USS Enterprise (eventually) on Discovery?
- Thread starter EJD1984
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Here is the earlier straight pylon version. Note the 2-pronged deflector dish. Someone should create one with a long handle for roasting hot dogs. 
Following that are renders that someone did based on Eaves' sketches for the Enterprise series before they settled on the NX-01 design. I hadn't seen this stuff before and figured plenty of other folks haven't, either:
Following that are renders that someone did based on Eaves' sketches for the Enterprise series before they settled on the NX-01 design. I hadn't seen this stuff before and figured plenty of other folks haven't, either:
The exact renders used in S2E1 with the straight pylons do appear to be in the Eaglemoss book.
I posted this one already a month or more back, but they did do a bunch of different variants. It was the production designer at the time that chose the one they used, not Eaves, though Eaves also liked the one they went with.
I've also noticed most of Eaves and Co's concept art use a lighter almost TOS coloured coloured hull, not the dark hull that the show went with.
I posted this one already a month or more back, but they did do a bunch of different variants. It was the production designer at the time that chose the one they used, not Eaves, though Eaves also liked the one they went with.
I've also noticed most of Eaves and Co's concept art use a lighter almost TOS coloured coloured hull, not the dark hull that the show went with.
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The exact renders used in S2E1 with the straight pylons do appear to be in the Eaglemoss book.
I posted this one already a month or more back, but they did do a bunch of different variants. It was the production designer at the time that chose the one they used, not Eaves, though Eaves also liked the one they went with.
I've also noticed most of Eaves and Co's concept art use a lighter almost TOS coloured coloured hull, not the dark hull that the show went with.
That sketch in the lower left-hand corner is very similar to what Eaves was working on in the early stages for the Enterprise series and shows that was his starting point for the Discoprise, which evolved from there:
Yup....the one on the left has the saucer 'landing gear' ports, like TOS, while the one on the right does not:
Is it weird that - having the TOS and the DISCO-Prise directly next to each other - that I think the TOS one is the much better and also much more futuristic design?
Like, the DISCO-prise looks pretty much what I would expect a starship using "current day + x" - technology would look like - it's awfully mundane, like it could appear on any other sci-fi franchise. Mostly because it so closely follows current day design guidelines.
Whereas the TOS ship looks futuristically weird - in a way that telegraphs everything is technologically different - but at the same time, every design element still looks like it has a specific function (we just can't really say what). Which is IMO the much more realistic prediction - that a society that has breached the universal limit of lightspeed would have completely different material sciences as well.
Maybe it's just my personal bias - but I always loved the more other-worldly futuristic look over the "realistic" ones for my space opera with beaming and phasers and warp and shit.
Imagine that. A ship designed in the 60s looks like what you expect 60s sci-fi to look like, and one designed in the 2010s looks like what you expect 2010s sci-fi to look like!
Imagine if Pike had the Enterprise instead of Discovery, this was the Enterprise he had, and the people from New Eden saw her with a telescope:
I still think that's an awesome concept....
Imagine that. A ship designed in the 60s looks like what you expect 60s sci-fi to look like, and one designed in the 2010s looks like what you expect 2010s sci-fi to look like!
Actually - no.
The beauty of the Enterprise from the 60's is that it doesn't look like a ship designed in the 60s. (If you don't believe me - just look at some other "spaceships" designed in the 60s). No - it believably looks like a starship from the far future.
(at least design-wise. production-quality? looks like the 60's...)
Whereas, yeah, the Disco-Prise absolutely looks like a ship designed in the 2010's. (Though - to be honest - she looks more like a design from the 00's than from the 10's. Design language has moved on already - she looks slightly dated even by "now"-standards).
Considering the DSC version is supposed to represent an earlier, clunkier iteration that prefigures those to come...not really, no.
-MMoM
Considering the DSC version is supposed to represent an earlier, clunkier iteration that prefigures those to come...not really, no.
-MMoM
That worked on ENT - being a 100 years earlier made sense that it was much closer to current day technology. For being the same ship? To change from ENT-like "realness" to super advanced futurism? Not so much.
(And yes - even though the TMP-refit was a comparable drastic change - both these versions looked very similar futuristic)
The designs on the right side and the text on the page seem to imply otherwise. He started from the original TOS Enterprise and slowly changed it.
He incorporated some stuff from his NX, and Doug Drexler's NX, but it wasn't the starting point.
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It's not that I don't believe you. It's that I disagree.
It seems to me that Eaves had more of his NX design in mind from the get-go, rather than truly beginning from TOS:
Looks very 60's to me. It's rockets attached a flying saucer. Has a radar dish in front and a clamshell door in the back.
I'm thinking that one person's major details may be another person's minor details....subjective opinion, rather than objective opinion. That said, I don't mind conceding that most likely from a purely technical standpoint they would reasonably fall into the category of major details.
this is a matter of perception.
It isn't, though. If we take Disco's place in the Prime universe seriously, it's meant to represent the exact same ship in the same configuration we saw in "The Cage" and then later with only superficial changes in WNMHGB and then TOS proper.Considering the DSC version is supposed to represent an earlier, clunkier iteration that prefigures those to come...not really, no.
-MMoM
The classic design now never existed, it's been overwritten with what we see in the S1 finale and S2 premiere.
The DSC design was deliberately meant to bridge those two eras, both recalling ENT's aesthetic and foreshadowing those of TOS and the movies at the same time.
As Scott Schneider says in the Eaglemoss booklet: "We were constantly trying to tie into both the past and future architecture of Starfleet ships...we tried to tie stuff into the NX-01 and stuff that would come in the future, like the Enterprise-B...we wanted to show some connection to the motion picture refit...get some of those details that you see on the refit in there, but to make it look as if they were in their earlier stages."
It was intentionally more contemporary in its practical execution, but less futuristic from an in-universe perspective, than the TOS and TMP iterations. Quibbles aside, I'd say they achieved that goal reasonably well, overall.
It's simply a case of the same artist being given the same task twice, beginning from the same starting point and following the same extrapolative process, and thus producing accordingly similar results.It seems to me that Eaves had more of his NX design in mind from the get-go, rather than truly beginning from TOS:
As Rick Berman said in the November 2001 issue of Star Trek: The Magazine: "We spent a lot of time studying the Enterprise from the television series and then the Enterprise from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and then the subsequent ships and a variety of other vessels. We wanted something that was reminiscent; we wanted something that people could believe would, 90 years later, evolve into Kirk's Enterprise..."
The very reason why Eaves' design for the NX-01 was ultimately rejected is that it was deemed to look too much like Kirk's ship for ENT's purposes.
From the standpoint of its design, which is what we were discussing, it was meant to be "the same ship that Kirk commanded at an earlier stage of its life, before several refits"—featuring "more primitive versions" of "various components" that "would be replaced over time," thus allowing for a "transition to the original Matt Jefferies ship later on."
In terms of interpreting what's been depicted onscreen thus far, I would say your interpretation is an extreme (if not wholly unfair) one. Personally, I would concur that we are probably meant to think this is indeed what the ship looked like at the time of "The Cage"—thus retconning the depiction there and in the (illusory) flashbacks from "The Menagerie" (TOS)—but only DSC showing its own flashbacks to that time or earlier (which might happen, but we don't know for sure if it will) could confirm this concretely.
Likewise, if DSC were to continue into the timeframe of TOS proper, and show the Enterprise again during Kirk's five-year mission (which I doubt will happen, though it hypothetically could), I'd agree that we might well find her similarly updated. But as yet, it's entirely premature to jump to the conclusion that she won't undergo one or more overhauls that bring her much closer into line with how she was depicted in all the other series. (And if we don't ever see her in that same period, the issue is rendered moot. We would be left equally free to imagine that she looked more or less exactly as previously depicted, one way or the other, or neither.)
-MMoM
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