I would have preferred that design for this season's hero ship.
Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard
- Thread starter pst
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The stinger portion of this class still weirds me out but over all it is a good design.Doug also posted this on Facebook
DSC and LDS switched to having white text instead of black for ship names in many cases. I guess Drexler was assuming that trend was going to continue, but they decided to go back to the traditional coloring (someone else posted the approval model, probably Blass, and mentioned that one of the changes made for the final model was back to an old-style hull color, so maybe it was because going with a lighter gray made the white even harder to see). No problem by me, I never liked the white text.
I agree. This retro vibe that discards mid and late 24th century designs does annoy me. There's no reason if the Excelsior and Miranda class ships can be around for 100 years in Trek history that we can't run into any TNG/DS9, TNG movie era ships.
My nerd opinion is that a Galaxy class space frame can definitely last 50 years so why can't it make one appearance. And I don't really count that Star Trek online version they slipped in Picard S2.
I get it, Terry Matalas probably has a TOS design affinity but where's the showrunner that loves the Nebula and Akira designs as much as me
Well, that whole war thing probably had an impact.
My point was that those ships showed up on screens across 100 years of Trek. Just like to see the ships from the TNG era some more.
Same. Ugly ships, though that's par for course in the 24th century, in my opinion.
I had a headcanon theory that fits this.
I had the idea that different shipyards had different design aesthetics and different engineering optimisations and tradeoffs, which would wax and wane and become dominant at different times. For example – the San Francisco and Beta Antares Fleet Yards favoured long, sleek, lean, elongated designs, like the Constitution, Excelsior, and Sovereign. The Utopia Planitia and 40 Eridani A Fleet Yards favoured these rounded, smooth shapes, like the Galaxy and the Nebula and all those background 24th century ships we glimpse – Cheyenne, New Orleans, Springfield etc. Ignoring multi-vector assault mode for a moment, the Intrepid and the Prometheus are basically sister ship classes on paper, but the Intrepid is the cuddly chonker Utopia Planitia/40 Eridani A version, and the Prometheus is the stretched-out skinny San Francisco/Beta Antares version.
For a long time during the decades of relative peace in the middle of the the 24th century the Utopia Planitia design language came to dominate with these elliptical saucers and bulbous nacelles, though it was ultimately discovered that while this method gave ships a much larger volume for a given mass and worked well for self-sufficient exploration vessels in peacetime, it was inefficient for more militaristic ships optimised for battle conditions. Then with the destruction of Utopia Planitia the manufacturing capacity for that type of design language was effectively lost. This is what we're seeing in PIC – leaner, more angular ships, that are fast and well-armed but much less "friendlier" in design and less comfortable than the best Utopia Planitia had to offer.
Also, I entirely agree that the Dominion War fleets should have had these types of ships rather than endless Excelsiors and Mirandas. But the lack of Ambassadors or Cheyennes really was an oversight, especially with the advent of CGI and when we start getting to the frankenfleet vessels.
Do we know if the Intrepid is a carrier like the Hornet/Wasp?
@AdmiralBuck is it a carrier?
@Macintosh
And then there are the yards we know less about. The ones in the home spaces of Andoria, Betazed, Benzar, Tellar, maybe even Bajor by now?
And then there are the yards we know less about. The ones in the home spaces of Andoria, Betazed, Benzar, Tellar, maybe even Bajor by now?
Yeah, we've been discussing them in another thread. I don't like that Utopia Planitia being destroyed was apparently such a significant blow to Starfleet's ship production capacity for years given that it's only one of at least three active shipyards in Earth's own solar system, never mind the many shipyards that must exist elsewhere – but we have to defer to what we're shown on screen.
Yep, with San Francisco Fleet Yards and the Tranquility Base Yards based at the Moon(they constructed the TOS Defiant) that still gives Starfleet a lot of construction power within Sector 001.
We only know for sure that McKinley Station and San Francisco Fleet Yards are producing starships into the 24th century – but in the 23rd century Earth's moon is quite the industrial hub, with Luna Shipyards (Kasidy Yates's freighter Xhosa), Copernicus Shipyards (Hathaway NCC-2593), and Tranquility Base (Defiant NCC-1764) all being cited. Even assuming that the lunar shipyards all closed down or relocated, Sector 001 should have significant starship production capability even without Utopia Planitia.
Only if there is the personnel available to make production happen.
There are very obviously two on the starboard and port sides of the Saucer section
