"Why the Enterprise-D Was Badly Designed"

I don't get the idea of a ship being disproportionate. Unless I missed something it's not going to fall over in space.

 

Poor choice of word I'd used, though it's more about its appearance than for functionality in the vacuum of space. Either way, some people think the design sucks... Once you see the _|-|_|-|_|-|_ pattern connecting the nacelles to the engineering hull, it's hard not to ponder if that looks like a structural weak point to be exploited by an enemy. Then again, for the "D", one tap on a nacelle could cause the entire ship to explode... the warp core was breached 4 times in TNG (not including the x number of times in spinoffs or movies), and everyone being chicken little when Geordi clucked the urgency of the possibility in maybe two dozen others...



Well that's depressing. Not only is the count lower than I'd hoped, the first instance doesn't even include TNG (much less the episode "Contagion" when they first bring in the trope. Then again, that video is only counting the number of times they try to eject the thing and whether or not they succeed...)

 

The warp core ejection system is the one thing (next to life support) that should work, no matter what.
In 'Cause and Effect' it's kind of awkward when first the warpcore emergy shutdown doesn't work.
OK, eject the core.
Well, that doesn't work either, oooops.
Well, they were in a weird unknown time disruption anomaly, maybe that could save that episode....

 

yes i agree completely with that, I've always wondered why they weren't able to do that.

 

The Galaxy Class design has grown on me over the years to where it's a beloved favorite nowadays (but for me, all time-favorite remains Constitution Class)

The only thing I hate about it is the saucer separation feature. Yes, it's neat that it can do that but it was used so sparingly in the early TNG seasons (for budget reasons apparently) that later on, you simply forgot that it can do that until Generations where it was used for it's implied purpose after all!

If you going to have it then use it, fine. But if not, then why have it at all?

 

Except in GEN it wasn't used for its primary purpose, but rather for an emergency (but pre-planned) purpose.

 

It has the nicest interior of any ship in the series. I can take or leave the exterior.

 

I've never been a huge fan of the Galaxy-Class design, always been fat too top heavy for me, I much prefer the likes of the Ambassador- or Nebula-Classes for my bigger capital ships, both of which just seem far better proportioned to me and still capable of doing all the Galaxy can.

 

It's not a matter of real-world physics we're talking about here. It's about the design choices. To me, the Abramsprise has stupidly-large, out-of-proportion-to-the-rest-of-the-ship nacelles. And I'm not particularly interested in any made-up fictional reason why this is the case. It just looks stupid.

 

As we all know, it's what's on the inside that counts.

 

I like the Kelvin-Trek films to varying degrees, but the design elements are not amongst my favorite aspects of those movies. The re-designed Enterprise is definitely not at the top of my list. I’ll take the Enterprise-D anytime over the Kelvinverse Enterprises.

 

The USS Apple Store.

 

The Galaxy class design has several things working well with it. The first is that it fills the screen well. It is almost an exercise in forced perspective - the eye reads the saucer as circular and the secondary hull stretches back getting smaller with the nacelles seeming far away. Not all views work, some make it look weird, but from the main views used in the series it does work well.
The second thing it that it is designed to look very big. Minimal surface features help with this. Some ships will always look small because they have heavy surface shapes and textures (the Klingon Bird of Prey is a good example). No matter what camera composition scaling tricks you use, it will always look kike a small scout craft. One reason the 2009 Enterprise has a problem is that the ship was designed to be one size (about the size of the refit but still larger) and after the shape was locked in they decided to make it huge. IIRC it is now supposed to be close to the size of a Galaxy class but if look at the two ahips side by side the Galaxy still looks like a much larger ship. Very large things have detail, but in proportion to the surface those details are small and blended.

 

I really like the Galaxy Class... I think it makes sense to have a lot of space and luxury on a ship designed for multi-year journeys. And I don't have any issue with the supposed disproportional look either. To somebody in the 1960s looking at modern vehicles, they'd probably think our cars look misshapen with such tiny hoods. But technology evolves and engines getting smaller and more efficient is a reasonable expectation. Plus in space it's not like shape matters all that much.

My one real beef with the class is the population. I really think a crew of 3000, plus a smattering of civilians, would make more sense. The ship is huge; and having it run by 200-300 people at any given time doesn't seem sufficient given all the things that need to be done -- operations, maintenance, research, various support missions in local systems, continuing education, weekends/days off (I know ship duty is usually 7 days, but this is a multi-year journey), and the list goes on.

A not-real beef with the class is how fragile the writers made it. In Contagion, when the Yamato's core breached, it was horrifying because of how rare such an event was. Indeed, up until that point (a bit less than 100 years of Star Trek "history") we never even heard of a Starfleet vessel's engine exploding. And after that, every time the ship shook a little bit, it was "Coolant leak in Engineering! Estimate 5 minutes to a warp core breach!"

 

Someone once posted that the saucer section of Voyager was lightweight / balanced because that's where they store all the plot holes.

 

I think the circular saucer on STO's Ross-class goes a long way towards making the ship seem more balanced.

Though, I remember the size of some of those extra bars made it look like you could easily have all 1,000 people on a ship in the lounges, and still have several of them totally empty.

 

It really does. And it has a bit of sleek that the D never quite got.

 

Ed Whitefire, one of original designers, told me that on a Galaxy class ship with a crew of one thousand you could walk all day and never see another crew member. It works out to over a football field of space for each of the crew - that is just habitable decks, not counting hardware and infrastructure

 

It could be that Janeway was feasting on the crew's souls on a daily basis.