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Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

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Starfleet's ships seem kind of bulgy and lacking traditional deflector dishes. Maybe that's the problem besides the homogeneity of the fleet?

The Romulan warbirds seem to be missing warp nacelles. I grew to like them, though.
 
The Klingon BOP (all sizes) never had visible nacelles either. Seems to be a viable in-universe design choice, particularly since it was originally conceived as a Romulan vessel. A number of warp-capable Voyager ships-of-the-week, didn’t have visible nacelles either, IIRC. I don’t think it’s about whether or not a ship has nacelles it can’t fly in warp, rather it probably can’t fly as efficiently in warp. And then there’s the Borg, none of whom have ever used nacelles for their transwarp conduits (no visible form of sublight propulsion either), as a matter of technological necessity. It’s certainly proven not to be a show-stopper for propulsion tech. More of a supplement than anything else, really.
 
They CG'd the hell out of the Discovery bridge in those over-the-shoulder shots. I'm not sure if they added panels at the rear to cover the doors or if they just had the chair side-on for the front shots so the side of the bridge looked like the rear.

Also I think the railings by the chair in the over-the-shoulder shots are missing from the front-on shots. Oops!
 
The intention, I believe, is for Zheng He and ibn Majid to both Curiosity class, since Curiosity ships are named for great, overlooked explorers of the past.

Why the silhouette looks different is an issue with the prop guys or the VFX department. Chabon apparently wants them to be the same class somehow.

Maybe the silhouette is just a standard Starship silhouette and doesn't reflect what the ibn Majid looked like.

Yeah, I’m forced to agree with you. Of course, the ibn Majid’s registry number seems to indicate that it was built not long after the São Paulo from DS9, which was built in 2375. That’s 24 years ago! So these ships are either that old, or they’re new but based on a 24 year old design.

It could explain why every ship in that fleet looks the same: Starfleet has been only building the same ship design for the last half-century, and there’s no other older designs still in service.
 
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Someone might have mentioned it already but with what happened to the ship yards maybe this was a quick way to mass produce Starships while sacrificing design. I got the sense these were more like drone ships all controlled by Riker's flagship.
 
I'm not sure if they added panels at the rear to cover the doors or if they just had the chair side-on for the front shots so the side of the bridge looked like the rear.
The chair is just at an angle in rear facing shots, the door is off to the right out of frame, it's in front of where Michael's console would be on the Discovery.

Here are some on set images
https://twitter.com/jonathansfrakes/status/1243187835554824198
https://twitter.com/TrekCore/status/1243292565467803655

And here is a comparison with the Discovery bridge
https://twitter.com/TrekCore/status/1243191367855214599
 
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Someone might have mentioned it already but with what happened to the ship yards maybe this was a quick way to mass produce Starships while sacrificing design. I got the sense these were more like drone ships all controlled by Riker's flagship.

Why do drone ships need windows?
 
Nah. They're otherwise identical. It seems just like slight variations withing single class. If TOS Connie and the refit are of the same class, then certainly all of these ships are too.

The main hulls do appear to be identical, but there are noticeable differences in the warp engine nacelle designs.
There are some (minor) differences with the top of the saucers as well, in particular the central domes based on the ships that are near to the camera, there may be bigger differences in the more distant ships but its hard to tell.

Makes me think they are sub classes of the same parent class, perhaps Riker is on board the parent class.

I covered this in more detail in another thread.
 
The Discovery bridge set may actually look worse in a late 24th century setting. Wow. How did they manage to actually add lighting and still make it look underwhelming? :lol:
 
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