Spoilers Starship Design in Star Trek: Picard

[Dukhat]

He pretty much did. The starting point was a drawing he'd done during production of TMP for a future Enterprise. It evolved until it became the familiar Galaxy class.

You mean this?

fsd.trekships.org/art/images/ded-2.jpg

These drawings look nothing like a TMP Enterprise that was scaled up and minimally changed.

 

[Burning Hearts of Qo'noS]

Just the idea of taking a Luna class saucer and converting it into a Constitution inspired design felt so silly. That look sticks out so absurdly in the 25th century. I might have liked it more if they did a modern saucer like the Sagan class, but having any brand new looking ship be a refit of the Titan was a ridiculous plot point from the get-go. They wanted to eat way too many cakes.

 

[Tomalak]

You mean this?

fsd.trekships.org/art/images/ded-2.jpg

These drawings look nothing like a TMP Enterprise that was scaled up and minimally changed.

Yeah, the top one. It's elements of the TOS and TMP designs with a squashed secondary hull and nacelles. The evolution from 1964 to 1987 is obvious to me.

 

[David cgc]

Yeah, the top one. It's elements of the TOS and TMP designs with a squashed secondary hull and nacelles. The evolution from 1964 to 1987 is obvious to me.

I'd say the most obvious precedent for the Wasp to the Intrepid is the Excelsior to the Enterprise-E, but I know how a lot of people feel here about Eaves' ships, and we've got a design paper-trail for the -E that show it was more a case of parallel evolution and it didn't start out as a streamlined Excelsior.

 

[korblborp]

Wish they'd kept the unique nacelles. I got a little tired of all the classes having the exact same ones.

my biggest problem with the nacelles used is that they look like they couldn't decide on one design and stitched four together

 

[Dukhat]

Yeah, the top one. It's elements of the TOS and TMP designs with a squashed secondary hull and nacelles. The evolution from 1964 to 1987 is obvious to me.

There’s a big difference between starship evolution, and just scaling up a ship to four times its original size and making minor cosmetic changes.

 

[Enterprise1701]

And here are some more views by Bill Krause of the Chaparral concept stage for the Duderstadt class.

Bill Krause (@admiralbuck.bsky.social)

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bsky.app

Turns out Bill Krause did share this view with TriZander on Twitter, who made a YouTube video several years ago. Pity Krause had to nuke his Twitter account with years of remaining content.

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[Enterprise1701]

Just the idea of taking a Luna class saucer and converting it into a Constitution inspired design felt so silly. That look sticks out so absurdly in the 25th century. I might have liked it more if they did a modern saucer like the Sagan class, but having any brand new looking ship be a refit of the Titan was a ridiculous plot point from the get-go. They wanted to eat way too many cakes.

Before finding out halfway through that Lower Decks had canonized Sean Tourangeau's Luna class design from the novels and STO, Terry Matalas wanted to secure the canonical take on Riker's unvisualized U.S.S. Titan mentioned in Star Trek Nemesis. Whatever was his plan going to be if he had gotten there first? Why neo-TMP nacelles right after the Dominion War?

 

[137th Gebirg]

IIRC, Doug Drexler explained that, they changed the nacelle designs in response to the semi-permanent warping of the space/time continuum established in TNG. The new designs "fixed" that problem so that ships could go back to higher warp factors in the main space lanes without wrecking things. They just couldn't really get there with putting such an innovation on the ships while they were all out fighting the Dominion. Once they stood down from their war footing, new ships built had the new tech and the older ships that remained from the war were upgraded in turn.

That's my head-canon on it anyway, based on Drexler's take, and it's as good an explanation as any to me.