What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 1701

[TRON JA307020]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Abramsprise all the way for me! Simply beautiful!

That the kind of answer I prefer. No waffling. You like what you like. Hope you voted.

 

[saddestmoon]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Abramsprise all the way for me! Simply beautiful!

That the kind of answer I prefer. No waffling. You like what you like. Hope you voted.

Yep - I sure did vote.

For me, the Abramsprise combines the best bits of the Refit, with the TOS. I also love the nacelles - but most of all, I'm a big fan of the Abramsprise primary hull.

Can't wait to see what the next Trek movie reveals in terms of the Abramsprise 'refit' sections (extended impulse drive, etc).

 

[TRON JA307020]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Abramsprise all the way for me! Simply beautiful!

That the kind of answer I prefer. No waffling. You like what you like. Hope you voted.

Yep - I sure did vote.

For me, the Abramsprise combines the best bits of the Refit, with the TOS. I also love the nacelles - but most of all, I'm a big fan of the Abramsprise primary hull.

Can't wait to see what the next Trek movie reveals in terms of the Abramsprise 'refit' sections (extended impulse drive, etc).

I actually liked the primary hull(Saucer) because they enlarged it. By enlarging the hull they could realistically get more rooms and larger rooms into the ship. Also the saucer looks a lot like TMP refit which I also like.

They are going to refit the ship in the next movie? Hmmm I wonder what it will look like.

 

[saddestmoon]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

They are going to refit the ship in the next movie? Hmmm I wonder what it will look like.

Evidence of a refit was already seen in the during the final shot of the Enterprise about to jump to warp, at the end of STID. The impulse drive has been enlongated along the edge of the saucer.

There's a thread about this over here, with images:

http://www.trekbbs.com/showthread.php?t=213265

So I'm wondering if there will be further refitting that will have, either occured at the same time (but not yet revealed in STID) as the impulse drive, or perhaps in the intervening period between STID and Trek 3 movie...

 

[Nerys Myk]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Not a fan of the nacelles, myself.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Really prefer the TMP refit over all of them, myself, but if comparing the TOS Connie w/ the JJPrise, I'll always pick TOS. Hopefully, in future refits, they'll thin out some of the bulk on the nacelles to give it a more "hotrod" look.

 

[bbailey861]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

I picked TOS, but I like them both. They each fit in well with the (real) time period they were introduced in.

 

[M'Sharak]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

The proportions of the new Enterprise are all wrong/off.

Do you mean to say that they're wrong or off in some functional way, or just that they don't match the familiar dimensions/proportions of the Enterprise from the original television series?

I think the nacelles look at bit top heavy. They did make the saucer bigger but the nacelles still look to big.

I was kinda hoping BriGuy might be able to provide some technical/mechanical explanation". The complaint about proportions being off or wrong aren't altogether uncommon, but no one I've ever asked seems to be able to express why that's so. What I get instead is a list of changes which would make it more like the TV Enterprise.

The TMP refit was so nice in that the nacelles were streamline and just seemed to fit the overall dimensions of the ship. While the TOS version was pretty streamlines the TMP refit was even more so.

Eh, I'll grant that the refit was photographed beautifully.

 

[Kemaiku]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Exactly. All the right parts, just sexed up for a new generation of Trek fans.

Well thank goodness they made at least one sexy, that skinny bitch was just getting on my nerves.

 

[Cyke101]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Question: I seem to recall reading a Wiki page stating that GR's original plans for the Enterprise were on the scale of close to what is now the JJPrise, but as he and the crew were proceeding through the planning stages (with a more accurate and concrete vision of what GR wanted the ship to do, accommodate, etc), the ship gradually became smaller and smaller until it reached its final form. Is there any truth to this?

As for the poll itself, I wish there was a both option. Years of watching TNG and now the JJ movies have made me wonder if the TOS-E was a little too small for what she does, imo. If the original or refit Enterprise were on the JJPrise-scale, I'd probably be happier with the design, considering all the dangers and hazards they faced on the show.

 

[M'Sharak]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Question: I seem to recall reading a Wiki page stating that GR's original plans for the Enterprise were on the scale of close to what is now the JJPrise, but as he and the crew were proceeding through the planning stages (with a more accurate and concrete vision of what GR wanted the ship to do, accommodate, etc), the ship gradually became smaller and smaller until it reached its final form. Is there any truth to this?

Here's a thing I found which talks about the design process Matt Jefferies went through with Roddenberry, and another piece which cites the same interview. Neither has any mention of size that I can see.

I also have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that at some point in the conception process, the ship was only about 200 meters long; the size and crew complement both ended up being doubled. I can't recall the source, though - might simply have been something someone posted here.

EDIT:

This may be the Wiki section you had in mind, Cyke.

Size

The dimensions of the Constitution-class, being 947 feet (289 meters) long for the original configuration and 1000 feet (305 meters) for the refit-configuration, have been set in stone in time immemorial as far as Star Trek -lore is concerned. That being said and oddly enough, neither dimension has actually ever been canonically confirmed, as neither dimension was ever seen or referred to in any of the live-action Star Trek productions.

[...]

Remarkably, the dimension of the starship had been in flux until that time as a Producer Gene Roddenberry's memo of 24 August 1964 evidenced, "We anticipate a final design might see the ship as 200 feet in length, and thus even a 1½-inch scale would give us quite a huge miniature." This figure, initially accompanied with a crew complement of 203 would actually more or less stand until Jefferies, utilizing his engineering background, recalculated the figures for his design three years later.

The original configuration Constitution-class length came closest to canon, when two ship size comparison graphics were featured in the Original Series third season episode "The Enterprise Incident". The two computer console graphics, also created by Jefferies, showed a Constitution-class vessel in comparison with a Romulan D7-class battle cruiser and an in the episode barely discernible yardstick. Yet, careful measurement of the production art of the graphic, using the featured yardstick, measured the Constitution-class vessel actually at exactly 900 feet (274 meter). Jefferies later sold his original plan view design art, including that for AMT, in the Profiles in History The Star Trek Auction of 12 December 2001, in order to raise funding for the "Motion Picture & Television Fund" charity.

 

[137th Gebirg]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

The ship seems to have grown over time, even canonically. Pike specifically mentioned the Enterprise having a crew of "203 lives" when he was complaining about the burden of command to Boyce. The number over-doubled to 430 by the time Kirk comes around in TOS, mentioned many times in dialog. I think the TMP refit got up to over 500, but I have no specific citation for that. Maybe the original TMP blueprints? Can't remember...

Begs the question, how did the number of crew double between Pike and Kirk? The ship's overall shape and size appeared to remain constant. Did Pike's Enterprise go out with a lot of empty undeveloped space that was later built-up with crew quarters? We know there were several physical refits during that time, mostly identified by the different bridge shape and warp nacelle greebles. From an interior POV, we never saw Pike's quarters, the super-long corridor or the trippy briefing room since then, either. It stands to reason they would have done some major reworking of the interior as well to accommodate the extra personnel.

To answer the original question, though, I don't think I've ever heard that the Enterprise was supposed to be much bigger, especially since the dialog about the crew numbers would indicate otherwise.

 

[mos6507]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

The complaint about proportions being off or wrong aren't altogether uncommon, but no one I've ever asked seems to be able to express why that's so. What I get instead is a list of changes which would make it more like the TV Enterprise.

It's the nature with aesthetics. It's something you feel in your gut and doesn't need any technical rationalization.

For instance, people generally cite the AMC Pacer as one of the ugliest cars in history. Why is that? A big reason has to do with the proportion of window to the rest of the body.

The same is true of the Enterprise. It's hard to go back in time to when the TOS Enterprise first appeared on screen and to know how people reacted to its proportions, but whatever those proportions may be, mathematically, "worked" and have been in some way maintained from generation to generation. When they haven't, things tend to feel "off". The saucer in the Enteprise-D feels oversized, for instance. The nacelles on Voyager seem undersized. So whenever they play with the formula a little too radically, it tends to turn people off. Such is the case with the JJ-Enterprise. The Nacelles are too fat and the way the neck attaches to the secondary hull and the way the main dish juts out so much feels "off". And the rear end feels too pinched. As a piece of fictional sculpture, beauty is purely in the eye of the beholder, but when I see it, all I can see is something that appears to be an amateurish attempt to mashup TOS and Refit styles while accidentally getting all of the proportions and alignment wrong. It doesn't feel intentionally designed to be this way. It comes across as if the designer simply has a poor sense of proportion and good taste and just kind of jammed this together with that and added a bunch of almost random curves and other details that don't really flow in a pleasing way (like the bow-legged nacelle struts and the reversed tapering on them which is not very flattering).

 

[Kemaiku]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

The original Enterprise was made out of many different sketches Jefferies made out of 20's through 60's rocket ships, it was no more mathy or technical than a childs visions of a space ship, only better drawn.

The new Enterprise has a hell of a lot more actual space, technological and mathematical attention to detail than the first one ever had.

Playing the PS3 game and getting to explore the interior of the new ship makes it feel more real and logical than the films may protray it, but it still feels more like a true space vessel than the 60's saucer and rocket patchwork ever did.

 

[TRON JA307020]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

The original Enterprise was made out of many different sketches Jefferies made out of 20's through 60's rocket ships, it was no more mathy or technical than a childs visions of a space ship, only better drawn.

The new Enterprise has a hell of a lot more actual space, technological and mathematical attention to detail than the first one ever had.

Playing the PS3 game and getting to explore the interior of the new ship makes it feel more real and logical than the films may protray it, but it still feels more like a true space vessel than the 60's saucer and rocket patchwork ever did.

How is the abrams version any more "mathematical"? ITs still basically just a art concept of a ship only done with CGI. It has no more realism for real world mechanics than the original model did. It actually seem more fantastical than the original enterprise. The only part of the ship that is real is the engine room and they use a old 20th century beer factory to portray that which in some ways is even more childish. I mean every time I walk into a factory I can pretend I am in the 23rd century engine room of the Abrams Enterprise?

 

[TRON JA307020]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Question: I seem to recall reading a Wiki page stating that GR's original plans for the Enterprise were on the scale of close to what is now the JJPrise, but as he and the crew were proceeding through the planning stages (with a more accurate and concrete vision of what GR wanted the ship to do, accommodate, etc), the ship gradually became smaller and smaller until it reached its final form. Is there any truth to this?

Here's a thing I found which talks about the design process Matt Jefferies went through with Roddenberry, and another piece which cites the same interview. Neither has any mention of size that I can see.

I also have a vague recollection of reading somewhere that at some point in the conception process, the ship was only about 200 meters long; the size and crew complement both ended up being doubled. I can't recall the source, though - might simply have been something someone posted here.

EDIT:

This may be the Wiki section you had in mind, Cyke.

Size

The dimensions of the Constitution-class, being 947 feet (289 meters) long for the original configuration and 1000 feet (305 meters) for the refit-configuration, have been set in stone in time immemorial as far as Star Trek -lore is concerned. That being said and oddly enough, neither dimension has actually ever been canonically confirmed, as neither dimension was ever seen or referred to in any of the live-action Star Trek productions.

[...]

Remarkably, the dimension of the starship had been in flux until that time as a Producer Gene Roddenberry's memo of 24 August 1964 evidenced, "We anticipate a final design might see the ship as 200 feet in length, and thus even a 1½-inch scale would give us quite a huge miniature." This figure, initially accompanied with a crew complement of 203 would actually more or less stand until Jefferies, utilizing his engineering background, recalculated the figures for his design three years later.

The original configuration Constitution-class length came closest to canon, when two ship size comparison graphics were featured in the Original Series third season episode "The Enterprise Incident". The two computer console graphics, also created by Jefferies, showed a Constitution-class vessel in comparison with a Romulan D7-class battle cruiser and an in the episode barely discernible yardstick. Yet, careful measurement of the production art of the graphic, using the featured yardstick, measured the Constitution-class vessel actually at exactly 900 feet (274 meter). Jefferies later sold his original plan view design art, including that for AMT, in the Profiles in History The Star Trek Auction of 12 December 2001, in order to raise funding for the "Motion Picture & Television Fund" charity.

I believe the crew size for the TOS version doubled from 200 plus crewman in Captain Pikes time from the episode the cage to 400 plus in Captain Kirks time 15 years later.

 

[F. King Daniel]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

Just for kicks, according to the old Experience the Enterprise site, the crew of the new, bigger Enterprise is 1100.

 

[M'Sharak]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

The complaint about proportions being off or wrong aren't altogether uncommon, but no one I've ever asked seems to be able to express why that's so. What I get instead is a list of changes which would make it more like the TV Enterprise.

It's the nature with aesthetics. It's something you feel in your gut and doesn't need any technical rationalization.

For instance, people generally cite the AMC Pacer as one of the ugliest cars in history. Why is that? A big reason has to do with the proportion of window to the rest of the body.

The same is true of the Enterprise. It's hard to go back in time to when the TOS Enterprise first appeared on screen and to know how people reacted to its proportions, but whatever those proportions may be, mathematically, "worked" and have been in some way maintained from generation to generation. When they haven't, things tend to feel "off". The saucer in the Enteprise-D feels oversized, for instance. The nacelles on Voyager seem undersized. So whenever they play with the formula a little too radically, it tends to turn people off. Such is the case with the JJ-Enterprise. The Nacelles are too fat and the way the neck attaches to the secondary hull and the way the main dish juts out so much feels "off". And the rear end feels too pinched. As a piece of fictional sculpture, beauty is purely in the eye of the beholder, but when I see it, all I can see is something that appears to be an amateurish attempt to mashup TOS and Refit styles while accidentally getting all of the proportions and alignment wrong. It doesn't feel intentionally designed to be this way. It comes across as if the designer simply has a poor sense of proportion and good taste and just kind of jammed this together with that and added a bunch of almost random curves and other details that don't really flow in a pleasing way (like the bow-legged nacelle struts and the reversed tapering on them which is not very flattering).

I don't have to go back in time for impressions of the TOS Enterprise's first appearance; I was there.

When I got my first glimpse of the new ship, just as with my first view of the original series ship, I wasn't harboring any expectations in advance of what it should look like; I just reacted to what it was, without filtering it through comparisons to the other models. And you know what? The new Enterprise worked just fine for me, aesthetically, right down to those nacelle pylons. It still does. It's a beautiful ship.

 

[Cyke101]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

The original Enterprise was made out of many different sketches Jefferies made out of 20's through 60's rocket ships, it was no more mathy or technical than a childs visions of a space ship, only better drawn.

The new Enterprise has a hell of a lot more actual space, technological and mathematical attention to detail than the first one ever had.

Playing the PS3 game and getting to explore the interior of the new ship makes it feel more real and logical than the films may protray it, but it still feels more like a true space vessel than the 60's saucer and rocket patchwork ever did.

How is the abrams version any more "mathematical"? ITs still basically just a art concept of a ship only done with CGI. It has no more realism for real world mechanics than the original model did. It actually seem more fantastical than the original enterprise. The only part of the ship that is real is the engine room and they use a old 20th century beer factory to portray that which in some ways is even more childish. I mean every time I walk into a factory I can pretend I am in the 23rd century engine room of the Abrams Enterprise?

Well, for one, the JJPrise was originally going to be closer in scale to the original, but when it came to mapping out scenes like the shuttlebay (being the biggest factor in implementing the changes), the size of the bridge, et all, the designers kept finding themselves scaling the JJPrise up and up until it reached its current form. Abrams, for example, wanted a larger shuttlebay to accommodate the needs of a crew that size, but a couple shuttles wouldn't do it, so he asked for a larger one. But getting more shuttles but also fitting in an engine room would mean expanding the ship.

But that kind of time and collaboration is a luxury that TV shows generally don't have, whereas movies have months to work and rework these concepts. Whatever communication that set design and ship design had with each other back then couldn't really be that accurate. It's true even in TNG -- Ten Forward is on the wrong floor! It really should be, I think, Eleven Forward if you're comparing its placement in the ship, but it's not nearly as catchy. And everyone's too busy counting Voyager's destroyed shuttles to notice that her shuttlebay keeps changing size depending on which exterior shot they're using. Heck, even Pike's bed didn't fit him in the Cage, and that was just between the set crew and the director; much simpler in communication.

As it is, it could be that many of the sets were designed and built *after* Enterprise was designed by Jeffries. So you'd have to shoehorn them into the ship somehow. Same with the E-D -- just how many times can you redress the observation lounge and Ten Forward to act as different parts of the ship, and then put in those rooms with the same dimension into the blueprints? It's not feasible, because those sets were conceived in later seasons after the ship was designed.

I'm strongly of the belief that if Jeffries had access to today's computers and design software, that the Enterprise would fundamentally change -- if not in basic shape, then definitely in size and function. If the ship design came first, maybe the stages like the bridge would change. If the production crew had time, maybe they would have constructed more detailed blueprints and then build the stages accordingly. As it is, today's designers have tools that yesterday's designers simply didn't have. Many of those tools are programs, and programs are, themselves, mathematical.

 

[BillJ]

Re: What Enterprise Do You Prefer? NuENterprise NCC 1701 or TOS NCC 17

It actually seem more fantastical than the original enterprise.

What about one fictional spaceship makes it more fantastical than another? Both go really fast (as fast as the plot needs) and both shot energy weapons and torpedoes. Both have a similar shape.