USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?

[Rahul]

Eh. The original fitted very well with the ships designed 1969-2017.
What didn't fit were the DISCO-ships. So they adapted the old ship to fit with the Discoverse. But if they were ever to do a time-travel story involving the ENT-D, or the NX-01, they certainly will adapt them to fit with the DISCO-style as well.
The whole old continuity fits very well. Only DIS does not really. It takes place in it's own visual continuity (even though they clearly try to make it the same story continuity). But that only means DIS is visually seperated from the rest of the franchise. There is no arbitrary line splitting the "old" continuity like some her postulate.

 

[cooleddie74]

I know "partial retcon" sounds like "a little bit pregnant" and thus probably not the best terminology to use, but to be frank even the TOS ship wasn't consistent from pilot to pilot and then the regular series. Three different impulse decks, three different warp nacelle designs, two different bridge modules and two different deflector dishes. Yeah, the DSC Enterprise is the most radical variant yet but it's not as if the ship remained unchanged on the outside from "The Cage" straight through to the final shot of "Turnabout Intruder."

I don't like every change that was made and she's not the way I'd have redesigned her, but she's still about 80 to 85 percent there.

 

[lawman]

I like this design a lot better, though still with certain reservations:

Interesting. It's got some genuine appeal to it. I think the thing I like most is that the surface looks so smooth and pristine... it's not covered with overdone aztecing and greebles, like so many newer ships. Who did this one?

That it's built around the original Trek in the real world doesn't change the fact that, in-universe, the TOS designs are no longer a fit for that world.

That's a subjective judgment call, and one that some of us emphatically disagree with. (As did the producers of every previous Trek series, obviously.)

That's nonsense. They HAVE retconned it, right in the last scene of Discovery, and now the original Enterprise fits better with other Starfleet ships that precede and follow it...

The ships that follow it always fit just as well following the TOS original. The ships that precede it include (A) the NX-01 and its kin from ENT a century before, with plenty of time for the design language to evolve, as literally shown in-show in S4; (B) arguably the Kelvin from a couple of decades before, which looks like a perfectly credible predecessor; and (C) the godawful ugly hodgepodge of ships we've seen in the first season of DSC. A and B don't pose any problems... and as for C, I'd cheerfully disregard it in a heartbeat before I would ever consider disregarding anything about TOS.

The outlier here remains DSC. Everything else fits together as well as it ever did.

...Only the pylons are radically different to the point where they stick out like a sore thumb. The rest of the ship - however changed - is still a recognizable TOS-era Connie right down to the round, copper-colored deflector dish, the details on the underside of the saucer and the windows on the saucer section and neck. I agree she's a reimaginging but a full retcon? An Enterprise that looked like the Kelvin timeline ship would be a full retcon and a complete and utter rejection of the TOS ship.

The Discoprise is pretty close, that's true. Pylons aside, the thing that probably bothers me the most is the shortened neck. It changes the whole profile of the ship, and I just don't see the point of it.

 

[Rahul]

The only close similarities between the NX design and the Discoprise are in the interconnecting hull, split nacelle struts and both having four nernies surrounding the nacelle domes rather than three. The lines and proportions of all major components are different, as is the other detailing.

Every attempt I've seen to produce a 3D version of the old Eaves design is pretty awful; the proportions don't work.

John Eaves early NX-01 design is clearly a seperate ship from the Connie as she appeared on DIS, that's for sure. But it's notably how all his changes are the same changes: Reduced height, backward-bent nacelle struts with splits, bridge window, a more drop-shaped secondary hull, the engines, that extra bit added to the shuttle bay, ...
It's of course a completely different ship. And the other one is by all means and purposes a pretty decent stand-in for the original Constitution. But it's the same details he changed in the same way in both cases.

I know "partial retcon" sounds like "a little bit pregnant" and thus probably not the best terminology to use, but to be frank even the TOS ship wasn't consistent from pilot to pilot and then the regular series. Three different impulse decks, three different warp nacelle designs, two different bridge modules and two different deflector dishes. Yeah, the DSC Enterprise is the most radical variant yet but it's not as if the ship remained unchanged on the outside from "The Cage" straight through to the final shot of "Turnabout Intruder."

I don't like every change that was made and she's not the way I'd have redesigned her, but she's still about 80 to 85 percent there.

Indeed!
It's pretty obvious they tried to "update" the Connie, not "reinvent" her. They could have gone with a more radical departure like the Enterprise-A at the end of Star Trek:Beyond. But they didn't. All in all, they stayed VERY friggin' faithful to the original design, So much so that I wouldn't blame anyone for not even noticing the differences.
The whole quibble about what details are better or worse (in which I gladly participate) is overall only academic. It IS the exact same ship, as far as production is concerned.

The debate is a lot akin to which type of original Enterprise - the cage variant or the regular - one prefers. Or the difference between the 6 foot and the 4 foot models of the Enterprise-D

 

[Tuskin38]

bridge window,

I'm assuming he did that because it was an old ship, maybe before view screen tech was perfected or something.

It might not even be the bridge, it could be an observation lounge.

The NX we got also has windows on the front of the bridge area, through they're port holes not a bay-window.

 

[cooleddie74]

Besides, there are more than eight years between the season finale of DSC and the events of "Where No Man Has Gone Before(TOS)," plenty of time for the fidgety, spastic change freaks in Starfleet to reinstall the straight nacelle pylons and replace the impulse deck, an impulse deck that will change yet again between "WNMHGB" and "The Corbomite Maneuver," a difference of barely one year in the continuity. Starfleet can't go more than a few years without changing uniforms and sidearm designs so a starship won't be any different and clearly isn't.

 

[Belz...]

Eh. The original fitted very well with the ships designed 1969-2017.
What didn't fit were the DISCO-ships. So they adapted the old ship to fit with the Discoverse. But if they were ever to do a time-travel story involving the ENT-D, or the NX-01, they certainly will adapt them to fit with the DISCO-style as well.
The whole old continuity fits very well. Only DIS does not really. It takes place in it's own visual continuity (even though they clearly try to make it the same story continuity). But that only means DIS is visually seperated from the rest of the franchise.

I'm sorry but you're talking nonsense. The DSC ships fit very well with the Kelvin and its contemporaries, themselves more advanced but similar to the NX-01. And from TMP onward there's a clear progression right up until the Prometheus in VOY. The TOS Enterprise looks nothing like anything before or after, either in details, plating, colour, shape or components. So I'm puzzled by what you think "fitted" very well between them.

That's a subjective judgment call

Of course it is. But make the test. Take every Starfleet ship ever put to screen and show them to someone who doesn't know Star Trek. Ask them which one looks off. The TOS ship is the only one that has no plating, is greenish, and has the various details, or lack thereof, that it has, in addition to shapes and components no other ship has.

and one that some of us emphatically disagree with. (As did the producers of every previous Trek series, obviously.)

You have no idea what the producers of these series thought. That they made homage to TOS doesn't mean they think it had continuity in any way. The only way to know would be to ask them, but even if they agreed, it'd be pointless: the issue is what they think _now_. And since they updated the design, they seem to agree with me, obviously.

The ships that follow it always fit just as well following the TOS original. The ships that precede it include (A) the NX-01 and its kin from ENT a century before, with plenty of time for the design language to evolve, as literally shown in-show in S4; (B) arguably the Kelvin from a couple of decades before, which looks like a perfectly credible predecessor; and (C) the godawful ugly hodgepodge of ships we've seen in the first season of DSC. A and B don't pose any problems... and as for C, I'd cheerfully disregard it in a heartbeat before I would ever consider disregarding anything about TOS.

Which is entirely an emotional argument rather than a rational one, even one that is subjective. You just don't like these designs and have an attachment to the TOS one. But even if I agreed with you that the DSC designs suck and that the TOS ones are pure heavenly art, it makes no difference to my argument. It's not about what I like.

The outlier here remains DSC. Everything else fits together as well as it ever did.

Nonsense. Sheer nonsense. The Kelvin, NX-01, Shenzhou and Crossfield fit very well together. And now, the DSC Enterprise bridges them with the TMP+ ones in a way it didn't before.

 

[Tuskin38]

is greenish,

What?

Shenzhou

Change the nacelle design and I'd agree with you.

Doug Drexler designed the NX-01 to look older then the Connie, that was always in his mind. He thinks the TOS Connie to looks more advanced.

 

[Rahul]

I'm sorry but you're talking nonsense. The DSC ships fit very well with the Kelvin and its contemporaries, themselves more advanced but similar to the NX-01. And from TMP onward there's a clear progression right up until the Prometheus in VOY. The TOS Enterprise looks nothing like anything before or after, either in details, plating, colour, shape or components. So I'm puzzled by what you think "fitted" very well between them.



Of course it is. But make the test. Take every Starfleet ship ever put to screen and show them to someone who doesn't know Star Trek. Ask them which one looks off. The TOS ship is the only one that has no plating, is greenish, and has the various details, or lack thereof, that it has, in addition to shapes and components no other ship has.



You have no idea what the producers of these series thought. That they made homage to TOS doesn't mean they think it had continuity in any way. The only way to know would be to ask them, but even if they agreed, it'd be pointless: the issue is what they think _now_. And since they updated the design, they seem to agree with me, obviously.



Which is entirely an emotional argument rather than a rational one, even one that is subjective. You just don't like these designs and have an attachment to the TOS one. But even if I agreed with you that the DSC designs suck and that the TOS ones are pure heavenly art, it makes no difference to my argument. It's not about what I like.



Nonsense. Sheer nonsense. The Kelvin, NX-01, Shenzhou and Crossfield fit very well together. And now, the DSC Enterprise bridges them with the TMP+ ones in a way it didn't before.

The USS Kelvin and the USS Shenzhou have literally nothing in common with each other, except both having bridge windows. But both are clearly part of two diverging continuities. The only connection between them is that both connect in some way or another to the original Enterprise.

 

[Tuskin38]

except both having bridge windows.

And pop-out weapon turrets.

 

[cooleddie74]

Wait until they show the bridge and the inside of the Enterprise when Season 2 starts. You think the blood in these threads is bad now? We'll be flipping the tables, taking dumps on the rug and running around like a drunken Yankees fan on game day.

 

[lawman]

Eh. The original fitted very well with the ships designed 1969-2017.
What didn't fit were the DISCO-ships. So they adapted the old ship to fit with the Discoverse. ... But that only means DIS is visually seperated from the rest of the franchise.

Indeed. What some posters here (and the designers for the show) don't quite seem to grasp is how much more that asks of fans.

If you ask people to appreciate DSC as a spinoff, a source of entertainment in its own right, take it or leave it, that's easy enough. It's a show that has potential but also has flaws; personally I usually enjoyed watching it more while it was on than I did once I thought about it afterward.

But if you ask people to take it as something that displaces previous Star Trek, then that's a much higher bar to get over. It's mainly affection for previous Trek, after all, that motivated anyone to give DSC a try in the first place. So to justify that, the show would have to be better than what came before, and that's one hell of a lot better than it actually is.

...the fidgety, spastic change freaks in Starfleet...

Heh! That's the way to look at it!...

 

[Tuskin38]

displaces previous Star Trek

I haven't seen the show displace it yet.

 

[lawman]

I haven't seen the show displace it yet.

Well, that's pretty much what Belz is arguing the change signifies.

Take every Starfleet ship ever put to screen and show them to someone who doesn't know Star Trek. Ask them which one looks off. The TOS ship is the only one that has no plating, is greenish, and has the various details, or lack thereof, that it has, in addition to shapes and components no other ship has.

That's an impossible test to execute, obviously. All you're really saying is that to your eye it looks off. There are other threads around here arguing (pretty convincingly) that there's basically no coherent design lineage to Starfleet ships and never has been (essentially that Starfleet is full of fidgety, spastic change freaks, except not tongue-in-cheek!), even before DSC.

Which is entirely an emotional argument rather than a rational one, even one that is subjective. You just don't like these designs and have an attachment to the TOS one. But even if I agreed with you that the DSC designs suck and that the TOS ones are pure heavenly art, it makes no difference to my argument. It's not about what I like.

Well, this is certainly about what I like... otherwise why would I be discussing it? Bottom line, you're saying that one way or another, audiences are being asked to mentally edit something they've seen. For my part, if given that choice, I will naturally choose to edit the ugly stuff (DSC) and keep the beautiful stuff (TOS).

 

[Rahul]

Wait until they show the bridge and the inside of the Enterprise when Season 2 starts. You think the blood in these threads is bad now? We'll be flipping the tables, taking dumps on the rug and running around like a drunken Yankees fan on game day.

Yeah. I fully expect that to be the point where they drop the ball (NO WAY the new sets look actually like only a small update on the 'the cage'-bridge). To the point I wonder why they included the Enterprise in the first place.

They created a pretty good starship model. But doing actual STORIES with the original Enterprise is SUCH a minefield - I have to wonder why they take that risk in the first place? I mean, they haven't exactly impressed me with their talent to have a cohesive, big story-arc worth telling at this point. And without the arc being REALLY friggin' good, I don't see it being worth doing all the mudd-work with the original ship...

Indeed. What some posters here (and the designers for the show) don't quite seem to grasp is how much more that asks of fans.

If you ask people to appreciate DSC as a spinoff, a source of entertainment in its own right, take it or leave it, that's easy enough. It's a show that has potential but also has flaws; personally I usually enjoyed watching it more while it was on than I did once I thought about it afterward.

But if you ask people to take it as something that displaces previous Star Trek, then that's a much higher bar to get over. It's mainly affection for previous Trek, after all, that motivated anyone to give DSC a try in the first place. So to justify that, the show would have to be better than what came before, and that's one hell of a lot better than it actually is.


Heh! That's the way to look at it!...

Indeed. I'm a big fan of Star Trek - that is, the stories that have been previously told. If they want to expand upon that, add new flavours to the franchise, I'm on board. And I'll be giving way more leeway than they deserve - still staying on board, even if I'm not really content with the quality of the product, in the hope that it will eventually get better and be a worthwile addition to the franchise. Much the same way Enterprise became with it's later seasons. But if they want to actually replace the old stories with their new continuity, they must be really friggin' fantastic for me to only even consider it. And so far, they haven't even really reached the level of "good" most of the time.

 

[GNDN18]

Starfleet can't go more than a few years without changing uniforms and sidearm designs so a starship won't be any different and clearly isn't.

 

[Rahul]

Well, that's pretty much what Belz is arguing the change signifies.


That's an impossible test to execute, obviously. All you're really saying is that to your eye it looks off. There are other threads around here arguing (pretty convincingly) that there's basically no coherent design lineage to Starfleet ships and never has been (basically that Starfleet is full of fidgety, spastic change freaks, except not tongue-in-cheek!), even before DSC.


Well, this is certainly about what I like... otherwise why would I be discussing it? Bottom line, you're saying that one way or another, audiences are being asked to mentally edit something they've seen. For my part, if given that choice, I will naturally choose to edit the ugly stuff (DSC) and keep the beautiful stuff (TOS).

It's not just about what's subjectively "beautiful" or "ugly". It's also about audience awareness - the main selling point of a franchise IP. Everyone knows the original Enterprise, even people that have never seen an episode of Star Trek. Wheras probably a majority of people at this point doesn't even know there IS a new Star Trek series being produced right now.

 

[Tuskin38]

(NO WAY the new sets look actually like only a small update on the 'the cage'-bridge)

Well Alex Kurtzman did say they would use the original design a base if they made a set.

Though he probably means Kirk's bridge, not Pike's.

 

[Rahul]

Well Alex Kurtzman did say they would use the original design as inspiration.

They also said that DIS will fit perfectly with the prime timeline and TOS aesthetics. Look how well THAT turned out.

 

[Tuskin38]

and TOS aesthetics.

They never said that