posted
Actually, I don't like the Chandley ... it *was* the worst from that game. I don't mind the cowl-hulls, in principle, but they are disproportionately huge versus the saucer, and the nacelles are like a mile away & down for no obvious reason. Even the Larson, one of my favorite FASA TOS designs, is kinda silly for the enormity of its "you-can't-have-my-single-nacelle!" struts.
However, the Chandley wasn't the hideous monstrosity I was pondering. I was thinking of the Bader Class and especially Keith Class family of design where enormous nasty blocky things are grafted onto the bottom of graceful Probert saucers, rendering the saucer a weird and unnecessary appendage. It's like having a space shuttle cockpit assembly sticking off the front of a fully loaded container ship.
All that said, though, it's easy to see that there are generational traits in the designs as people tried to emulate, if not the grace of Jefferies or Probert, at least some of the lines and angles.
Even in the "Volume II" ships made sometime after Generations, most ships look era-appropriate, though the Finder clearly has inappropriate nacelle struts for the period. That I can even say that means there are period-specific styling cues that Eaves and the gang have ignored or never knew for Discovery.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
I don't even know what to make of the name "Keith class". I just find myself imagining that it includes such grand ships as the USS Gary and USS Craig.
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Shik
Starship database: completed; History of Starfleet: done; website: probably never
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posted
Actually, those are all perfectly cromulent names.
-------------------- "The French have a saying: 'mise en place'—keep everything in its fucking place!"
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quote:Originally posted by TSN: I don't even know what to make of the name "Keith class". I just find myself imagining that it includes such grand ships as the USS Gary and USS Craig.
Those aren't as famous as the Keith Class USS Marvin, USS Herbert, and, of course, how could we forget the illustrious and storied career of the USS Bob.
That said, I want a USS Cromulent now.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
One does recall the good old days when test pilot names might've been on a shuttlepod, instead.
As for the ship, I just looked it up. It's one of the least terrible Disco ships, but that's mostly due to it being a restyled Miranda. The new pylons are hideous and blocky, the nacelles interesting but alien . . . indeed, the whole ship comes across better if it were sold as a Russian or Chinese knock-off of a Miranda, as if some Federation quasi-ally was trying to maintain the appearance of parity without the ability to actually match a Miranda.
quote:Originally posted by The Mighty Monkey of Mim: And thirdly, since you bring up the Ent-A, her interiors changed with every film she was in, even going from TNG-style touchscreens and carpeting (yet also revealing innards highly reminiscent of TOS) in TFF back to physical knobs and buttons and such in TUC (but now with a more TOS-like paintjob to the exterior).
I really, really don't think modifications to the bridge color scheme or panels creates a worthwhile argument in your favor. For a similar example, a crewman changing the bedsheets as cause to invoke Ship of Theseus arguments is taking things a bit far.
However, according to reports, not only is the Discoprise significantly different in hull configuration from either the "Cage" or TOS Enterprise, but additionally she's some forty percent larger.
Good luck with that refit-back-and-forth argument.
quote: I certainly don't find decrying it all as "bullshit"—even if it is—a constructive approach.
Um. What? Decrying Trek continuity as "bullshit" is *exactly* what your argument is based on.
Discovery is perfectly acceptable as a continuity unto itself. It just doesn't work with Prime.
quote: the people making the show have been following at every step the premise that it's in-continuity with TOS and all the other shows and films, including the Prime elements that frame the Kelvin Timeline (hence bridge windows).
Claiming they are tying in with another alternate universe doesn't help the case.
quote: "Relics"/"Trials"/"Darkly" didn't re-create those little slices of TOS because they were somehow bound to in order to remain canonically valid or whatever. They did it just for fun, because they wanted to...which is as perfectly good a reason not to do it, too.
They did it because they wanted to have it look right. They could've visually rebooted the TOS bridge into a Star Destroyer bridge "for fun", but it, too, would've been ridiculous and wrong.
quote: Why would you expect them not to look like John Eaves designs? After all, that's what they are.
Incidentally, the Shenzhou is basically an ugly Eavesian FASA design.
quote: "Looking more advanced" is subjective.
I agree, to a point. For example, as I have said before, touchscreens are not automatically superior to buttons, and in some ways are actually less useful thanks to muscle memory and non-visual feedback. All it takes to make buttons catch up to the infinite reconfigurability of touchscreens is on-the-fly 3-D printing / morphing, which would be a sweet Hollywood effect.
However, there are some car things that simply are more advanced. They simply didn't have the tech back in the day to have windshields that fit smoothly against the metal body without some sort of outer frame, for instance, but now that's ubiquitous. Hell, we didn't have sufficient glue for decades to permanently mount them right anyway.
Translating to starships, the different design ethos over time (as was evident before the nonsensical Discovery fleet) suggested a march of technological advancement, not just stylistic decisions. The increasing warp speeds, designs meant to avoid aubspace damage as per cruising speed increases observed, and other details all point to this.
Now, however, Eavesian styling is just the equivalent of bell-bottoms.
How contrary, and how dull.
quote: In times like these, we would all do well to observe Saloniemi's Razor: "Occam has little place in fiction (in addition to bein[g] fundamentally faulty anyway).
Fiction writers need to observe Occam's Razor the most . . . and there's nothing wrong with the razor. There is, however, something wrong with your argument.
Re: "visual reboot"
quote: I've never used that term myself, and to my knowledge neither has anyone involved with DSC. As far as I can tell, it's only being used by fans—as either a defense or an indictment, depending on the fan.
Even if they had not used the phrase, they've also said everything to make the point in every other way so it hardly matters.
quote: But as for having it both ways, I see absolutely no reason why they (and we) can't.
That's just giving yourself permission to argue out of both sides of your mouth. If this is a visual reboot (or whatever) then it doesn't have to line up with anything else. If it isn't a visual reboot, then it does. You cannot have it both ways.
quote:
quote:Originally posted by Guardian 2000:
...but then add in the TMP refit, and we have an alternating pattern instead of a one-off anomaly!
With 40% upscale and downscale? I think not.
quote: (Again, if one insists upon taking it all literally. I note that pic uses the "remastered" versions...is that "Prime canon" in your eyes, then?
Did you see the post where I noted I didn't make the pic? Hell, they're using a crappy version of the Cage ship. Look at the neck.
quote: As much fun as an analysis of how Greg Jein's re-creation of the Enterprise gets certain details like the curvature of the saucer underside or the number and arrangement of windows "wrong,"
Most people recognize the utility of distinguishing between a virtually unnoticable, difficult-to-replicate detail and a blindingly obvious difference.
quote: or a rehash of how the TMP refit can't "realistically" be derived from the TOS version, anyway.
That's actually incorrect.
quote: But while we're at it, let's hear why in a post-scarcity world (certain exotic substances excepted) where energy can be instantaneously converted into matter, and vice versa, "the cost of hundreds of ships' worth of material" would be an obstacle to...anything at all?
As the person who, so near as I can tell, was the first to 'discover' and apply the concept of post-scarcity economics to Star Trek, starting a thread of thought that's now resulted in articles a-plenty and even a poorly-written book, I know a thing or two about this question, and you have misunderstood the concept.
Post-scarcity doesn't mean that everyone can add on a transporter vomitorium and go full glutton any more than it means you can build a thousand ships at the push of a button. Post-scarcity does not mean post-budgets.
-------------------- . . . ceterum censeo Carthaginem esse delendam.
posted
Going based on the crashed version, it kinda looked similar to the Engle class. But the computer display version looked pretty different to me.
-------------------- “Those people who think they know everything are a great annoyance to those of us who do.” — Isaac Asimov Star Trek Minutiae | Memory Alpha
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