The new Star Trek movie is loaded with plot devices. And those plot devices have holes in them so big you could drive V'ger through them and not dent the clouds
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And I'll agree whole-heartedly to your entire list of pros and cons but for one...
The updated exteriour of the Enterprise doesn't set well with me. And it's not an 'in general' kind of thing, either. I can be very very specific: I have a passionate dislike of the warp nacelles. Call me old fashioned, but they make the Great Lady look uncomfortably pregnant. :(
But in all other things I can chime in enthusiastically.
The nacelles seem like a compromised design both in-universe and for design considerations. The TOS look just wasn't going to fly on any level and the rightly stuck pretty damn close to the movie era exterior, which is just beautiful on so many levels, but there are fans that never would have let them hear the end of it if they'd gone with the sleek and streamlined movie-era drive system more than a decade before it was developed. The "new" nacelles look ugly, pregnant, bloated... a primitive, brute-force means of overcoming Einstein's universal speed limit.
On the visual design note, I was only really bothered by the notion of single-nacelled ships... not just because it breaks Rodenberry's 2-or-more rule, but, it's just a bad idea, if you're building ships for deep-space exploration, to not build any redundancy in your drive system.
Of course, it's also not exactly brilliant to stick way out on delicate stalks where they're vulnerable to everything from enemy fire to a ship recklessly piloted by a drunk Kelsey Grammar.
It's been quite a long time since I read any of the semi-official starship stuff that was made about Trek ships in general. Starfleet used the remote nacelle system because it allowed for rapid jettison of a highly dangerous system in case of serious malfunction. Ships the size of the Enterprise's Constitution class usually had two nacelles but there were examples of other, smaller, ships that possessed only one. And even some that had three. The overall tendency, though, is matched pairs.
Ellie, yeah, the nacelles are the clunkiest design since the Enterprise B from 'Generations.' To me, that was about the worst Enterprise design; looked like they'd cross-bred her with 50's era automobiles. But Scotty's on her now, so perhaps NCC 1701 will be even spiffer for the next viewing.
All things considered, though, I just had too much fun to want to quibble over the little sticky bits like that.
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The updated exteriour of the Enterprise doesn't set well with me. And it's not an 'in general' kind of thing, either. I can be very very specific: I have a passionate dislike of the warp nacelles. Call me old fashioned, but they make the Great Lady look uncomfortably pregnant. :(
But in all other things I can chime in enthusiastically.
Reply
On the visual design note, I was only really bothered by the notion of single-nacelled ships... not just because it breaks Rodenberry's 2-or-more rule, but, it's just a bad idea, if you're building ships for deep-space exploration, to not build any redundancy in your drive system.
Of course, it's also not exactly brilliant to stick way out on delicate stalks where they're vulnerable to everything from enemy fire to a ship recklessly piloted by a drunk Kelsey Grammar.
Reply
Ellie, yeah, the nacelles are the clunkiest design since the Enterprise B from 'Generations.' To me, that was about the worst Enterprise design; looked like they'd cross-bred her with 50's era automobiles. But Scotty's on her now, so perhaps NCC 1701 will be even spiffer for the next viewing.
All things considered, though, I just had too much fun to want to quibble over the little sticky bits like that.
Reply
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