NCC-1000 Stts (FASA STCS)

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Originally Posted by LUGTrekGM

Akira was an Anime' show also, right?

That's what I meant. If the Akira Class as NX Cousin was from DS9, my apologies to all who might have been misled, when I loosely tossed out "next gen".

NX from Enterprise certainly did not fall anywhere in between TOS Enterprise and Cochrane's ship. Seems to me that would be the path of development.

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You just seem to pointing out the Daedalus or whatever and saying 'nuh-uh!' a lot. The aesthetic decisions that point out certain things as looking more 'primitive' or not aren't universal, especially when we're dealing with fictional technological progression as imagined by almost fifty years of designers. Look at anything from the 60s and anything from the 00s and tell me that they would share a common aesthetic understanding of what 'primitive' in this case would be.

I had several problems with the NX-01 design, aside from the obvious lifting from the Akira.

First: The warp engines were very next-gen style, down to the blue piping, layout, etc. The weren't the warp engines that you would expect for a ship 80 years prior to TOS, to be sure.

Second: Seams. Guys, we're hundreds of feet away from these ships in most camera shots.. we're NOT going to clearly see millimeter-wide seams that far out and they're at MOST going to look like a discoloration. To get seams like we see on the NX-01, they would have to be about two-feet wide.

Third: Gunmetal texture. Sorry, but that wasn't convincing. It wasn't a BAD idea, but it just didn't look right. It needed to be less harsh, I think, less 'glossy' all around. I know they wanted a 'cruder' look, but that didn't pull it off.

I think we should all take the NX-01 for what it was, a VFX head's lazy approach to getting a new ship on the screen with minimal effort... and treat it as such.

>The NX's engines are attached in a way more consistent with 20th-Century ideas of >force-distribution and transfer than the 'way-out-on-fragile-pylons- engines of the >1701. More primitive.

The pylons end up too streamlined looking, not just durable.

And LUGTrekGM and VanguardTF are both right in several ways.

I thank both of you for helping me out.

I'll stat the Daedalus in a little while, so you can check it out.

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Originally Posted by TFVanguard

I think we should all take the NX-01 for what it was, a VFX head's lazy approach to getting a new ship on the screen with minimal effort... and treat it as such.

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Now people are just being pissy.

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Originally Posted by C. Huth

Now people are just being pissy.

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I wasn't being pissy, I was being matter of fact. When you look at the ship, you realize that it's a barely-modified Akira with altered nacelles and a new texture map for the surface. That's it. The VFX artists admitted openly that the version we got was NEVER meant to be the final, but that the 'powers that be' rushed it into production.

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Look at anything from the 60s and anything from the 00s and tell me that they would share a common aesthetic understanding of what 'primitive' in this case would be.

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I'm not sure if I read what you are asking correctly, but the 60's >> 2000+ :

As development of Sleekness / Spiffiness:

Rotary Telephone > Cellphone / totally retro : Post and reciever by cable a la "Cracko"

Film camera > Digital camera Retro: Honking big film camera.

Tube Television > Plasma TV / totally retro : Radio *(sans pics) or just bigger console larger tube with less clarity.

Most any cars. / Totally retro : Model T

from the 70's dot matrix printers > Inkjet with all the bells and whistles. Obviosuly this has no retro component, perhaps typewriter and carbon papaer copies but it's not really accurate as it's a cross-tech.

Not so much passenger aircraft, since the design is more aerodynamics by shape, really. But totally retro : Biplane, again kind of a cross tech.

It's mostly better featuires, more options, lighter weight, or more compact, lighter materials, more endurance, speed, etc.

I'm not sure I really understand the qutoed question. Perhaps I missed what you are asking for here. If that's obvious, please clarify.

I am not saying nu-uh to Daedalus. I am suggesting NX does not fit in that line. to the Excelsior, Galaxy, etc.

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Originally Posted by TFVanguard

I wasn't being pissy, I was being matter of fact. When you look at the ship, you realize that it's a barely-modified Akira with altered nacelles and a new texture map for the surface. That's it. The VFX artists admitted openly that the version we got was NEVER meant to be the final, but that the 'powers that be' rushed it into production.

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Well, they are working on a television show.

"Were".

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Originally Posted by Meteo

"Were".

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They're probably doing it still. Just not that one.

At least the NX didn't look like Voyager. What a piece of shit.

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Originally Posted by LUGTrekGM

Long rambling lists

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Look, I think you're missing the point. Ask someone in the 60s to design a primitive spaceship of the 2150s, and then ask someone from the 00s the same thing, and the results will be different. Especially if they're drawing on sources not confined to the fictional precedents.

Retrospecitvelly the Consitution class doesn't really look that dated.. If you've seen the Defiant (orginal Trek, not DS9) in Enterprise you can see that it looks absolutelly spiffing, huge, high tech and uber in combat. People seem to confuse how many greebles a ship has on it's hull with how high tech it is.. Ships in the TOS era were simply designed to look more minimalist.. Style is not a function of how tech something is... In an age where automation and computers mean you don't need some toggles and switches on every surface, then yes, the clean halls and minimalist look is just a style... Minimalism comes in and out of Fashion :D Don't forget that all the visual mcguffins on the walls of all scifi shows are just that.. they don't do anything but make it look 'high tech' or correspondingly 'low tech' when that 'style' falls out of favour! :)

It's like people always go on about how Mobile phone's are more compact than communicators are in TOS... So? If anyone's seen the Film Zoolander they mock teeny tiny phones in that.. there is a finite size something can be before it is unuseable.. so what size it is is down to function... I.e. if it gets any smaller you couldn't touch the buttons without mashing them, Like Homer "Your fngers are too fat to dial that number, please mash the keypad and we will send you a special dialing wand" :D

The other differences I put down to low budgets.. I mean I have to say the Conie A in TMP is one of the most beautiful models in all of trek, much like the D looks superb in the movies, and the Excelsior and the E.. it's because they were movie quality models, rather than TV quality models!

The les said (that has not already been said!) about the Akiraprise the better :D

Missing the point... Perhaps.

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Ask someone in the 60s to design a primitive spaceship of the 2150s, and then ask someone from the 00s the same thing, and the results will be different. Especially if they're drawing on sources not confined to the fictional precedents.

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Same result for two different people in the 60's. Or two different people in the 2000's. 4 different ships. We can see this on the internet.

But if it is confined to the "Fictional precedents", that's my point. I suggest that some of those designing these ships, are not following the Fictional Precedent.

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Originally Posted by LUGTrekGM

Missing the point... Perhaps.



Same result for two different people in the 60's. Or two different people in the 2000's. 4 different ships. We can see this on the internet.

But if it is confined to the "Fictional precedents", that's my point. I suggest that some of those designing these ships, are not following the Fictional Precedent.

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And I'm saying there's more to ship designs than Fictional Precedent. There has to be, or things will get dry very very quickly.

Sure there is.

But just because someone wants to make the ship look all spiffy, because he or she got a Computer Graphics Modeling degree from DeVry Institute, doesn't mean it should be used to design a retro ship, that looks like it is a cousin to a ship that is not seen until 150 years later, or more, according to canon sources.

If I am drawing a precursor ship, from a description of a US Navy Monitor from Pre WW I, without having seen one ahead of time, but knowing what a Monitor looks like, it is not gonna look like a Spruance Class Destroyer's next door neighbor.

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Originally Posted by LUGTrekGM

Sure there is.

But just because someone wants to make the ship look all spiffy, because he or she got a Computer Graphics Modeling degree from DeVry Institute, doesn't mean it should be used to design a retro ship, that looks like it is a cousin to a ship that is not seen until 150 years later, or more, according to canon sources.

If I am drawing a precursor ship, from a description of a US Navy Monitor from Pre WW I, without having seen one ahead of time, but knowing what a Monitor looks like, it is not gonna look like a Spruance Class Destroyer's next door neighbor.

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On the other hand, here the Monitor is sort-of-maybe there, amid a bunch of random other designs of dubious quality. Eaves or Drexler (i forget which) submitted a design based on the SS Ent that got rejected, and that one was even in dialogue, dammit.

I think I have to dissagree with you there C.Huth - you can design within a fictive precident and come up with something new.. The Ecxelsior, the galaxy class, the Sovereign, the Ambassador.... the list goes on.. they are all designed within a Fictive precident, and in the case of the Ambassador class, which is a spiffy ship, fits neatly between the Excelsior and the galaxy, without looking too much like either.. The Akira class, Norway etc, from First contact also are designed from a fictive precident, yet look like outgrowth designs, are original, and pretty cool, and far outstrip standard fanboy limitations (which usually consist of hideous fusions of old ships :D). The Entire show is about a fictive precident, it's just that the Akiraprise bucked that trend!

They stated from the very beginning that they didn't care about 'Startrek' when they launched 'enterprise', so continuity of design wasn't an issue to them, hence they chose a design which should not have been used! It would not have been so bad if the Phoenix hadn't fit into the mould so well, as, ironically, did the warp 4 test ship we see Archer piloting in flashback.. It's just that ship which is out of place. It is fairly damned obvious they just went with one of the cooler new designs, the Akira, and retro-ified it, badly. Ok so it fooled you: It didn't fool most people! :)