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Leaving aside your opinions of the show, in general terms (including aesthetic, functionality, technical and so forth) do you like the design of Star Trek Enterprise's titular ship?

Zor

It kind of grew on me, but I can't get over its Akira inspiration.

Except for fairly minor quibbles I was fine with it; I wish they'd had lasers and fusion-tipped missiles for weapons instead of phase canons and photonic torpedoes. The "polarize the hull plating" and even the use of "hull plating offline" was fine for me, with the latter being understood to mean "hull plating polarization offline". Aesthetically, it didn't delight me, but I didn't dislike it, either.

It would've been better if there were a few more obvious links between the space shuttle, the Phoenix and the NX-01, such as colouring or Starfleet markings (like, you know, they have on the NCC-1701). A few more 'practical' bits to the design would've been nice too, like obvious gunports on the main model.

Imperator-zor wrote:
Leaving aside your opinions of the show, in general terms (including aesthetic, functionality, technical and so forth) do you like the design of Star Trek Enterprise's titular ship?

I feel like the NX-01 is a great 'predecessor' to later Starfleet vessels, like the standard 'flying spoon' that would become the Constitution, Excelsior, Ambassador, etc., the Miranda, and various others. It's just primitive enough to be right for the timeline, but just advanced enough to be cool by 2000-2004 standards.

I feel like the NX-01 was the strongest part of Enterprise in a few ways, really. Whatever they screwed up with the drama, they did not mess up with the starship.

Imperator-zor wrote:
Leaving aside your opinions of the show, in general terms (including aesthetic, functionality, technical and so forth) do you like the design of Star Trek Enterprise's titular ship?

Zor

I found the design and even the tech that was being used on the ship seemed advance for the 2000s but also not as advanced for the TOS era. Plus, I kind of see how the evolution of how the tech would develop over the decades to get to where Kirk was as well.

I remember wishing they'd made it the ring-ship design instead, and given the Vulcan ships the saucers. Mix things up a bit; Earth doesn't have to have invented everything after all.

The NX-01 was fine on its surface, it looked good on TV. It just would have been better for continuity to use the XCV-330 design. Failing that, something with a more space-filling shape closer to the Daedalus class than more modern starships.

I thought that the NX-01 looks fine. We do know that Humans were in space before ENT happened (thanks to, Mayweather's, "hey, I have been in space before" lines) and that the NX-01 was supposed to be top of the line. So, I bought the idea that it could look like that and I am still fine with the design as well.

It grew on me over time, though I think it was something the books added which really made me love the design. Strangely, what the Enterprise books added was a new design. The Columbia class, which shows the connection between the NX class and the swan shaped ones we would come to know and love.





Adding the secondary hull in that manner suddenly made the steps to get to the refit Constitution class much more likely.