I like the C and of course the D. If people turn the lights down or paint the new Ent I'd take it too. The E fits the time the ship was built, it's a war ship. The only issue is that TNG movies are horrible and never really showed that war.
The Enterprise-E is so ugly it entered an ugly contest and they said sorry no professionals. (Jokes aside I am a fan of the E)
I'm glad you brought up the C. I think it's fairly underrated, and I like that it was designed with the Excelsior and Galaxy in mind (but then again, I'm slightly bothered that its design is retroactive in that sense; but I like it nonetheless).
Exactly. This is probably the major reason why I have "believability" problems with both the Enterprise-C (Rick Sternbach design) and the Abramsprise, the warp nacelles are way too big. In one of the closed Enterprise-C threads I had to provide an illustration featuring side views of both the Probert-C and the Sternbach-C. Just for fun, I reduced the Sternbach-C in size to match the height of its warp nacelles with the Probert ones. The "believability" factor increased, IMHO. Bob
She's so ugly that Klingons won't touch her with YOUR phasers. She's so ugly that Romulans gave her a cloaking device. She's so ugly that Miranda Jones threw away her sensor web.
Maybe Best of Both Worlds, actually. Pun intended! While both Grandeur and Excalibur classes do look more advanced than the Enterprise-D, to me the silhouette of both classes look closer to the Constitution class refit, than a Galaxy class. The Excalibur class was specifically designed to be reminiscent of the Constitution class, both in game and out of it. In fact, had you read the link I posted, you'd notice this: Naturally, due to its strong resemblance (intentional or not) to the Excalibur Class, the Grandeur also reminds me of the Constitution Class refit.
The Enterprise-E has grown on me over the years. I think I was bitter towards it for replacing my favourite Trek ship. Didn't see the need for them to destroy the D in Generations and was gutted when I first saw the Ent-E in First Contact. No surprise but it's still the Enterprise-D for me, I've also found a new appreciation for the Intrepid class since I've started rewatching Voyager.
@ Rincewiend & Dennis I had a friend assemble a visual comparison between the Probert-C and the Sternbach-C, but I couldn't access it today, so I used the other illustration from the closed thread instead (because it shows the proportions I talked about). You can mock me all day long if that satisfies your juvenile desires, but since you just revived the issue here is a link to another recent post of mine. "Pessimists find problems in every solution". Well, you may count me among the optimists. Bob P.S. And another display of open-mindedness of Star Trek fans. We know there are parallel universes ever since "Mirror, Mirror" and twin personalities are equally not a thing unheard of in Star Trek (Lt. Leslie, William Thomas Riker), but beware if you explore such heretic concepts any further.
Bob, I really wish you'd stop saying things like that. Believe it or not, I actually enjoy reading most of your posts. You seem like a very knowledgeable person and a true fan of Star Trek, just like the rest of us. You're an intelligent and erudite guy. And yet, whenever you bring up the subject of Probert's C (and then inevitably get razzed about it by the rest of us for your..."overzealousness" about the subject), you turn into this arrogant know-it-all who disparages the rest of us for not having the audacity to agree with your opinions. That's a great disservice to you. I'd ask that you please lighten up about that particular subject
I agree with all of this. There was simply no good reason for the D to be destroyed. But, if they absolutely had to do it, they could have at least made the E an identical Galaxy class ship.
Back on topic, I quite like the E-E design. It doesn't follow along from the E-D as the E-D followed from the E-C, but then again the C didn't exactly follow the design language from the B much, IMO. They wanted lean and mean, and we got it. I don't see her going out and doing much exploring, but do you see the average D'deridex or Negh'Var doing the same? She's not my favorite Enterprise, but I see a beauty and grace that isn't there on most of the other that makes her all her own. When it comes to the interior, I never liked the bridge (far too many pointy consoles sticking out everywhere for people to puncture kidneys on; and the entire forward third of the room is empty, unused space unless you count the movie cameras) however the other spaces have been nicely exposed in some of the spinoff media. In Elite Force II for example, I really enjoyed exploring the spaces they've recreated there as well as the lightened up, friendlier colors they applied. Nemesis had is looking like a darkened battleship on the inside, but if they turned the lights on I think it would be far more comfortable. And for all you gamers out there, at least it's not the Enterprise-F. Mark
I can't find the link off-hand, but there's orthos of what claims to be the actual CG model used in one or more of the films (probably Nemesis) and the aztec patterns look totally drawn out in an arbitrary way, including non-right-angles, almost like an angular jigsaw puzzle. The TMP refit kept the aztec lines aligned with the hull, so you have right-angles on the secondary hull and radial patterns on the saucer. It's ultimately a fairly uniform grid or checkerboard which makes more logical sense in engineering something like a ship. So there was an unforgivable level of sloppiness in how those aztec patterns were sketched on the E. I still like the overall lines of the E, but the surface detail was botched. I also think the aesthetics of the ships took a nosedive once they started littering the hull with escape pods, but that was a key plot-point in First Contact so I guess it was necessary. As far as size perceptions, it was a fallacy to equate technological progress with ever bigger Enterprises. I got the sense that the E was a deliberate retreat from the idea of the crew taking their whole family aboard, which I was happy to see. Film-era TNG tried to aim for more of a TOS-movie buttoned-down military vibe and to lose some of the laid-back-ness of the show, which kind of had to happen, as we shifted from the 80s into the 90s.
agreed Not a "key" plot point. They didn't need even to show the lifeboats. In the many other times in Star Trek a captain ordered "abandon ship", that was enough. Also, by having that short scene they created the problem of having to retrieve all of them before going back to the future.
I totally love the Enterprise-F (she's ain't a bloated whale, just a big-boned gal), but then the dimensions I worked out placed her as being not that terribly bigger (only about 20% larger) than the Enterprise-E of several decades earlier. http://img685.imageshack.us/img685/2859/unled2oi.jpg
There is one and only one thing on the JJ Prise that is probably the best of all the Enterprises, and that's the main dish where it comes across the most like a functional iris of an eye. That design aspect is key in anthropomorphising the ship, which is why I disliked the E for having such a small inset dish. The eyes are the window of the soul, as they say, and the E is "beady-eyed".