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A Tall Ship, and a Star Trek to Steer Her By

4/23/2016

5 Comments

 
It's no secret that J.J. Abrams' rebooted Star Trek universe has been a source of consternation and displeasure for me since 2009, but while I've discussed the problems with the feel and storytelling of NuTrek rather extensively, there's one element of the reboot that I have yet to thoroughly critique: the Enterprise herself.

And yes, I'm enough of a fan to know that starship names should be italicized. You'll thank me someday when I talk about "the Enterprise of Enterprise" and you can readily identify which one's the TV show. But I digress.

I bring this up because, once a month, I receive two meticulously detailed and screen-accurate model starships from the Star Trek Official Starships Collection, each one accompanied by a magazine filled with neat photos of the featured ship, its fictional history within the Star Trek universe, behind-the-scenes stories about its real-world development, and distracting grammatical errors. (P.S.: Eaglemoss, if you ever need an editor with content area expertise...) The ships come from all corners of Star Trek's 50-year history: icons such as the USS Enterprise-D, the NX-01 (I'll refrain from saying "the Enterprise of Enterprise" so soon), and Deep Space Nine (which is a space station and not a starship, but I'm not complaining); that one cool ship you saw in the background in First Contact; that weird ship that only appeared in one episode of Voyager...really, anything and everything. Short of buying me an actual, functional starship, this is as good as it gets for a geek like me.
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Aside from one disappointment (the refit Enterprise from The Motion Picture [TMP], which is perfectly acceptable until you see how much more surface detail went into all the other ships), every new ship has been a joy to unbox and put on display. Once every few months, a special issue becomes available, featuring a larger-than-usual ship for an extra charge. Some months ago, I was given the option to become the proud (?) owner of the Abramsverse Enterprise from the 2009 reboot.

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This one. Source: Memory Alpha.
This was a challenging decision. On the one hand, I have so many problems with the design of the ship in question; I cannot readily call to mind any other ship from the entire franchise that I outright dislike. On the other hand, I was looking forward to a future special issue featuring the USS Vengeance from Into Darkness, and it wouldn't do to have the one NuTrek ship I like on a shelf without its rival beside it. Furthermore, there's always the possibility that a future film or TV series set in the Abramsverse will change my opinion about the reboot, and I'd regret missing the opportunity now to collect something I could like later. The completionist in me ultimately won out, and I've been trying to figure out how to feel about it ever since.
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On its own, the design of the 2009 Enterprise (sounds like I'm talking about a car) is passable enough. If it were a ship designed by a new alien race or belonging to a different sci-fi franchise altogether, I don't think I'd mind it. It's sleek, it's curvy, it's glowy and full of lens flare. The problem is that it's a reimagining of a classic ship that, like the rest of NuTrek, ignores every precedent that should have informed its design.

The USS Enterprise of the original Star Trek (TOS) is simultaneously very '60s and very forward-thinking. The ship cuts a memorable figure, distinct from the flying saucers and rocket ships that had dominated science fiction up until that point, but the surface details are only slightly more complex than anything you'd see in Buck Rogers or Flash Gordon. It's retro and futuristic at the same time, which makes it difficult to revise for a modern audience without sacrificing some part of its identity. It's also a beloved icon, so someone is bound to complain, no matter what you do. I get that.
Picture
Do you know how hard it is to find a good on-screen picture of the original, non-remastered Enterprise anymore? Source: Memory Alpha.
I think the refit Enterprise created for TMP is a superb example of a revision done right, though. The ship's proportions and basic shape were left intact, more surface detail was added, and only a few elements (nacelles, deflector dish) were revamped substantially, modernizing the ship by tinkering with the existing blueprints. When you look at the subsequent Enterprises (B, C, D, E, and even J), it's apparent that the same design mentality was still in use; you can imagine each Enterprise being stretched or compressed into the shape of the next one in line, rather than being built from scratch.
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This technically isn't the refit Enterprise from TMP, but it might as well be. Source: Memory Alpha.
Even the NX-01, designed for a TV show filmed decades after TOS but taking place a century before, has several key design elements in common with good ol' NCC-1701 (especially after the refit that was planned to happen if the show had remained on the air). If you can accept that somewhere between Enterprise and Next Generation there is a galaxy-wide revival of 1960s aesthetics that interrupts the otherwise consistent look of Star Trek, then it's not unreasonable to believe that Archer's Enterprise could evolve into Kirk's Enterprise.
NX-01 Refit
The planned refit of NX-01, adding a secondary hull. Source: Memory Beta.
Here's the thing: The Abramsverse doesn't reboot all of Star Trek; it only rewrites the timeline starting with the birth of James T. Kirk. This means that Zefram Cochrane still made his first warp flight in the Phoenix we saw in First Contact, and that the NX-01—whose design clearly took some measure of inspiration from the Phoenix—was still out saving the galaxy while Kirk's grandfather was in diapers. We even see models of these ships in Admiral Marcus's office in Into Darkness. So even if every other starship design principle of later Star Trek is thrown out the airlock, the Abramsprise should still look like a descendant of the Phoenix and the NX-01.

It doesn't even look like a distant relative. My wife says it looks like a Fisher-Price toy.
Picture
What even am I looking at? A giant squid? A good starship should look good from any angle.
And you can't peg this on Nero disrupting the timeline, either. Starfleet encounters all-powerful beings that destroy starships all the time, yet this one incident where a mystery ship obliterates a single vessel and then disappears for 25 years is enough to spook Starfleet engineers into building a USS Enterprise that's a caricature of the original timeline's ship, and twice as big. Bigger, in fact, than the largest vessels that Picard and Sisko bring into battle against the Borg and the Dominion a century later. I think the following chart speaks volumes about what's wrong with the NuTrek Enterprise:
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Source: Byrne Robotics.
How would any Star Trek character explain this monstrosity to a fellow Starfleet officer without breaking the fourth wall? In real life, the designers took the original, forward-thinking Enterprise and exaggerated the components for a faux-retro look that's more 1960s than the 1960s. They were going to keep the ship close to the original scale, but then the scene in the shuttle bay didn't look impressive enough, so they doubled the size of the ship to increase the wow factor. No Starfleet engineer says, "This shuttle bay isn't jaw-dropping enough; let's double the effort and resources required for the whole construction."

Part of the reason I like the Vengeance so much is that it at least looks like a plausible product of Starfleet covert ops engineering. It's essentially a mashup of two canonical starship classes (Constitution refit and Sovereign), with creative elements that give the ship a unique look without altering the weight and lines of traditional Starfleet design. Even the Kelvin, lopsided as it is, has a sense of balance in line with that of the Oberth or Constellation classes.
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The USS Vengeance. Yes, I know this is a Christmas ornament, but you can barely tell the shape of the ship from what's shown in the movie. Source: Memory Alpha.
When I look at the Abramsprise, all I can see are the ridiculous nacelles. In contrast with every other vessel in Starfleet history, the nacelles are as thick as the saucer section and even thicker than the stardrive section. They're too long and close together relative to the saucer section, giving the ship the appearance of having been gripped tightly and pulled back like a balloon animal. The pylons that attach the nacelles to the rest of the ship have almost a Romulan-style curve to them; Starfleet pylons are consistently straight, and even Galaxy- and Nebula-class pylons only use curves to round off the sharpness of a right angle. Everything about the nacelles draws the attention to the back of the ship. It's also irritating that the bussard collectors glow blue instead of the usual red. That last point might seem nitpicky even for me, but try changing one of the colors on your country's national flag and see how long it takes to bother you.

Any other elongated class of starship with a sense of movement to its design (e.g., Excelsior, Sovereign) has the look of a graceful bird or a swift predator about it. The Abramsprise has the look of an animal that was injected with whatever absurd vaccine McCoy gave to Kirk that made his hands swell up in the film. The nacelles are oversized jet thrusters hanging onto the back of the ship for dear life, and the saucer section fits onto the secondary hull like a full-sized sombrero on a child. There's no way this ship was designed by the same Starfleet engineers who would've made the Enterprise we know and love if some angry Romulan hadn't killed Kirk's dad.

Here's a comparison shot that helps illustrate how absurdly exaggerated the Abramsprise's features are—note that the engineering hull is basically the same size on both vessels (and also the bridge module, but you can barely tell here):
Picture
It's like the two silliest moments of The Animated Series at once: the real Enterprise riding piggyback on an inflatable starship decoy.
I think about the thought processes that went into designing the Reliant (immediately recognizable as Starfleet, but with a different shape so as not to confuse it with the Enterprise), the Excelsior (the Enterprise, but with an elegant Japanese aesthetic), and the Defiant (built for war, not exploration), and they all ask, "WWSD?" (What Would Starfleet Design?). The proportions, the contours, they all make sense to me. Nothing makes sense to me about the Abramsprise, and I can barely get a good look at the whole thing because my eyes keep sliding down the ship and falling off the back of it. This is not redesigning a ship for a new generation; this is having a little too much fun with Kai's Power Goo.

NuTrek had an opportunity to craft an Enterprise that made more sense as a successor to the NX-01. And as far as the story is concerned, there's not nearly enough of a rationale for why the new Enterprise looks so drastically different from the one that would have been designed if Nero hadn't shown up for two minutes. Early design sketches of the reboot Enterprise hint at a faithfulness to the source material, but the finished product seems to reflect the personal taste of the director more than the 50 years of Star Trek history that should have played into the design. I could even live with the retro-futuristic design if it leaned more toward TOS in terms of surface detail; ironically, those complex textures make the ship look too close to the Starfleet aesthetic from TMP onward, which only serves to emphasize the differences with the rest of the ship.
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This could have been the Abramsprise, and I could have lived with it. The differences are subtle, but vital. We were so close. Source: Memory Alpha.
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On the other end of the spectrum is something like this redesign by Gabriel Koerner, featured in a Star Trek: Ships of the Line calendar predating the 2009 reboot, which captures a lot of that NX-01 feel without sacrificing the shape of the ship. Source: Memory Beta.
Somewhere between the two designs above is the Enterprise that should have carried us into the future.
5 Comments
Scott link
8/20/2018 04:19:15 am

I've thought the same things about the Kelvin Enterprise as well, but I actually let it go.

2233 in the prime timeline (primeline?) was, as far as we know, a relatively peaceful era. The last major conflict to occur was with the Romulan Star Empire nearly 70 years before; the Federation itself is also only 70 years or so old at this point.

The Enterprise itself is launched in 2245 under Captain April. Prime Kirk and Enterprise and the Star Trek we know didn't occur til 2265.

So essentially, the Federation existed in a peaceful state for over 100 years by the time we see Star Trek.

HOWEVER, in the Kelvin Timeline, we have this tremendous disaster in 2233 where an unknown, tremendously power invades Federation space, single-handledly demolishes a Federation ship, and then just disappears.

What would that do to a new power? It makes sense to me that from 2233, the Federation would be on a war footing with two aims:

1. Find that entity

2. Prevent this loss of life from ever happening again

With this kind of motivation driving them, I can see why their ships would be bigger, faster, and have more redundancies. The germs of the Constitution class would have been sent back to the drawing board -- yes, they have the influences of the original NX-01 and the need for the dual nacelle configuration, but they want to make these ships capable of dealing with anything they find out there, including the original threat.

I think this is shown by the fact that in the Kelvin Timeline, the Enterprise is launched in 2258, 13 years later than the original Enterprise. To delay the construction and launch by 13 years, there must have been massive changes made to the original Constitution concept.

On top of that, these changes were such that the ship itself had to be made on Earth instead of at Utopia Planitia above Mars.

For an more in-universe look at the Federation's reaction to a tremendous threat, we can look at the Borg. Captain Picard learns of the Borg in 23, then they come to to the Alpha Quadrant and present themselves as a terrible threat at Wolf 359 in 2367 and the Federation directly changes established starship combat doctrine in response, producing the USS Defiant in 2370.

Rather than large, multipurpose ships, they make a relatively tiny, heavily armed, overpowered, overarmored ship that utilizes a treaty-violating technology for the threat of the Borg.

So it really makes sense that Nero's appearance and subsequent disappearance would cause a similar doctrine change to result in the larger Enterprise.

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Nathaniel link
8/21/2018 10:19:20 pm

That's not a bad explanation, but I still find it hard to accept that the Narada's fleeting appearance would have changed Starfleet design so radically.

What about the Planet Killer? The Crystalline Entity? The Whale Probe? V'Ger? There are so many examples of stunningly powerful ships and creatures that terrorized Starfleet for a day without leaving a lasting impact on design direction. The only reason the Borg spurred such a response is because a single cube took out a huge chunk of Starfleet's finest ships in a conflict they were prepared to fight. The Kelvin was a survey vessel that got taken by surprise.

The cynic in me views that 13-year construction delay as a convenient excuse to get Cadet Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise during its maiden voyage, and the construction on Earth is just for a cool visual shot.

I've softened toward the reboot Enterprise and the films in general (especially after Beyond made an honest attempt to make good on the potential of the reboot), but I still find it a bit of a stretch for the Kelvin to be the linchpin of the entire reboot timeline.

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Scott link
8/21/2018 11:05:16 pm

> What about the Planet Killer? The Crystalline Entity? The Whale Probe? V'Ger?

It might be cheating a bit, but the books do address some of these and the effects they had on Starfleet (and a giant weapons cache).

The Probe seems a bit different to me since it was more like an entity looking for something, so it's less of a "mysterious disaster" than "we kind of screwed up in the past but Jim Kirk did the slingshot and saved us, so it won't happen again because we'll take care of planets better now" event to me.

> The only reason the Borg spurred such a response is because a single cube took out a huge chunk of Starfleet's finest ships in a conflict they were prepared to fight. The Kelvin was a survey vessel that got taken by surprise.

Very true!

> The cynic in me views that 13-year construction delay as a convenient excuse to get Cadet Kirk on the bridge of the Enterprise during its maiden voyage, and the construction on Earth is just for a cool visual shot.


Yeah, I definitely agree with you on this despite my effort to make the universe changes "work" in my head. There are a lot of changes in the movies that just seem to be shoehorned in for the sake of having some scene.

It's interesting that you've softened toward the films in general, since I think I've gone the opposite route: I enjoyed them when they first came out, but on reflection and after repeated viewings, I realized that the humanist aspects were what made Star Trek "Star Trek" for me, and that those are completely missing from the new movies.

Nathaniel link
8/22/2018 01:42:27 pm

I've softened toward the films because I've stopped trying to accept them as canon. They're fun action movies, but they're Star Trek in name only.

I'm still mad at the first installment, which was really just a test run for JJ Abrams to direct Star Wars; continuity got so mangled that trying to reconcile it as canon was a waste of time and energy.

With the damage done, I didn't hold the second installment to normal Star Trek standards; I just treated it as I would any other movie sequel. There are numerous and significant problems with the storytelling, and the Khan story was more of a popularity cash-in than a story that needed to be retold, but the film at least pretends like it belongs in the Star Trek universe, making lots of little references to the entire franchise (rather than picking a few of the biggest names from TOS, like the previous film did). It's mindless fun.

The third installment made an honest-to-goodness attempt to FEEL like Star Trek. Too little, too late, but still refreshing to see the heroes exploring and diplomacizing amidst all the action. There are some thought-provoking and genuinely emotional moments, and the character interactions finally feel organic and dynamic. A main component of the story revolves around continuity with ENT, which is not a series you reference if you're just pandering to casual Trekkies. The film also catches an important nuance, that the ship is as important as any of the characters, and allows us to get to know the Enterprise better with drawn-out exterior shots as well as interior shots that give you a better sense of what it's like to live and work on the ship. There are still some things I'd change, but I very much enjoyed the film.

I appreciate that each installment tries harder and harder to be genuine Trek, but I'm through getting hung up on trying to treat the Abramsverse as a timeline alteration when it only makes sense as an alternate reality.

Scott link
8/22/2018 10:19:20 pm

I can definitely see where you're coming from and agree that the movies do take on more Trek-like plot elements as they progress. Beyond definitely went the extra mile in including the NX-326, but to me, that's just superficially embracing continuity.

The reason I think it's just superficial is that while Beyond embraces the material continuity (The Great Material Continuum? :p), it neglects the spiritual. Almost all modern Trek seems to miss out on the humanist element that informed TOS/TNG (and thus my "feeling" of what Trek should be).

For me, Starfleet, in a way, is supposed to be like the Lensmen -- an organization of nigh-incorruptible men and women who are the best they can be... and STILL strive to be better still.

If I think back about every Star Trek thing I dislike, there's a definite trend of "traitors" and "weak (spiritually, morally) people" in Starfleet underlying every single one. TNG's Conspiracy stands out especially as THE weakest and least-Trek-like episode for me because of this. That Starfleet, that people inside Starfleet could be compromised like that is just unbelievable.

Into Darkness also featured a morally weak officer driving the story.

Beyond, the same.

One of the most interesting DS9 stories for me was the one of Worf being forced to choose between being a good officer or a good husband when he had to choose between potentially saving millions of lives or his wife. This is made all the more intense for me because of my image of Starfleet -- I like Worf and Jadzia and I want them to be happy, but I know from the past Treks exactly what it means to be a Starfleet officer, and can sympathize with Sisko playing the heavy and telling Worf that he will never get command.

Additionally, my favorite Trek stories tend to be the ones where people realize something new and improve themselves. Picard bridging communication gaps in Darmok is absolutely fantastic; he is frustrated and human, but he continues to strive to communicate and build bridges -- and it works.

DS9 had a TON of this through Sisko, especially through his initial speciesism when it came to Nog (and the Ferengi in general). As he gained experience and responsibility, he also broadened his worldview and became more accepting of other cultures, overcoming his personal griefs and flaws in the process.

I'm not at all saying that Starfleet should be made of perfect superhumans (and non-humans) -- there will definitely be conflict within its ranks due to differing opinions (as we've seen with Kirk time and again).

However, for me, Starfleet and the Federation are almost mythical entities, like the Knights of the Round Table. They support the idea that in the future, things will be better, people will be better, people will strive to become even better still, and that this is a slice of a story about a type of humanity that will continue to live long and prosper.

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