust when it turned out domestic was superior?

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anonskekwkksksbxjw]

The Shenzhou was likely you to date on refits when Michael arrived on the ship. Presumably it had the USS Kelvin aesthetic during the 2230s. Whether it was built then or not is unknown.

 

[Anonskekwkksksbxjw]

*up to date

 

[Timo]

Hmm... I'm not sure every ship gets to enjoy every step in starship evolution, even across a service life that covers the better part of a century. Say, engines-wise, the Shenzhou might well have skipped the Kelvin stage, much like the Enterprise seems to have skipped just about every stage since Archer's days, and at least the Discovery state. But Georgiou's ship might have received the latest user interfaces, much like Lorca's, while Pike's was stuck with Kelvin style ones and remained so even when handed over to Kirk. And possibly Pike got more modern guns and transporters, while Georgiou got better spacesuits, etc.

It might only be in times of plenty that Starfleet actually manages to fit a major part of its fleet with the same sort of gear. In DSC, this would be the nacelles; in TNG, apparently at least the interiors; after TNG we get a fairly homogeneous fleet in LDS, and then finally an amusingly uniform one in PIC... There might be eras of diversity or utter chaos, too, though.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Anonskekwkksksbxjw]

We don’t ever see that though. This is a post scarcity society. Michael (in the 2240s flashback) doesn’t say the Shenzhou looks outdated, she says the transporter system is outdated. We see that a decade earlier ships had tubular nacelles so it is clear that for two decades they started making nacelles more angular and then reversed that for the 2260s only to then switch to vertical flattened nacelles in the 2270s. Part of this chaos may be due to alien influences coming in as they join the federation and integrate their ships into Starfleet. Remember, it is helpful to visualize the design history as four streams which merge into one with many more streams flowing in across the streams length. About the size and how one user pointed out that the bridge window doesn’t fit with the 288 meters, I came to a realization. What if they aren’t just creating ridiculously sized ships, what if they are increasing the size of all ships in Star Trek by the same amount and retroactively saying that the Enterprise in TOS with the TOS look was 442 meters? If you adjust all the sizes of non discovery ships up, then suddenly the sets for ships on the other shows actually fit within the ship size. If we do this it will not only make the discovery sizes fit better but actually make the sets of ships fit into their respective sizes. We can establish The Galaxy class as not being 642 meters, but instead 983.087 meters. The Excelsior goes from 469 to 718.174 which completely fixes the Excelsior size problem https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/excelsior-size.htm. If you use the DS9 tech manual size of 511 meters you get 782.488 meters. And, triumplantly, the Sovereign goes from 685 meters to a whopping 1048.932 meters. I thought about it a lot and concluded they may actually be reestablishing the sizes to better fit the ship interiors. It’s not like anyone in universe has ever stated the size of their ship. It keeps the same ratios and now the Enterprise E seems much more impressive. Anyways I would like someone to make the fan art of a Kelvin style Shenzhou. Just give it the right paint job, all white, replace deflector dish with the one on the Kelvins engineering section, add Kelvin style hull lettering and swap out the nacelles.

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

I personally liked the look of the Shenzhou in Discovery as it was a cool ship. My own headcanon says it can do many things like it did in the episode such as hover in atmosphere and with those nacelles the way they were it could probably land using them as landing gear.

 

[Mytran]

What if they aren’t just creating ridiculously sized ships, what if they are increasing the size of all ships in Star Trek by the same amount and retroactively saying that the Enterprise in TOS with the TOS look was 442 meters? If you adjust all the sizes of non discovery ships up, then suddenly the sets for ships on the other shows actually fit within the ship size. If we do this it will not only make the discovery sizes fit better but actually make the sets of ships fit into their respective sizes. We can establish The Galaxy class as not being 642 meters, but instead 983.087 meters. The Excelsior goes from 469 to 718.174 which completely fixes the Excelsior size problem https://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/excelsior-size.htm. If you use the DS9 tech manual size of 511 meters you get 782.488 meters. And, triumplantly, the Sovereign goes from 685 meters to a whopping 1048.932 meters. I thought about it a lot and concluded they may actually be reestablishing the sizes to better fit the ship interiors.

I really like this, but as for...

It’s not like anyone in universe has ever stated the size of their ship.

...there's that pesky line from Picard in ST8:

There are twenty-four decks. Almost seven hundred metres long.

 

[NCC-73515]

And then they had intruders on deck 29, where a giant deep pit exists. XD

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

And then they had intruders on deck 29, where a giant deep pit exists. XD

A pit to nothingness..... They were inspired by Galaxy Quest

 

[Timo]

...Although it wasn't all that deep, and wasn't on Deck 29, and could quite plausibly be spotted on the MSD, too.

We do get onscreen statements about the size of the Trek ships, only in written (but, alas, quite readable) form. And all of them suggest ridiculously low figures. There's the length of Kirk's ship from the comparison chart with the Klingon/Romulan battle cruiser, and the mass of Kirk's ship from the graphics of "Brother", both figures that I'd rather ditch altogether. Especially as the spoken references, such as Scotty's "nearly a million gross tons", are more in line with what we get in the greater Trek context.

Happily, we never saw the Sovereign next to anything measurable...

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Kamen Rider Blade]

But if you follow modern military tech, current day naval vessels outside of Carriers are much smaller than their WW2 equivalent.

Everything is getting Smaller and more efficient and only size up as needed if the scope of their main mission has expanded.

 

[Timo]

Oh, I'm fine with Picard's flagship being shorter than Lorca's makeshift flying lab or Marcus' old dreadnought.

It's just that I really wouldn't want to believe in NCC-1701-nil actually shrinking during her service life, so that she's the realistic DSC size in the late 2250s, but the uncomfortably cramped TOS size in the 2270s where we can measure the docking ports and whatnot, and perhaps originally even the Kelvinverse size (that is, the size we'd really expect from a ship shaped much like the Kelvin).

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

Oh, I'm fine with Picard's flagship being shorter than Lorca's makeshift flying lab or Marcus' old dreadnought.

It's just that I really wouldn't want to believe in NCC-1701-nil actually shrinking during her service life, so that she's the realistic DSC size in the late 2250s, but the uncomfortably cramped TOS size in the 2270s where we can measure the docking ports and whatnot, and perhaps originally even the Kelvinverse size (that is, the size we'd really expect from a ship shaped much like the Kelvin).

Timo Saloniemi

I like the Kelvinverse Enterprise.

 

[Tuskin38]

STO's take on the Terran Empire Modified Connie seen in Season 1. The red markings are something Cryptic have done with their Mirror DSC ships, it's not something mandated from CBS as far as I know.

 

[137th Gebirg]

The red markings are identical - in shape - to what has come before since ENT. They just changed the color from yellow to red in this case, probably to indicate an Emperor's flagship, as opposed to standard ships of the line.

Interesting update.

 

[Tuskin38]

The red markings are identical - in shape - to what has come before since ENT. They just changed the color from yellow to red in this case, probably to indicate an Emperor's flagship, as opposed to standard ships of the line.

Interesting update.

As I said, all of STOs Mirror DSC Ships have those same markings (except the Mirror Crossfield probably to get around a possible plothole of the USS Discovery disguising herself wrong)

 

[Anonskekwkksksbxjw]

I’d like to see that kelvin style shenzhou fanart. Also I wonder what the new ships in Picard look like close up since they seemed really rushed. But I would like to see that fanart. Just change the paint job, lettering, nacelles, and deflector dish to match. I believe multiplying the sizes of all non discovery ships by
221000/144323 is the answer. Exception for USS Kelvin of the prime timeline and any ships in this three movies because they are never seen alongside ships from previous shows in the franchise and they are made by some of the same people so we will keep those sizes the same. But I do really want to see that fan art as I can’t find any examples

 

[Gingerbread Demon]

To put ships in scale I found this....... Covers everything including Star Trek but not Disco. But the size of some of these guys.

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[valkyrie013]

Always thought that the Defiant was destroyed or otherwise lost. Why? Because the Enterprise was a Connie when Kirk went over, and why would they use a ship design over 100 years old??
Basically, the Empress used the ship to quell rebelion, but being paranoid that the Technology would end up in the wrong hands she prevented the ship from being dismantled or studied, and it was eventually destroyed.

 

[Tuskin38]

and why would they use a ship design over 100 years old??

Maybe the Terrans aren't good at innovating? Maybe it was so advanced they had a hard time reverse engineering it?

Maybe the Defiant was a symbol to the Terrans and those who opposed them so they used the design as a symbol of fear. It looked the same on the outside, but on the inside it was slightly more advanced.

Or because the technology was so advanced, they never bothered making anything more advanced than it for the next 100 years. They felt no need, it did its job.

There are many possible reasons.