#ncc-1701-d

[haaaaaaaaaaaave-you-met-ted]

Star Trek: The Next Generation - USS Enterprise-D Main Engineering Concept Art by Andrew Probert

[chernobog13]

Relative sizes of the Constitution-class refit and Galaxy-class versions of the USS Enterprise.

[alphamecha-mkii]

USS Enterprise-D at Warp by Mallacore

[reagan-the-saunders]

Many hours of work, caffeine, and jamming out to my playlist later, I have spawned an Enterprise D to feed my Star Trek obsession. 🖖

Prints available soon in my shop!!

[tomoleary]

Bob Eggleton Star Trek: The Next Generation, The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D, Amazing Stories #593 cover (Summer 1998) Source

[nocternalrandomness]

"Next Generation"

[coolcowboyjoethings]

Lights On

USS Enterprise NCC-1701-D computers turn on and reactivates.

Star Trek: Picard - Episode 9 Vox

[pundus]

Spaceshiptember 2023, Day 13: Curves - "The Neutral Zone"

Half a century after the Tomed Incident, a series of outposts of both sides of the Romulan Neutral Zone were attacked. With hostilities defused at a standoff between Tebok and Picard, this would mark a return of the Star Empire onto the galactic map.

[scarletquake-n7]

Which Ship do you prefer?

[burningearthvfx]

Just a little something I made for fun. Happy 58th birthday, Star Trek, and thank you for continuing to inspire me.

[khmara-blog]

[stra-tek]

more_liminal_tng.jpg

From portalrealm

[chernobog13]

A size comparison of some Federation starships of note.

[alphamecha-mkii]

USS Enterprise-D by Mallacore

[2stepadmiral]

So every year or two, I go through a period of reconnecting with my high school Trekkie interests, rewatching some Star Trek clips, episodes, and movies, and during this particular period, I have to voice my main criticism of the reboot films: namely, the treatment of the Enterprise.

To be clear, I think the reboot Enterprise had a nice redesign. She looked very clean and futuristic while capturing the original design in broad strokes. The lens glare is certainly annoying, and it doesn’t have the same heart and retro feel as the original, but I feel they generally did a fairly decent job with the design. I’m talking about how she is treated throughout the films, namely, how she’s treated effectively like just another ship.

In the original series, the Enterprise has a certain heart coming across almost like a character in of herself. You get a clear feel from the characters that they consider the enterprise almost to be home, and Kirk and Scotty in particular see her almost like an actual woman, one who they cherish and will protect at all costs. This sentiment is magnified in the first three movies, particularly in the motion picture and in the search for Spock. When Kirk first sees the refit Enterprise, you can see how much he loves the ship, and when the Enterprise is plunging to her final resting place, the mourning on all of their faces, especially Kirk, makes this moment particularly powerful and truly hammer home that the Enterprise was a character in and of herself. The original Enterprise felt like a character fans had grown up with, and her destruction felt almost like the loss of an old friend. And at the end of the voyage home, when the crew has that last-minute surprise reveal of the Enterprise-A, the triumph and homecoming feeling is so clear that even the audience shares the sentiment, almost as if the character has been reborn.

The enterprise in the reboots was never portrayed this way. She was treated like just a ship, one that might’ve been nicer and fancier and more advanced than the others, but not really all that special beyond that. In the first movie, that’s acceptable, as the focus is on bringing together the crew and getting them where they need to be for the start of their journeys. The second one focuses more on the captaincy, and what it means to really earn that seat, so it’s excusable that this one focused more on Kirk and how seriously he took his responsibilities, though they could’ve put more emphasis on the ship as part of that arc. Yes, the ship almost crashing was an emotional scene, but that had everything to do with the characters aboard and nothing to do with the ship beyond it being the place where the characters were and it’s damage being the reason that they were about to die.

And then in the third one, they just blow up the ship in the first 30 minutes and try to portray it with the same sentimental weight as the destruction of the Enterprise in the search for Spock. Which would’ve been fine, if it weren’t for the fact that they spent the last two movies treating the enterprise like just a thing, just another tool in the characters belt. She had no heart, no soul, no feeling that she was a home, or that she was the thing that brought the crew together, and kept them together, the thing that made them a family. She was basically just a big car, there to get them from point A to point B and occasionally shoot at some bad guys, and then, we’re supposed to feel devastated when she goes down for the final time.

The reveal of a reboot version of the Enterprise A was a nice surprise, but it lacked the emotional payoff of the original version, largely because of how ordinary the first Enterprise had been in this timeline. You can’t really celebrate the revival of a lost character when the character was never really there to begin with. They might as well have put the crew on an entirely new ship, like maybe a rebooted version of the Excelsior, and it would’ve had the same basic impact.

My point is that classic trek, as well as the next generation and DS9, did an excellent job of portraying the dynamic between captain and ship to the point where the ship felt almost like a real character. And that worked really well. It made the crash of the Enterprise D in generations a shocking scene, and it made her surprise return in season 3 of Picard a heartfelt and deeply nostalgic scene (Even if I wanted the Enterprise E, sorry but she’s my favorite). It made the loss of the Defiant in season seven of DS9 a powerful and emotional moment. I haven’t watched a lot of Voyager, so I can’t comment on that, but I can say with decent confidence that they couldn’t have done worse than they did in the reboots.

[startrekprodigyfan]

Was listening to a podcast about Profigy and heard the hosts praising Voyager-A’s design. Which, yes, I agree. Very nice redesign of Voyager.

But then they started BADMOUTHING the Enterprise-D! Complaining that it’s FAT and that the Sovereign Class “fixed” it’s design and…

I just can’t…

Then I discovered that apparently this is a widely held belief amongst a lot of Star Trek fans? Really?? I will not have it! You guys hold your TONGUES! We do not fat shame my favorite starship around here! The Galaxy Class starship is PEAK Star Trek absurdity! I love my fat ship! Look at her! You apologize to her right now! She’s BEAUTIFUL!