Why the Enterprise shape?

[varek]

The Jefferies sketches were interesting, but the saucer looks so much sleeker and more sophisticated than the globe designs. Also, the saucer had to be separable, so some aspects of the design had to be the way they were.
It is interesting, though, that the Romulan warbird, and the Klingon warships derived from them, resembled birds.
Personally, I like a warship that looks like a scorpion: giving a clear indication of its purpose and intentions!

 

[publiusr]

You don't see many ships like that on screen.

 

[robau]

It's a flying saucer attached to a submarine with rockets propelling it.

 

[matthunter]

One of the EU sources discussed it as being a blend of Human, Andorian and Tellarite design aesthetics (presumably the Centaurans were too busy recovering from the introduction of Zephram Cochrane and whiskey into their culture and the Vulcans were more interested in designing the computer and sensors).

I kinda liked the idea that the design was a mixing of ideas from the five founding races of the Federation, but Enterprise retcons the shape as being human-designed all along.

 

[B.J.]

^ No reason why it still can't be a mix. They likely put together the best parts of the different races' designs. It seems the warp design and shape go hand-in-hand, and is obviously human designed. Stuff like the tractor beams and, and you mentioned, computers may have come from the Vulcans. Maybe someone else contributed a better impulse engine.

The point is, you wouldn't just mash together different warp engine/hull designs and hope they'd work, because you'd probably end up with something worse than any single design. You'd keep the best parts of what worked, and maybe tweak it a bit later.

 

[publiusr]

I do not care for a lot of the later Starfleet hull designs- especially the Galaxy Class oval saucer. I suppose it was intended to look larger from the front view since the eye would try to resolve it into a circle. The arrow-head primary hulls do not appeal much to me either.

Ditto

 

[TheCegorach]

More than the shape of particular iterations of the Enterprise, I'm bothered by the fact that the 150+ worlds of the Federation produce ships that are so monotonous in appearance.

 

[C.E. Evans]

Towards the end of the 24th-Century, we had ships that were moving farther and farther away from the Enterprise shape with wedge-shaped command sections and no interconnecting dorsal (Nova, Intrepid, and Prometheus designs) and designs that weren't remotely like the Enterprise shape like the Defiant-class.

 

[TheCegorach]

While the Defiant is a welcome departure, an angular saucer is still part of the all-too-familiar (in my opinion) standard Federation pattern: saucer, secondary hull, nacelles.

An Intrepid-class follows this pattern; contrast with an Andorian Kumari, or a Vulcan D'Kyr, for instance. There is no mistaking a D'Kyr for a "standard" Federation design. With a few notable exceptions (Defiant and Horizon spring immediately to mind), the differences in most Federation designs resemble the year-to-year changes you might see in a single model of a car, to my eye. It's like every starship is a Ford Mustang--some might be '66 models (Constitution), then they got really long in the early '70s (Excelsior), then they got smaller again (Ambassador), but nonetheless, they're all Mustangs, and they all kinda blend into the same thing after a while, in my opinion.

 

[C.E. Evans]

While the Defiant is a welcome departure, an angular saucer is still part of the all-too-familiar (in my opinion) standard Federation pattern: saucer, secondary hull, nacelles.

By that definition, that's a common configuration not exclusive to the Federation (or even Star Trek). But wedge-shaped forward sections like those of the Nova- and Prometheus-classes really aren't saucers, especially when they're continuous with the rest of the vessel.

 

[Hartzilla2007]

The Daedalus Class wasn't "fan-retconned", Sisko had a model of it in his DS9 office

And we know for a fact that this was a model of a Daedalus-class how exactly?

 

[T'Girl]

And we know for a fact that this was a model of a Daedalus-class how exactly?

And during TNG, all of those shots of some random Galaxy class where we couldn't see any markings denoting specific identity, those were shots of the Enterprise Dee how exactly?

:

 

[Hartzilla2007]

And we know for a fact that this was a model of a Daedalus-class how exactly?

And during TNG, all of those shots of some random Galaxy class where we couldn't see any markings denoting specific identity, those were shots of the Enterprise Dee how exactly?

:

The fact that they cut to the sets which kind of implies it, as opposed to seeing a random starship model and assuming its a particular class of starship despite nothing said or shown to indicate this is the case.