Forget "design flaws". Is the entire Galaxy concep

[Patrick Degan]

And the proof for this speculation is...

Proof that the fans would've cried bloody murder if they got the old Constitution? No proof, since it didn't happen. Just some basic knowledge about Trek fans and a functioning brain. No self-respecting Trekkie would've stood for the recycling of the movie design for a ship that was supposed to be a century more advanced. Age of sail my ass, there would've been riots.

Translation to English: you're just talking out of your ass, as usual. Howzabout some actual proof for your assertions. You do understand what the word "proof" means, I trust?

The concept itself was fundamentally flawed: a military vessel

The concept didn't call for a military vessel, but for a space-borne community that could defend itself if need be. That was the original intent. The military aspect was deliberately toned down (something people on this board will never hesitate to complain about) up until the writers realised that they were going to have to do space battles.

Who are you kidding? If the vessel's armed to the fucking teeth, it's military by definition. No matter how much the issue's glossed over, it still comes down to a warship fitted out with luxury appointments to cart around a load of useless civilians, which is why they did get in trouble when space battle stories became impossible not to tell.

[Uraniun235]

Well, the main problem with using that design would've been with the Paramount movie division. They wanted to have a ship entirely unique for the Trek movie series (both TOS and TNG), this is why we never saw a Constitution in TNG (Picard's old ship the Stargazer was supposed to have been a Constitution but they had to change it to a new model) and why we never saw a Sovereign outside the TNG Movies. That Consitution variant is too close to a Constitution for the show to have been allowed to use it.

Indeed, if I remember right, it took a bit of convincing for even the Reliant to get approved in TWOK, because some studio persons were concerned that people wouldn't be able to figure out who the good guys were supposed to be.

No self-respecting Trekkie would've stood for the recycling of the movie design for a ship that was supposed to be a century more advanced.

Gene Roddenberry didn't have to put the show a century ahead. He could easily have put the show in the year after Star Trek 4 and he could have named the ship Yorktown. Instead, he was more interested in indulging his private aesthetic and political tastes and going wherever his whims took him.

(Although, to be fair, I don't think he is at all alone among other TV scifi producers in that regard; Babylon 5 and Andromeda come immediately to mind, and I'm sure there's at least one other series which fell into the trap of its success ultimately giving its creator the power to become its undoing.)

[ShadowSonic]

Well, if he didn't put the show far ahead enough to get away from the TOS cast, wouldn't the audience just drone on about how they should've just made the show be about the TOS cast again, or why the TOS cast didn't make frequent appearances all the time? And if they killed off the TOS cast to make way for the TNG ones (if TNG was in TOS) wouldn't the fans just boycott the show anyways?

I mean sure, DS9 got away without having the TNG cast show up too often (a TNG crossover in the pilot, and a DS9 crossover in the TNG show, and Worf joining in S4) but that may have had more to do with the fall-out between the TNG and DS9 creative teams.

100 years may have been a stretch, but I do understand the reasoning in having TNG be set in a different time than TOS.

[Chris OFarrell]

There are a hell of a lot of interesting stories about the behind the scenes politics in Star Trek.

Some of the great ones are DS9 with More and Co trying to do something, only to have B&B jump in and scream blue murder.

Like the Dominion war that was only going to last 3 episodes.
Like the screaming over Nog getting his leg blown off.

Hell I remember reading somewhere that More was originaly, early in the Dominion war when all the characters are trying to adjust to really being AT war; have Sisko reflecting on how fucking stupid it was to bring civilian families along on Starships and how glad he was Starfleet dropped the policy (thinking how he lost Jenifer at Wolf 359 and damn near lost Jake). Only to have Braga scream that you can't defy the glorious Roddenberry ideals and drop the whole scene.

Frankly I would have found simply redoing a Constitution boring as hell for the TNG series (and a dangerous 'REMAKE! REMAKE!' signal). But I wouldn't have minded if we had gotten something that looked much closer to one then the Galaxy. I admit the Galaxy has grown on me over the years quite a bit, but for quite a while my impression was 'Damn thats a butt ugly SOB'.

Of course the whole TNG concept was fucked up from day one in what they wanted to Enterprise to BE. You only have to look at the initial designs for the ships bridge to see that. Give me the Defiants bridge any day of the week. A third the size, with twice as many consoles.

[ShadowSonic]

I don't really think Braga had much to do with any Producer intervention in DS9, it would've come from Berman seeing as how Braga was only a Producer on VOY for 2 seasons before letting Biller take over, and Berman really didn't start intervening until S6. Hell, he didn't even get more involved in the running of VOY until S4.

As for Bridges, the one in "Yesterday's Enterprise" is okay for me on what the Ent-D's bridge should've looked like, except with more chairs like a stool at Tactical for Tasha and at least one other chair/console for Riker.

[Uraniun235]

Frankly I would have found simply redoing a Constitution boring as hell for the TNG series (and a dangerous 'REMAKE! REMAKE!' signal).

...but it was a remake. Space opera adventure centered around a Federation starship.

Only... increasingly less adventurous.

Give me the Defiants bridge any day of the week. A third the size, with twice as many consoles.

And apparently twenty times the pyrotechnics. No thanks, I'm pretty permanently soured on that set.

[General Zod]

...but it was a remake. Space opera adventure centered around a Federation starship.

Less space opera and more spaghetti western in space. For the original series at least. TNG goes more for the space opera stuff.

[Uraniun235]

"Space opera" does not mean "soap opera in space".

[AirshipFanboy]

Is the notion of complementing a deep-range exploration starship with civilian personnel - creating what is basically a mobile micro-colony of the Federation - fundamentally broken?

It's not "fundamentally broken." A luxury liner/city ship like the E-D can explore space and do the other jobs demanded of it - as it did on TNG. It just may not be the best solution.

If so, why do we continue to try to "fix" a ship which was so basically flawed from the moment of its inception?

If not, why do we continue to try to shoehorn it into the role given it by the show - a role for which it is ill-prepared to fulfill - when it would make more sense to design a new ship (or alter a different existing ship) to better fulfill the role of The Hero Ship?

To defend my thread, I made it because I thought it would be an interesting topic for discussion. It has been, at least for me.

And yes, I agree, it probably would be more logical to just design a whole new ship, or alter something smaller.

Basically, this:



—could have handily filled the role of the Enterprise for the series had they stuck to the idea of a straightforward explorer/warship instead of the Love Boat. Proven design with a little updating.

BTW, the ship above exists as a desktop model seen in the Utopia Planetia office reconstruction on the holodeck in "Booby Trap". TNG season 3.

Why would you bother turning the nacelles sideways? I don't see how that's an improvement, visual or otherwise.

[Patrick Degan]

Why would you bother turning the nacelles sideways? I don't see how that's an improvement, visual or otherwise.

I know this is a bit of thread-necro and the mods can lock it if they wish but I just thought to answer the question.

The sidewise-nacelle mountings reflected the design pattern of the Constellations and were transitional to the later Ambassador and Galaxy/Nebula nacelle configurations. Of course, the real reason is that modelmaker Greg Jein had to make the standard AMT Enteprise kit look a bit different from the movie version so he mounted the nacelles sideways on the pylons and left off the panels for the saucer viewports —filling them in with lengths of finely corrugated plastic sheet.

The drawing's slightly off in detail, BTW. But it was sufficient to make the point.

[Darth Wong]

The design goal of the E-D was "peaceful explorer and non-militaristic cabin cruiser ... but with a shitload of WMDs onboard just in case". There's no way to properly reconcile this schizophrenic design with any coherent intent. It was not designed as a wagon train to the stars; the classic Wild West wagon train did not come accompanied with Army regiments and artillery. It was not designed as a military vessel either. And it was not designed as a city-ship; it is far too small to think of in that way. One is wasting one's breath looking for the "original intent" of the ship because there was no coherent intent in the first place.

[fgalkin]

The Galaxy-class is a GSV, with much lower tech, and designed by morons. Seriously, that's what it's supposed to be- it just flies around showing its passengers the sights, and making frequent stops at the Space Anomaly of the Week. And if anything hostile comes along, well, that's why they invented Gridfire.

It is a proper design, but the Galaxy just fails miserably at its purpose. It is not a true "city in space," because it has nowhere near enough people and is not self-sufficient (it's not even a village in space!). And it can still be taken on and gangraped by hostile ships. It is, in short, the very definition of "epic fail." The fact that the design even got off the drawing board shows how ridiculous Trek is, both in- and out- of universe.

Have a very nice day.
-fgalkin

[montypython]

Until the 'War Galaxy' type ships appeared, the whole GCS vessel configuration just didn't make any sense whatsoever, a Voth-type city ship or even Macross-type city ships seemed far better equipped for civvies in space.

[Knife]

If the Consitution was too old or used for TNG, a nice Excelcior would have worked out fine. She's larger, more powerful, pretty as hell and established. In fact, as a brand new ship class in Kirks time, she'd be a seasoned work horse decades later, and was seen as such in TNG.

[Starglider]

One is wasting one's breath looking for the "original intent" of the ship because there was no coherent intent in the first place.

Which is pretty good evidence for the Federation ship design process being a dysfunctional beurecracy rife with warring interests trying to load piles of conflicting requirements onto a high-prestige project.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

One is wasting one's breath looking for the "original intent" of the ship because there was no coherent intent in the first place.

Which is pretty good evidence for the Federation ship design process being a dysfunctional beurecracy rife with warring interests trying to load piles of conflicting requirements onto a high-prestige project.

Well, you had an egotistical warp core designer for starters who didn't fancy listening to advice much.

[ShadowSonic]

If the Consitution was too old or used for TNG, a nice Excelcior would have worked out fine. She's larger, more powerful, pretty as hell and established. In fact, as a brand new ship class in Kirks time, she'd be a seasoned work horse decades later, and was seen as such in TNG.

What about the Ambassador class? I always thought that would've been a nice idea. It still resembles the design aesthetics of the TOS era somewhat, but also serves as a "middle-ground" between the TOS shps and the TNG era design aesthetics for ships.

[Uraniun235]

If the Consitution was too old or used for TNG, a nice Excelcior would have worked out fine. She's larger, more powerful, pretty as hell and established. In fact, as a brand new ship class in Kirks time, she'd be a seasoned work horse decades later, and was seen as such in TNG.

If I remember right, there were plans to put the TOS crew on Excelsior at the end of Star Trek 4, but fan reaction was supposedly negative enough to put them on Enterprise-A.

[VT-16]

If I remember right, there were plans to put the TOS crew on Excelsior at the end of Star Trek 4, but fan reaction was supposedly negative enough to put them on Enterprise-A.

Yes, god forbid the franchise actually break the status quo once in a while. Would the Excelsior have been called Enterprise-A or retained its name?

[Uraniun235]

I'm pretty sure it was to be called Excelsior.

[Bounty]

I'm pretty sure it was to be called Excelsior.

Somehow I doubt that. Kirk on a not-the-Enterprise? Imagine the outrage about that...

Besides, the Excelsior was promised to Takei as early as TWoK. If he lost it to Shatner, he'd have blown a fuse.

[Uraniun235]

I'm pretty sure it was to be called Excelsior.

Somehow I doubt that. Kirk on a not-the-Enterprise? Imagine the outrage about that...

Well, that would explain the negative reaction to it.

[Fingolfin_Noldor]

I'm pretty sure it was to be called Excelsior.

Somehow I doubt that. Kirk on a not-the-Enterprise? Imagine the outrage about that...

Besides, the Excelsior was promised to Takei as early as TWoK. If he lost it to Shatner, he'd have blown a fuse.

They promised Takei a ship?

[Bounty]

I'm pretty sure it was to be called Excelsior.

Somehow I doubt that. Kirk on a not-the-Enterprise? Imagine the outrage about that...

Besides, the Excelsior was promised to Takei as early as TWoK. If he lost it to Shatner, he'd have blown a fuse.

They promised Takei a ship?

In the TWoK novelisation, Kirk congratulates Sulu on his promotion to captain and his posting as Excelsior's captain. A scene for the movie was shot where Sulu mentions this (as part of the conversation in the drydock fly-by) but Shatner reportedly had it cut.

[Sidewinder]

In the TWoK novelisation, Kirk congratulates Sulu on his promotion to captain and his posting as Excelsior's captain. A scene for the movie was shot where Sulu mentions this (as part of the conversation in the drydock fly-by) but Shatner reportedly had it cut.

Does 'The Wrath of Khan' DVD have this deleted scene as an extra? (I don't have DVDs for the 'Star Trek' movies.)