Anyone Think The New Movie Enterprise Looks Ungainy?

And this is my personal favorite update to the original. Something that seeks to add rather than to change.

Y'all think about this shit too much.

Look, I know this is going to freak out most of the hardcore geeks here, but...

Star Trek starships are ugly as fucking hell. The design makes no sense. A giant saucer (with the bridge fully-exposed, no less) stuck on a stick-man body with two chintzy nacelles?

I think it makes perfect sense to go with a modular design that puts your fucking antimatter reactor and big metal tubes full of plasma in separate compartments from your crew. And the saucer is an efficient design. A sphere would be even better. I do agree about the bridge being exposed, but then again, where is the bridge on an aircraft carriers? They've got all manner of fancy sensors and whatnot, but if all else fails I imagine the command crew might need to fall back on looking out a damned window to see what the fuck is going on. The nacelle pylons are spindly. I'll give you that. Well, unless you're talking about the Defiant.

Which looks nothing like other Trek starships.

I rest my case.

It was too awesome to look like anything else. It couldn't help itself.

Even Bermaga and/or Coto were aware of this in Enterprise--there was a line in that Romulan dust-up where Trip and Reed were looking for the bridge of the Romulan vessel and one says to the other "there's no rule saying the bridge has to be at the top of a ship."

That makes sense on a water ship, since it's the best view of the water. On a spaceship where cameras can be remotely accessed just about anywhere: Yeah, just plain stupid. Wouldn't most enemies like to, shoot at, you know, the most open part of the fucking ship?

Maybe J.J. can reboot that little detail next.

Roddenberry stole the design off a ship on an old SF magazine.

Course...why the SF magazine illustrator chose spindly nacelles....

Okay, I'm going to reach deep into the well of Geek-Fu and explain this.

The spindliness of the struts doesn't matter. For one thing, it's been established that starships in the Trek universe make use of something called a structural integrity field. In other words, the hull isn't the only thing carrying the load. There's some kind of force-field-based reinforcement going on.

Second, these ships are not using a reaction drive, like a rocket or some such. There's no thrust coming out of the back of the nacelles, so no stress from that thrust is being borne by the structure. Star Trek ships use a field effect as a drive . . . they form a "subspace" bubble about themselves and then manipulate the structure of space itself to "squirt" themselves along. In effect, they're constantly sliding down a spatial gradient, possibly a gravimetric one (since we know they have artificial gravity). Even the impulse drive makes use of this, to a degree, altho impulse is a lot more like a rocket engine than is the warp drive.

What that means in terms of ship design is that the geometric shape is largely irrelevant, altho it's been established that most warp-capable vessels make some use of a nacelles-outboard-of-hull configuration. I think the main consideration (in the show's internal logic) is warp field dynamics, not load-bearing containment of a reaction drive.

If that makes sense.

Which sci-fi magazine did Roddenberry steal the design from?

^
I want to see that original image!

I think Matt Jeffries would have a thing or two to say about that.

None, since Roddenberry didn't design the ship.

As for the bridge being exposed - it doesn't matter, since the ship is protected by force fields. If the shields fail, it doesn't matter how deep inside the bridge may be.

Good point.

Given that Star Trek type weapons are supposedly capable of multimegaton size detonations, if one hit the ship directly without shields it would probably destroy it completely.

Star Trek technical publications tried to explain away the bridge question by saying that the entire Deck One bridge section was modular and designed to be easily replaced.

The constant changes in the Enterprise bridge from movie to movie would suggest this.

I agree. That is why I'd like to know what sci-fi magazine Diacanu claims it was stolen from.

I mean, Roddenberry wasn't above stealing things, but I'm 95% sure the design of the Enterprise wasn't one of them.

Oh, and I'm adding "Force Fields" to my list of porno aliases.

Because stuff can come out but it can't go in?

"Amazing Fantasy", or "Amazing Science Fiction", or "Astounding something, something".

Someone had a website with the image, can't find it now.

I love the original Constitution-class design. Before the refit.

No bloody, A, B, C, or D.

My favorite Enterprise (aside from CV-6 and CVAN-65, the real ones) is the Constitution-refit from TMP, with the bridge from TWOK.

What I wish they had done, however, was make the interior a little warmer. Make the corridors and such more along the lines of TOS than those little narrow catwalk-ways we saw in the movies.

Ungainly? The word I would use is FOUL.

For me the (real) motion picture refit Enterprise was the best, nothing else comes even closer.

This is my favorite:



Here she is (on the right) capturing Tripolitan Corsair in 1801. "She fired the first shots in the First Barbary War against the Tripolitanian ship Tripoli." according to wiki.



But seriously there is a long list of ships named Enterprise in America......

Continental Navy

Two ships of the Continental Navy were named Enterprise:

USS Enterprise (1775) armed sloop (18 May 1775 – 7 July 1777), the first American ship to bear the name served on Lake Champlain

Enterprise (1776) schooner (20 December 1776 – February 1777), the second American ship to bear this name served on Chesapeake Bay during the Revolutionary War.

United States Navy

Six ships of the United States Navy have been named Enterprise:

USS Enterprise (1799) 12-gun schooner / 14-gun brig (17 December 1799 – 9 July 1823), the third ship to bear this name, was built as schooner, and later rerigged as a brig. She fired the first shots in the First Barbary War against the Tripolitanian ship Tripoli

USS Enterprise (1831) 10-gun schooner (15 December 1831 – 24 June 1844), the fourth ship to bear this name

USS Enterprise (1874) barque-rigged screw sloop (16 March 1877 – 1 October 1909), the fifth ship to bear this name

USS Enterprise (SP-790) motor yacht (1917–1919), the sixth ship to bear this name, was non-commissioned, serving in the Second Naval District during World War I

USS Enterprise (CV-6) Yorktown-class aircraft carrier (12 May 1938 – 17 February 1947), the seventh ship to bear this name, was the most-decorated U.S. Navy vessel of World War II and of all U.S. history.

USS Enterprise (CVN-65) Enterprise-class aircraft carrier (25 November 1961 – Present), the eighth ship to bear this name, is a unique design, and the first nuclear powered aircraft carrier in the world. Currently scheduled to be decommissioned in 2013.

Here's an interesting tidbit of naval history:

Lieutenant (later Commodore) David Dixon Porter commanded the schooner Enterprise, and one time in port in Antigua he had a British sailor hauled aboard and flogged for mouthing insults and/or obscenities from a boat toward the Enterprise. The British harbor commander demanded an apology, and Porter refused. He ran out his guns (such as they were) and boldly sailed out of port with the threat that if his ship was fired upon it would be an act of war.

The Brits let them go unscathed. Remember which period of history this was, too.

I bet the British never called the Enterprise a garbage scow after that.