USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

[Prax]

That's not what I'm saying AT ALL.

I'm saying that APPEARANCE of consistency from previous trek productions is a consequence of the fact that the majority of the starships that appeared in those shows were recycled from models of OTHER ships and used most of the same parts. Even the "new" ships that we started to see in TNG were recycled multiple times with slight modifications to differentiate different ship types, to the point that we got used to the idea that there was some kind of "design lineage" between those ships in the way they borrowed each other's architecture.

For example: we've seen the Constitution refit, and we've seen the Reliant model. Then we see USS Stargazer, which is LITERALLY cobbled together from Enterprise-A model kits and pieces of a VF-1 Valkyrie. We see ships like the Bozeman, the Saratoga and the Lantree which are also just modifications of the old Reliant model; we see twenty different incarnations of the Grissom, we see a couple of Galaxy class starships, and we see a few ships that are basically just rearranged Galaxy classes (the Phoenix and the Southerland). We see the Enterprise-C model, and then we see a half dozen ships represented by the same model with a different registry and some cosmetic changes to the hull. And we see a metric fuckton of Excelsior classes, including the Enterprise-B making a comeback as the Lakota.

So it's "consistency" in that they're using and re-using the same models over and over again and whenever something new gets added, it gets reused again and again in much the same way. Voyager was no stranger to this either, it just had fewer opportunities to do this for STARFLEET ships since it was set so far away from Federation space.


The ultimate example of this is, ironically, TOS itself. NO show is more consistent in its depiction of what starships than the original series... after all, they were completely identical. When you're so strapped for cash that you can't even afford to DESIGN a new starship, let alone build models for ships you might have designed, consistency is the likely result.


Because, as I said, they were all using the same parts. The ships from First Contact were really the only ones to break the mold on that tradition, since John Eaves had a larger budget to work with and could really play with new concepts. This is how we got the Norway, the Steamrunner and the Akira classes. Which is interesting, because those three designs look NOTHING like any of the previous kitbashes that were built for TNG. And even Prometheus (which, in all fairness, is probably the most ridiculous thing Star Trek has ever produced) was only made possible thanks to advances in CG modeling.

And now we have the Discovery era, where you can design starships in fifty different ways and make models for every single one of them without having to ever share parts in common. Enterprise had this same feature, but only ever showed us three or four starship designs, most of which looked nothing alike.

No, this is what you said:
"Discovery is probably the first Star Trek production in history to not actually have that problem, with all-original starship designs that are not themselves kitbashes or re-arrangements"

 

[cooleddie74]

All-original or not they need to work on these ships. A lot of them just aren't very good.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

No, this is what you said:
"Discovery is probably the first Star Trek production in history to not actually have that problem, with all-original starship designs that are not themselves kitbashes or re-arrangements"

And your problem with this is what, exactly? Most of the ships on Voyager were kitbashes and rearrangements until CG technology devloped to the point that they could build the equinox and Prometheus, and NX-01 began as a redesign of the Akira. Even Discovery is actually based on the old "Planet of the Titans" starship design, significantly modified and embellished, so USS Shenzhou is the first "hero ship" John Eaves ever got to design entirely from scratch. Despite some subtle nods to NX-01's overall concept, it bears little resemblance to the ships that came before it and isn't all that similar to its newer successors either. In that sense, it's not unlike, say, the Intrepid and the Sarajevo.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

All-original or not they need to work on these ships. A lot of them just aren't very good.

I like some of these designs (not all of them), but they're definitely second string to the Kelvinverse designs, IMO.

 

[Prax]

And your problem with this is what, exactly?

It's not true? It makes no sense?

Voyager had a full cg model of the ship from season 1, episode 1. They showed a runabout in season 2, then the Promethius in s4. When they actually had the opportunity to show another "Starfleet ship," they built one...a new one, that aimed to be consistent with the other ones.

Enterprise NX-01 was the result of dozens and dozens of designs in a long process of scrapped ideas, until after using the Akira to base it off of, they found one that they liked. They designed other "Earth ships" to have a functionally similar look.

This doesn't even get into the dozens of alien ships created for both shows. "Discovery is the first...." Yeah, no.

 

[UssGlenn]

The Miranda also is not a kitbash, but a designed ship, intended to resemble the Connie.

Now that's just untrue. Its own production designer says:

Visual Effects Supervisor Kenneth Ralston told Cinefantastique 44, 12 (1982), “The ship takes the best of the Enterprise, rearranges it, and adds a few goodies of its own.”​

It doesn't "resemble" the Connie, it IS the Connie, rearranged and embellished.

That still doesn't make it a kitbash. The Miranda didn't start out life as a model built from Constitution parts. It was built from scratch. This sets it apart form the Nebula and Stargazer, which appeared onscreen as models build from other model parts. You know, a model kit bashed together.

 

[jaime]

... but they couldn't pull it off

so they built the Enterprise-C instead.

Like most of the other ships in the TNG era, the Ent-C was a compromise design when they found themselves unable to deliver something more complicated and intricate. The same thing happened with Proberts original shuttlecraft design: they couldn't build a convincing set, so they evenually scrapped it and went with something simpler. In this case, "Something Simpler" is a redress of the Gallileo shuttlecraft from "The Final Frontier," so once again we have a 23rd century design being jazzed up to look like a 24th century one, but also looking completely unlike the design that it replaced, and we call it "consistency" for some reason.


Sternbach didn't design the D. Probert did. Sternbach filled out some of the DETAILS of the ship, and many of those details are all over the place (the aforementioned shuttlecraft problem, and don't even get me started on those little shuttlepods).

Overall point: you're acting like the "design language" of the TNG era is the way it was always intended from the beginning. That is not and has never been the case. The designs from TNG became what they are because of the aggregate of design choices made by artists, set designers and builders, and many of their choices were made not because of what they wanted, but because of what was and wasn't practical to build. The Enterprise-C is an excellent example of this; they managed to build the wall model in the observation lounge to Probert's specifications, but when it came to actually building a filming model for "Yesterday's Enterprise" they did something else entirely.


Yes it is:

The models, built from parts of Galaxy-class AMT Star Trek model kits, No's 6618 and 6619, differed from its later definitive appearance in that they sported two smaller warp nacelles where the sensor pod was to be positioned and that the secondary hull was more elongated. Captain Benjamin Sisko's desk top model (having made two early appearances as desktop model in TNG: "Future Imperfect", "The Wounded"), representing the destroyed Melbourne was retrofitted with the redesigned sensor pod after its first few appearances in Star Trek: Deep Space Nine.​

[...]

The design upgrades for the Nebula-class were done by Mike Okuda and Rick Sternbach and the model was built by Greg Jein. In Drexler's blog, Okuda elaborated further: "As so often happens with this kind of project, we didn't give Greg enough time to accomplish this, so we decided to retain the original scale of the Galaxy-class ship saucer. I suggested the original 'AWACS' pod in response to a producer's observation that the ship might otherwise appear unbalanced. Unfortunately, the AWACS pod didn't look as elegant as we had hoped in "The Wounded". Rick Sternbach came to the rescue with the cool triangular pod that we used in later episodes." The time constraints could also explain why the USS Phoenix is not equipped with reaction control thruster assemblies. Fortunately, Jein was indeed able to save some time by using the molds of the recently constructed four-foot Enterprise-D studio model to cast the saucer section and the nacelles, though he was not able to carry over Okuda's original notion of altering details to make it appear as a smaller vessel.​

Here, too, we see a design compromise. That the Nebula wound up looking ANYTHING like the Galaxy class, in part or in whole, is owed to the fact that the original design for the ship came from OFF THE SHELF model kits that were spliced together for background shots. When it came time to design a filming model, they didn't even have time to change the SCALE.



Now that's just untrue. Its own production designer says:

Visual Effects Supervisor Kenneth Ralston told Cinefantastique 44, 12 (1982), “The ship takes the best of the Enterprise, rearranges it, and adds a few goodies of its own.”​

It doesn't "resemble" the Connie, it IS the Connie, rearranged and embellished.


This is the PERFECT example of what I'm talking about.

Because the Cardassians did not have a "design language." The Cardassians had exactly TWO types of starship in their entire fleet, and one of them was just a Galor class with a bunch of shit stuck on its back. What you're calling a "design language" is literally just "The limits of what they could afford to make." You might as well theorize that the Star Trek universe has an "evolutionary language" that explains why all that aliens look just like humans.

The Cardassian design language is present from DS9 onwards, the Galors predate that, but also inform it.
Filming models were made for the Nebula etc, they weren’t kits stuck together (whatever the genesis) and the Miranda was also atotally separate filming model...they took elements that existed, and made a new design by adding bits, rearranging bits, what hAve you...but it’s still a new design based on bits of the enterprise (as, to a greater or lesser degree, every ship traces its Starfleet lineage back to the TOS enterprise. This includes the Disco...which by the arguments here can’t be an original design, because it’s starts with the old TMP design as it’s base.)
I think we have different ideas about ‘kitbashing’ versus using established forms to provide a cohesive look. (the frankenfleet is kitbashing. Sticking a new rollbar on the Miranda is kitbashing to an extent...the enterprise B is advanced kitbashing, and it shows.)
Reusing forms is more ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and ‘we want there to be uniform look’.
Even the Voyager, which is a completely different design (even in its runabout literal kitbash early concept form) from the Galaxy, still shows design elements from the Galaxy (I.e those bits Sternbach added to the Probert.)
The Ambassador onscreen leans more to Excelsior styling (and connie) than the Probert design (which became our Guardian over in STO) but is still clearly interstitial between Movie era and TNG era (at least until the Sovereign takes us back.)
Until I get a better look at the DSC ships (and probably won’t be for a while, I am not paying Eaglemoss for two collections at once basically xD) I won’t be too familiar with its style.

 

[Tuskin38]

I'm pretty sure when Eddie is saying Kitbashing, they don't always mean the actual show used model was made from kits, It's that the design is using existing parts from other ships.

 

[Prax]

"Kitbash" is generally in reference to background ships that you can't really see. Like in best of both worlds when they fly through the debris field. Those were "Kitbashes."

And it makes no difference whether it's miniatures or cgi. A well known Kitbash, the "Yeager," shows up as a cgi model.

If Discovery were to have two ships that have the same saucer, couldn't we then call that a Kitbash? Discovery obviously works under the same budget and time constraints as all the other series did. They reuse assets ALL THE TIME.

 

[Tuskin38]

CGI didn't always allow for unique models, the CG Nebula model was made from Galaxy parts and didn't keep any of the unique design changes the physical model had other then the triangular pod.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/nebula.htm

most noticeably the deflector design and secondary hull shape wasn't kept.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Voyager had a full cg model of the ship from season 1, episode 1.

Yes and no. They had a CG model that they used for some shots (the title sequence in particular) but it was far from perfect, and far from CONVINCING. They didn't phase out the physical model until halfway through Season 3, which coincidentally is when they were finally able to think about doing all-CG graphics for their starship designs. Weirdly, they still maintained the process of recycling CG models to build alien-of-the-week ships, and apparently maintained this practice even into production of Enterprise because a number of Voyager ship designs showed up slightly modified in Enterprise (the Romulan drone ship being only the most famous of these).

Enterprise NX-01 was the result of dozens and dozens of designs in a long process of scrapped ideas, until after using the Akira to base it off of, they found one that they liked.

Partially. Eaves wanted to go with a completely original design that more closely resembled the TOS ship but with a more industrial styling and details. The producers insisted on using a re-textured Akira model, and when they realized the producers weren't actually paying that much attention to those kinds of details, they created a vessel with the same basic shape and said "It's the same, we just repainted it."

Intrepid and the Warp Delta are the only Starfleet designs that are all that original for Enterprise, and neither show a consistent "design language" except for their nacelles. And Sarajevo is... well, a stack of horseshoes with a cockpit on top of it. Not sure you could call that "functional" but it's definitely not "consistent" with its peers.

This doesn't even get into the dozens of alien ships created for both shows.

Uh huh...

And even Schneider missed the fact that this ship turned up AGAIN in "Dear Doctor" as the valakian shuttle.

And then of course there's the team not managing to create a new Klingon warship in time for "Unexpected" and just recycling the one from "Prophecy" almost unmodified, only to replace the D7 model with the "Raptor Class" a few episodes later, only to replace the Raptor class with the D5 and the Bird of Prey a few episodes later.

We are discussing "consistency" and the fact that the producers of Discovery are not actually borrowing designs from previous incarnations of Star Trek in part or in whole. Even Voyager originally began as a modified runabout model.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

If Discovery were to have two ships that have the same saucer, couldn't we then call that a Kitbash?

Probably. I actually think that's how they got the design for the bird of prey: they took Khaless' "beacon" and added some engines to it.

In this case, though, they went out of their way to design a half dozen unique starships for the Battle of the Binaries and are recycling various models with different names and registries, so there's not a great deal of need to Frankenstein various ships together to make new ones. They already have multiple designs with unique parts and components, so splicing them together would be unnecessary.

And this is the confusion we have with this "design language" business. All of these ships were designed from scratch and introduced in the very first episode. Where 1980s and 90s Trek would have just given you 20 modified AMT kits of of the Enterprise-A, -D and Excelsior, where Voyager would have just used the CG models from "First Contact" plus one or two new designs, where even Enterprise would have given you two original ships and three recycled ones that you aren't meant to clearly see, Discovery starts out with a dozen completely new designs that don't borrow architecture or designs from past ships. The "design language" we're used to seeing disappears because the designs aren't loosely or indirectly based on anything we've already seen.

If Sternbach had had the time and the resources to build 10 brand new starships for Voyager's opening episode, they probably wouldn't have looked anything like the starships we saw in TNG. As it stands, Voyager sure as hell didn't, despite its original basis as an oversized runabout.

 

[Jesse1066]

Then we see USS Stargazer, which is LITERALLY cobbled together from Enterprise-A model kits and pieces of a VF-1 Valkyrie.

The Stargazer was not LITERALLY cobbled together from Enterprise-A model kits and pieces of a VF-1 Valkyrie, that was Picard's model of it. When they decided to make it a real ship, they built a proper filming model of it without kitbashed parts. Same for the Nebula class the first time it was shown up close.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The Cardassian design language is present from DS9 onwards, the Galors predate that, but also inform it.

Inform WHAT? They never built another cardassian ship for DS9, they just reused the Galor model, later modded to the Keldon class for "Defiant" and "The Die is Cast" but then switched back to the Galors later.

Any "language" can be called consistent if it only has one word, right?

Filming models were made for the Nebula etc, they weren’t kits stuck together

They were LITERALLY made from the same mold as the Enterprise-D filming model. That's not a "design language" at all, that's just modifying an existing work to create a new one.

the Miranda was also atotally separate filming model...they took elements that existed, and made a new design by adding bits, rearranging bits

Which isn't a "design language" it's just modifying an existing work to create a new one.

It's like if Arthur C. Clarke decided to write a Star Trek novel by taking "2001 a Space odyssey", changing the dates, rearranging the chapters and changing HAL's name to "Computer." That's not writing a new story, it's just modifying an old one.

Reusing forms is more ‘if it ain’t broke don’t fix it’ and ‘we want there to be uniform look’.

Not in this case. It's more of "You have three days and $200 to design a totally new starship. Good luck."

As in the above example, somebody tells Arthur Clarke "You have three days and $20 to write a Star Trek novel."

What do you do? You don't have time to do the work from scratch. Take what you've already got and turn it into what you need it to be.

 

[Prax]

They both look good. The one on the right looks better, and more suitable for the appearance it would make, and the role it would play. The one on the left looks almost just like a galaxy class.

And it ended up looking great. A damaged ship from an older generation.

 

[jaime]

Inform WHAT? They never built another cardassian ship for DS9, they just reused the Galor model, later modded to the Keldon class for "Defiant" and "The Die is Cast" but then switched back to the Galors later.

Any "language" can be called consistent if it only has one word, right?


They were LITERALLY made from the same mold as the Enterprise-D filming model. That's not a "design language" at all, that's just modifying an existing work to create a new one.


Which isn't a "design language" it's just modifying an existing work to create a new one.

It's like if Arthur C. Clarke decided to write a Star Trek novel by taking "2001 a Space odyssey", changing the dates, rearranging the chapters and changing HAL's name to "Computer." That's not writing a new story, it's just modifying an old one.


Not in this case. It's more of "You have three days and $200 to design a totally new starship. Good luck."

As in the above example, somebody tells Arthur Clarke "You have three days and $20 to write a Star Trek novel."

What do you do? You don't have time to do the work from scratch. Take what you've already got and turn it into what you need it to be.

Egyptian motif, the number three...it’s literally written down in the Making Of Deep Space Nine.
As the others, if you want matching nacelles as part of your uniform look, why would you go make new molds? Same way you can pull a 3D CGI model apart and reuse the bits you want to look the same. Same as they did with the Shenzou in DSC.
Federation ships have a look for given era, even if you build and design from scratch. 24th century is big windows, phaser array strips, visible life boats and a generally more organic curved look everywhere. Interviews describe these things happening in the making of the show. Red bussards, blue nacelle vents...these are things that don’t change even when the money and time is there.

 

[Jesse1066]

Inform WHAT? They never built another cardassian ship for DS9, they just reused the Galor model, later modded to the Keldon class for "Defiant" and "The Die is Cast" but then switched back to the Galors later.

There weren't many Cardassian ship classes, but they designed many Cardassian things for DS9. First and foremost was the station itself, inside and out. Then there's various props such as desktop monitors, weapons, and PADDs. Plus the Cardassian shuttle, a shipyard space station, orbital weapons platforms, and the various building interiors and exteriors of Cardassia itself. All of these things were designed in the same style, and it's a familiar one because it's in every single episode.

 

[jaime]

There weren't many Cardassian ship classes, but they designed many Cardassian things for DS9. First and foremost was the station itself, inside and out. Then there's various props such as desktop monitors, weapons, and PADDs. Plus the Cardassian shuttle, a shipyard space station, orbital weapons platforms, and the various building interiors and exteriors of Cardassia itself. All of these things were designed in the same style, and it's a familiar one because it's in every single episode.

So much this.
Ditch the ‘newer is better thinking’ peoples, and evaluate on what is. The Berman era of Trek is exceedingly well designed, there’s documentation everywhere that show the process, and we had touring exhibitions back the day, so many of us can vouch for the quality and workmanship. The height of this is DS9 and Voyager (ENT went frugal, and proudly so.) and if people actually sat and looked at it they would see it as something to aspire to, not to rail against.
Stuff was so influential, it influenced the actual tech we use now...sit a Voyager PADD next to a kindle. (kindle touch in particular) Look at the iPad, the kindle fires. There is a ton of work that puts these things together, and I will be shocked if we see a set with the level of work of say...DS9s Promenade...on screen ever again.
Even when DSC didn’t its alien quarter on Quo’Nos, it was calling back to those designs (check out the Romulan motif in the backgrounds) and the Discos interiors were about 70 percent VOY, 20 percent TMP and 10 percent TOS.
The ship itself, if you like that little moving parts setup? Guess which ship did that kind of thing first?
Sigh.
The books are right there as some of us (including Jesse, whose post I am tagging along with on this one) keep pointing out. We don’t even have to guess or google or check memory alpha. Some of us have been staring at these drawings for decades.
I like the work on DSC...but it’s external shots need some more thought. *shrug*
They are not Treks best period at,.

 

[Mudd]

I prefer the Probert Ambassador, but they're both nice.

In those days it was pretty exciting to see a new version of the Enterprise - it didn't happen often.

 

[fireproof78]

The Runabout, Defiant, Voyager, Promethius, Akira,

Not sure what consistent look means in this context because the runabout is about as ugly a standout as the Defiant.