Discovery’s season two finale certainly seemed to be setting the landscape for S31, so my gut feeling is that the show will take place in the 23rd century. Combine that with the Toronto production, as mentioned above, and it makes perfect sense as the time setting - probably the cheapest live action show they’ll have launched, in this wave of new Trek. I’m pretty psyched for this show. I’m almost expecting an Alias-type series, which will really give us something different to previous Trek. I’ve seen enough of ships exploring the cosmos - I can watch those back any time. I’m ready to just cut deeper into the Trek universe, and see what different people, groups and organisations are doing.
Then he's mistaken or misremembering, or misunderstood at the time. There were many designs for the NX that were created and rejected before the Akira became an influence. It was a long process lasting months.
That wasn’t my point. Yes, I am aware that there were other concepts presented and rejected (one of which was a concept Eaves later used as the starting point for the DSC Enterprise.) I wasn’t implying that there weren’t other designs, but rather that when the other designs were rejected, the producers found the Akira class from FC and decided then to use it as the NX-01.
I’ve seen his concept art for the NX-01 and I’ve seen his concept art for the DSC Enterprise. They’re 90% identical. So I’m not “stating falsehoods.”
I'm saying the idea that someone(Berman?) wanted to use the Akira as is for the NX-01 is not plausible. They had people sketching out concepts for months. The guideline were that it have a saucer, resemble the TOS Enterprise, use direct elements from the TOS and TMP enterprises, look both retro and modern(modern as in 2001, retro as in 1950's). They poured so much money and time into meticulously designing everything on the show, including the ship, compared to previous shows.
So then explain to me why the finished product still looked so much like the Akira. John Eaves made concept art for the NX-01 but it was Drexler who ultimately designed the ship as it is. He made a comment that the producers originally came to the decision that they wanted the Akira as the NX-01 (presumably after rejecting all the previous concept designs and then found the Akira CGI from FC), and he was able to at least change things enough for it to resemble more of a 22nd century type of ship instead of a 24th century ship. He had no reason to make any of that up. It's not like someone asked him about it; he freely gave out that info on his blog.
It has similarities to the Akira, but it follows all of the guidelines set out for the NX-01 from the get go. An unchanged Akira doesn't at all. It's absurd. He must be confused. It's just not believable, and contradicts everything else that is known from everyone else involved in the design process.
For all you know, the “guidelines” went out the window when they kept rejecting all of Eaves’s designs and finally found the Akira. The producers of ENT made a lot of stupid decisions during that show’s run. I wouldn’t put it past them at all to have used the Akira unchanged. But believe what you want.
I will accept the claim if there is a source besides Drexler making it. Either one of the actual producers, or Zimmerman who had direct contact with them. Drexler doesn't have to have a reason to lie if he is simply mistaken, but if he is stretching the truth, it might be because he's gone around the interwebs defending his ship against all the whining. He would basically be saying "Look, guys, I'm the good guy here! I saved this ship. I made it more like TOS!" It's not as though they just found this model from ILM. Berman, et al had already had their own(cg) model of the Akira made for DS9 and Voyager. It's also not as though Drexler just took some Akira model, tweaked it, and now it's an NX. It's a totally new model built from scratch, and was built to share many of the landmarks of the other model.
That's fine. All I'm pointing out is that Drexler had no reason to make up what he said. He posted the info on his blog years after ENT was off the air, so no one was pestering him about the NX-01 design anymore. As for the Akira CGI: It was created by ILM for use in First Contact. When DS9 needed more CGI ships, ILM surrendered the three Akira, Saber, and Steamrunner class models to them, but they were all low-poly and had to be remapped for use in the show. But even after the remapping, the Akira was still being used as a 'background' ship, which their logic translates as "nobody really noticed it, so we can get away with reusing it for a completely different ship in a different show."
The Wikipedia article I linked earlier actually quotes Zimmerman saying exactly that. Besides you're the only person I've seen in eighteen years claim the NX-01 was not just a modified Akira. Everyone knows this to be true. Entertainment Weekly did an article about it. The novels have made jokes about it since as early as 2002. This is basic Trek Trivia here, something everyone (at least everyone familiar with Enterprise) knows.
The Zimmerman quote states exactly what I've been stating, that they used elements from the Akira class. The wikipedia quote is not a direct quote from anybody, but a paragraph about Drexler's claim, sourced only to Drexler(and twice for some reason). It isn't. It's a newly built cg model that borrows many elements from the Akira. The narrative here is that the producer's just found the Akira and said "that's nice, just use that," and that Drexler rebelliously took this horrific decision and made the most out of it by modifying the existing model. It's silly.
Sweet shit, that ring ship at the bottom is an utter monstrosity. It's like they didn't know what direction they wanted to go in with that design.