Starship design history in light of Discovery

[Timo]

How does Burnham saying that she’s seen these graveyards all over equate that she’s unfamiliar with them to you? That’s the exact opposite of her statement. She clearly knows how to act on the planet and how to deal with the Emerald Chain. So she obviously has lots of familiarity with places like this.

I get the exact opposite impression: she has seen graveyards, but not scrapyards, and it e.g. comes as a shock to her that the site would work on slave labor. It's Georgiou who knows her way around the environment, with Burnham just watching and learning.

Hima was Emerald Chain territory, and Book worked for them often enough. Burnham, apparently less so.

The intent is clearly that these ships were not originally wrecked, or previously in the hands of the Chain (if the Chain even existed before the Burn, which is very doubtful.) They might have been old, but they were still operational prior to the Burn. The intent is also clear that they were not meant to represent the 23rd century Hiawatha, Hoover and Cardenas classes, but generic 31st century ships that were damaged specifically because of the Burn.

Such an intent would not be consistent with what we see happened to the ships (no Burn damage but merely various states of disrepair), nor with what we hear of the nature of the place (its product range satisfies the discerning 23rd century customer, save for those parts where it slightly spills over to the 24th). So it's best forgotten altogether, especially when not backed up by dialogue.

I'm actually betting that we'll see some new 2260's-era Starfleet ship designs in SNW and very little recycling of DSC season 1 models. Even the Enterprise may look different from what we saw in DSC.

Depends on the business model, I guess. The PIC shortie was put together out of existing assets, with the show itself investing in different models - but the high budget DSC keeps on recycling.

In-universe, SNW supposedly takes place after DSC S2, so we could easily accept that some of what we saw is on its way out (including the Enterprise hersefl!) and new stuff is coming in.

That the incoming stuff would "look more like TOS" is a non-starter, though, because there is no TOS look. Everything we think we know about the looks of the TOS Starfleet actually comes from TAS. And even that is precious little, limited to two types of support ship and a number of shuttlecraft. What really should be coming in is TMP. And I don't see TPTB going there quite yet.

Timo Saloniemi

 

[Dukhat]

I disagree completely with 100% of what you said.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Same. Start moving to the TOS designs so by the time Pike hands the keys to Kirk in the finale the Enterprise looks like it should.

The animated Short Trek already depicted Kirk's TOS Enterprise with the Discovery/Strange New Worlds design, going from that to the TMP version. No way are they transitioning to the 1960's designs now.

 

[Dukhat]

The animated Short Trek already depicted Kirk's TOS Enterprise with the Discovery/Strange New Worlds design, going from that to the TMP version. No way are they transitioning to the 1960's designs now.

Well, if we just go by the visuals, Calypso is inconsistent with the current season of DSC, so there’s no reason to assume that they’re going to be consistent with what we saw in Ephraim & Dot (especially since that Short Trek was visually inconsistent on its own, showing the TOS crew with the DSC Enterprise interiors/exteriors.)

 

[F. King Daniel]

Well, if we just go by the visuals, Calypso is inconsistent with the current season of DSC, so there’s no reason to assume that they’re going to be consistent with what we saw in Ephraim & Dot (especially since that Short Trek was visually inconsistent on its own, showing the TOS crew with the DSC Enterprise interiors/exteriors.)

Calypso is set around 1,000 years after season 3. Bit soon to say it's inconsistent.

 

[dupersuper]

Well, if we just go by the visuals, Calypso is inconsistent with the current season of DSC, so there’s no reason to assume that they’re going to be consistent with what we saw in Ephraim & Dot (especially since that Short Trek was visually inconsistent on its own, showing the TOS crew with the DSC Enterprise interiors/exteriors.)

Didn't it also have an A on it?

 

[Dukhat]

Calypso is set around 1,000 years after season 3. Bit soon to say it's inconsistent.

It’s ambiguous as to when Calypso is set. And either way, the ship doesn’t look like that anymore, which was the point I was making.

Didn't it also have an A on it?

The TMP version did, yes. Which was the wrong ship as it was the nil that was destroyed over Genesis.

 

[F. King Daniel]

It’s ambiguous as to when Calypso is set. And either way, the ship doesn’t look like that anymore, which was the point I was making

With programmable matter being behind all the upgrades, can't Zora make the ship look however she wants?

 

[Dukhat]

With programmable matter being behind all the upgrades, can't Zora make the ship look however she wants?

You would have to ask her. And I’m not sure why she would care what the ship looked like.

 

[F. King Daniel]

You would have to ask her. And I’m not sure why she would care what the ship looked like.

She likes classic movies, she's got a thing for nostalgia

 

[Dukhat]

She likes classic movies, she's got a thing for nostalgia

Then she should have turned the ship into a TOS Connie

 

[Ronald Held]

Ephraim cannot keep all the multiverse variants of the Connies straight

 

[Dryson]

I think the ships of Trek, 32nd century, are to large and streamlined for the extremely limited resources on hand. Even Ossyra's ship was far to large. Smaller ships built from whatever could be scrounged by all sides would be the norm, in my opinion.

After Su'Kal is saved, rebuilding Starfleet should take at least 100 years, if not more.

The galaxy is not a pretty place now. It is similar to the deserts of Nimbus III, lots of pirates and hybrid ships.

In Disco, we should be seeing a lot of hybrids. Intact but capable saucer sections plasma welded to freighters, the freighters now becoming crew sections and cargo holds. Old impulse engines held in storage, waiting for final fitting, fused onto the half moon decking of an unfinished Galor class starship, the connections to the hull secondary hull, plated over and welded shut.

Not only would Starfleet have various hybrids, but all of the other species would as well. The ships of the Romulans. Vulcans, Breen, Gorn, Andorians and many others, would be drastically different in the 32nd century.

In the grand scheme of things, everything that had dilithium in it, a hand held device, a ships warp core, planetary manufacturing facilities, etc. is all laid to waste. Like the Borg came through, carved the galaxy up and decided they didn't want the components and then let the facilities crash back into the surface of a planet in a thunderous tumult of dust.

 

[Tuskin38]

I think the ships of Trek, 32nd century, are to large and streamlined for the extremely limited resources on hand. Even Ossyra's ship was far to large. Smaller ships built from whatever could be scrounged by all sides would be the norm, in my opinion.

The Starfleet designs at least pre-date the burn, you see them in that flashback plus a couple are part of the debris field in Episode 1.

They could be surviving ships, ones with their warp cores off for whatever reason.

 

[F. King Daniel]

With programmable matter, rebuilding the fleet should be nothing. Look how quickly they have a 900 year update to Discovery.

 

[Anonskekwkksksbxjw]

It bothered me how the internal sets stayed the same after a 900 year catch up refit. Also I want to see those Ni’var ships get refit like the Discovery did. Something that bothered me was how the Excelsiors appeared in TNG without being refit. After a ton of digging I found fanart of a 2370s style excelsior refit

https://www.deviantart.com/quantum808/art/U-S-S-Nexcelsior-24th-Century-706304465

 

[Tuskin38]

It bothered me how the internal sets stayed the same after a 900 year catch up refit.

Probably budget/time.

Maybe they’ll be changed for season 4.

 

[Dukhat]

It bothered me how the internal sets stayed the same after a 900 year catch up refit. Also I want to see those Ni’var ships get refit like the Discovery did. Something that bothered me was how the Excelsiors appeared in TNG without being refit. After a ton of digging I found fanart of a 2370s style excelsior refit

https://www.deviantart.com/quantum808/art/U-S-S-Nexcelsior-24th-Century-706304465

1. They explained in the show that they didn’t want to change the interiors too much so that the crew would still be able to function adequately and be familiar with the controls, etc.

2. I’m not sure what you mean about the Ni’var ships. They just looked like little fighter craft to me. Why would they need to be refit like Discovery?

3. While I agree that the Excelsiors we saw in TNG/DS9/VOY should have been refit to look more up to date, that fan drawing is really nothing more than a regular Excelsior with Sovereign nacelles. I would expect something more like the radical upgrade from the TOS Constitution to the TMP Constitution.

 

[Tuskin38]

Huh I've never seen that top left art before (all of these images from IrishTrekkie's videos)

And the art on the right here (STO made their own Mirror Crossfield with a gold'ish hull, I wonder if it was inspired by that)

Some Shenzhou art I haven't seen before

 

[Timo]

The thing about Fuller wanting the hero ship to camouflage herself as a D-7 really is a head-scratcher. Was she designed by Starfleet to do that very thing? (Then why give her a saucer in the first place?) Or was this supposed to be clever wartime improvisation with random resources? Or something halfway in between, as with the purpose-built merchant raiders of WWI and WWII that had special false smokestacks or forecastles or upperworks details prepared in advance, along with ample supplies of paint?

The end result is much superior to many of the early ideas IMHO. But the Shenzhou could have used a lot more work to meet the "familiar and even humdrum compared to the real hero ship" criterion. A less busy finish to the design, perhaps, with significantly simpler nacelles and without the fins and the complexity of the pylons. The ENT influences are there all right, and are very welcome. But without any context for the era between ENT and TOS, it takes extra work to sell this as an intermediate design, and that work just wasn't there. (Even though clearly a lot of work in general was done!)

Timo Saloniemi