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Events of Enterprise may led to Different look of the Constitution Class And Other Eliminates
ryuranger
Member Posts: 533 Arc User
in Ten Forward
I been Watching Enterprise and looking in at Discovery's era Tech and Thinking to my self could the Temporal Cold War that we see in Enterprise might change cretin things in TOS here is why I think so. We Know how in Star Trek Enterprise we see a lot Time travel that basically derailed the series; so could some of that Time Travel Changed how the Enterprise 1701 looked in 2245-2260s I been thinking about it I do not know if the Evidence is in Enterprise or in Discovery it self but if anyone as any thoughts please let me know.
May the Shwartz Be With You
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Nothing was changed. TOS still happened as we saw it. As for how Enterprise appeared in 2257, its a very good reimagining of the classic TOS design. You can either say she got a refit into the TOS style, or retcon the appearance of the TOS version if you want. But nothing changed as the Temporal Cold War was pretty much all PRESERVING the timeline. Not changing it. One faction wanting to alter history for their benefit, Daniels' faction trying to preserve the timeline as it happened, IE maintain everything we know as it happened.
Actually, there are some things known about the time before ENT which were different, from dialog in TOS and TAS mainly.
For one thing, in the history of TOS the Eugenics wars started earlier, running from 1992 to 1996, yet when Voyager went to that time chasing down the timeline disturbances caused by the crashed timeship they apparently hadn't happened yet. And a conflict that killed 30 to 37 million people would have been noticed by someone but there were no news stories of it or any other reference to it during the Voyager incursion.
Also, while Rain Robinson had a model of the DY-100 on her desk and an "artist's concept" poster of it on her wall, it seems unlikely that any of them are already built at that point. It all points to the Eugenics wars starting later, though not the 22nd century that was mentioned elsewhere (Ronald D. Moore said in an interview that the intention was to push it back a decade or two but the line taken from Wrath of Khan went into the script without correcting for the hundred years between the TOS-crew movies and the TNG era).
Those ships bring in another anomaly. In TOS Zephram Cochrane was from the Alpha Centauri system that was supposed to have been colonized with them shortly after the Eugenics wars but before the devastation of WWIII. In First Contact he was from Earth and the Alpha-C colonies apparently do not exist. Also his testbed for the warp drive system shown in DS9 looked completely different from the Phoenix from the movie.
Another change is that in TOS the USA was launching orbital nuclear weapons platforms as part of the cold war in the 1960s, and Spock mentioned that the "other powers" were doing the same, but none of the series outside of TOS make any reference to that at all, so there is a good chance that, like in the real world, space was kept clear of nukes by treaty and the incident involving Gary Seven, Isis, Roberta Lincoln, and Kirk's Enterprise never happened in the past of some of the other series.
So there are anomalies enough to make a good case for multiple timelines or paradox twisting of events should CBS want to go that route and finally put the TOS/anti-TOS conflict to rest. And it is not at all surprising that the anomalies would exist with all the time travel going on, especially with the Red Angel poking things looking for her "domino points".
And yes, the TOS Enterprise was significantly more advanced technologically compared to the Discovery and DSC Enterprise despite the problems the 1960s TV production technology had in showing it properly. It had a lot more power and precision packed into a smaller frame.
And I'd say Pike's Enterprise was just as precise. Despite being an older ship than Discovery, Enterprise had more powerful phasers, and actually fired beams like she did in TOS. She held up amazingly well for being swarmed the way she was at the end of season 2.
The DSC Enterprise pretty much floated in place and shot robot ships that were crawling towards them at very very low speed and probably a few kilometers away at most. That is still very poor showing for TOS with its warp 4 combat and 40,000km average range (with some at around 100,000km). And I doubt they can see where they are going in warp any better than any of the other DSC ships so it will probably blunder blindly into an asteroid field just like the Discovery did or something equally easily avoided by the TOS version.
You do have a point about the beam phasers though, they did seem more powerful (and were certainly more impressive looking) than the popguns Discovery and the others used.
Still, the DSC Enterprise is much bigger and a thin-skinned carrier instead of the more compact heavily armored battlecruiser it was in TOS. The TOS shuttlebays were designed with the idea that only two shuttles were active at a time like the catapult-rail-launched spotter planes on WWII battlecruisers, so shrinking it down and completely changing its role from the DSC version to the TOS version with just a normal refit would be difficult to say the least (and Trek fans just love to point out continuity goofs like that).
Even the "windows" visible on the TOS Enterprise's hull were not supposed to be transparent windows, just look at the interior sets, the ONLY one with through-the-hull windows was the shuttlebay catwalk tubes (in fact Kirk said in dialog that they were the only place one could look out on the stars directly instead of via a screen), all the other ones were just blank wall, even the ones where the wall angles made it obvious they were the inside of the outer hull.
Since they have the exact same glow look as the sensor domes and the big dorsal sensor patches my guess is that they are more sensor panels (they probably align with the decks to make servicing from the inside easier, since Jefferies was adamant about the fact that everything but massive hull damage could be fixed from the inside).
As for "thin skinned", I find that a non argument because she got hit with a torpedo that was specifically designed to pierce the hull and blow up inside the ship. Up until that torpedo hit, Enterprise was holding up remarkably well for being outnumbered and surrounded. It showed the power of the Constitution Class that could have helped against the Klingons in the war. But we know Enterprise was held back by Starfleet. And its possible the other Connies were as well, since they are generally representing the best and brightest of Starfleet, and their survival was more important apparently. I'm glad Pike expressed frustration at being sidelined during the war.
Ultimately the problem is trying to compare how things were portrayed in a show made in the 60s that was building itself vs a show made today that has a LOT of history behind it.
Not so. Comparison diagrams of the Enterprise and the D7 were drawn up in scale with each other and the scale bar is visible on the tri-screen on the conference room table which makes that graphic canon. On top of that, while they never said the length in dialog, the blueprints for the big model were done to scale and that scale factor (1/85th) was marked on the blueprints. The length of 947 feet (slightly larger than one of the bigger WWII aircraft carriers and about the size of today's Queen Elizabeth class carriers) and crew complement of approximately 430-450 people were even given in several versions of the series bible.
Besides, while it is true that there are no hard numbers like that on the DSC Enterprise, when Kurtzman and others on the production end of DSC have flat out said they had to upscale the ship to bring it in line with the other DSC ships I think it is fairly safe to say that it is bigger.
Warp combat started in the last season or so of ENT, which is consistent with TOS style warp combat. And the reason for going to impulse combat in the movie era was sufficiently explained by the shift to using the warp reactor to power the weapons so it became a situation of move fast or hit hard but not both.
And yes, NOMAD used its space-magic level tech to make the Enterprise go warp 14 oldscale (which is 9.95 in TNG scale btw) which is no different from the Traveller doing more or less the same thing in TNG. Another TOS warp incident (with the Medusan ambassador onboard) was an insane engineer misconfiguring the warp drive and throwing them into hyperspace where they could not navigate but luckily the Medusan could, but even that is not too off the wall by TNG standards (Enterprise-D ended up in the Magellanic clouds at one point). Unmodified the TOS Enterprise was rated with a warp 8 (oldscale, about six and a half by TNG scale) maximum speed and anything past that was extremely dangerous, which is not inconsistent with anything else.
I based the "thin skinned" comment on blowouts seen in DSC on other ships where their outer skin is shown to be about an inch or two thick at most, and the fact that the debris from that missile looks the same as the debris from the other scenes so the DSC Enterprise is probably not armored much if any more than they are. Also, the DSC Enterprise hull thickness is easily seen in the JJwindow and appears to be no more than about four inches thick on its outer part, whereas the TOS Enterprise according to Roddenberry and Jefferies had nine inches of tritanium armor over a duranium pressure hull. Also the window itself is no more than two or three inches thick and it is likely to be the thickest one due to having more surface area to support.
And I was using the term in the naval sense were thin-skinned does not mean a soap bubble, most modern ships are considered thin skinned in fact, it just means that it does not have heavy armor or extensive protective void layers like the old torpedo blisters. The TOS Enterprise was considered a bit of a dinosaur, like a WWII battleship still in use, and used heavy armor along with upgraded shields which made it quite tanky during the TOS era.
Roddenberry probably got the idea from the Iowa class battleships that were constantly in the news at the time with congress and the joint chiefs arguing about whether to activate them for service in the Vietnam war (congress finally reluctantly let them bring one of them out of standby (the USS New Jersey) for that) but that is just a guess.
TOS fits in with Star Trek history quite well, all the important stuff is explained by in-universe things (though a few are pushing it a bit). DSC is the odd one out with their 2280s based designs and TNG style slow-and-close combat, but even that is not a problem if SNW starts doing "experimental" things like warp combat and uses the impulse engines less and less as the show progresses.
In fact, DSC itself gives a very good reason for not doing warp combat, they apparently cannot see very well at warp (so they blunder into asteroid fields and whatnot) so just an advance in sensor technology could rapidly change things since warp combat has so many advantages over sublight combat tactically (or at least it does for a few years until improved shield tech makes connecting the phasers to the warp reactors a necessity). That is on top of the fact that they cant seem to lock on a target more than a few kilometers distant (which could also be a sensor issue).
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Due to subspace limitations (again, not otherwise specified), the Connies were designed for a top cruise speed of Warp 6, and a top emergency speed of Warp 8 (after which the engines would need overhauled, if sustained too long).
As for ship size, we know the size of a Connie relative to a D7, and vice versa, but as neither one is defined in any other terms the measure is essentially meaningless. Crew complement was variable as well - there was an early episode, possibly the first pilot, where it was mentioned as being around 200, then in a later episode 400, and finally 430. The only limiting factor on ship size vs crew complement, of course, is making sure it hits a certain minimum size; the 200-crew ship could be that 900-footer mentioned above, but with lots of room for ship's systems. We do know, however, that Starfleet likes to modify their ships a lot, as a cover for design changes between seasons of later series, so the Enterprise of "The Cage", which is already visibly different from the Enterprise of TOS (which itself changed either during the first season or between seasons 1 and 2, when they lost the little spikes on the nacelles), could easily be the same as the visibly-different Enterprise seen on DSC. (This is supported by Pike's mention of recent overhauls, which would eventually include yanking out the holographic comms system because they interfered with the rest of the ship's operations.)
The TOS connies took a BEATING, and were slimmer lighter than the Disco stuff.
Disco looks so industrial and primitive......
Technically it was both the Kelvins and NOMAD who over-amped the engines like that, just at different times. And yes, the main thing was the crew being in danger because NOMAD could decide they are too imperfect at any time. The speed thing was just a side problem to that, NOMAD decided to raise the efficiency of the engine settings without bothering to think about whether they or the spaceframe could take it for long, but it does illustrate the point.
Like I said before, there was a size comparison up on a conference table that included a scale bar. The transparency had some bloom to it (like a Xerox copy or mimeograph does though they probably used a different process) so it is not exact, but it does show the ship at around 950 feet which is good enough to canonize the 947 feet figure that all the behind the scenes documentation on the ship had.
The shock needles on the bussards only showed up in a few of the first season episodes, technically they were ditched befor the second pilot was shot but they used some stock footage from the first one which showed the needles (maybe an inworld explanation could be that they are retractable or something).
Then, after the second pilot was shot the spheres were added to rear of the nacelles with the in-universe justification that the damage from hitting the galactic barrier necessitated replacing the nacelles (though like most things in the series they did not stop and technobabble about it like TNG usually did so that explanation never made it into official canon).
That may have been when they replaced the impulse exhausts too, but I think they did it between the pilots like the needles and dorsal sensor dome.
The last time the needles are seen is in Mirror, Mirror, the mirror universe ship still had the old nacelles (though the remaster could have changed that, they made a lot of little errors from missing the subtleties in other episodes). Use of the old stock footage from the first pilot for the mirror Enterprise was done on purpose, and it took some fiddling to get the ships placed exactly right so it would be a shame if the remastering did replace it thinking it was an error (or even not noticing that they were two different stock shots interwoven together). That they did it that way in Mirror, Mirror is interesting in that it implies that they never hit the barrier which necessitated the replacement in the non-mirror TOS.
I too prefer the elegance of the googie design style of TOS over the industrial looking art deco style DSC uses. I suppose whatever program they used to make the DSC models may not have an easy way to simulate a French curve stencil, that or they just prefer the boring mechanistic look all the other shows tend to use nowadays.
Doubt it, I think Kurtzman and company just wanted to change it for the mere SAKE of changing it. I think the designer said the whole 25% requirement difference thing is just BS, the execs wanted to change it for the sake of changing, which makes me have even less respect for 'em.
I honestly don't see how she looks less advanced and more industrial than the TOS Connie.
Yea she has a thicker neck and angled pylons, but all the proportions are right. And frankly I like the glowing field grills.
Unlike the Kelvin Connie, which took until she popped up out of Titan for me to like her, I instantly fell in love with the DSC Connie. One look and I was like "THAT'S A CONNIE! THAT IS A FREAKIN' CONNIE!"
And even if they decided to retcon that as the design before the movie Refit... the style flows from DSC to Refit, hell... flows slightly better because she already has angled pylons. But that is my opinion.
And again... we still have around 10 or so years before Kirk takes command. They could easily refit her with straight pylons and different bridge module between Captains.
The two ships are similar, and they both look good in their own ways, but very obviously designed using entirely different design styles.
Googie (which Jefferies used to design the TOS Enterprise) is based on Euler spirals, algebraic geometry, and golden ratios, which is the how most things in nature are put together which the human subconscious recognizes. It was not just seen in the outer hull, it is reflected in the control panels, the way shape is used to denote purpose (like if you see a coffin-shaped door it is either an airlock, section seal, or other airtight door), and a lot of other things like shape of the delta badges and "boomerang" Starfleet glyph.
Googie needs tools like a French curve template to draw properly, and while buildings are not made in the style much anymore new bridges (like for instance the "Dublin Link" in Ohio) are sometimes still done in the style along with some other things that are supposed to suggest a more "green" or natural aesthetic.
It has a sort of playful, upbeat futuristic feel which is somewhat out of step with the cynical downbeat zeitgeist of today and the fact that it was used rather heavily in The Jetsons cartoon probably adds an element of self-conscious "kiddie cartoon" stigma in Hollywood circles.
Art deco, which is used in DSC and most other modern Hollywood sci-fi has some similarities and overlaps, but is actually based on regular geometry, (circles, squares, triangles) and equal division symmetry which is a more artificial, mechanical look. It can be drawn with a compass, straightedge, and regular triangle for the most part though it does contain a certain amount of regular parabolic features. The Golden Gate and other oldschool bridges are a good example of the style.
Everyone talks about the struts, and while they are probably the most noticeable difference it is actually not as important as the others though it does contribute to the dated industrial look of the ship too. The fact that the DSC ones are angled is irrelevant, it is more the width and the fact that the slot gives the impression of something like gothic flying buttresses that make it look like an older, less metallurgically advanced design. From the front or back the placement of the strut roots on the secondary hull and the angle the struts go out towards the sides looks more natural/organic on the TOS ship and more industrial on the DSC ship.
The squat thick neck with the straight vertical brace at the bottom front gives the same impression on the DSC one.
Where it really shows the most though are things like the design of the saucer. The TOS saucer has a more organic spiral cross-section curve to it while the DSC one has a flatter, simpler curve that looks more like the top of an industrial oil storage tank or something similar. In fact, the impulse engineering ridge running up to the bridge blister reinforces that oil tank impression since it resembles the catwalk they often build along to the top to give access to the center-top inspection hatch and hazard lights.
Another feature that makes the DSC ship look like an older technology is that the impulse drive engineering area appears much larger than the TOS version, actually bumping out of the saucer section in places. It does make sense in a way due to the considerably increased impulse engine usage in DSC compared to its use as little more than an emergency backup in TOS, but it still gives that lower-tech industrial rather than elegant natural impression.
And again, I am not trying to put down the DSC style Enterprise, it is a nice looking design and very much fits the current Hollywood starship style trends. To me though it lacks the character of the TOS design (the natural organic impression of the TOS ship tells the viewer something about the Federation without anyone saying a word for example). Come to think of it, I suppose the harsher industrial look of the DSC ship does the same for the harder, darker, more cynical Federation in DSC though.
For me personally, the pylons feel a bit more like a natural progression if we go straight from DSC to TMP, and the neck actually has that straight portion positioned right where the TMP torpedo launcher would one day go.
We know that the Enterprise had a rather invasive refit to the TMP style, dang near just rebuilding the ship from the ground up. But the DSC Connie feels like there could be more actually saved than torn down to the keel. Feels a bit like at least part of the spaceframe or skeleton was preserved. As for the pylons having that extra bit... could either be anything from structural because she's supposed to look more sturdy, or it could be that they needed the extra bit for access to the warp coils for maintenance as that particular style of power grid may have required more space in the pylons.
At the end of the day though... to quote Kirk: A ship is a ship.
While I feel she feels more advanced than the TOS version, that is just a product of our real world advancement. Expecting something to have the EXACT SAME look as a 60s production is honestly a bit unrealistic when we have iPads and computers in RL that make the TOS designs look childish. Having the touchscreens mixed in with the push buttons makes her feel far more functional to me, as consoles actually look like they can display data that is necessary to control a starship. But again that is just a technical thing. We wouldn't even be here discussing this if not for TOS and everything it built.
To each their own honestly. I won't worship one over the other because of some design concept making her better or not. We all have our favorites. Before the DSC Connie I actually preferred the Refit over the classic. Again because the controls felt far more realistic in displaying data needed to fly a ship. Also I kinda liked the design a bit more.
What I like about the DSC Connie is that she feels like she fits in with everything. The more gunmetal grey hull which has basically been standard across most eras, the glowing blue field grills that tie her into Enterprise and the TNG era, she does feel like she belongs. Far better than the Kelvin Connie did when I first saw her. And none of it has to do with design schools or anything. It just feels... right to me. I can't really explain it more than that.
But as I said... none of this would be here without the TOS Connie. She's the one that started it all. And we now have at least 4 variants. I feel that the DSC Connie is a great modernization of the classic design while keeping true to the source. Thin skinned, advanced or not... she is a Connie through and through.
A funny fact is that Jefferies got the inspiration for the final TOS ship design from a goose with its wings partially raised. You can see the doodles of that in some of his published notes/early drawings. And one version of the early ship design has an "S" shaped neck that came out of the front of the secondary hull.
When asked about the length of the neck in the final design Jefferies said that part of concept was that the ship had emergency rockets (since changed to "gravity impulse") to back up the main drive (warp) and he imagined the two nacelles were very dense and heavy compared to the secondary hull so the saucer (which had the emergency thrust drive) had to be up close to the level of the nacelles to be at the proper place to balance the two.
Since they changed the nature of the impulse drive the consideration is rather anachronistic, but personally I like the mix of elegance and surprising, odd proportion of the original.
Of course, the real reason was probably to keep the organic look of the ship intact by designing the neck and strut lengths so it resulted in "golden ratio" proportions even though it does look a bit odd for a vehicle.
I know right? If the TOS Connie too that hit to the neck the refit did in WoK, I swear Reliant would have sliced clean through. Enterprise was lucky that she not only had a thicker neck at that time, Reliant actually hit the Torpedo Launcher, which was the thickest part of the neck. And we kinda DID see that vulnerability exploited in Beyond. Also that Kelvin Timeline refit... I'm kinda Meh on. But that's another discussion for another thread.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
ape brain. The TOS connie took a BEATING in the series. The movie era one was like Glass Joe from Punch Out.....couple of hits.....DOWN.
Looked far less advanced in Disco.
Caught with her shields down by someone who know where to hit her for maximum effect. I fail to see how its "ape brain", or what that even means.
She was hit with worse in the series and took it better. The movie one depended much more on shields and SIF, blowout scenes show that it completely lacked armor, just like the TNG ships did. Realworld SFX wise it looked like they made the hull sections out of one or two inch thick panels of that grayer kind of styrofoam, which was fairly common in those kinds of scenes.
The nine inch thick outer layer of tritanium the TOS one had would have blunted the attack significantly even without the shields the same way the NX could take hits on its armor without shields, but they probably reduced it to about a half inch or so (assuming at least part of the thickness in blowout scenes is the duranium they used for the section seals internally) to reduce the weight for speed (in Voyager "all duranium hull" was technobabbled as being part of their speed performance enhancements so apparently weight made some kind of difference).
In the damage control chatter in TOS they send people into breached sections to patch them during the battle which implies that they are more like cracks, slits, or small holes rather than a huge deck to ceiling people ejecting blowouts like are seen in the movie era and later since it seems unlikely they would send people into that kind of hazard with sealant spray foam and patches when the ship is getting intermittently slammed around enough to throw people off their feet and even out of chairs.
As for the difference in crew size, one of Roddenberry's standard spiels was that a lot of the equipment and supplies got smaller over time and the life support system got better, so they could devote more space to scientists and other specialists they had to skimp on before but now could double up on. A good visual example of the difference in equipment size is the sensor dome over the bridge, in The Cage it was about a deck high just on its own, while in TOS itself it is much flatter yet has better performance than the Cage one.
TOS took MAYBE two dozen shots combined over the entirety of the show's runtime - that is NOT a beating, by any stretch of the imagination, except for those living in severe delusion
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"
As much as I agree with you RE: the Discoprise's resilience, that's not necessarily a fantastic argument. An Iowa-Class battleship would shrug off a destroyer's 5" shells, but it's gonna take a pounding from anything bigger than an 11" gun and can expect pretty major damage from anything above (and including) 14" shells. There can be different magnitudes in weapon strength. More often than not when TOS Enterprise got shot up, it was against an equal or more powerful opponent (and people seem to miss how the TOS Enterprise would often be in critical condition after 2 or 3 hits at most against an equal Combatant). These are drones with little pop-guns relying on numbers and swarm tactics because the writers couldn't be fussed to represent actual battle tactics. Then the actual warships took a shot and suddenly the Enterprise was facing an actual threat.
Trials of Blood and Fire
Moving On Parts 1-3 - Part 4
In Cold Blood
#LegalizeAwoo
A normie goes "Oh, what's this?"
An otaku goes "UwU, what's this?"
A furry goes "OwO, what's this?"
A werewolf goes "Awoo, what's this?"
"It's nothing personal, I just don't feel like I've gotten to know a person until I've sniffed their crotch."
"We said 'no' to Mr. Curiosity. We're not home. Curiosity is not welcome, it is not to be invited in. Curiosity...is bad. It gets you in trouble, it gets you killed, and more importantly...it makes you poor!"