Starship design history in light of Discovery
- Thread starter INACTIVEUSS Einstein
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I wasn't sure which thread to post this in but I wanted to share it. I had a little fun in photoshop and gave the Shepard class some rounded nacelles from the Frankin.
I'm still suprised people care so much about round vs. not round nacelles.
The movie era had the Connie/miranda nacelles, the excelsior nacelles and the oberth nacelles, all had very distinct looks.
The TNG era had galaxy/nebula nacelles, sovereign nacelles, defiant nacells and intrepid nacelles, all again looking very different from each other (with the only thing they had in common being red and blue glowy bits)
So why do we expect similar looking nacelles in the TOS era now that we get more ships? There's nothing wrong with ships from that era having individual nacelles too.
We have no idea if round nacelles where ever even a standard, maybe whoever designed the constitution class did round nacelles as a callback to 22nd century design while starfleet as a whole didn't use them a lot.
The movie era had the Connie/miranda nacelles, the excelsior nacelles and the oberth nacelles, all had very distinct looks.
The TNG era had galaxy/nebula nacelles, sovereign nacelles, defiant nacells and intrepid nacelles, all again looking very different from each other (with the only thing they had in common being red and blue glowy bits)
So why do we expect similar looking nacelles in the TOS era now that we get more ships? There's nothing wrong with ships from that era having individual nacelles too.
We have no idea if round nacelles where ever even a standard, maybe whoever designed the constitution class did round nacelles as a callback to 22nd century design while starfleet as a whole didn't use them a lot.
For me personally I think the Shepard looks better with them. I feel a few more ships besides connies should have round nacelles. It's a distinct part of that era. Plus I don't really like the boxy square nacelles of Discovery.
A definite improvement.I wasn't sure which thread to post this in but I wanted to share it. I had a little fun in photoshop and gave the Shepard class some rounded nacelles from the Frankin.
Thank you.
Sure, they could show more round nacelles (maybe they will, the show's still young) and there's absolutely nothing wrong with preferring round nacelles, while I like a lot of the Discovery designs I'm not in love with the nacelles either.
It just confuses me when people say that square nacelles don't fit the era when we've seen a grand total of one ship class of that era before Discovery. Showing that the constitution class is the exception and not the rule when it comes to ship design doesn't contradict anything.
In fact, it supports statements in TOS proper that the Constitution is a unique ship class even within Starfleet.
The Connie is also possibly an older ship then some of the ones we’ve seen, though that still makes the shenzhou the odd one out.
John Eaves speculates (so not fact) that there are round nacelles under the blocky housings and that the current design was future proofing for wide adoption of the spore drive.
Most of the ships do have round domed bussards, something mostly unique to TOS.
John Eaves speculates (so not fact) that there are round nacelles under the blocky housings and that the current design was future proofing for wide adoption of the spore drive.
Most of the ships do have round domed bussards, something mostly unique to TOS.
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Only if we assume the class of the Shenzhou, the Walker class, is older than the Constitution, rather than vice versa...
There's nothing solid on that in the dialogue yet. We don't know when the Walker was launched. We don't know when the Constitution was launched, either, but we know the Enterprise of that class was launched as late as 2245. Then again, the Enterprise has a registry in the 1700s, but there are members of that class with registries in the 1000s range - perhaps the Enterprise is a very late specimen, built to the specs of bygone days for reasons of maintenance logistics? The registry of the Shenzhou falls in between, at the 1200s, but again the Walker might be from the 700s for all we know.
The final datapoint we are missing from all the cases is a launch date or at least stardate derived from a dedication plaque. All DSC and TOS plaques lack that information...
...Yeah, I rather doubt there would be angular warp coils in any warp engine! But why double nacelles, rather than just square holes for round warp coil pegs?
We see three or four distinct angular nacelle shapes in the numerous background DSC ships: there's a basic shape that might be common to Malachovski and Cardenas, say, even when Hoover has a completely different shape. If Starfleet wanted to prepare for an upcoming superdrive by commonalizing old engines for "fitted-for-but-not-yet-with", why would it commonalize separately? Why not put the same "waiting for mushrooms" box on top of every pylon?
...Or TNG. Or ENT. In fact, only the TOS movie engines appear to lack those (but there are half-domes of sort slightly aft of the very front tip), and the VOY engines have their domes split into little red fingernails.
The DSC ships just appear to have multiple domes, sometimes a big one at the center and flanking smaller ones, sometimes two or three big ones side by side. A round housing would be less suited for this than one with a rectangular cross section. Why the extra domes? Does that have to do with the upcoming new drive?
And is it related to the trio of round holes at the bow of the TOS ship saucer? Those were oOo in the first pilot and OOO later on, echoing the DSC dome layouts...
Timo Saloniemi
I don't think anyone has been saying that.
But by not showing more ships with round nacelles too, it pushes that quite classic and pleasing design increasingly into rarity. Now, even in the era of the all-famous Constitution-class, we have now not seen a single other canonical vessel with those nacelles. Barring some computer graphics in the movies.
Do you see what people are saying? I can certainly sympathise. Non-canon material used to love using the round nacelles as a shorthand way to represent antiquity of design, and 23rd century in general, conjuring a sense of history, like the museum in Star Trek: Judgement Rites. I would love to see it.
A render based on Greg Jein's SS Valiant idea
It would have been nice to establish an entire fleet of supporting sister ships around the Constitution class. It would also be nice to see the odd relic or hulk from the early days of space travel, with round nacelles and primitive elements. Old freighters, long crashed. There is a couple of great moments in Judgement Rites where the museum gives descriptions of early spaceflight, describing an early EVA spacewalk in which a freighter was rescued above Mars by a Russian cosmonaut, amongst others. Bring back that sense of wonder for spaceflight history. ENT damaged that feeling somewhat, by being too easy a working environment for starfleet, as opposed to say Babylon 5, where early ships were cramped, zero-G and primitive.
EDIT: Timo just summarised the issues really well below this post.
TOS-R and TAS only show round ones; quite a sudden difference.
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What we have here is a long period in Starfleet history that the camera visits for the very first time - the period between the ending of ENT in the 2150s and the starting of TOS in the 2260s. So far, our only glimpse to it has been USS Kelvin. We thus really have no basis in thinking Starfleet could not be full of ships with squarish engine nacelle cross sections, a fashion spanning half a dozen decades and following a preceding fascination with triangular engines or double nacelles per each pylon or whatnot.
What we do not have, alas, is a clear rationale for why an era would end just before TOS/TAS. Where do the square (but as such very diverse) nacelles so suddenly go? Why is everything we see in TOS (and more tellingly TOS-R and TAS) round?
Well, we could say the nastiness with Klingons depleted Starfleet's supply of square-nacelled ships. DSC S2 might in fact establish something like that. But S1 already did good work in establishing that the Klingon nastiness actually was of limited scope, without major repercussions, just as befits the general pseudohistory. Is 30% losses sufficient depletion? Did the Klingons single out these square-engined ships, and why? Were they perhaps more modern than the average, or more warlike, or what?
The general feel I personally still get is one of a lineage of nacelle cross section shapes, from round-as-Cochrane-used-to-have-it, through square, to vertical flat, to an eventual horizontal flat. But the sharp transitions are a problem, and we have two: from DSC to TOS/TAS, and from TOS/TAS to the TOS movies. That is, we also need to ask, where did the round nacelles disappear all of a sudden? And the answer there would be automatic if round indeed were the ancient thing preceding square.
Timo Saloniemi
What we do not have, alas, is a clear rationale for why an era would end just before TOS/TAS. Where do the square (but as such very diverse) nacelles so suddenly go? Why is everything we see in TOS (and more tellingly TOS-R and TAS) round?
Well, we could say the nastiness with Klingons depleted Starfleet's supply of square-nacelled ships. DSC S2 might in fact establish something like that. But S1 already did good work in establishing that the Klingon nastiness actually was of limited scope, without major repercussions, just as befits the general pseudohistory. Is 30% losses sufficient depletion? Did the Klingons single out these square-engined ships, and why? Were they perhaps more modern than the average, or more warlike, or what?
The general feel I personally still get is one of a lineage of nacelle cross section shapes, from round-as-Cochrane-used-to-have-it, through square, to vertical flat, to an eventual horizontal flat. But the sharp transitions are a problem, and we have two: from DSC to TOS/TAS, and from TOS/TAS to the TOS movies. That is, we also need to ask, where did the round nacelles disappear all of a sudden? And the answer there would be automatic if round indeed were the ancient thing preceding square.
Timo Saloniemi
Ignore the registry numbers.
This. Despite several fans' neurosis that they must be chronological, they're not and have never been.
Plus Discovery's registry number is also a meta reference.
For me it was not a big problem that the ships we saw so far at Discovery are not perfectly in line, because if we look on our cars or phones or any other industrial design, it can change very fast. If we consider that we have over a 100 species in the UFP at that time we have so much diffrent visions of designing a federation starship. So....
Just my 2 cents, thrown from the top of a skyscraper :-)
Just my 2 cents, thrown from the top of a skyscraper :-)
I like how STC handled that : there wasn't much of a fleet left, especially Connies, after everything that had happened during the 5 year mission period. Combine that with Klingon War fleet losses and there's a pretty compelling argument for why ships look very different and officers, on the whole, are very young.
I see it now. I like itIt almost looks like the Top two Nacelles and the Bridge module should be able to detach and become a Federation "BOP'.
Curiouser and curiouser...
Nice! Could you make Discovery with round nacelles? Probably TOS Enterprise style? I have a theory the ship will look 10x better with those round nacelles.I wasn't sure which thread to post this in but I wanted to share it. I had a little fun in photoshop and gave the Shepard class some rounded nacelles from the Frankin.
EDIT: Looks like Trekyards did an episode on alternative Discovery:
It's interesting. I am not sure I like it 100%, but it's decent.
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