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Starship design history in light of Discovery

We started doing sketches based on [Paul Christopher's Discovery concept and the '70s Ken Adam & Ralph McQuarrie Enterprise design], but the first thing Bryan [Fuller] said when he saw them was that he didn't want to see any round nacelles on any Starfleet ships! That became a huge concern for all of us, because we were all thinking, "No round nacelles, what are we going to do now?"

Since everyone knew our timeframe took place between Enterprise and the original TV series, round nacelles would really sell the timeframe without question, so having to alter them on all our starships was strange.

We were probably 90% of the way there in the first month or so, but the nacelles became a big holdup. It ended up being a battle for easily five months, just trying to figure out what kind of nacelles we were going to do, and we tried every shape possible.

(Pages 183-184)

Holy shit that was dumb. The more I hear about what Fuller intended to do, the more I find it baffling why they chose him to do a new Trek show? Sounds as counter-intuitive as giving Zack Snyder, the guy famous for "300" and "Watchmen" a Superman-movie to helm! Sometimes Hollywood is just flat out weird...

Just look at my avatar. No court is higher than Night Court.

Soooo... considering there exist early concept sketches all featuring round nacelles, lost of people are on record saying Fuller "ordered" nacelles not to be round - and Fuller, as the absolute chef, had authority over every ingle piece of design, and none of them feature round nacelles - your theory is:

Eaves designed round nacelles, but then never submitted these sketches (which is literally his job), and instead chose to lie about his former bosses, and sectretly conspired with the vfx-guys to make every single one of the finished ships on screen have square nacelles directly deceiving his boss?

Well that just sounds reasonable, and not at all like a crazy bonkers conspiracy theory...:rolleyes:
 
The whole point of "Enterprise" is that it's the first ship humanity has built that was remotely that fast. As a result, it's the first ship that's actually able to undergo exploration. Having a ship a couple years earlier that's only slightly slower utterly undermines the premise in nearly countless ways.

Why wasn't Franklin sent to Terra Nova? Why didn't the Franklin come across Andorians or Klingons? Enterprise came across all of that within weeks of leaving Earth. You're trying to justify this using a couple of flavor lines from one episode while ignoring the entirely of what that show was telling you.

Couple of things.

1) just because the Franklin could reach war 4 doesn't mean it could sustain warp 4.
NX class could not sustain warp 5. Later on it could have been refited with a better engine but it's likely when it was first launched it was buggy.

2) it was originally a MACO ship. That means it's mission profile was likely different to the NX. It's primary design was likely based around defence rather than exploration.
Most likely it was designed with protecting the fledgling human trade routes.

NX was about pushing boundaries, the Franklin ship was likely built to fill
A needed role with available technologies.
 
Soooo... considering there exist early concept sketches all featuring round nacelles, lost of people are on record saying Fuller "ordered" nacelles not to be round - and Fuller, as the absolute chef, had authority over every single piece of design, and none of them feature round nacelles - your theory is:

Eaves designed round nacelles, but then never submitted these sketches (which is literally his job), and instead chose to lie about his former bosses, and sectretly conspired with the vfx-guys to make every single one of the finished ships on screen have square nacelles directly deceiving his boss?

Not quite. I will explain my rationale, and then I will cease bringing it up, as I'm quite tired of talking about it.

These production people were saying that Fuller ordered the nacelles not to be round. My response was, why would Fuller care about something so esoteric as the shape of the nacelles, when none of the other attributes of the Starfleet vessels are in any way consistent with each other? Wouldn't Fuller have lots of other, more important things to worry about besides something as random as that? That's why designers are hired in the first place: to design stuff so the higher-ups don't have to. So Fuller had a conniption fit about nacelles, but everything else about those ships were fine, even though they looked nothing alike?

John Eaves has had a history of designing ships that look pretty much the same no matter what organization and time period they belong to. He put Jem'Hadar nacelles on a 200 year old Romulan Bird of Prey in ENT, and then later said that someone else ordered him to do that (which I also don't believe). So it seemed like typical John Eaves to do something like that again. He also made ship designs for STO where the ship's hull evoked late-24th century design aesthetics, but made two versions, one with round TOS nacelles and one with blocky post-Nemesis nacelles. So again I didn't put it past him that he submitted both designs, and the blocky one was the one that was chosen (but wouldn't have if he hadn't submitted it in the first place).

Now, I'm not above admitting that I'm possibly wrong about my assumptions. But it's not like I just pulled this shit out of my ass without past precedent because I'm a "conspiracy nut." I have more important things to do with my time than worry about stuff like this other than posting my opinions about it here.

I'm also not anti-John Eaves. He's a nice guy and I've even chatted with him in the past when he had his blog. But I don't think he's above the occasional fib.

This had better not be Season 1 Night Court. :)

Season 1 sucked ass. But at least it was only 13 episodes.
 
The nacelles can probably be explained like this.

The round nacelle design dating from the ent era is tried and true techonology.
Therefore more reliable and fitted to long range ships the the Enterprise 1701.
Reliability being more important than top speed.

The box design being newer might be less reliable and so fitted to the ships operating within the federation borders and being used as front line combat ships as speed would be more important.

By TMP the box design probably reached the same reliability as the old round style nacelle and so all old style nacelles where refitted.
 
Not quite. I will explain my rationale, and then I will cease bringing it up, as I'm quite tired of talking about it.

These production people were saying that Fuller ordered the nacelles not to be round. My response was, why would Fuller care about something so esoteric as the shape of the nacelles, when none of the other attributes of the Starfleet vessels are in any way consistent with each other? Wouldn't Fuller have lots of other, more important things to worry about besides something as random as that? That's why designers are hired in the first place: to design stuff so the higher-ups don't have to. So Fuller had a conniption fit about nacelles, but everything else about those ships were fine, even though they looked nothing alike?

John Eaves has had a history of designing ships that look pretty much the same no matter what organization and time period they belong to. He put Jem'Hadar nacelles on a 200 year old Romulan Bird of Prey in ENT, and then later said that someone else ordered him to do that (which I also don't believe). So it seemed like typical John Eaves to do something like that again. He also made ship designs for STO where the ship's hull evoked late-24th century design aesthetics, but made two versions, one with round TOS nacelles and one with blocky post-Nemesis nacelles. So again I didn't put it past him that he submitted both designs, and the blocky one was the one that was chosen (but wouldn't have if he hadn't submitted it in the first place).

Now, I'm not above admitting that I'm possibly wrong about my assumptions. But it's not like I just pulled this shit out of my ass without past precedent because I'm a "conspiracy nut." I have more important things to do with my time than worry about stuff like this other than posting my opinions about it here.

I'm also not anti-John Eaves. He's a nice guy and I've even chatted with him in the past when he had his blog. But I don't think he's above the occasional fib.



Season 1 sucked ass. But at least it was only 13 episodes.
It isn't just Eaves saying things like this though, the people who designed the Klingon ships (Eaves didn't work on any of the Klingon ships FYI) said similar things, being that Fuller told them to ignore all previous Klingon ship designs, and then you have him delegating that the Klingons should be bald, and that their make up should look more Alien.

Based on all of that, I don't see how it's odd that Fuller would give some design directions for the Federation ships. I'm not saying he micromanaged every tiny detail on the ships, he just gave guidelines. Flat profile, no round nacelles.

Eaves had a design partner, he could probably back up these statements. The lead design director probably could as well if you could find a way to contact them.
 
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There's a difference between wanting to update TOS aliens (especially the Klingons, as I doubted they would look like the oily-skinned humans in Mongol-face they were in TOS) and worrying about what shape nacelles are. Especially since there was also another reason for the radical Klingon change (they wanted to hide the fact that Shazad Latif was playing dual roles.)
 
There's a difference between wanting to update TOS aliens (especially the Klingons, as I doubted they would look like the oily-skinned humans in Mongol-face they were in TOS) and worrying about what shape nacelles are. Especially since there was also another reason for the radical Klingon change (they wanted to hide the fact that Shazad Latif was playing dual roles.)
But it was their ships too, not just the Makeup. Fuller said to ignore all the previous Klingon ships. So why is it so damn hard to believe he wouldn't give guidelines for the Fed ships as well?

and worrying about what shape nacelles are.
I don't see the difference, they're both designs. We know producers/show runners can make those decisions.

Maybe he wasn't a fan of round nacelles, maybe he thought the TOS aesthetic looked too dated.
 
There's a difference between wanting to update TOS aliens (especially the Klingons, as I doubted they would look like the oily-skinned humans in Mongol-face they were in TOS) and worrying about what shape nacelles are. Especially since there was also another reason for the radical Klingon change (they wanted to hide the fact that Shazad Latif was playing dual roles.)
I genuinely do not see how it is different. Both are design elements, both can impact the overall look and feel of a show, and can be redesigned to suit a production designers particular tastes.

Just because he isn't the designer doesn't mean he doesn't have an opinion or preference. Such things require his final approval anyway.

ETA: Less this came across as overtly hostile, it is not meant as such. Only that I am trying to grasp this POV but do not see design of aliens as different than design of starships.
 
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a clearer render of Baron Grimes' ship. Saw it on Facebook, apparently comes from one of the Eaglemoss booklets.

ySiyIlC.png
 
Uh, It hasn't shown up yet in any of my Subscription DISCOVERY ships booklets yet.
????
I'm supposed to get the Klingon "Frypan" ship tomorrow, maybe it's in the back of that booklet.
:shrug:

I'll be posting pics in the next day or so either way.
 
I love the hood ornament.

Grimes, Stella, and their ship seem like refugees from a universe where DSC embraced its TOS-y-ness.
 
Not quite. I will explain my rationale, and then I will cease bringing it up, as I'm quite tired of talking about it.

These production people were saying that Fuller ordered the nacelles not to be round. My response was, why would Fuller care about something so esoteric as the shape of the nacelles, when none of the other attributes of the Starfleet vessels are in any way consistent with each other? Wouldn't Fuller have lots of other, more important things to worry about besides something as random as that? That's why designers are hired in the first place: to design stuff so the higher-ups don't have to. So Fuller had a conniption fit about nacelles, but everything else about those ships were fine, even though they looked nothing alike?

John Eaves has had a history of designing ships that look pretty much the same no matter what organization and time period they belong to. He put Jem'Hadar nacelles on a 200 year old Romulan Bird of Prey in ENT, and then later said that someone else ordered him to do that (which I also don't believe). So it seemed like typical John Eaves to do something like that again. He also made ship designs for STO where the ship's hull evoked late-24th century design aesthetics, but made two versions, one with round TOS nacelles and one with blocky post-Nemesis nacelles. So again I didn't put it past him that he submitted both designs, and the blocky one was the one that was chosen (but wouldn't have if he hadn't submitted it in the first place).

Now, I'm not above admitting that I'm possibly wrong about my assumptions. But it's not like I just pulled this shit out of my ass without past precedent because I'm a "conspiracy nut." I have more important things to do with my time than worry about stuff like this other than posting my opinions about it here.

I'm also not anti-John Eaves. He's a nice guy and I've even chatted with him in the past when he had his blog. But I don't think he's above the occasional fib.



Season 1 sucked ass. But at least it was only 13 episodes.

Except Fuller gave multiple design directives. The following are (a non exhaustive) list, all documented in officially sanctioned sources:

1) Discovery was to be based on the Planet of the Titans Enterprise concept.
2) Discovery was to be gold colored.
3) Other Starfleet ships were to use a subtle gray texturing, and *not* the matte olive-gray of the TOS model.
4) Discovery was to have a registry of 1031 to commemorate 10/31, his favor holiday.
5) Starfleet ships were to be "flat" as opposed to the "tall ship" aesthetic of TOS/TMP.
6) The various ships were to be as different from past Starfleet designs as possible. Especially TOS.
7) The boxy nacelles, except for Enterprise. This was decided early on as a way to represent a "new type of warp drive" from TOS, before the decided only Disco was going to get the spore drive.
8) Klingon ships were to eschew all past design queues in lieu of a gothic, Gigeresque motif.
9) Klingon ships were also to be flat, the designs are practically 2D.

About half of those seem so trivial as to be beneath a showrunners notice, but he noticed anyway. Maybe Fuller is just a hands-on kind of manager.

Eaves, within these constraints, relied on two main techniques: a) use detailing and shaping to bridge the gap between ENT and TMP b) using early jet/rocket age details, proportions and shapes (Discovery borrows as much from North American Aviation XB-70A Valkyrie bomber prototype as it does from Planet of the Titans).

Pretty much ever Starfleet ship has an aviation nod in it. As in, if you know your stuff, you know what model of aircraft he was looking it when he made the ship. I'm not sure of the venn diagram between trek fans and aviation buffs, but if you're in it everything works on another level.
 
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