Favourite Enterprise?

Klingon Hamlet

NX01:
To me, looks ridiculous. Too flat, too boring, too ungainly. Doesn't even resemble a Federation Starship.

Or this...

NCC 1701 mk1:
Classic design. Screams of the 60s with its psychadelic spinning hubs on its nacelles and charmingly simple-looking "Sky dish" on its secondary hull. Great bright metallic colour, just an awesome design.

This lead to...

NCC 1701 mk2 / 1701-A:
Excellent upgrade. Overall a sleeker, meaner, more realistic take on its predecessor's design. Love the blue glowing deflector dish. In the battle-scene with Chang in STVI, as it cruises by his viewscreen, even though you know it's a miniature model it looks and feels like a real ship.

Some didn't...

NCC 1701-B:
Excelsior with extra pimpage on the deflector dish. only had that ridge added to spare the original model damage, for future use in DS9. Looked like a rush job, I felt let down when I saw it. I figured it would have its own iconic design. But then, STVII had a small budget.

Talking of small budgets...

NCC 1701-C:
Meh. Looks odd. A bit stunted. Peter David made it sound like a deadly class (Ambassador) in his first few New Frontier books). Still, not enough thought went into it. Then again it was a rush job for a 48-hour time limited screenplay, for a massively underbudgeted ep (Yesterday's Enterprise).

For that show...

NCC 1701-D:
Didn't like it at the start. Way too top heavy. But as the series progressed, the budget increased and the effects improved, they found new angles, making it seem more like a city in space rather than an astral elephant. A bit too rounded but then that was down to Roddenberry's insistence on future Starfleet being Nice Guys.

Which brings me to...

NCC 1701-D mk2:
In "All Good Things" the Federation is in a Cold War with the Klingons, and so the Enterprise now proudly bears a third, middle nacelle (for "Warp thirteen" apparently) and a rather convenient gigantic phaser cannon mounted on the saucer's belly. Bit of a stretch of logic but awesome in its badassery.

Here's another badass design...

NCC 1701-E:
An amazing design, from the moment it was backlit by the Crab Nebula in "First Contact". Dropped the "neck" and made it look actually 100 years more advanced than Kirk's ship. Looked deadly battling the Scimitar in the green nebula in "Nemesis". Too bad about the film.

NCC 1701-J:
Yuck.

Goodshape

Nice summation of the various designs. I agree with most of that.

It's the D for me. Partly, I'm sure, because I grew up watching TNG and it just has that special place in my heart.

Like you said, it was a "city in space". The Enterprise D gave the impression (far more than the others) that this was more than just a mission, this was a city built for a lifetime of space exploration.


The original and refit / A are classics. Not my personal favourite but I do like them.

The B is by far my least favourite. Very disappointed to see little more than a cheap Excelsior knock-off touted as the "next Enterprise" in Generations.

The C was fine, imo. We didn't get to see much of it but it looked like it would have been a fine ship in it's day, and -- moreso than B -- you can clearly see the lineage in design.

Not a big fan of the E. It's sleek, I guess, but just isn't very memorable imo. It was sort of the obvious movie Enterprise... smaller, faster looking, more of an 'exciting' warship feel to it... the city in the sky was more interesting to me.


NX01 and J... meh, whatever.

nyarlothothep

NCC A and B are too 80s, both look they were designed with square pixels in mind. NX01 was rocking, I love that ship. NC1701D is my favourite. Its got character and is majestic.

Rawr

Damn!

So difficult to choose!
I vote for E, because it does look pretty damned good. It sort of looks like a mix of the older Enterprise mkII / A, but stretched out and modern looking. For me, the E deserves the name-sake.

After that, in order:

Enterprise MkII / A
Simply because they ripped the ship to pieces in the movies, and it looked amazing.

Enterprise D
Ugly as hell, but it did get better with time. This gets No. 3, simply because we've had her around for so long, and she went out in style at the end of Generations.

At the bottom of the barrel:

Enterprise C
Looked weird and kinda puny for a ship named Enterprise.

Enterprise B
It was just an Excelsior Class with bits added....and the damned thing isn't finished until Tuesday.

The Enterprise......Enterprise
Urrrrrg.....
Ugly as hell, with the weird rounded part on the dish section, and an odd flattened deflector on the front.

It feels like they were trying their best to do a TOS-era vessel at first, and then half way gave up and said: "Ahh...f*ck it, this is hard! Let's just make it Akira-Class and slap 'Enterprise' all over it. Those morons will accept anything with the name 'Enterprise'. *Anything*! (Evil Laugh)"

chamlis

Rawr wrote: »

Damn!

Enterprise B
It was just an Excelsior Class with bits added....and the damned thing isn't finished until Tuesday.

lolz

Yeah I always liked the C for some reason. I haven't read any of the novels, I understand an Ambassador class ship features heavily in some. It's purely from "Yesterday's Enterprise" I base my favour.

Scale is a big thing for me, especially how the different enterprises compare size wise to each other, as well as to other ships. For that reason, I really like the scale of the Enterprise A /Refit. It just seems like the right size to me, Enterprise D was too bloody big
Still class though.

Cookie_Monster

Goodshape wrote: »

Not a big fan of the E. It's sleek, I guess, but just isn't very memorable imo. It was sort of the obvious movie Enterprise... smaller, faster looking, more of an 'exciting' warship feel to it...

smaller... isin't it bigger, longer anyway, looks like it supposed to be bigger too.

Klingon Hamlet

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

smaller... isn't it bigger, longer anyway, looks like it supposed to be bigger too.

The D is taller, the E is longer.

The E's more weapon-like design is partly down to the universe it was created in. Starfleet was far more militaristic, with the Maquis nibbling away at the sharp-toothed Cardassians, the Klingons on the verge of revolution, and the Dominion making their impact by destroying a Galaxy class starship at their DS9 base. The Borg were a constant worry plus the Romulans were always waiting to find a crack in the Starfleet armour.

Note the slanted wings and pyramidal ramscoops on the E. Allegedly John Eaves, the artist who designed the ship, based it not only on a new era in the Star Trek movies and in the Enterprise Legacy, but also on that TNG ep where warp fields were creating rips in space. The new structure supposedly allowed it to breach the safety restriction of Warp 4/5 (?). Funny how that never got mentioned again.

I don't agree with whomever criticised the A for being 80s. I think just the camera angles were nowhere near as dynamic on those films as they are now.

On that point, I think we've gone the other way too far. Now with virtual cameras whizzing by at superfast speeds and ships slipping through space like eels, there's no weight to them. The A simply roared past the camera, blazing rainbow light behind it.

I think this is where JJ Abrams got his look of the new film from. A mix of Firefly/Serenity/BSG-style rough-edge camerawork, and old-school bursting-through-the-screen excitement. With some Star Wars spectacle thrown in there.

Oh dear. I went there. Beam me up fast!:cool:

Goodshape

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

smaller... isin't it bigger, longer anyway, looks like it supposed to be bigger too.

Tried to find a side by side comparison via google but couldn't find anything. I always had the impression it was a good bit smaller than the Galaxy class D.

The stretched out look of the E also got in the way of my suspension of disbelief (only a little bit, bit still..). Why make a space ship that's so sleek and streamlined and aero-dynamic? What does that achieve when your speeding through frictionless space?, except for that it looks 'cool' to the audience.

(as an aside, the same goes for the lighting on board the E... very dark and "exciting" all of a sudden. Decent light bulbs go out of fashion in the 2380's?)

nyarlothothep

As regards the dark lighting, I agree, it makes no sense. Firstly on Voy wouldn't everyone be suffering eyesight problems staring at illuminated consoles in relative darkness. Secondly would it not be depressing to live in such darkness with just the void of space for company, this would apply moreso to DS9. Also accidents with walking into coffee tables would be frequent. Although on real subs I hear they reduce lighting for combat scenarios.

In relation to landing on planets, I don't think any federation ship should have been able to do it, for example the shuttles are very polygonal, and wouldn't Voy have flipped around with the air rushing under the saucer section and streaming by the rest of the ship? The Borg got it right with their imposing cubes and spheres

Klingon Hamlet

nyarlothothep wrote: »

As regards the dark lighting, I agree, it makes no sense. Firstly on Voy wouldn't everyone be suffering eyesight problems staring at illuminated consoles in relative darkness. Secondly would it not be depressing to live in such darkness with just the void of space for company, this would apply moreso to DS9. Also accidents with walking into coffee tables would be frequent. Although on real subs I hear they reduce lighting for combat scenarios.

In relation to landing on planets, I don't think any federation ship should have been able to do it, for example the shuttles are very polygonal, and wouldn't Voy have flipped around with the air rushing under the saucer section and streaming by the rest of the ship? The Borg got it right with their imposing cubes and spheres

The dimmed Starfleet bridge lighting was introduced on the bridge of the Defiant, in DS9. It was also brought to the Enterprise D bridge for ST:Generations, to make it more cinematic, more compelling. I liked it. The primary coloured uniforms against a metallic blue and grey allette with the flashing digital screens---felt like today's tense cold war-ish existence brought forward a few centuries. Perhaps not Roddenberry;s dream, but gave it the similar naval feel of the Kirk movies.

Voyager's bridge looked too dull, too wide, and too generic to me. They could really have gone to town on that one. With it being Intrepid-class, shouldn't it have had cutting edge ideas like fully automatic guidance, etc...

As for ship design, I always liked to imagine the hull's shape affected the warp field, therefore its speed and accuracy in reaching a destination. Plus although they didn't do it half enough in the shows and films, these ships were designed to navigate through anomalies and nebulas and all the rest---their streamlined design could assist this. On an even more critical point, if the fleet was heading for war (hello Jem'Hadar) a long, sleek battleship with a narrow profile from front to tail made it a more diffiuclt target to strike.

Entering a planet's stmosphere surely could be made easy courtesy of wide shelding taking the majority of air-resistance? Maybe the TV bydgets didn't allow for it but I always thought shields did more than repel phaser/disrutor beams.

nyarlothothep

ah yes, the shields. That would make a lot of sense, you could change the shape of the field into something very aerodynamic

Goodshape

Klingon Hamlet wrote: »

As for ship design, I always liked to imagine the hull's shape affected the warp field, therefore its speed and accuracy in reaching a destination. Plus although they didn't do it half enough in the shows and films, these ships were designed to navigate through anomalies and nebulas and all the rest---their streamlined design could assist this. On an even more critical point, if the fleet was heading for war (hello Jem'Hadar) a long, sleek battleship with a narrow profile from front to tail made it a more diffiuclt target to strike.

Couldn't argue with any of that.

I guess I still think of it as an exploration ship but you're right, the E design does make sense in the battleground setting.

I still prefer the D though . A civilised ship for a more civilised time.

norrie rugger

D
C
D-X
E
A
Mk1
NX
B
J

I love D, as it is basically scientists with armaments. A flying city/laboratory designed to explore and contact. Woe be the fool who attacks though

C looked like a tough little ship

D-x Phaser cannon FTW

E - Looks great but too much of a fighting ship

A- Great but dated

Mk1 - as above

NX - Akira

B - Knock off excelsior

J - WTF??

norrie rugger

Klingon Hamlet wrote: »

On an even more critical point, if the fleet was heading for war (hello Jem'Hadar) a long, sleek battleship with a narrow profile from front to tail made it a more diffiuclt target to strike.

What about an attack along the Z axis?

Cookie_Monster

norrie rugger wrote: »

What about an attack along the Z axis?

Funnily enough that axis seems not to exist really in the trek universe;)

Klingon Hamlet

norrie rugger wrote: »

What about an attack along the Z axis?

I was talking about head-on attacks. You'll find she's pretty vulnerable along the z axis. Take the battle in Nemesis. Picard reeled out some awesome multi-dimensional maneuvers (and Riker called out my favourite: "Defensive pattern Kirk-Epsilon." Shiny!) but the E took some heavy damage, especially when one of the Romulan scouts was shredded, and a fragment hit the side and a nacelle. Double-whammy baby.

(Let's all remember the design is for the sake of awesome, which far outweighs logic, and for good reason:p).

Klingon Hamlet

Cookie_Monster wrote: »

Funnily enough that axis seems not to exist really in the trek universe;)

:pac:
Actually (God I'm anal) Spock points out Khan's 2 domensional thinking in STII. That's what causes the deadly-looking scenes with the two ships crisscrossing each other's paths at different levels. Ironically, every other film ignored this newfound dogfight-in-slow-motion-type action and went for face-to-face "FIRE TORPEDOES" obviousness.

Except Nemesis. Which was dull. Duuuuullllll.

Rawr

Found this on YouTube. I feel that it sums them up nicely

helimachoptor

NX01:
Really like it I have to say

NCC 1701 mk1:

Like this
NCC 1701 mk2 / 1701-A:
Like this

NCC 1701-B:

Big Fan
NCC 1701-C:
Horrible stumpy ship

NCC 1701-D:
Grew up watching the big D so gotta give it a thumbs up!

NCC 1701-D mk2:
Very Kickass almost like the canon thing voyager was gonna get apart from 7 of 9 got gang probed :eek:


NCC 1701-E:
Love it

NCC 1701-J:

Really like it but seems a bit breakable

Magic Eight Ball

Like many others, D with always have a special place with me, but I gotta go with E. Remember seeing it in the cinema for the first time.. savage!!:D

MetalDawg

I know I voted for the A, but the E is great too. I'd love to see it in another TNG film but thats unlikely I know.

Niska

Voted for the "C" - it's got a classic aesthetic in comparison to the "D" which I prefer- circular deflector and saucer rather than ovally, combined with the right-angled nacelles. Slightly disappointed there was no Ambassador-class CGI model used in DS9.

From certain angles the "D" is gorgeous - from others it looks like a stuffed turkey...

For the original Constitution-class, and the refits, love the dynamics and prefer the refit - rectangular nacelles, updated Sky Dish in front and the addition of the "photon-box" to the neck. though the CGI classic model, Defiant, seen in the mirror-universe Enterprise two parter is rather pwettty.

Never a fan of the Excelsior class - always looked like there was no neck and the saucer-section was just floating there.

The "E" looked silly- stretched for a sporty look. Surprised they didn't paint flames on the nacelles...

Never got a good look at the "J".

As for the "NX"... Quite like it. No secondary hull really, just the saucer and nacelles. Quite similar to the Akira. Some of the beauty passes are quite spectacular.

For those who need a refresh:

NX - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Enterprise_(NX-01)
NCC-1701 - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701)
NCC-1701-A - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-A)
NCC-1701-B - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-B)
NCC-1701-C - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-C)
NCC-1701-D - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-D)
NCC-1701-E - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-E)
NCC-1701-J - http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/USS_Enterprise_(NCC-1701-J)

Mal-Adjusted

For me, the NX-01 is the Enterprise. beautiful ship.

after that, it's a tie with the E and the A, brilliant looking.

the B comes next, class design, just the right balence between curvature & angles.

then the constitution, unchanged, tore the mirror universe to shreads!

then comes the C, it looked cool, but we really saw too little of it.

Hated D. end.


come on, we all know the Voyager is the best looking of all ships anyway:D

Niska

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

come on, we all know the Voyager is the best looking of all ships anyway:D

The flying teaspoon? I think not.

norrie rugger

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

come on, we all know the Voyager is the best looking of all ships anyway:D

Carlsberg don't do wrong opinions but if they did.....


The above quote nullifies any opinion you have on the matter

Mal-Adjusted

norrie rugger wrote: »

Carlsberg don't do wrong opinions but if they did.....


The above quote nullifies any opinion you have on the matter

phew! good thing your opinion doesn't count for jack, (see, I can be a dick too;). please try to be civil)

but seriously it looks brilliant, Hate the show, not the ship!:D

norrie rugger

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

phew! good thing your opinion doesn't count for jack, (see, I can be a dick too;). please try to be civil)

but seriously it looks brilliant, Hate the show, not the ship!:D

Ah come on, a "carlsberg don't" comment is always tounge in cheek.

Seriously ugly ship IMO. Squashed, front heavy,stretched looking, sterile with gammy nacelles

Mal-Adjusted

norrie rugger wrote: »

Ah come on, a "carlsberg don't" comment is always tounge in cheek.

Seriously ugly ship IMO. Squashed, front heavy,stretched looking, sterile with gammy nacelles

i guess it all comes down to personal taste in the end:D

i.e. I LOVE Enterprise, but thing TNG is meh, and that the galaxy class is an ungainley blue elephant (try landing THAT on a planet!:o)

to each his own, i suppose:)

norrie rugger

Mal-Adjusted wrote: »

i guess it all comes down to personal taste in the end:D

i.e. I LOVE Enterprise, but thing TNG is meh, and that the galaxy class is an ungainley blue elephant (try landing THAT on a planet!:o)

to each his own, i suppose:)

Admittedly TNG is not aging well. But neither did voyager.

DS9 is aging well as it is story arc driven, I still enjoy Enterprise for season 3&4 (really hate it for miscasting, wasted potential and trying to "sex up" Trek, with bio contaminant gel)

Mal-Adjusted

norrie rugger wrote: »

Admittedly TNG is not aging well. But neither did voyager.

DS9 is aging well as it is story arc driven, I still enjoy Enterprise for season 3&4 (really hate it for miscasting, wasted potential and trying to "sex up" Trek, with bio contaminant gel)

:pac: yea, those forst two seasons had their fair share of muck. I'm actually surprised how well TOS is aging...sorry for going (slightly) OT

DenMan

Like some of the other posters I grew up watching The Next Generation so the D will always have a special place in my heart. I was so annoyed when she was destroyed in Generations. The E is so sleek and really compliments the big screen so well (hence the removal of the D). I liked the look of the C, felt it was a great combination of Excelsior and Galaxy class starships, it is right in the middle after all. Remember the shot of both an Ambassabor class ship and Nebula class ship moving away and turning to face the Borg at Wolf 359 in DS9's pilot, awesome shot. Excelsior class is a legend imo.

Does anybody remember the plated look the Enterprise D's hull got in the later seasons of TNG, awesome and very beautiful.

The E looks awesome in Nemesis.