Why did people dislike the "TNG aesthetic"?

[Timewalker]

I prefer the 1701-D aesthetic to the 1701-E aesthetic. The former has warmth and character; the latter feels stark and unfriendly. I know that was kind of the point, 1701-E is a battleship after all. But from a gut feeling I know which one I'd rather serve on.

Oh I agree! The Enterprise-D had character and looked like a place people would actually be able to work and live in for an extended amount.

In general I don't understand the distaste for the D's "comfortable" design. Why is it so difficult to believe that in 70+ years technology would advance to make things more comfortable? Or that people might not like their quarters painted in traffic light red?

I don't recall any "traffic light red" quarters in TOS.

There were red elements like the bedding and room dividers. Spock had red in his quarters because he had decorated them in the Vulcan aesthetic.

There might be some romanticized notion that a starship should be as utilitarian and no frills as possible, but after a few years of that, and it starts feeling like a prison. I think having as much comfort as possible on long-term deep-space missions is crucial for keeping up crew morale (and ultimately, crew performance) and is something that Starfleet is aware of. I think it's a different story for ships that aren't meant for lengthy deployments.

I've seen the case made by actual psychologists that bright primary colors and soft warm decorations would be essential to long term space deployments to stop people going crazy. I believe Gene Roddenberry himself said one of his favorite things about the 1701-D was the wooden railing on the bridge, as it gave the crew a connection to nature.

Too much beige, grey, and off-white can be terribly depressing. The wall color in my current apartment is beige. The carpet color is medium brown. I am not allowed to paint the walls, or they would definitely be different.

I don't have houseplants because they wouldn't survive the cats, but I do have lots of wood bookshelves and lots of books. So I get that the Enterprise D would have items and decor that at least look natural, even if they're not, for the psychological well-being of the crew. But this does need to be broken up by the occasional bit of primary color.

For me, VOY (of all things) struck the right balance between some comfort, with some utilitarian feeling.

Quarters is one thing, and decorate those how ever it pleases the person. The bridge, and other work rooms, should have a feeling of functionality as well as comfort.

I don't know how to describe it. TNG never felt comfortable to me. The uniforms looked too confining, the bridge felt too big, nothing felt comfortable to me.

The TNG bridge was huge. But David Gerrold addressed the issue of huge starship corridors and other rooms in one of his books (don't recall if it was "The Trouble With Tribbles" or The World of Star Trek). He said that a real starship wouldn't be as large, or have as wide corridors, but the reason the Enterprise does is because of the 20th century need to have enough room for the camera crew and other tech people to work, when the shows were being filmed.

Voyager actually resembles a hotel much like TNG, except in a different color scheme. Remember the episode where Janeway and Chakotay are marooned on "New Earth" and have to build a pre-fab shelter? They joke about whether they want the beige walls to be the interior or the grey. Considering that they expected that they might be there for the rest of their lives, they could have been in for a really depressing time.

 

[mswood]

^I haven't really heard any complaints about TNG aesthetics either, and I personally loved it. If I had the means, I would probably have a living room kitted out to look similar to the Enterprise D bridge.

To me thats a huge part of the problem. Having worked at an office and worked at home, both being equal Home is of course far, far more comfortable, but the drawback its the only place I have actually fallen asleep while I was actually working.

There is point where too much comfort actually can put you to sleep. the bridge is literally not the best place for that. now crew quarters, rec areas, off duty areas, sick bay 9especially patient areas0, hall way etc. no problem at all. But places were you need to be focused or at the very last be in a position to be focused at a moments notice, too much comfort would actually hamper that.

Out of all the starships, with the exception of two people sharing center stage equally (at least Picard was a center), Voyager's bridge and a lot of their sets really mixed comfort and not being to comfortable. So my overall least favorite show, in fact as the interiors I would most want to work in.

For a purely functional, and to me far more accessible to humanity of this day, I love, love the NX-01 interiors. Far and away my favorite interior design of the franchise. Though clearly they were absolutely not designed for long term comfort.

 

[The Wormhole]

I personally feel that the absolute best-looking Enterprise interiors were those featured in The Undiscovered Country.

Fun fact: the dinner scene with Gorkon and his contingent, is actually a redressed conference room from TNG.

TUC recycled a lot from TNG. As mentioned above, most of the Enterprise's interiors are their counterparts from TNG (eg, sickbay, engineering, transporter room, corridors, dining room, as you mention). Also, the Federation President's office is the Ten-Forward set, with a matte painting out the windows of "future Paris" from the TNG episode We'll Always Have Paris.

 

[JirinPanthosa]

Having lots of leisure ability makes for better television because it enables more exploration of the characters having fun. If we're considering believability against entertainment value, it's more a cost benefit question. Will this extra bulk and energy use be a problem in combat situations? Can we produce two utilitarian ships for the same effort expenditure as we can produce one luxury ship?

Will two ships of stressed, anxious crew desperate to get out of their plastisteel working jails be of more use than one ship with a crew of high morale and top physical and emotional fitness?

I note (since it's just what happens to be at the front of my mind) the Skylab 4/3 crew was worked to the point of mutiny by people who reasoned they were only going to be on orbit, at great expense, for a very short while and so had to make the most productive use of every single moment of every single day. After the rebellion, and the decision to set working rules in accord with making the crew comfortable, they got to be enormously more productive too. I grant there are several steps to go between this point and the Enterprise D aesthetic, but I do not believe that people are worse off for living and working in pleasant places.

There's quite a bit of distance between a plainsteel prison and a luxury cruiser. The ship is a kilometer long and has practically a deck's worth of high tech imagination playgrounds. The saucer and both nacelles are giant very vulnerable targets. It could be comfortable and livable while being a little more practical.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

The ship is a kilometer long and has practically a deck's worth of high tech imagination playgrounds.

What ship is a kilometer long?

 

[Mk_Sn]

"Early TNG had a very specific visual philosophy at work. You saw more plants, wood paneling, earth tones carpeting etc. later seasons of TNG moved away from that. Planters became light boxes and with the exception of the horseshoe rail most of the wood vanished as well. You started getting a lot more grey in the color scheme and more utilitarian look."

Heh I didn't notice. Then again I skip the first season and most of the second season it could be why I haven't noticed.

Also all this talk of efficiency and realism can only go so far because at least from what we know, starships easily traveling around the galaxy aren't realistic :P

 

[Goji]

The look of TNG is by far my least favorite of the various Trek incarnations.

 

[publiusr]

It does look a little too safe.

It's what you want loved ones to have on a trip--

 

[Greg Cox]

There might be some romanticized notion that a starship should be as utilitarian and no frills as possible, but after a few years of that, and it starts feeling like a prison.

But wouldn't the blandness and uniformity of the ship's decor also be a problem over a protracted time period?

Despite creating a vision of exploration that was comfortable and relaxed...fans seemed to reject the look everytime it was tried.

Comfortable, relaxed, lesurely suggest that what's going on isn't all that important, that there's no emphasis on the (supposedly) significant mission they're undertaking.

I didn't really have a problem with the design, but I suppose it did possibly contribute to the impression that the Final Frontier had maybe gotten a little too cozy and civilized by Picard's time. And I confess that the copywriter in me recoils at the very idea of describing STAR TREK as "comfortable, relaxed, leisurely" and so on, which strikes me as the polar opposite of dramatic and exciting.

Risk is their business, damn it, and, to quote Q, space is not for the timid. And the opening spiel sure as heck does not go:

"This is the leisurely cruise of the Starship Enterprise, going comfortably where no one has gone before . ... "

 

[Goji]

Comfortable, relaxed and leisurely are pretty much exactly what I think of when I think of most TNG. But that does tend to make episodes like Conspiracy, Yesterday's Enterprise, or The Best of Both Worlds stick out more and feel all the more memorable, because they're so much further out of the norm.

 

[Ithekro]

Wasn't the 1987 Galaxy-class bridge set the same size as the old 1966 Constitution-class bridge set? They just have less stuff around the edges and only the woodwork rail rather than railing all the way around the command pit.

 

[BillJ]

Wasn't the 1987 Galaxy-class bridge set the same size as the old 1966 Constitution-class bridge set? They just have less stuff around the edges and only the woodwork rail rather than railing all the way around the command pit.

That is what I've heard but don't know if it is true or not.

 

[Greg Cox]

Granted, we probably shouldn't underestimate the appeal of "cozy" when it comes to TNG.

One of Trek's distinguishing characteristics, when it comes to sci-fi shows, is that it features one of the few futures one would actually want to live in, as opposed to Planet of the Apes, Logan's Run, Mad Max, Terminator, The Matrix, etc.

Star Wars is a special case, in that, if you look closely, it's a universe of war and evil empires, but it's also a colorful, swashbuckling adventure so it doesn't feel particularly pessimistic or dystopian. The tone is one of fun and excitement, so I imagine there are plenty of fans who want to live in the SW universe as well.

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Quark's comparison of the Federation to root beer in "The Way of the Warrior" is one of the funniest things in Trek. I don't believe it could have had the same impact, were the "TNG aesthetic" "less luxurious."

 

[Shawnster]

Quarters is one thing, and decorate those how ever it pleases the person. The bridge, and other work rooms, should have a feeling of functionality as well as comfort.

I have felt the same way. Lately, I've imagined the crew quarters decks should have planters along the hallway like you see in some resort hotels or upscale apartment complexes. Bring a little green and life into the personal living areas.

Then I took that idea further and decided that 24th century ships could have basic holodeck technology incorporated into the crew decks. The corridors could be functional holodecks with limited features. They could display street scenes including blue sky, breeze, maybe light rain, and animals scurrying about. The doors to the individual crew quarters could look like doors to homes or apartments or tenements or something.

I never had a problem with the TNG sets. What I did have a problem with initially was the new Starfleet uniforms. It made no sense to me that Starfleet would return to the divisional colors after 100 years of not having them, never mind the uniforms being made out of "futuristic" '80's spandex. Of course, this was all about Roddenberry wanting to distance TNG from the feature films and return to the TOS aesthetic. I just never found it all that believable.

This isn't entirely true. Trek has always had department divisional colors. It's just been very subtle sometimes.

http://www.ex-astris-scientia.org/gallery/starfleet-uniforms1.htm

As you can see, movie era Trek expanded the division colors beyond the TOS 3 of Red, Blue and Yellow (Green)

 

[BillJ]

Quark's comparison of the Federation to root beer in "The Way of the Warrior" is one of the funniest things in Trek. I don't believe it could have had the same impact, were the "TNG aesthetic" "less luxurious."

That scene is one of the few from DS9 that I vividly remember.

 

[USS Triumphant]

Star Wars is a special case, in that, if you look closely, it's a universe of war and evil empires, but it's also a colorful, swashbuckling adventure so it doesn't feel particularly pessimistic or dystopian. The tone is one of fun and excitement, so I imagine there are plenty of fans who want to live in the SW universe as well.

I think the secret to the appeal of the Star Wars universe is that it IS war torn and rundown, but it has been advanced for soooo long that even under those circumstances, you can probably even dig some piece of technology that we would find absolutely amazing out of the trash of a junk dealer on some backwater world. And, to be so advanced, their security is crap. Want a ship, and to go adventuring? Put in a few days effort and you can probably steal one.

 

[Greg Cox]

Star Wars is a special case, in that, if you look closely, it's a universe of war and evil empires, but it's also a colorful, swashbuckling adventure so it doesn't feel particularly pessimistic or dystopian. The tone is one of fun and excitement, so I imagine there are plenty of fans who want to live in the SW universe as well.

I think the secret to the appeal of the Star Wars universe is that it IS war torn and rundown, but it has been advanced for soooo long that even under those circumstances, you can probably even dig some piece of technology that we would find absolutely amazing out of the trash of a junk dealer on some backwater world. And, to be so advanced, their security is crap. Want a ship, and to go adventuring? Put in a few days effort and you can probably steal one.

And, of course, it's like FLASH GORDON. Technically, sure, Mongo is a dictatorship ruled by a "merciless" tyrant, but there are jet packs and hawk-men and sword fights and exotic alien princes and princesses . . . woo-hoo!

 

[CorporalCaptain]

Chiefly what makes Star Wars not dystopian is that the story involves good triumphing over evil.

 

[Greg Cox]

Chiefly what makes Star Wars not dystopian is that the story involves good triumphing over evil.

Well, there is that.

Good point!