However, I think that the reason people like me are in such a crazed homicidal frenzy over the new the ship is that Berman and company are messing around with what we consider to be a main character of the Star Trek universe. While the people should be the focus, the ship (or space station) is the primary setting, and thus, quite important.

Specifically, a pre-TOS ship design is a REALLY touchy subject; more so than the ships of recent Trek. Why? Well, new 24th century designs are just that; NEW. In Voyager, DS9, or the movies, Trek has always been MOVING FORWARD, so it really didn’t matter whether I liked a particular ship or not. (For example, I was never a big fan of the Enterprise-E. Nonetheless, I didn’t throw a big hissy fit like I am with the Akiraprise.)

Now comes Enterprise, a “PREQUEL,” which puts my own view of Star Trek ship linage to the ultimate test. And on my personal scorecard, the NX-01 fails miserably.

Disliking the U.S.S. Voyager because one doesn’t personally care for the design is one thing. Disliking the Akiraprise because one doesn’t find that it is an appropriately designed pre-TOS ship is totally different.

All that being said, I wish to reiterate that I will give Enterprise a look, and if the stories are good, I will “forgive” the ship design and enjoy the show as best I can! (Although, I do reserve the right to keep fussing about the Akiraprise!)

[ August 15, 2001: Message edited by: Commander Dan ]

Anyway - what he said. Exactly.

I don't like the Voyager design because it lacked the grace and elegance that I had come to expect from TOS, the movies, and TNG. She's a chubby design. Her primary section looks heinously unbalanced with the secondary section. It's a look contrary to the personal preferences I had based on the original and refit Enterprise, the Enterprise-D, and the Excelsior. The nacelles looked hideously short and incapable of the vast range of speeds she was reputed to have. The location of the impulse engines seems a tactical mistake, and the flappable pylons seem to be another. And the overall size and shape does not lend itself to a ship that could survive what the producers intended to put her through.

The people that do not like the Enterprise's design can have their reasons stated in a similar fashion. It goes against the ship designs for the period that people have formulated in their minds by truly taking to heart the fandom publications that showed TOS contemporary ship designs and earlier. You yourself said that your basis for thinking that the Enterprise doesn't jive was based on having grown up and experienced the birth and expansion of fandom's role in filling the gaps left by TOS. From a lot of those works, pre-TOS ships were quite similar to the NCC-1701. Smooth hulls, typically a primary/secondary/twin nacelle configuration or a variation of that same theme, no real exterior signs of things like airlocks, transporter emitters, RCS assemblies, and the like.

In the end, we like or dislike the ships based solely on our opinions on how things should be. We have no canonical evidence of what things were like in the era that Enterprise takes place. It's never been explored; we have one Starfleet ship design from the era. Fandom helped fill in that gap. For some that watch Star Trek, we can accept the existence of that design in that era regardless of whether we've been exposed to fandom's ship designs. For some others that watch Star Trek, they can't accept the existence of that design in that era regardless of whether they've been exposed to fandom's ship designs. It really does simply come down to what we think about the subject.