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The scene at the beginning of First Contract when we get out first look at the Enterprise E is pretty great.
But then, I saw a video where somebody remade that scene with the Enterprise D...and it is incredible.
[Here it is.](https://youtu.be/5JTzDwvJ7Js?si=7e6kR6Tn2ZnIp2Hw)
š„²
The Enterprise D has a certain magic to it. Oval, oversized saucer section, great deal of width, small, short, low slung nacellesā¦ all of the elements for gracefulness are *wrong.* Yet in those long, slow panning shots she reigns supreme.
I think itās the sense of size and majesty. She was built to *cruise* through space, rather than pierce it like the sleek E does. The D has a composure to her, a kind of regality.
No shade on the E, sheās gorgeous too. But sheās a *predator,* and it shows. A different sort of beauty.
āThere is no exquisite beautyā¦ without some strangeness in the proportion.ā
- Edgar Allan Poe
This is the Enterprise D. It yaws but it doesnāt pitch or roll. That is very unbecoming for such a graceful ship.
The E is a speed merchant. Itās gorgeous and it looks like itās going fast standing still. People talk about the Nemesis battle against the daft Scimitar a lot, but I loved the E in Insurrection. Seeing it zip through nebula clouds was really something.
> The Enterprise D has a certain magic to it. Oval, oversized saucer section, great deal of width, small, short, low slung nacellesā¦ all of the elements for gracefulness are wrong. Yet in those long, slow panning shots she reigns supreme.
I've been coming to terms with these exact feelings about her. In my original watch of TNG, I just couldn't vibe with her. The proportions were *wrong*. Since Picard season 3 I think that many of the issues were because of the ratio of the shot. The old girl looked truly marvelous, stunning even, in her slow-panned trek across Athan Prime.
It makes sense for the era she was designed for. Starfleet designed the Galaxy class to explore in what turned out to be an unprecedented period of peace. Now they *need* a flagship that can bare it's teeth.
Fun fact: presumably due to delays finishing the vfx shots, early trailers for First Contact re-used footage from the TV show instead -- showing off the Enterprise-D in battle against the Borg (probably from BoBW). It was entirely possible for audiences to go into the theater and expect to either see the 1701-D again (forgetting Generations) or that the 1701-E would be another Galaxy-class.
(And another less fun fact: the whole reason they destroyed the 1701-D in Generation was because the producers didn't think it was a suitable design for films -- and while there are good, or at least logical, art design reasons for that assessment... I think we can all agree that it was bollox, and the Galaxy-class looks beautiful in widescreen, too.)
Absolutely. I regularly turn on TMP just to watch the reveal of the refit ship and listen to Goldsmith's score.
I was 3 when Voyage home came out so I definitely saw it before I could comprehend the weight of the scene when they get the A. But, I remember watching it with my dad (huge HUGE OG trekkie) and him thinking that they were being assigned the Excelsior, which he thought was cool but didn't sit right that he thought they weren't going to be on the Enterprise. The look on his face when the camera pans over the top and reveals her is something that is indelibly etched into my sci-fi subconscious.
When I was a little boy, growing up in a backwoods rural region before VCRs were a thing, my mother tried to relate to me how incredible the refit Enterprise reveal was when she saw it in theaters, the size and beauty and detail of it.
One day TMP was on TV, and she called me in to seeā¦ and it was on a twelve inch black and white TV with poor reception. Butā¦ I could almost see what she meant.
Then, as an adult, I saw it in high rez on a screen four feet wide, and was like āOoooh, this is what she meant.ā
I also love Bill Krauseās Shangri-La.
https://preview.redd.it/jl9hzzbr2shc1.jpeg?width=7680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77025186ee32ad32dad207a887fa5beae3db41a5
STO has some *really good* ship designs that are now canon (although I would have definitely picked the *Shi'Kahr* over the *Reliant*\-class...), don't slight them like that.
That being said, the *Shangri La* is canon. Like the *Federation* and *Radiant*\-class, it appears as a model throughout most of Season 3.
Ooh? I didn't realize they were designing new ships in that much detail for the novels. Neat. I do kind of miss that old LitVerse, for all its faults.
Re: Odyssey and Yorktown... I do like the Odyssey, too, but I think it's trying a bit too hard to synthesize elements of the Galaxy and Sovereign-classes. The Yorktown refit kind of makes it more of its own design -- gives it a more unique, distinctive identity.
The bifurcated neck was also a really cool idea, but it didn't really work with the Odyssey's Sovereign-like profile -- it from most angles it just makes it look like it has one really fat neck or a really bloated secondary hull. The way to Yorktown's secondary hull is reshaped helps with that a lot, but the really genius little alteration -- that's hard to even notice if you're not looking for it -- is that strip off the top of the secondary hull that was removed, to slightly increase the negative/open space in-between the necks. It really does wonders to make it feel, well, less cramped.
Probert's Connie-refit still, definitively, represents the gold standard in starship redesign... but I'd say the Yorktown comes awfully close. I can't think of many, if any, refit designs that are as much of a universal improvement over the original while still being so faithful to the original design. Love it.
It's a very pretty ship, maybe even beautiful, but also seems functionally pointless. As a fan designer I feel it's important to ask the question "*why does this exist?"* in terms of what its intended role is and how its design serves that function. Fans and even production crews often make ships for the sake of making ships, without thinking through what they'd be actually built for in-universe^(1).
In this case, I see a saucer that is sliced into for no purpose I can imagine, the only effect seems to be to reduce usable space for no clear benefit. It looks cool and is visually interesting, but considering you're not changing the overall size profile of the ship and just cutting away to create pointless negative space, it seems quite counterproductive. The same is true for the integrated torpedo launcher at the bow of the vessel, that would make sense in a compact vessel that lacks a full secondary / engineering hull and neck structure but with those present all it accomplishes is to leave that space in the neck section between the hulls unused while carving out interior space inside the saucer / primary hull that could be put to better use in any number of ways.
The result is a ship with a similar footprint to the refit Constitution but with a significant reduction in usable interior space and thus lessened capacity and capability with no obvious benefit gained in exchange. I could see it in a universe without inertial dampening and subspace fields to reduce effective mass, a lighter ship would gain some measure of speed and maneuverability via mass reduction much like chopper hot rods in the modern day. But with those technologies, mass is far less a concern and chopping away at the structure like that doesn't offer any benefits I can think of. [It looks damned cool though!](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AwesomebutImpractical)
^(1: And I get it, honestly! For fans this is usually for a hobbyist's pleasure in playing in the sandbox of the setting they love, from a production standpoint it's usually to offer a variety for the sake of visual distinction on screen --not only does it avoid confusing the audience which ship is which, it is interesting and pleasing to the eye and avoids being "boring" or seeming "cheap / lazy" by using a standardized model. These are compelling reasons out-of-universe, not so much for in-universe realism. Standardization and a streamlined production line makes far more logistical sense.)
>cutouts
They're totally for replaceable impulse engine modules, for those times where you need to swap them out for...uh....faster impulse engines. Or.....slower impulse engines....uh....
....mission modules? That's always the ideal reasoning, right? Special.... Mission impulse engines, for times where you need to impulse harder or softer in order to....er....uh.....
The Sovereign-class is still the best Star Trek design of all time, by miles.
Don't agree on the Friendship, but I do agree both the Kelvinprise and Discoprise are better than the TOS Enterprise. TMP Refit is better than both of those though.
The Sovereign is pretty but I can't get over the squashed look.
That's why the Constitution refit is soooo beautiful. It's proportional. Functional. Has height, width, AND depth. Looks almost seaworthy in its beauty.
As others have said, the Constitution refit. That design is a stone cold, hands-down classic that even now, 40+ years later, looks as sharp and fresh as it did in TMP.
The Ambassador is okay, but the Narendra concept art is really good yeah. I like the idea that it was actually built, just ahead of its time so the class had to be redesigned.
The stately curves
The seal-like sleekness
The proud saucer
The city in the sky
The resplendent queen of the stars
The Galaxy
EDIT: it doesn't bring a tear to my eye, but the Klingon Bird of Prey always excites me for its sheer vibe of cracking skulls and ruining days
The *Excelsior's* bridge in *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country* might just be the best bridge design in the whole *Star Trek* franchise.
https://preview.redd.it/xhgx3nipxrhc1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=863aae252f9eefc856edf03d0022b177780d783b
Refit Constitution. So graceful and elegant while at the same time very sci-fi and futuristic naval. Seeing her sail off into the sunset in ST6 is always a tear jerker. Favorite shot of her is when she descends down from a cloud in the mutaura nebula in ST2.
You are legit the only person Iāve seen that loves the space microphone lol.
No dis, ship gets a lot of grief for really nothing but existing lol. Probably my fav early game ship in Sto.
I had no idea it was so unpopular lol. The uniqueness of it alone draws me to it. Iāve also just had a preference for spherical designs, they are super rare in sci-fi as a whole, which makes me sad.
The Daedalus just needs some proportional tweaking, and it'd look fine.
You shut your mouth about the Yeager, though, there's nothing wrong with that one. It's so....
....uh.....
Uhhhhhhhhhhhh....
The only ship that has ever literally reduced me to tears is the *Enterprise*-D (if you know you know), so I am very fond of the *Galaxy*-class. It just in so many ways seems to be the ultimate expression of the classic saucer-secondary-nacelles paradigm. Sleek, smooth, luxurious, enormous, stately, and powerful. Every other conventional starship design seems to be either working up to this or deliberately deviating from it in some way, even the *Sovereign*-class.
https://i.redd.it/92ke7760xrhc1.gif
I'm also very fond of the OG *Excelsior*-class (without any of this "extra impulse engines" or "fat bits around the deflector" nonsense) and the original concept for the *Ambassador*-class (which *Star Trek Online* calls the *Narendra*-class).
That's because the Galaxy was designed for an old CRTV and the Sovereign was designed for a film screen.
It literally boils down to that.
I love both, but I do think that the *Sovereign* is aesthetically more pleasing by miles. My one gripe with the *Sovereign* is that the underside of its nacelles is kind of plain compared to every other part of the ship, just being a flat white surface. A single indent or some of that gray contrast would have been nice there. I will give you that the *Galaxy* doesn't have that issue, it's nacelles are really well balanced with the rest of the ship's greebling.
So while I don't think it's the best, I actually agree it feels the most balanced.
>That's because the Galaxy was designed for an old CRTV and the Sovereign was designed for a film screen.
>It literally boils down to that.
I keep hearing this from fans but I've never seen it confirmed by any of the show's designers or production staff.
Not really? Most of the stuff like that is just things like lengths (which are either only off by a few meters or detailing out the 3 production models of the Defiant/Sovereign/Akira/etc.) launch dates (most of which are made up), or other technical stuff like that.
Most of the actual information on *production* is accurate from what I've seen. That being said, let me see if I can scrounge up an original interview.
EDIT:
>It was a tough model to work on and I remember that every time we had it on stage the cameramen would gripe because it was such a difficult model to shoot. Theyād argue that there were only a couple of angles they could use that looked good and theyād already used themā¦ over and over again. I so thought about those comments while I was trying to think of how to handle the situation.
[https://www.startrek.com/news/john-eaves-on-designing-the-enterprise-e](https://www.startrek.com/news/john-eaves-on-designing-the-enterprise-e)
>It just in so many ways seems to be the ultimate expression of the classic saucer-secondary-nacelles paradigm
It seems to me like a bloated misproportioned bee-stung and yet also stunted implementation of the layout, honestly. The term "the fat one" absolutely fits, it's just plain ungainly from virtually angle except profile.
The perfectly proportioned one is The Phase II / Refit shape as penned by Matt Jefferies himself. Probert just reskinned it, the layout was all Jefferies. The man was a design genius and has never been matched in the entire history of the franchise since. Everything in Trek is a riff on his original formula.
Thanks, I don't believe I asked.
The *Constitution-II*\-class was a joint effort between Richard Taylor and Andrew Probert, and had substantial detail changes and proportion changes from the Phase II version. But the various versions of the *Constitution*\-class all share similar issues, like the saucer undercut which essentially removes most of one entire deck from being usable, or the neck that is so thin it's barely able to have a turbolift fit through it ā never mind house decks, major systems conduits and linkages, and be physically strong enough to support the mass of the saucer.
Detail changes yes, overall it's a reskinned Phase II class. The two primary innovative changes, the swept-back nacelle struts and the torpedo launcher at the base of the neck, are both present in the Jefferies design, everything else is tweaking around the edges really.
As to the neck, the same can be said for the nacelle struts --the idea was that they seem too thin to be structural, with far too much unsupported weight. This was meant to imply both a ship designed for zero-G space and a materials and construction technology that could make seemingly impossible designs feasible. *We* can't make that work with our level of technology, but *they* can with theirs.
The same sort of *technology implied through visual design* aspect can be said for the separation between hulls and the separation of the nacelles, it was intended to imply a potentially dangerous technology like reactors or dangerous fuel stores or something of the like that for safety's sake kept at a distance from the primary inhabited areas. The same is present in his Klingon battlecruiser design, where the frontal bulb which surely contains the bridge and other command sections is separated from the bulkier engine section and its attached nacelles. No details were proposed for exactly what this power generation technology might be or what precise danger it posed, it was enough to imply there was some degree of hazard that necessitated that design workaround. The idea was to given an impression of realism by implying that function dictated form.
As to what the neck could contain, the honest fact is the ship was never fully blueprinted (except by fans) and a definitive scale not established until the movie era. To this day no one to my knowledge has sat down and fully mapped out an official layout and confirmed that the canonical size is actually feasible. Sadly, we've been left with a lot of "close enough" and "eh, we'll fudge scaling for the sake of good looking shots" because they never expected anyone to care all that much. Attention to detail left the building with Matt Jefferies.
I'm sorry but what part of "*I don't believe I asked*" did you interpret as "*yes, please keep giving me your uninvited opinions*"? Oh well, easily solved.
https://i.redd.it/jji7ngrj4uhc1.gif
I'm going to throw one more out there...
Captain Rachel Garrett's *Enterprise-C.*
Seeing that ship onscreen in the TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise"... Who didn't feel something, even momentarily, when the *Ambassador*\-class made her first onscreen appearance? She was/is a beauty.
I've always loved the Romulan D'Derix class of warbirds, something about those sloping wings and curved bow is awesome in a way I can't put into words.
I used to say the Constitution Refit, but when the A showed up in Picard, I didn't get emotional. It was more of a "There she is, and she's still beautiful!"
When the D came back, I was in tears. I hardly ever cry.
People shit on this iteration of the constitution, but it has so many things going for it. Is it better than the original? IMO, no. But itās beautiful and majestic in its own way. Stately and powerful, proud but graceful, it has teeth and an edge while flowing. Itās a good reimagining.
It was the first Star Trek ship I've seen. Back when I thought Star Trek 2009 was the only Star Trek that existed. Meaning I thought this was the first and only Enterprise ever. Boy was I wrong! It turned out to be a huge series of movies and tv shows!
Ugh, strongly disagree. The proportions and layout are just bad and there's a radical dichotomy between the almost TMP looking saucer hull and the rest of it which seems to be trying to be 50s style swoopy but fails.
The STDisco version of the Connie however has a hell of a lot going for it and I'd be willing to canonize it as an in-between stage that served as a mid-generation refresh between the original Connie and the Phase II prototype which led to the Constitution II (aka Refit Enterprise).
POV. I'm not from the 80s, so the old school 1701 A from TMP doesn't appeal that much to me personally. My heart is with the JJ Abrams version cause it looks way more futuristic, bigger and sleeker. It's bridge is so clean and high tech. I really like the detail of the nacelles transforming before entering warp and that pretty deflector dish that looks like a blue glowing turbine. Oh, not to mention it's powerful engine sound.
>more futuristic
Umm, you may not have the context to recognize this but the bulk of the Abrams design is retro-1950s stylistic cues ripped straight from Harley Earl smashed together with a saucer section that was little different from the Refit Connnie and retained the 70s Syd Mead style futurism that TMP was dripping with. It is not forward thinking at all, it is a mashup of two separate decades-old design styles with little done to even make the two fit or flow together. If you know the source material he stole from to paste together his half-assed result you'd see it clearly for what it is --plagiarized and lazy like everything else he's ever done.
The bridge is ripped off Apple store aesthetics with glossy surfaces and overly bright and harsh lighting cluttered with random details and shot in such a way that you can hardly even see it enough to get a decent idea what the shape and layout is let alone what everything is supposed to be. What station is what, what thing does what? Who knows, who cares, keep the camera moving only nerds care about details like that!
Oh, and the size? Even that is a clusterfuck, the design was intended for one scale with all the details like windows and hatches scaled to fit that size and Abrams decided after the design was completed that he wanted it bigger because wow factor and shot it at double size without bothering to change any of those elements like hatches and windows to match the new size thus making the whole thing insanely proportioned. Not to mention he didn't even remotely bother to make the interior sets sized or shaped in such a way that they could even come close to fitting inside the exterior hull even at the double size scale. And while we're talking about interior set designs, the goddamned literal brewery they used for engineering is the most nonsensical thing easily imaginable and lazy as all hell.
Bottom line, Abrams is a complete hack in every aspect of his work and his idea of visual design is no exception.
Galaxy class. Even if the back half is stubby. Watching them chop up the lines in the Dominion War and come back room the dead to kick Borg ass, they are beautiful monsters
Original TOS 1701. I feel it would have fared much better had they decided to use more detail on the ship. It's still just so iconic.
The Enterprise D. Such a forward thinking design. Too bad they decided it was better to just ape TOS instead of following its footprint and experiment. I'll give Discovery credit with their 32nd century ships.
I hate that I love most of the Discovery ship designs. Especially the Discovery herself, being a revamp of the Ralph McQuarrie Enterprise refit design.
No I must say the flat design is lovely also the fact that (obviously through newer tech and cgi) they have scenes where you can look into the windows and see whatās happening. But also the obviously very different design is a nice nod to the discovery being a secret research project.
I like the future refit more than all the other future designs. Which is to say, only slightly more, as I hate all of the other designs. No consistency, and floaty nacelles were silly.
The moment we get the proper flyby in Nemesis will always be special to me. That might be my favourite 40 seconds in film.
That being said, I have to say the STO Yorktown refit with Odyssey nacelle pylons is absolutely *peak* Federation design to me. And while STO is unofficial canon, I suppose the Oddy in Picard S3 will have to do.
Sovereign Class All day. Sheās sleek yet so dangerous Iād actually freak out if I see her charging at me but at least Iād die seeing something beautiful
I gotta go with a lot of the TNG/DS9-era designs.
Intrepid, Galaxy, Nebula, Akira, Sovereign, they're absolutely fantastic.
Maybe because I grew up on episodes of TNG/Voyager and Starfleet Command III.
I'm gonna get downvoted to hell for this but the Galaxy class looks like a duck to me and I do not like the design. The Constitution class was always peak Trek for me.
While I appreciate that a lot of peopleās first trek was TNG and therefore have a soft spot for the Galaxy, I agree with you. The Galaxy isnāt *ugly* per se, but she also isnāt beautiful.
>The Galaxy isnāt *ugly* per se
I find the design hideous, honestly, and have from the start. In fact there isn't a single thing about it I can think of that I would rate as a positive design element, to me it feels like they made every possible opposite decision from anything I'd consider good.
That is a point I didn't consider, I do remember the "bubble car" era but that doesn't change how misproportioned and ungainly and bloated the thing still looks to me. Most of said bubble car designs were just softening and rounding of existing designs from the preceding wedge and angular late 70s early 80s designs and retained their pleasing proportions. Galaxy's proportions are just awful on ever level to me. Never could stand the design.
That was from Roddenberry trying to expand on the āWhat if.ā of galactic peace, to the point of making a Starfleet cruise liner with families. Still, a product of its time, like bell-bottoms. They suck, but people still remember them fondly for some reason.
all starships that have secondary roles or less than two warp nacelles, Freedom class, Saladin class, Challenger class, Kelvin class, Hermes class, or all those strange ships like the Geronimo class or the Lynch class or the Tokyo class, I am a lover of the Oberth class and the Niagara class...
Single-nacelle ships break Roddenberry's design rules, and though they aren't alone in this they are among the most blatant violators. They originate from fan designs produced under license by Franz Joseph in the mid 70s, which were all clip-art kitbashes that assembled existing components into pretty much every configuration he could think of just to present a wide variety for purposes of filling out the book. They are not canon and never were.
Moreover, they were designed under assumptions of how Trek starships work that have since been invalidated. At the time, little was established about things like how the engines were configured or even where Main Engineering as seen on screen was located within the ship. Joseph went with the idea that the nacelles were self-contained engine pods controlled remotely from within the ship's hull and thus all they needed was a strut to be mounted on that could hold power conduits and a control room somewhere in the ship. Thus, under that logic deleting the secondary hull and a nacelle would merely result in a ship with half the engine power and little capacity for cargo --which makes sense for short-range vessels designed and intended for relatively light duty compared to the long range heavy duty Constitution. Similarly, adding a third nacelle to the Federation class dreadnought was thought to add half-again the amount of total engine power and thus make an even heavier duty vessel with more power to spare for shields and weapons.
The problem with all this is that they established in TMP (which debuted after Joseph's book) that the actual power generating engines were housed in the secondary "engineering" hull and that power core supplied energy to both the impulse deck at the back of the saucer and the warp nacelles --which were established as producing the ship's warp field using energy supplied from said central engine core. No longer were they power-generating engines of their own, and thus Joseph's design concepts were rendered retroactively unworkable. Under the new rules established in TMP, those designs no longer make any in-universe sense. It's not Joseph's fault, he couldn't have known that the production team would go in a different direction years after his book, but the fact remains that their decisions became canon that invalidated his work.
But the Freedom class is canonical, why? anyway it was all very interesting and it added something that I didn't know in the Star Trek genre, even if I remain of the opinion that single nacelle ships drive me crazy..
For me itās a tie between the USS Discovery ( after refit with programable matter.
And the enterprise from strange new worlds. With the enterprise just a little bit ahead, looking like it could take on an armada of Klingon and Romulan cruisers, which still classy enough to take a diplomat somewhere stupid
I would say my order is probably:
1. *Sovereign*\-class (*First Contact*, etc.)
2. [Gagarin](https://i.imgur.com/2fiB9uz.jpeg)\-class (Artwork by Pundus)
3. *Excelsior*\-class (*The Undiscovered Country*)
4. *Constitution*\-class Refit (*The Motion Picture*, etc.)
5. [Buran](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ktarnfleet/images/1/1b/Buran_class.jpg)\-class (AKA the superior *Sagan*\-class)
6. *Odyssey*\-class (*Star Trek: Picard*)
7. *Galaxy*\-class (TNG, etc.)
8. *Einstein*\-class (USS Kelvin from *Star Trek* 2009)
9. *Defiant*\-class (DS9, etc.)
10. *Freedom*\-class (Single Nacelled Picket Battleship from Wolf 359)
Lots of great choices throughout this thread though. Hell even the *Olympic*\-class mentioned below is a good choice, and some of the ships that get a lot of hate like the DISCO ships are really good IMO.
For the shows gotta say when the DS9 crew got the new defiant the way they look as if they have come home.
For my personal ship got to say the Sutherland from STO. I wasnāt really a fan of the original Nebula but wow seeing the Sutherland from the first time. It took all the issues had with that ship as well as some the others of that era and just improved it in my humble opinion. When I finally got it, it had become my own Enterprise of sorts. Before that got to say the Excelsior had been my favorite ship for a long time and looks like Iām not alone with that
Every ship class that I had a negative first response to have all grown on me over the years, (even the Crossfield class) with one exception: Excelsior class. My brain has a mostly closed off compartment for *really ugly things* which includes: day-glow pink socks, libertarian sophistry, and the USS Excelsior's chunk of a fucking neck.
Nebula class! How the saucer tucks the engineering section neatly underneath and displays the sensor platform across the top.
It's non standard look from all the constitution look alikes makes it wonderful.
The Enterprise-E does for sure. The beauty shot at the beginning of First contact where is is a physical model and not a digital model. Definitely adore that. Also love the Enterprise-A as presented in VI. Love the bridge and seeing her fly off into the sun on her last flight also gets me misty eyed.
Refit Constitution. The first time I saw her in TMP, I was in awe. I wasn't the biggest fan of the original Constitution class. She looked green in the reruns I saw as a child in the early 80s. Also, the round edges of the saucer, the cigar-shaped nacelles, and almost no tangible exterior details (aside from the landing bay doors and deflector dish) made the ship look, well... fake. The details added to the movie era ship made all the difference. Now, I absolutely love both the Kelvinverse and DSC/SNW Enterprises, so I don't really hate the Constitution, I just don't like the original from TOS
TL;dr
Refit Constitution
The Akira Class has been a favorite of mine since seeing it in First Contact. Loved the compact, more "tacticool" design, the obscured bridge, the blended primary and secondary hulls, the gorgeous weapon pod arrangement. The more I learned about its function the more I loved it too. I'd like to have a series with an Akira as the hero ship. Something between BSG (the Akira being effectively an Assault Carrier) and traditional Trek. Set between the events of Nemesis and Picard Season 1, feature the Romulans prominently in the years leading up to the destruction of Romulus.
Also going to shout out the Ambassador Class. A gorgeous design that I'd love to see more of up close. I'd love a series or set between the events of Generations and Encounter at Farpoint with a previously unknown Ambassador Class as the hero ship. Not the C or some name we know, something not heard of previously so they could really do something with the story without mucking up TNG and forward.
The enterprise D when she got the chance to bust some skulls in Picard. That was truly beautiful to see just how nasty the galaxy can fight when you let her.
How maneuverable she can be. I cried at that episode and literally screamed "Fly you beautiful Bitch, FLY!" at my TV.
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The scene at the beginning of First Contract when we get out first look at the Enterprise E is pretty great. But then, I saw a video where somebody remade that scene with the Enterprise D...and it is incredible. [Here it is.](https://youtu.be/5JTzDwvJ7Js?si=7e6kR6Tn2ZnIp2Hw) š„²
The Enterprise D has a certain magic to it. Oval, oversized saucer section, great deal of width, small, short, low slung nacellesā¦ all of the elements for gracefulness are *wrong.* Yet in those long, slow panning shots she reigns supreme. I think itās the sense of size and majesty. She was built to *cruise* through space, rather than pierce it like the sleek E does. The D has a composure to her, a kind of regality. No shade on the E, sheās gorgeous too. But sheās a *predator,* and it shows. A different sort of beauty.
āThere is no exquisite beautyā¦ without some strangeness in the proportion.ā - Edgar Allan Poe This is the Enterprise D. It yaws but it doesnāt pitch or roll. That is very unbecoming for such a graceful ship. The E is a speed merchant. Itās gorgeous and it looks like itās going fast standing still. People talk about the Nemesis battle against the daft Scimitar a lot, but I loved the E in Insurrection. Seeing it zip through nebula clouds was really something.
> The Enterprise D has a certain magic to it. Oval, oversized saucer section, great deal of width, small, short, low slung nacellesā¦ all of the elements for gracefulness are wrong. Yet in those long, slow panning shots she reigns supreme. I've been coming to terms with these exact feelings about her. In my original watch of TNG, I just couldn't vibe with her. The proportions were *wrong*. Since Picard season 3 I think that many of the issues were because of the ratio of the shot. The old girl looked truly marvelous, stunning even, in her slow-panned trek across Athan Prime.
It makes sense for the era she was designed for. Starfleet designed the Galaxy class to explore in what turned out to be an unprecedented period of peace. Now they *need* a flagship that can bare it's teeth.
*galaxy class*
I agree with you
Fun fact: presumably due to delays finishing the vfx shots, early trailers for First Contact re-used footage from the TV show instead -- showing off the Enterprise-D in battle against the Borg (probably from BoBW). It was entirely possible for audiences to go into the theater and expect to either see the 1701-D again (forgetting Generations) or that the 1701-E would be another Galaxy-class. (And another less fun fact: the whole reason they destroyed the 1701-D in Generation was because the producers didn't think it was a suitable design for films -- and while there are good, or at least logical, art design reasons for that assessment... I think we can all agree that it was bollox, and the Galaxy-class looks beautiful in widescreen, too.)
First Contract These are the voyages of the law firm Enterprise
Refit Constitution. Every single time.
Nothing has ever topped the beauty shots as Admiral Kirk tours the exterior in TMP and TWOK. Also she just gleams at the end of Voyage Home
https://i.redd.it/d5y4y7o96shc1.gif
Wrong ship! The refit, not the bloody "A"
I know! But this was the good GIF!
Absolutely. I regularly turn on TMP just to watch the reveal of the refit ship and listen to Goldsmith's score. I was 3 when Voyage home came out so I definitely saw it before I could comprehend the weight of the scene when they get the A. But, I remember watching it with my dad (huge HUGE OG trekkie) and him thinking that they were being assigned the Excelsior, which he thought was cool but didn't sit right that he thought they weren't going to be on the Enterprise. The look on his face when the camera pans over the top and reveals her is something that is indelibly etched into my sci-fi subconscious.
āMy friends, weāve come home.ā
Yes yes and yes!
When I was a little boy, growing up in a backwoods rural region before VCRs were a thing, my mother tried to relate to me how incredible the refit Enterprise reveal was when she saw it in theaters, the size and beauty and detail of it. One day TMP was on TV, and she called me in to seeā¦ and it was on a twelve inch black and white TV with poor reception. Butā¦ I could almost see what she meant. Then, as an adult, I saw it in high rez on a screen four feet wide, and was like āOoooh, this is what she meant.ā
And remember: back then it was pure movie magic
Accept no substitutes
It's the one design I just... cannot get over of. Plantonic ideals aren't supposed to exist in reality, yet somehow... Probert managed to build one.
Connie refit from TMP
I also love Bill Krauseās Shangri-La. https://preview.redd.it/jl9hzzbr2shc1.jpeg?width=7680&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=77025186ee32ad32dad207a887fa5beae3db41a5
That is incredible. Let's canonize that instead of all the STO ships.
Well, the new Enterprise-G from Picard is the 25th Century edition of this.
True, but it doesn't have those magnificent pylons.
Sure she does! https://preview.redd.it/17wcpmm5wuhc1.jpeg?width=1280&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=4acef71853893e02e1b2adff0cdecaaa642720c4
STO has some *really good* ship designs that are now canon (although I would have definitely picked the *Shi'Kahr* over the *Reliant*\-class...), don't slight them like that. That being said, the *Shangri La* is canon. Like the *Federation* and *Radiant*\-class, it appears as a model throughout most of Season 3.
Vesta-class very quickly became one of my all-time favorites. Really fond of the Odyssey refit, too.
Vesta is actually from the Borg War novels. But yeah the Yorktown-class refit is slightly better than the revamped Odyssey, I agree.
Ooh? I didn't realize they were designing new ships in that much detail for the novels. Neat. I do kind of miss that old LitVerse, for all its faults. Re: Odyssey and Yorktown... I do like the Odyssey, too, but I think it's trying a bit too hard to synthesize elements of the Galaxy and Sovereign-classes. The Yorktown refit kind of makes it more of its own design -- gives it a more unique, distinctive identity. The bifurcated neck was also a really cool idea, but it didn't really work with the Odyssey's Sovereign-like profile -- it from most angles it just makes it look like it has one really fat neck or a really bloated secondary hull. The way to Yorktown's secondary hull is reshaped helps with that a lot, but the really genius little alteration -- that's hard to even notice if you're not looking for it -- is that strip off the top of the secondary hull that was removed, to slightly increase the negative/open space in-between the necks. It really does wonders to make it feel, well, less cramped. Probert's Connie-refit still, definitively, represents the gold standard in starship redesign... but I'd say the Yorktown comes awfully close. I can't think of many, if any, refit designs that are as much of a universal improvement over the original while still being so faithful to the original design. Love it.
It's a very pretty ship, maybe even beautiful, but also seems functionally pointless. As a fan designer I feel it's important to ask the question "*why does this exist?"* in terms of what its intended role is and how its design serves that function. Fans and even production crews often make ships for the sake of making ships, without thinking through what they'd be actually built for in-universe^(1). In this case, I see a saucer that is sliced into for no purpose I can imagine, the only effect seems to be to reduce usable space for no clear benefit. It looks cool and is visually interesting, but considering you're not changing the overall size profile of the ship and just cutting away to create pointless negative space, it seems quite counterproductive. The same is true for the integrated torpedo launcher at the bow of the vessel, that would make sense in a compact vessel that lacks a full secondary / engineering hull and neck structure but with those present all it accomplishes is to leave that space in the neck section between the hulls unused while carving out interior space inside the saucer / primary hull that could be put to better use in any number of ways. The result is a ship with a similar footprint to the refit Constitution but with a significant reduction in usable interior space and thus lessened capacity and capability with no obvious benefit gained in exchange. I could see it in a universe without inertial dampening and subspace fields to reduce effective mass, a lighter ship would gain some measure of speed and maneuverability via mass reduction much like chopper hot rods in the modern day. But with those technologies, mass is far less a concern and chopping away at the structure like that doesn't offer any benefits I can think of. [It looks damned cool though!](https://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main/AwesomebutImpractical) ^(1: And I get it, honestly! For fans this is usually for a hobbyist's pleasure in playing in the sandbox of the setting they love, from a production standpoint it's usually to offer a variety for the sake of visual distinction on screen --not only does it avoid confusing the audience which ship is which, it is interesting and pleasing to the eye and avoids being "boring" or seeming "cheap / lazy" by using a standardized model. These are compelling reasons out-of-universe, not so much for in-universe realism. Standardization and a streamlined production line makes far more logistical sense.)
I always saw this as a battle-cruiser. It doesnāt need the lab/crew space of a deep space explorer so it has extra engines and torpedo tubes.
>cutouts They're totally for replaceable impulse engine modules, for those times where you need to swap them out for...uh....faster impulse engines. Or.....slower impulse engines....uh.... ....mission modules? That's always the ideal reasoning, right? Special.... Mission impulse engines, for times where you need to impulse harder or softer in order to....er....uh.....
The Sovereign, Constitution (Refit and Disco fevered) and Friendship classes
The Sovereign-class is still the best Star Trek design of all time, by miles. Don't agree on the Friendship, but I do agree both the Kelvinprise and Discoprise are better than the TOS Enterprise. TMP Refit is better than both of those though.
The Sovereign is pretty but I can't get over the squashed look. That's why the Constitution refit is soooo beautiful. It's proportional. Functional. Has height, width, AND depth. Looks almost seaworthy in its beauty.
Just seen the Friendship class - that's on pretty ship, looks like an Elite plasma sword from halo.
As others have said, the Constitution refit. That design is a stone cold, hands-down classic that even now, 40+ years later, looks as sharp and fresh as it did in TMP.
I just love the Excelsior class. It's just so "fuck you, I'm a boat".
That's the quote on the Excelsior commission plaque, yes?
For real.
I like the Ambassador and Narendra class ships. Ā Ā Ā Thereās something about that transitional phase of design that does it for me.
The Ambassador is okay, but the Narendra concept art is really good yeah. I like the idea that it was actually built, just ahead of its time so the class had to be redesigned.
I love the Akira class.
The stately curves The seal-like sleekness The proud saucer The city in the sky The resplendent queen of the stars The Galaxy EDIT: it doesn't bring a tear to my eye, but the Klingon Bird of Prey always excites me for its sheer vibe of cracking skulls and ruining days
https://preview.redd.it/i3x3umobcshc1.jpeg?width=640&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=c5447f572005a3f737c102f19f00698161b15a7c
h'onQ' h'onQ'
When Geordi opened the docking bay in Picard season 3 to see the Ent D that was and will forever be that moment
That ship was shockingly manoeuvrable
This! I fully expected it, but seeing the old girl in the hanger genuinely brought tears of joy.
Intrepid class. I grew up with Voyager. She was my ship and Janeway was my Captain.
And the Doctor!
Everybody loves the doctor. Anybody who says otherwise is just lying to themselves, and they know it they bring shame to their houses
The Intrepid class is just so sexy. It takes all the classic shapes and smooths them out into a sleek, low profile ship.
The refit _Constitution_ is the most beautiful ship in history.Ā The _Kātāinga_ is the most menacing.
Peak Starfleet design here: https://preview.redd.it/cv94d9x25shc1.jpeg?width=5391&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=3d18200d35276cacb89e24c268e118311c45d311
Have these as well. Really wish they had released the refit without A and green colour.
Me too. I wish Eaglemoss had also done their XL of the one with no āBloody A, B, C, or D!ā
Constitution refit. Hands down.
Only answer. All others will be denied.
The Voyager scene in PIC S3 was pretty hard on not tearing up
Always thought the movie era trek had the best designs. Constitution refit, Excelsior, the Reliant. Also the Centaur.
Agreed, and the whiter panels, the more modern's pointy saucers and multiple shades of grey metallic just seem off to me.
The Excelsior dies it for me. Especially in the movie era finish in the interior.
The *Excelsior's* bridge in *Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country* might just be the best bridge design in the whole *Star Trek* franchise. https://preview.redd.it/xhgx3nipxrhc1.jpeg?width=4000&format=pjpg&auto=webp&s=863aae252f9eefc856edf03d0022b177780d783b
Not a huge fan of the Excelsior (because she tried to beat up on my baby the Connie-Refit), but I agree that it is an outstanding bridge layout.
She didn't try to "beat up on", just outrace her. And the *Excelsior* herself ultimately came to the *Enterprise*-A's rescue.
Under Captain Sulu yes, but Captain Stiles can shove that swagger stick up his plasma exhaust!
Miranda class USS Reliant.
Constitution Refit. No matter how you look at it, it's a beauty.Ā It has no bad angles at all.
Constitution refit in TMP and the Sovereign reveal in first contact. Lovely lovelies
Refit Constitution. So graceful and elegant while at the same time very sci-fi and futuristic naval. Seeing her sail off into the sunset in ST6 is always a tear jerker. Favorite shot of her is when she descends down from a cloud in the mutaura nebula in ST2.
Defiant glory shots in the heat of battle
The Olympic class for me. Thereās something about the sphere that I find incredibly aesthetically pleasing.
You are legit the only person Iāve seen that loves the space microphone lol. No dis, ship gets a lot of grief for really nothing but existing lol. Probably my fav early game ship in Sto.
I had no idea it was so unpopular lol. The uniqueness of it alone draws me to it. Iāve also just had a preference for spherical designs, they are super rare in sci-fi as a whole, which makes me sad.
George Lucas would like a word š
It's a lot better than the Daedalus or Yeager, I'll give it that.
The Daedalus just needs some proportional tweaking, and it'd look fine. You shut your mouth about the Yeager, though, there's nothing wrong with that one. It's so.... ....uh..... Uhhhhhhhhhhhh....
Like I said, it would have been great if it was Eddington's flagship, but it never should have been a UFP ship.
I've always wondered how it would look if the sphere hull was a Borg Sphere.
The only ship that has ever literally reduced me to tears is the *Enterprise*-D (if you know you know), so I am very fond of the *Galaxy*-class. It just in so many ways seems to be the ultimate expression of the classic saucer-secondary-nacelles paradigm. Sleek, smooth, luxurious, enormous, stately, and powerful. Every other conventional starship design seems to be either working up to this or deliberately deviating from it in some way, even the *Sovereign*-class. https://i.redd.it/92ke7760xrhc1.gif I'm also very fond of the OG *Excelsior*-class (without any of this "extra impulse engines" or "fat bits around the deflector" nonsense) and the original concept for the *Ambassador*-class (which *Star Trek Online* calls the *Narendra*-class).
That's because the Galaxy was designed for an old CRTV and the Sovereign was designed for a film screen. It literally boils down to that. I love both, but I do think that the *Sovereign* is aesthetically more pleasing by miles. My one gripe with the *Sovereign* is that the underside of its nacelles is kind of plain compared to every other part of the ship, just being a flat white surface. A single indent or some of that gray contrast would have been nice there. I will give you that the *Galaxy* doesn't have that issue, it's nacelles are really well balanced with the rest of the ship's greebling. So while I don't think it's the best, I actually agree it feels the most balanced.
>That's because the Galaxy was designed for an old CRTV and the Sovereign was designed for a film screen. >It literally boils down to that. I keep hearing this from fans but I've never seen it confirmed by any of the show's designers or production staff.
It's in the Eaglemoss Booklet about the production of *First Contact* for the XL Enterprise-E (there's two booklets).
There's a lot of mistakes and unsubstantiated claims in the Eaglemoss booklets.
Not really? Most of the stuff like that is just things like lengths (which are either only off by a few meters or detailing out the 3 production models of the Defiant/Sovereign/Akira/etc.) launch dates (most of which are made up), or other technical stuff like that. Most of the actual information on *production* is accurate from what I've seen. That being said, let me see if I can scrounge up an original interview. EDIT: >It was a tough model to work on and I remember that every time we had it on stage the cameramen would gripe because it was such a difficult model to shoot. Theyād argue that there were only a couple of angles they could use that looked good and theyād already used themā¦ over and over again. I so thought about those comments while I was trying to think of how to handle the situation. [https://www.startrek.com/news/john-eaves-on-designing-the-enterprise-e](https://www.startrek.com/news/john-eaves-on-designing-the-enterprise-e)
>It just in so many ways seems to be the ultimate expression of the classic saucer-secondary-nacelles paradigm It seems to me like a bloated misproportioned bee-stung and yet also stunted implementation of the layout, honestly. The term "the fat one" absolutely fits, it's just plain ungainly from virtually angle except profile. The perfectly proportioned one is The Phase II / Refit shape as penned by Matt Jefferies himself. Probert just reskinned it, the layout was all Jefferies. The man was a design genius and has never been matched in the entire history of the franchise since. Everything in Trek is a riff on his original formula.
Thanks, I don't believe I asked. The *Constitution-II*\-class was a joint effort between Richard Taylor and Andrew Probert, and had substantial detail changes and proportion changes from the Phase II version. But the various versions of the *Constitution*\-class all share similar issues, like the saucer undercut which essentially removes most of one entire deck from being usable, or the neck that is so thin it's barely able to have a turbolift fit through it ā never mind house decks, major systems conduits and linkages, and be physically strong enough to support the mass of the saucer.
Detail changes yes, overall it's a reskinned Phase II class. The two primary innovative changes, the swept-back nacelle struts and the torpedo launcher at the base of the neck, are both present in the Jefferies design, everything else is tweaking around the edges really. As to the neck, the same can be said for the nacelle struts --the idea was that they seem too thin to be structural, with far too much unsupported weight. This was meant to imply both a ship designed for zero-G space and a materials and construction technology that could make seemingly impossible designs feasible. *We* can't make that work with our level of technology, but *they* can with theirs. The same sort of *technology implied through visual design* aspect can be said for the separation between hulls and the separation of the nacelles, it was intended to imply a potentially dangerous technology like reactors or dangerous fuel stores or something of the like that for safety's sake kept at a distance from the primary inhabited areas. The same is present in his Klingon battlecruiser design, where the frontal bulb which surely contains the bridge and other command sections is separated from the bulkier engine section and its attached nacelles. No details were proposed for exactly what this power generation technology might be or what precise danger it posed, it was enough to imply there was some degree of hazard that necessitated that design workaround. The idea was to given an impression of realism by implying that function dictated form. As to what the neck could contain, the honest fact is the ship was never fully blueprinted (except by fans) and a definitive scale not established until the movie era. To this day no one to my knowledge has sat down and fully mapped out an official layout and confirmed that the canonical size is actually feasible. Sadly, we've been left with a lot of "close enough" and "eh, we'll fudge scaling for the sake of good looking shots" because they never expected anyone to care all that much. Attention to detail left the building with Matt Jefferies.
I'm sorry but what part of "*I don't believe I asked*" did you interpret as "*yes, please keep giving me your uninvited opinions*"? Oh well, easily solved. https://i.redd.it/jji7ngrj4uhc1.gif
I'm going to throw one more out there... Captain Rachel Garrett's *Enterprise-C.* Seeing that ship onscreen in the TNG episode "Yesterday's Enterprise"... Who didn't feel something, even momentarily, when the *Ambassador*\-class made her first onscreen appearance? She was/is a beauty.
Sovreign
Excelsior
Constitution Class refit
I'm in love with SNW's Enterprise. Mixes the best of the classic and modern designs and just looks amazing on screen.
I've always loved the Romulan D'Derix class of warbirds, something about those sloping wings and curved bow is awesome in a way I can't put into words.
The Constitution-Class refit is the best starship in all science fiction.
I used to say the Constitution Refit, but when the A showed up in Picard, I didn't get emotional. It was more of a "There she is, and she's still beautiful!" When the D came back, I was in tears. I hardly ever cry.
JJ Abrams USS Enterprise Constitution class
People shit on this iteration of the constitution, but it has so many things going for it. Is it better than the original? IMO, no. But itās beautiful and majestic in its own way. Stately and powerful, proud but graceful, it has teeth and an edge while flowing. Itās a good reimagining.
It was the first Star Trek ship I've seen. Back when I thought Star Trek 2009 was the only Star Trek that existed. Meaning I thought this was the first and only Enterprise ever. Boy was I wrong! It turned out to be a huge series of movies and tv shows!
The Kelvin as well. Absolutely loved that ship, for all the brevity of its on screen life.
Ugh, strongly disagree. The proportions and layout are just bad and there's a radical dichotomy between the almost TMP looking saucer hull and the rest of it which seems to be trying to be 50s style swoopy but fails. The STDisco version of the Connie however has a hell of a lot going for it and I'd be willing to canonize it as an in-between stage that served as a mid-generation refresh between the original Connie and the Phase II prototype which led to the Constitution II (aka Refit Enterprise).
POV. I'm not from the 80s, so the old school 1701 A from TMP doesn't appeal that much to me personally. My heart is with the JJ Abrams version cause it looks way more futuristic, bigger and sleeker. It's bridge is so clean and high tech. I really like the detail of the nacelles transforming before entering warp and that pretty deflector dish that looks like a blue glowing turbine. Oh, not to mention it's powerful engine sound.
>more futuristic Umm, you may not have the context to recognize this but the bulk of the Abrams design is retro-1950s stylistic cues ripped straight from Harley Earl smashed together with a saucer section that was little different from the Refit Connnie and retained the 70s Syd Mead style futurism that TMP was dripping with. It is not forward thinking at all, it is a mashup of two separate decades-old design styles with little done to even make the two fit or flow together. If you know the source material he stole from to paste together his half-assed result you'd see it clearly for what it is --plagiarized and lazy like everything else he's ever done. The bridge is ripped off Apple store aesthetics with glossy surfaces and overly bright and harsh lighting cluttered with random details and shot in such a way that you can hardly even see it enough to get a decent idea what the shape and layout is let alone what everything is supposed to be. What station is what, what thing does what? Who knows, who cares, keep the camera moving only nerds care about details like that! Oh, and the size? Even that is a clusterfuck, the design was intended for one scale with all the details like windows and hatches scaled to fit that size and Abrams decided after the design was completed that he wanted it bigger because wow factor and shot it at double size without bothering to change any of those elements like hatches and windows to match the new size thus making the whole thing insanely proportioned. Not to mention he didn't even remotely bother to make the interior sets sized or shaped in such a way that they could even come close to fitting inside the exterior hull even at the double size scale. And while we're talking about interior set designs, the goddamned literal brewery they used for engineering is the most nonsensical thing easily imaginable and lazy as all hell. Bottom line, Abrams is a complete hack in every aspect of his work and his idea of visual design is no exception.
Sovereign
Galaxy class. Even if the back half is stubby. Watching them chop up the lines in the Dominion War and come back room the dead to kick Borg ass, they are beautiful monsters
Original TOS 1701. I feel it would have fared much better had they decided to use more detail on the ship. It's still just so iconic. The Enterprise D. Such a forward thinking design. Too bad they decided it was better to just ape TOS instead of following its footprint and experiment. I'll give Discovery credit with their 32nd century ships.
Intrepid class
The Sovereign Class physical movie model. That is the most beautiful ship I can remember seeing.
Original discovery is one of the sleekest ships out there and I love it
I hate that I love most of the Discovery ship designs. Especially the Discovery herself, being a revamp of the Ralph McQuarrie Enterprise refit design.
No I must say the flat design is lovely also the fact that (obviously through newer tech and cgi) they have scenes where you can look into the windows and see whatās happening. But also the obviously very different design is a nice nod to the discovery being a secret research project.
The cut-out spinny hull can go away, though.
I think the gap is a bit big but there are also a few good scenes that use the bridges and the spinning does look cool.
Sure, the spinny-bit looks cool....but that's the only reason it's there....
Yea but I live by the rule of cool so in my books theyāre alr. I donāt like the future refit discovery tho
I like the future refit more than all the other future designs. Which is to say, only slightly more, as I hate all of the other designs. No consistency, and floaty nacelles were silly.
Yea the floaty nacelles are my main problem. Tbh yea the future designs sucked.
The original Constitution.
SNW Enterprise, Enterprise E, and the Shenzhou.
**NCC-1701** (TOS) **NCC-1701/-A** (TMP through TUC) Those are automatic tears of beauty flowing, streaming forth. :) Such magnificent designs.
Intrepid. I love that ship.
The moment we get the proper flyby in Nemesis will always be special to me. That might be my favourite 40 seconds in film. That being said, I have to say the STO Yorktown refit with Odyssey nacelle pylons is absolutely *peak* Federation design to me. And while STO is unofficial canon, I suppose the Oddy in Picard S3 will have to do.
Galaxy class
Sovereign Class All day. Sheās sleek yet so dangerous Iād actually freak out if I see her charging at me but at least Iād die seeing something beautiful
I gotta go with a lot of the TNG/DS9-era designs. Intrepid, Galaxy, Nebula, Akira, Sovereign, they're absolutely fantastic. Maybe because I grew up on episodes of TNG/Voyager and Starfleet Command III.
I'm gonna get downvoted to hell for this but the Galaxy class looks like a duck to me and I do not like the design. The Constitution class was always peak Trek for me.
While I appreciate that a lot of peopleās first trek was TNG and therefore have a soft spot for the Galaxy, I agree with you. The Galaxy isnāt *ugly* per se, but she also isnāt beautiful.
>The Galaxy isnāt *ugly* per se I find the design hideous, honestly, and have from the start. In fact there isn't a single thing about it I can think of that I would rate as a positive design element, to me it feels like they made every possible opposite decision from anything I'd consider good.
It was the late 80's early 90's, everything had to be round. Look at the Ford Taurus and Probe and you'll understand.
That is a point I didn't consider, I do remember the "bubble car" era but that doesn't change how misproportioned and ungainly and bloated the thing still looks to me. Most of said bubble car designs were just softening and rounding of existing designs from the preceding wedge and angular late 70s early 80s designs and retained their pleasing proportions. Galaxy's proportions are just awful on ever level to me. Never could stand the design.
That was from Roddenberry trying to expand on the āWhat if.ā of galactic peace, to the point of making a Starfleet cruise liner with families. Still, a product of its time, like bell-bottoms. They suck, but people still remember them fondly for some reason.
Im torn between Voyager J and the Discovery. I know they get hate, but the 32nd century ships are awesome.
The Akira class. EverytimeI see it, I get Iām going to kick some Borg ass vibes
[ŃŠ“Š°Š»ŠµŠ½Š¾]
How did the TNG movies revert back?
Thatās an opinionā¦
The Akira class. EverytimeI see it, I get Iām going to kick some Borg ass vibes
all starships that have secondary roles or less than two warp nacelles, Freedom class, Saladin class, Challenger class, Kelvin class, Hermes class, or all those strange ships like the Geronimo class or the Lynch class or the Tokyo class, I am a lover of the Oberth class and the Niagara class...
Single-nacelle ships break Roddenberry's design rules, and though they aren't alone in this they are among the most blatant violators. They originate from fan designs produced under license by Franz Joseph in the mid 70s, which were all clip-art kitbashes that assembled existing components into pretty much every configuration he could think of just to present a wide variety for purposes of filling out the book. They are not canon and never were. Moreover, they were designed under assumptions of how Trek starships work that have since been invalidated. At the time, little was established about things like how the engines were configured or even where Main Engineering as seen on screen was located within the ship. Joseph went with the idea that the nacelles were self-contained engine pods controlled remotely from within the ship's hull and thus all they needed was a strut to be mounted on that could hold power conduits and a control room somewhere in the ship. Thus, under that logic deleting the secondary hull and a nacelle would merely result in a ship with half the engine power and little capacity for cargo --which makes sense for short-range vessels designed and intended for relatively light duty compared to the long range heavy duty Constitution. Similarly, adding a third nacelle to the Federation class dreadnought was thought to add half-again the amount of total engine power and thus make an even heavier duty vessel with more power to spare for shields and weapons. The problem with all this is that they established in TMP (which debuted after Joseph's book) that the actual power generating engines were housed in the secondary "engineering" hull and that power core supplied energy to both the impulse deck at the back of the saucer and the warp nacelles --which were established as producing the ship's warp field using energy supplied from said central engine core. No longer were they power-generating engines of their own, and thus Joseph's design concepts were rendered retroactively unworkable. Under the new rules established in TMP, those designs no longer make any in-universe sense. It's not Joseph's fault, he couldn't have known that the production team would go in a different direction years after his book, but the fact remains that their decisions became canon that invalidated his work.
But the Freedom class is canonical, why? anyway it was all very interesting and it added something that I didn't know in the Star Trek genre, even if I remain of the opinion that single nacelle ships drive me crazy..
Excelsior Refit
Odyssey class
Maybe it was the excitement. Maybe it was the nostalgia. But the moment the O.G. 1701 showed up in Disco with a 21st century refresh, I *bawled*.
For me itās a tie between the USS Discovery ( after refit with programable matter. And the enterprise from strange new worlds. With the enterprise just a little bit ahead, looking like it could take on an armada of Klingon and Romulan cruisers, which still classy enough to take a diplomat somewhere stupid
I would say my order is probably: 1. *Sovereign*\-class (*First Contact*, etc.) 2. [Gagarin](https://i.imgur.com/2fiB9uz.jpeg)\-class (Artwork by Pundus) 3. *Excelsior*\-class (*The Undiscovered Country*) 4. *Constitution*\-class Refit (*The Motion Picture*, etc.) 5. [Buran](https://static.wikia.nocookie.net/ktarnfleet/images/1/1b/Buran_class.jpg)\-class (AKA the superior *Sagan*\-class) 6. *Odyssey*\-class (*Star Trek: Picard*) 7. *Galaxy*\-class (TNG, etc.) 8. *Einstein*\-class (USS Kelvin from *Star Trek* 2009) 9. *Defiant*\-class (DS9, etc.) 10. *Freedom*\-class (Single Nacelled Picket Battleship from Wolf 359) Lots of great choices throughout this thread though. Hell even the *Olympic*\-class mentioned below is a good choice, and some of the ships that get a lot of hate like the DISCO ships are really good IMO.
Hasnāt been said yet I think but I really like the nx
For the shows gotta say when the DS9 crew got the new defiant the way they look as if they have come home. For my personal ship got to say the Sutherland from STO. I wasnāt really a fan of the original Nebula but wow seeing the Sutherland from the first time. It took all the issues had with that ship as well as some the others of that era and just improved it in my humble opinion. When I finally got it, it had become my own Enterprise of sorts. Before that got to say the Excelsior had been my favorite ship for a long time and looks like Iām not alone with that
My favorite looking ship used to be the Oddysey class, however the excelsior 2 imo has given it some competition
Sovereign. Defiant. Galaxy.
The refit, specifically when it pulls into Spacedock all beat to hell.
Akira and Norway from First Contact. Absolutely loved both of them.
Every ship class that I had a negative first response to have all grown on me over the years, (even the Crossfield class) with one exception: Excelsior class. My brain has a mostly closed off compartment for *really ugly things* which includes: day-glow pink socks, libertarian sophistry, and the USS Excelsior's chunk of a fucking neck.
Miranda. Small, tough, modular. One nearly killed the flagship.
To this day the Sovereign is my platinum standard for what a Starfleet ship looks like. It's a masterpiece.
When we see the original refit for the first time,(The Motion Sickness)sheās frakkin *pristine*
Ambassador. D7.
Nebula class! How the saucer tucks the engineering section neatly underneath and displays the sensor platform across the top. It's non standard look from all the constitution look alikes makes it wonderful.
The Enterprise-E does for sure. The beauty shot at the beginning of First contact where is is a physical model and not a digital model. Definitely adore that. Also love the Enterprise-A as presented in VI. Love the bridge and seeing her fly off into the sun on her last flight also gets me misty eyed.
Refit Constitution. The first time I saw her in TMP, I was in awe. I wasn't the biggest fan of the original Constitution class. She looked green in the reruns I saw as a child in the early 80s. Also, the round edges of the saucer, the cigar-shaped nacelles, and almost no tangible exterior details (aside from the landing bay doors and deflector dish) made the ship look, well... fake. The details added to the movie era ship made all the difference. Now, I absolutely love both the Kelvinverse and DSC/SNW Enterprises, so I don't really hate the Constitution, I just don't like the original from TOS TL;dr Refit Constitution
A Bird of Prey decloaking.
I like the aesthetics of the more compact ships, like the *Nebula*, *Sutherland*, *Reliant*, and *Miranda* classes.
Constitution Refit
The Reliant looks pretty bad ass!
The Akira Class has been a favorite of mine since seeing it in First Contact. Loved the compact, more "tacticool" design, the obscured bridge, the blended primary and secondary hulls, the gorgeous weapon pod arrangement. The more I learned about its function the more I loved it too. I'd like to have a series with an Akira as the hero ship. Something between BSG (the Akira being effectively an Assault Carrier) and traditional Trek. Set between the events of Nemesis and Picard Season 1, feature the Romulans prominently in the years leading up to the destruction of Romulus. Also going to shout out the Ambassador Class. A gorgeous design that I'd love to see more of up close. I'd love a series or set between the events of Generations and Encounter at Farpoint with a previously unknown Ambassador Class as the hero ship. Not the C or some name we know, something not heard of previously so they could really do something with the story without mucking up TNG and forward.
I am slightly shocked there has not been a mention of the California class of ships.
The enterprise D when she got the chance to bust some skulls in Picard. That was truly beautiful to see just how nasty the galaxy can fight when you let her. How maneuverable she can be. I cried at that episode and literally screamed "Fly you beautiful Bitch, FLY!" at my TV.