Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[Sci]

Really? Hadn't heard that. That's a shame. I've got no tolerance for that kinda bullshit.

Yeah. When "The Trouble With Edward" came out in late 2019, he claimed that modern Trek was always depicting straight white men as evil or incompetent. Which is just nonsense, as witnessed by the fact that Anson Mount's Pike and Ethan Peck's Spock had already debuted to wide acclaim (and the heroic Saru is very clearly coded as white). And of course Sir Patrick Stewart was returning to star in PIC just a few months later.

 

[cooleddie74]

Edward in that story was just an egotistical idiot who suffered from Dunning-Kruger. The producers weren't anti-straight white male. They were pro-skewering characters who thought they knew better than everyone else. I mean...H. Jon Benjamin was basically playing one of his Adult Swim characters as a live action Starfleet officer and we were supposed to see him as incompetent.

 

[HotRod]

Yeah. When "The Trouble With Edward" came out in late 2019, he claimed that modern Trek was always depicting straight white men as evil or incompetent. Which is just nonsense, as witnessed by the fact that Anson Mount's Pike and Ethan Peck's Spock had already debuted to wide acclaim (and the heroic Saru is very clearly coded as white). And of course Sir Patrick Stewart was returning to star in PIC just a few months later.

Ah, Christ...... he's one of those assholes....

Well, thanks for letting me know that. One less site I'll have to visit.

 

[drt]

The original Enterprise was seen as outdated and used as a cadet training ship in The Wrath of Khan

While overall I agree with your take that Matalas thinks of the TOS movie Enterprise as scrappy, the dialog in TWOK is pretty clear that they’re training a new crew specifically for Enterprise, probably because the production still had the idea that they might gradually replace the original crew with new cast members (or appropriate for this forum, really the first attempt at potentially setting up a “Legacy” show). The “out of date” thing only arises in ST3, which then gets retroactively applied to the previous movie to downgrade TWOK Enterprise to just a training ship.

 

[David cgc]

I'd also say that while the Enterprise was a front-line ship in TOS, it wasn't supposed to be head-and-shoulders above every other ship in the fleet the way the Enterprise-D and -E were. "Scrappy" might be exaggerating it, but there's definitely a different vibe from day on in TNG, with the Enterprise-D specifically designed to be able to do what no other ship could (it's got futuristic-for-the-future equipment and amenities, it's faster than anything in space, it splits in two, and it does hair-pin turns!). Narratively, having the Enterprise-G be more normal ship that can be distinguished by the deeds of its crew rather than one that is already set up to make the impossible easy no matter who's flying it.

 

[Nerys Myk]

It started way before that. He hated the NX-01 and all the perceived continuity violations in Enterprise too.

Ah, the good old days.

 

[cooleddie74]

It's nice to know that people who were dead wrong long ago are still dead wrong today. Consistency is their only badge of honor.

 

[Sci]

Ah, Christ...... he's one of those assholes....

Well, thanks for letting me know that. One less site I'll have to visit.

Here: "On a final note on Edward, regular readers of my reviews know that I don't make judgments based on the gender or race of a character. I leave that to the people who are very biased in this regard (in either way). But just imagine the complete idiot in this episode had not been a white man. Just imagine the outrage..."

There are also some weird exchanges here and here over Twitter, where he has deleted his original post but accuses the people who reply to him in disagreement of trying to censor him for being a cishet white man. A search of his Twitter account's history for the month of March 2019 indicates that he was probably expressing his dislike of slash fiction (fan fic that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships, usually between same-sex couples), and other users responded by pointing out that there was some implicit homophobia in his remarks, and he severely over-reacted out of defensiveness against the idea he had an implicit bias of which he was unaware.

While overall I agree with your take that Matalas thinks of the TOS movie Enterprise as scrappy, the dialog in TWOK is pretty clear that they’re training a new crew specifically for Enterprise, probably because the production still had the idea that they might gradually replace the original crew with new cast members (or appropriate for this forum, really the first attempt at potentially setting up a “Legacy” show). The “out of date” thing only arises in ST3, which then gets retroactively applied to the previous movie to downgrade TWOK Enterprise to just a training ship.

Ah, good point! But yeah, either way Matalas thinks of the TOS film-era Constitution class as kind of scrappy, and that's why he made the Constitution III class a powerful but not most-powerful ship.

 

[HotRod]

Here: "On a final note on Edward, regular readers of my reviews know that I don't make judgments based on the gender or race of a character. I leave that to the people who are very biased in this regard (in either way). But just imagine the complete idiot in this episode had not been a white man. Just imagine the outrage..."

There are also some weird exchanges here and here over Twitter, where he has deleted his original post but accuses the people who reply to him in disagreement of trying to censor him for being a cishet white man. A search of his Twitter account's history for the month of March 2019 indicates that he was probably expressing his dislike of slash fiction (fan fic that focuses on romantic or sexual relationships, usually between same-sex couples), and other users responded by pointing out that there was some implicit homophobia in his remarks, and he severely over-reacted out of defensiveness against the idea he had an implicit bias of which he was unaware.

Yeah...... that says alot. Thanks for doing the leg work.

 

[Tuskin38]

It started way before that. He hated the NX-01 and all the perceived continuity violations in Enterprise too.

Though he never shoved it into an alternate universe like he did with Discovery and SNW.

 

[Tallguy]

I'd also say that while the Enterprise was a front-line ship in TOS, it wasn't supposed to be head-and-shoulders above every other ship in the fleet the way the Enterprise-D and -E were.

It absolutely was. Can you offer evidence to the contrary?

 

[fireproof78]

"There are only 12 like her in the fleet."

That's not head and shoulders above every ship.

 

[cooleddie74]

And the four Connies in the war games armada against the Enterprise in "The Ultimate Computer" were pretty evenly matched with her if you took the M5 computer out of the equation.

 

[Tallguy]

"There are only 12 like her in the fleet."

That's not head and shoulders above every ship.

OK. Neither is the Enterprise D head and shoulders above every ship because there are other Galaxy class ships.

Interestingly the Starship Enterprise was meant to be equal or slightly superior to the Klingon D-7 and obviously a tougher ship than the Romulan warbird. Was there ever an indication that the Galaxy could take on the D'deridex?

 

[fireproof78]

OK. Neither is the Enterprise D head and shoulders above every ship because there are other Galaxy class ships.

Interestingly the Starship Enterprise was meant to be equal or slightly superior to the Klingon D-7 and obviously a tougher ship than the Romulan warbird. Was there ever an indication that the Galaxy could take on the D'deridex?

Not in so many words, but the Enterprise-D was sent in Angel One to the neutral zone to be a show of force against a "Romulan Battlecruiser" seen on their side of the boarder.

 

[HotRod]

Interestingly the Starship Enterprise was meant to be equal or slightly superior to the Klingon D-7 and obviously a tougher ship than the Romulan warbird.

If you're talking "In-universe," the Klingon D7 didn't enter service until 2257, when the Enterprise was already 12 years old. And how could the Enterprise be built to be tougher then a ship the Feds had yet to encounter.

 

[fireproof78]

If you're talking "In-universe," the Klingon D7 didn't enter service until 2257, when the Enterprise was already 12 years old. And how could the Enterprise be built to be tougher then a ship the Feds had yet to encounter.

Time travel.

 

[Macintosh]

Honestly, had they simply shown the BoP landing more shots and having a few more tricks up their sleeves to thwart the E-D crew's attempts to defend themselves, I wouldn't have had a problem with it. Why the D only fires ONCE the entire time is ridiculous. Plus the BoP misses a good number of shots she takes!

Exactly. Even without shields I'd expect a Galaxy-class to smack an old Bird-of-Prey all up and down that star system. It has the two largest phaser banks ever found on a Starfleet ship and can launch twenty torpedoes at once, Riker should have just unleashed hell.

 

[Tallguy]

If you're talking "In-universe," the Klingon D7 didn't enter service until 2257, when the Enterprise was already 12 years old. And how could the Enterprise be built to be tougher then a ship the Feds had yet to encounter.

I'm just going by Gene:
"The Klingon vessels were big, dangerous looking—undoubtedly their new K’t’inga-class heavy cruisers which some Admiralty tacticians feared might prove faster and more powerful than Starfleet’s First Line Constitution-Class starships."

I never said that the Constitution Class was built to be tougher than the D-7. I'm saying it was. Happy accident? It wasn't built to be tougher than the Romulan ship either. "Meant to be" in that we the audience were to have that understanding.

Not in so many words, but the Enterprise-D was sent in Angel One to the neutral zone to be a show of force against a "Romulan Battlecruiser" seen on their side of the boarder.

I know at that point no one had seen Romulans for some time, right? Was The Neutral Zone the first time anyone had seen the big greenies? Or had those been the Rommie's rides when they vanished?

 

[cooleddie74]

The first official contact between the Federation and the Romulans since 2311 was in "The Neutral Zone(TNG)," set at the very end of 2364. Even when the Enterprise-C was destroyed in 2344 it wasn't considered an official contact situation and no recorded messages were traded by the 1701-C and the attacking Romulans.