Yeah! Isn’t it awesome?
It’s…colorful, sure…
It’s a trap!
Enterprise sucks big fat donkey dicks. Condemned prisoners shouldn’t be made to watch that show.
But just imagine McQuarrie Enterprise vs McQuarrie Darth Vader! Who would McQuarrie-win?
I loved the idea of the Enterprise-B when it was just an Excelsior with a different name. And then Generations had to give it a couple of tumors, and hand the keys to Cameron… Dammit.
My favorite Planet Express ship is the Dark Star.
I think my favorite Dark Star is the Winnebago from Spaceballs.
My favorite Winnebago is the Satellite of Love.
I voted for the Enterprise refit from the first 6 movies; the original would be right behind at #2.
But this is my actual favorite Trek starship:
My favorite dead horse is a dead raccoon.
My favorite beating a dead horse is the Enterprise.
I actually did love the Reliant style ship, but this is my fave:
I so want one. Badly.
The Enterprise E is a beautiful ship, to be sure, all sleek and streamlined, but, aside from the Falcon, the Enterprise D was the first spaceship I really loved.
My favorite Sovereign is a reaper. OK, I’m done, I promise.
The Sovereign/Enterprise E just looks too much like it was designed to look cool to me… “Let’s make one that looks like it’s moving fast even when standing still!”
And yes, the Reliant is a beauty.
I too really like the Defiant, but mostly because I actually got to sit on the bridge before it was even shown on TV. (When I did an article about DS9 for OMNI.)
As for Serenity, it’s almost a cool looking ship, except the horsehead part.
Totes jelly about the Defiant bridge dude. Tell us more!!
On Serenity, as far as I know, they actually call it the Goose Neck. :)
The initial design of the Ent-E had the nacelle beams swept forward. It wasn’t until someone noticed that it looked like a Thanksgiving Day turkey that the nacelles were swept back.
I meant to vote for the reboot Enterprise, but misread the poll options, thinking the last one read NCC-Shit, Bonerz. So I voted for Enterprise-C instead. It has a similar sort of barrel-chested main deflector array. This was, again, unintentional, just like Tasha Yar surviving.
I love those super jet-age nacelles and fat saucer in the reboot-1701, as if it were designed in the 1950s instead of the '60s. When you strip mine Iowa to build a starship instead of slapping it together in a Martian orbit, you get better design.
Back around 1993 I worked on an article for OMNI about DS9 and got to visit the sets and talk to a bunch of folks involved with the show. (Also got to do a phone interview with Trek tech guy Andre Bormanis, which could have gone on forever…)
Highlights and stuff I can remember after 18 years:
[ul]
[li]The Defiant bridge was tiny. When I visited it they had all the sections in place (various sides could be removed for camera placement) and you really felt like you were on a small submarine. Other than an outline transparency on one of the bridge readouts, I didn’t get to see what the actual ship looked like until it premiered on TV.
[/li][li]The construction of the sets would never hold up for today’s HD shooting. Many “metal” parts were painted wood, with very visible woodgrain. Looked great on NTSC video, but pretty cheesy in person. The Vegas version of Quark’s Bar was much more detailed than the one used on the show.
[/li][li]I got to walk through the set that was used for every cave scene on every TNG-and-later series. It could be shot from different angles to look like you were in a different part of the cave
[/li][li]Avery Brooks is apparently a very serious guy. Didn’t talk to him as he was super-busy, as he was directing the episode that was being filmed that day.
[/li][li]Coming around a corner to look at sickbay, I literally ran into Terry Farrell as she was walking out with Alexander Siddig. She is very tall, and was wearing heeled boots, which caused a height differential that made the encounter even more awkward. She laughed it off, though, and was super-nice.
[/li][li]The DS9 set was HUGE. It was all built with the actual rooms in their actual places on the soundstage. We watched them shooting a fight scene outside of Quark’s bar from up on one of the walkways on the second story of the Promenade.
[/li][li]I got to meet Mike Okuda; also a super-nice guy. He showed me the various transparencies they used for control panels, etc.
[/li][/ul]