I'm glad it's not a full reboot. To some degree, Star Trek has always been rooted in the '60s, just like Alien and Star Wars are rooted in the '70s and Terminator is rooted in the '80s. Even as it moves forward, it looks back.
USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?
- Thread starter EJD1984
- Start date
Supposedly. But they thought so much about it, that they didn’t bother to mention on screen the actual reason even once.
I wouldn't have been bothered if the deflecter resembled Vektor's or Koerner's, but I've always been a bit of a purist and I like it how it is. And I always liked that wacky shape of the neck. I'm not even really sure why. The rest has been fixed, just as it was in TMP. The new old Enterprise is a compromise, and it's one I'm happy with. The purists don't like it, and some people (such as yourself, I suppose) were hoping the changes would go further, so in my opinion they tuned it just about right.
Completely agree. I love the fact that Star Trek put a stake in the ground. You can't separate the franchise from the 60s and I love that and I think that's reflected in the basic theme of the franchise: "humanity can do better." As we move further from the that decade the definition of "better" continues to evolve.
I am not a big TOS fan. but many take my input as bashing when I point out it is primitive and dated as hell. They refuse to accept the shapes are primitive, they refuse to accept they are 60's style. I do some graphic work, nothing major but to me I can not unsee those shapes, the dated styling. It screams at me.
I understand tastes, what I do not understand is the ability to see something so obvious. You can like 1960's styling, you can like Artdeco or whatever. But what we are seeing is people pure up claiming it is not what it is, they simply refuse to see it. Kinda like people telling someone a Model T looks modern and fits in with 2018 designs.
That is not a taste issue.
I think I can relate to this to an extent. While I'm not a professional CG artist, I am a professional user interface designer and I love f-ing love TOS too. None of the user interfaces we've seen in Trek have ever made real-world sense, but they always looked good on screen at the time. Popular entertainment is always aimed at the audience. In the 1960s, blinking lights and clicking "computers" made sense. In the 80s, touch interfaces without semantic search made sense. In the 2010s gesture based UI is expected.
There's nothing wrong with what the artists envisioned at the time. In fact, each era was prophetic to an extent but the bottom line is that this is a form of entertainment and it must stimulate visual interest. Jellybean buttons won't cut it today and static Okudagram translights won't either. They were perfect for the time but technology continues to evolve and to maintain a plausible vision of the future, Star Trek must adapt.
Star wars had visual design that is more adaptable in modern day. Tos literally looked like models hanging on strings. Cos it was
People perceive styles different ways. That's not objective.
I'm sorry, but you are COMPLETELY wrong. Its first most important function is to RESPECT CANON! And by that I mean align to whatever I personally consider canon (Axanar), disregard anything I don't (DSC), despite what the actual stewards of the franchise say is canon. To do otherwise is violating the HISTORY of Star Trek. Because fiction can have a set in stone history, right? See. If after meeting the requirement outlined above, and not ever contradicting a one-off line spoken 52 years ago, THEN if it manages to entertain, we're in business.
I've always been a fan of the Refit ship, but this new one might just take my new top spot as my favorite Enterprise design of all time.
Wait, seriously? A man in his 30s won't watch any TV made before 2009, just because it's not in HD? That's bizarre. He's missing out on a lot of classic TV.
Not only do I completely disagree, but this strikes me as genuinely sad. I can't imagine how either of you guys can enjoy watching TOS with this kind of attitude. And without TOS as the ur-text... well, the rest of Trek is really just a series of increasingly degraded photocopies.
And it really does seem kind of disdainful toward Matt Jefferies, who put in a level of design work that was thoughtful and painstaking beyond anything that had been done before, far beyond the demands of the medium — even for film, let alone television.
Clearly, de gustibus non est disputandum, because again I completely disagree. Trek designs look timeless to me, whereas the ship designs in Star Wars scream "1970s" to me every bit as much as the costumes and hairstyles. (Also, I find them ugly. They're covered with pointless greebles, and often have awkward asymmetric shapes. And who ever thought it made sense to build massive space stations and starships with giant gaping death-defying chasms cluttering up the middle of them, often without guardrails?)
Thanks for clarifying. At least this lets me know where you're coming from.
For what it's worth, I disagree with you about the aethetic impact of 1-4 and 6, but once again that reduces to subjectivities. As for 5, though, I think you're simply wrong. The Enterprise actually has a considerable level of surface detail... more than enough to establish scale, and certainly more than could be made out on screen at the time. It has windows. It has running lights. It has sensors. It has the bridge dome. It has visible deck layers in the saucer. It has concentric layering around the deflector dish. It has pennants painted on the side. It has the impulse engine superstructure embedded in the rear of the saucer. It has a subtle deflector grid. It has elaborate cutouts on the interior of the nacelles, and complex endcaps and tubing brackets as well. It has the shuttlebay doors. It has ports and cargo holds and other unexplained color-coded shapes outlined on the hull. Seriously, it has everything you would want of such a ship and more.
What it doesn't have (or need) is pointless cutouts interfering with the curve of the saucer, or visible weapons turrets, or superfluous multiple struts, or ship parts that are not plausibly connected or accessible from within, or extraneous layers added to hulls and nacelles just because, or any number of other quixotic details that have been added to various latter-day Starfleet ships in the name of making them "modern." It definitely doesn't have one big overly complicated curvy blob blending together into a vaguely aerodynamic shape that only looks good from very specific angles, like, say, the frankly hideous Enterprise-E. But YMMV, of course.
The Chrysler PT Cruiser was explicitly and deliberately designed to evoke cars from the 1930s. It was an incredibly trendy and popular model between 2000 and 2010.
Umm No, styling have names. If something is Artdeco, you calling it "contemporary" does not in fact make it so. It is still Artdeco. If you say your home is decorated in a Bohemian style, that has a set meaning and a set style.
Seriously. There have been legit people in other corners of the internet say that DSC isn't canon ONLY because of the way the Enterprise looked last night. I cannot comprehend or understand how they expected any different. I grew up on TNG, it's "my Star Trek." But shit, even alot of TNG is looking horribly dated these days. Especially the first 2 seasons. If they changed the interior or exterior of the Enterprise-D, I'd understand it needed to be done. I personally think the exterior still looks modern, except for the nacelles.
Along those lines, though, I think the Enterprise-E, which is 23 years old, could be dropped into a modern film today with no changes at all. It might turn out to be a timeless design. John Eaves was ahead of his time.
This thread has been a real eye opener. Will Enterprise-D ever suffer this same level of revulsion? Maybe in twenty years.
I do not in fact enjoy TOS, its never been my thing. But much like watching any other show, its look is set by the time it is filmed. TOS is a 1960's show, so looks fine for a 1960's show. But you go in knowing it was filmed in the 1960's. Pointing out the fact it looks cheap, campy and old in 2018 is not a slam on how it looked in the 1960's.
But its not 1930's style. As you said, it simply trys to invoke it. No one is gonna ever mistake it for a 1930 van. Just as no one is gonna mistake the 1960's TOS ship for modern.
So, what is the TOS style and can it be demonstrated outside of the show? Googlefu is failing me right now.
So, educate me.
Because it has fun stories, great characters, and I can appreciate it based on the context of the decade it was made without comparing it against modern tv/film. Much like I can watch a black and white silent film and not expect it to be 4K 3D HDR.
People have been saying DSC can't be canon because of tons of needed visual updates. But yes, I have seen the same argument since last night over the Enterprise. Here is the thing. Sci-fi ship design was changed forever by Star wars, in many ways that was the start of Modern sci-fi ship designs. And as you said, the sovereign class still looks modern. The Inside might not, as you pointed out TNG sets scream "1990's". I stayed at a Hotel last year that had not been updated since the 90's and while clean and well maintained, it was like the bridge of the Enterprise D. Which, I kept joking about to the wife.
At the end of the day, who the hell cares? Different strokes for different folks. Some people like things for how they are, Others think said things are dated and need updating. And some are fine with a compromise. Good for all that apply. Just agree to disagree and move on without the bickering. Opinions are like A**holes. Everybody has one. Unless you're Klingon. 
60's design style is 60's styling, Space Age or Atomic age styling. And it jumps out, the sets and design of the TOS ship scream it.
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