Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard
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Called them using the Discovery bridge months ago! Except I guessed it would be for the Enterprise-E.
The fleet looked cool, kinda Star Trek Online-ish but were there only 2 designs?
The fleet looked cool, kinda Star Trek Online-ish but were there only 2 designs?
Yeah disappointment or what.
I have never been disappointed in a startrek fleet until now.
Even discovery had a good variety of ships.
Probably the only let down of the series.
Yep, one primary and secondary hull and two different nacelle designs and that appears to have been it.
Yup. And I'm glad it was a couple of solid designs, if a bit unrealistic to only have a couple of types of ships in a fleet.
I'm giving Eaves a pass on this one. These ships are exactly what they were meant to be: generic Starfleet vessels only seen for a minute or two, that were hastily designed because of time constraints.
Believe me, I'm just as much into starship porn as the next guy, but think of it this way: What if this design was what they chose for the Enterprise-F? Would you really want the next Enterprise to have been a recycled, low-poly rush job with no real thought put into it other than 'saucer and two nacelles?' (And trust me, if we do eventually see the Enterprise, it will be the F because I'm pretty certain they aren't going to reuse the Sovereign class.)
I mean, they even had to reuse the Magee and Zimmerman classes for generic background ships in "Children of Mars" because of time constraints, and they could have totally done that again with this scene. I would much rather they took their time to design a ship for next season that's going to be shown more prominently than these were.
Believe me, I'm just as much into starship porn as the next guy, but think of it this way: What if this design was what they chose for the Enterprise-F? Would you really want the next Enterprise to have been a recycled, low-poly rush job with no real thought put into it other than 'saucer and two nacelles?' (And trust me, if we do eventually see the Enterprise, it will be the F because I'm pretty certain they aren't going to reuse the Sovereign class.)
I mean, they even had to reuse the Magee and Zimmerman classes for generic background ships in "Children of Mars" because of time constraints, and they could have totally done that again with this scene. I would much rather they took their time to design a ship for next season that's going to be shown more prominently than these were.
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Then people would have bitched about design lineage and how they don't look Starfleet etc..
Not this person. I'm all for an actual (logical) progression of change.
Although I hear what you're saying. Look at the flack those DSC Klingon ships made. And I'll admit that I didn't care for them either, but not because of their designs; rather, that they did not follow a logical progression of change, in that the ships that came before them and came after them were pretty unified in design, and then along comes these completely different things shoehorned into the middle. Even the producers recognized the problem and reverted back to the more familiar D7 style design.
I love the one design.
Michael Chabon identified the class as the ''Curiosity"-class in his latest Instagram story.
This reminds me of The Orville. Only the CG isn't as good.
These ships also have a Steamrunner-y-ness about them. That is, they look better in the background or abstractly but less so in real life. Look at how clunky the Steamrunner looks compared to other ships below -- hero ships that were designed in detail and with care.
It's not simply a matter of polygon count. It's boxy, sure, but look at the size of those Bussard Collectors next to the Intrepid's. Or its pod next to the Miranda's. Further thought needed to be put into it, and would have if it were meant for more, and I feel similarly about these ships.
This reminds me of The Orville. Only the CG isn't as good.
These ships also have a Steamrunner-y-ness about them. That is, they look better in the background or abstractly but less so in real life. Look at how clunky the Steamrunner looks compared to other ships below -- hero ships that were designed in detail and with care.
It's not simply a matter of polygon count. It's boxy, sure, but look at the size of those Bussard Collectors next to the Intrepid's. Or its pod next to the Miranda's. Further thought needed to be put into it, and would have if it were meant for more, and I feel similarly about these ships.
I think it’s unfair to compare the FC ships with other designs with more thought put into them. The four ships Alex Jaeger designed were never meant to be seen up close or at a standstill. That’s why they were in the far background zipping around super-fast, and were only on screen for about a minute. Jaeger’s only job was to design ships that would look nothing like the new Enterprise so the audience wouldn’t be confused as to which ship they were seeing in the battle.
And the only reason why we ended up seeing those ships again was because ILM handed them over to the DS9 VFX department because they needed more ships for the CGI fleet scenes. And even then they had to be completely remapped for DS9.
This is the same thing: they just needed a generic ship design for the few minutes they would be on screen, and then they multiplied it a hundred times instead of wasting time designing ten more ship classes.
My hope is that for season 2, they will take the time to put some thought into a new ship (especially if it’s the Enterprise) and give it the love that people like Probert and Sternbach put into theirs.
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Definitely, and fits with the post Dominion War vibe I got from it.
Really appreciate the design.
Are we sure it's the actual Discovery bridge or did they build one similar? Picard films in California whereas Discovery films in Toronto. It was all viewscreen stuff, perhaps Frakes filmed his stuff while directing a Discovery S3 episode.
I assumed it was the command chair and a couple of stations behind him, filmed on a green screen and everything else was virtual.
