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On 4/26/2018 at 5:45 PM, azrael said:

 

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Red shirts????? Thought they wanted to stick to "The Cage"-colors of Gold, Bronze, Silver/Blue.

 

Well, the UFP Starfleet does change its uniform A LOT.  The maroon uniforms from TOS movies 2-6 were the longest-lived ones to date, lasting about eighty years from ~2270-2350.

 

16 minutes ago, tekering said:

Okay, Discovery is clearly a reboot of its own, so we can set aside all those nagging continuity issues.  This is neither the "Prime" universe, nor the Kelvin timeline; this is a new and different Trek universe again, where Sarek has an adopted daughter, Spock has a human sister, and Klingons are hairless.  So be it.

If they'd take that view, it'd help matters immensely.  But they continue to insist that Discovery is a prime universe series, and the end of season one and lead-in for season two seem intended to keep pushing that agenda.

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I prefer to think of Discovery as a visual reboot. As in all events are the same but ANYTHING we SEE onscreen, whether it is TOS, Movies, or any other series, is just a visual interpretation of in universe events, from the time it was produced. Makes things much easier to take. 

Could the production tried to make things look more like TOS....sure. But people that want everything to look just like it did in TOS (made in the 1960’s) is just silly IMO. 

Chris

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46 minutes ago, Dobber said:

Could the production tried to make things look more like TOS....sure. But people that want everything to look just like it did in TOS (made in the 1960’s) is just silly IMO. 

It'd probably be less of an issue if four of the five previous Star Trek series1 hadn't already done that very thing in stories involving the holodeck or time travel. 

(See TAS in general, TNG: "Relics", DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations", ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly" parts 1 and 2)

 

Spoiler

1. Five of six previous series if you count the officially-blessed Star Trek relaunch novel metaseries. 

The Enterprise-era portions make a bit of a meal out of both lampshading how primitive the TOS design aesthetic looks, and devoting a significant amount of plot to explaining the reason 23rd century technology ended up looking like that.  Those stories credit the choice to remove reconfigurable multifunction consoles in favor of hardwired controls (and the addition of auto-destruct) to the Earth-Romulan War, in which the Romulans captured and remotely operated a number of Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite ships (and a few Earth ships) by using a trojan introduced via onboard comms systems to take over whole shipboard networks.

 

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3 hours ago, Seto Kaiba said:

It'd probably be less of an issue if four of the five previous Star Trek series1 hadn't already done that very thing in stories involving the holodeck or time travel. 

(See TAS in general, TNG: "Relics", DS9: "Trials and Tribble-ations", ENT: "In a Mirror, Darkly" parts 1 and 2)

 

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1. Five of six previous series if you count the officially-blessed Star Trek relaunch novel metaseries. 

The Enterprise-era portions make a bit of a meal out of both lampshading how primitive the TOS design aesthetic looks, and devoting a significant amount of plot to explaining the reason 23rd century technology ended up looking like that.  Those stories credit the choice to remove reconfigurable multifunction consoles in favor of hardwired controls (and the addition of auto-destruct) to the Earth-Romulan War, in which the Romulans captured and remotely operated a number of Vulcan, Andorian, Tellarite ships (and a few Earth ships) by using a trojan introduced via onboard comms systems to take over whole shipboard networks.

 

So, sort of like the corded phones on the Battlestar Galactica.

I really didn't have an interest in watching this show, but dang, that Enterprise looks pretty. 

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  • 1 month later...

A good bit of news (rumor news?) that a bunch of new Star Trek TV is on the way.  The only solid one seems to be that the new Discovery director has a deal to expand the TV options.  The more out there one was Patrick Stewart may be back as Captain Picard.

 

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That’s out there, but not completely impossible. I just wonder who could write Picard without screwing him up these days, or honestly who could write Picard well enough to get Stewart’s attention in the first place. 

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18 hours ago, Dynaman said:

A good bit of news (rumor news?) that a bunch of new Star Trek TV is on the way.  The only solid one seems to be that the new Discovery director has a deal to expand the TV options.

Given what Variety's supposed "anonymous sources" said, it's more like CBS is revisiting the same tired list of bad ideas, parts of which have been doing the rounds since at least the late 90's:

  • The multiply-rejected fan un-favorite Star Trek: Starfleet Academy proposal - which started back in 1991 as one of several proposals for what eventually became Star Trek VI under a working title Star Trek: the First Adventure (meant to be a Kirk-Spock-McCoy prequel) and ultimately cannibalized into the first quarter hour or so of Jar-Jar Abrams' Star Trek.  (The other attempts to do Starfleet Academy-centric series were unsuccessful as well, the best lasting only 19 issues at Marvel comics before being canceled.)
  • CBS's own self-rejected proposal for a grimdark Star Trek cartoon - initially developed under the working title Star Trek: Final Frontier in 2006, and set in the 26th century after someone rendered vast swaths of the galaxy impassible with omega particle weapons during a major war between the Federation and Romulan Empire, leading to the Federation splitting in two, the Romulans conquering the Klingons, the destruction of Andoria, and the Vulcans quitting the Federation to reunify with the Romulans.  The idea was so terrible that CBS pulled the plug after paying for just five story treatments and a few pieces of concept art.
  • The Eugenics Wars miniseries proposal - another idea that just won't die, despite constantly getting rejected for the fairly basic reason that it's not really Star Trek anymore if there's no space travel (no "star trekking"), it's set entirely on Earth, and everybody is awful.  Having occurred between 1992 and 1996 doesn't help matters, nor does Voyager having gone back to 1996 and shown things really weren't as bad as Kirk and co. made out.
  • "TNG 2.0" - really self-explanatory.  The network has wanted to make the TNG lightning strike twice since TNG went off the air, hence all the executive meddling in Voyager that changed its format from a gritty slog back to the Alpha quadrant (ala DS9's last three seasons) to a rather inexplicably fluffy episodic high adventure series.

The skeptic in me is not at all inclined to believe that CBS is seriously pursuing any of these series concepts from the Isle of Misfit Story Treatments.  I think this is just some noise intended to draw attention away from Star Trek: Discovery's ongoing woes.  Between the fan backlash against just about every part of the series (made worse by Jason Isaacs taunting fans by saying the new Star Trek didn't need them and that they shouldn't watch), the reviewers tearing the latter half of the first season several new orifices of indeterminate purpose, Netflix allegedly being unhappy about their return-on-investment for Season One, a budget crunch caused by overspending on Season Two's premiere, and the recent departures of three of Star Trek: Discovery's executive producer-showrunners under allegations that the working relationship between the production and writing staffs had reportedly deteriorated to the point of shouting matches, namecalling, and even overt threats, leaving Kurzman and Fuller to run the show alone, things are pretty frigging awful for the series.

That Discovery is a deeply troubled production is beyond dispute... and lately, it seems like it may well be on course for a premature ending as the shortest Star Trek live action series.  This stuff about other proposed series is, I think, an attempt to say "Nothing to see here folks, move along" when it comes to Discovery's issues.

 

Quote

The more out there one was Patrick Stewart may be back as Captain Picard.

Discovery boomeranged from "we don't need the fans" to "Baby I'm sorry, please come back" so fast it was actually pretty funny... the appearance of the classic Enterprise was a pretty blatant attempt to bring back some of the fans who'd stopped watching (or in some cases never started), and this feels like another one.  Maybe a time travel cameo, or something like Brent Spiner's role in Star Trek: Enterprise playing an identical ancestor.1

(Maybe that's their Out at the end of Season 2... Star Trek: Discovery is all just a holoprogram that Picard was running, just like Enterprise's final episode was a holoprogram of Riker's.)

 

4 hours ago, Sildani said:

That’s out there, but not completely impossible. I just wonder who could write Picard without screwing him up these days, or honestly who could write Picard well enough to get Stewart’s attention in the first place. 

Certainly not Goldsman, Halberts, or Berg... they've all left CBS.

 

 

1. Background material created for Star Trek: Generations indicates one of Captain Jean-Luc Picard's ancestors, Georges E. Picard, was a senior officer in the United Earth Space Probe Agency during the Earth-Romulan War and an aide to the first Federation President... maybe one of his kids, I guess.

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I think Patrick Stewart is bit too old to be running around the galaxy.   He's nearing 80 and the character most likely retired to take care of the family vineyard.   Does he become the new Boothby?

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1 hour ago, Roy Focker said:

I think Patrick Stewart is bit too old to be running around the galaxy.   He's nearing 80 and the character most likely retired to take care of the family vineyard.   Does he become the new Boothby?

Might be just a cameo or a 15 to 30-second scene.

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27 minutes ago, Dynaman said:

Maybe that Worf spinoff show Mr. Dorn was hoping for has a chance now.  That is an interesting premise at least.

That'd be more interesting than what the rumors are about... as long as they stay away from the same shenanigans the Relaunch got into.  Worf's girlfriend getting killed is almost as common as "O'Brien must suffer" plots.

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Yeah, Worf’s SOs do tend to live short lives around him. Still, it’d be really, really nifty to see a series pretty much based around the Klingon Empire... we’d get to see just how a warrior-centric society manages to function on an interstellar scale. How do Klingons become scientists, cooks, diplomats and such if warrior is the highest calling? It’d be fascinating. 

To coin a phrase. 

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26 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Yeah, Worf’s SOs do tend to live short lives around him.

He's what, 0 for 4 now... or is it 5?

K'Ehleyr was stabbed and left for dead by Duras, Jadzia Dax was magicked to death by Pah-wraith!Dukat, Jasminder Choudhury was captured by the Breen and later painfully vaporized to motivate LaForge and Dr. Soong, the Vulcan councilor who'd replaced Troi was getting close to him before she helped lead a mutiny on the Enterprise-E and was killed by blast effects from the Borg's orbital bombardment of Vulcan while on leave there... and I could swear I'm missing one...

 

26 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Still, it’d be really, really nifty to see a series pretty much based around the Klingon Empire... we’d get to see just how a warrior-centric society manages to function on an interstellar scale. How do Klingons become scientists, cooks, diplomats and such if warrior is the highest calling? It’d be fascinating. 

To coin a phrase. 

They touched on that briefly in TNG and ENT, and more in-depth in the Relaunch novels.

Klingon society has a caste system, apparently built on the expectation that a son would follow in his father's career.  Dr. Antak in season four of Enterprise noted to Phlox that he was from a warrior caste house and that his father disowned him for defying the family tradition to become a healer instead.  When Archer is arrested and tried in a Klingon court, his lawyer indicates to him that the warrior caste's rise to dominance in Klingon society was a relatively recent development that'd occurred during his lifetime.

With the warrior caste largely running the show, the Klingon Empire's great and good are the Great Houses and nobility, who are apparently obligated to pursue military service in defense of the Empire.  Pretty much every Klingon we've seen has belonged to either the head family of a Great House (e.g. Worf, Kurn, Martok, Gowron, Duras, Kmpec) or a noble family (e.g. Kor, Kang, Koloth).

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3 hours ago, Sildani said:

That makes sense. Thanks!

There are a couple really good Klingon-centric story arcs in the relaunch novels continuity that touch on Klingon culture and the impact various galactic events had on it.

J.G. Hertzler did a really good duology called The Left Hand of Destiny about a(nother) civil war in the Klingon Empire that started shortly after the Dominion War's end when the newly-installed Chancellor Martok started to address the rampant corruption that'd set in when less-than-honorable career politicians like Ja'rod, Duras, Kmpec, and Gowron took over most of the high council using underhanded methods like assassination and subterfuge.  It's a very Klingon take on the Arthurian mythos, with Martok in the role of King Arthur, Kahless (II) as Merlin, Worf as Lancelot, Ezri as the Lady of the Lake, etc.  It sets off a sort of Klingon Reformation that persists through the rest of the relaunch novels.

There's also a really good follow-up to the Klingon Augments duology in the Enterprise relaunch that deals with the sociopolitical fallout of the Augment virus outbreak that created the TOS Klingons as a B-plot in Rise of the Federation.  It revolves around how the High Council's efforts to exterminate or disenfranchise the virus's victims who had lost honor because of their deformity and become outcasts in Klingon society.  (In so doing, it also explains why the TOS Klingons ended up being the only ones which the Federation had contact with in the TOS era... the Empire put them out on the border and the frontier where they wouldn't have to look at them on a daily basis.)

There's also a three-parter I haven't read yet about Kruge's relatives, who held his house together after his death without a heir on the Genesis Planet in Star Trek III seeking revenge on the Federation.

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12 hours ago, Mommar said:

This sounds awesome.

It really is.

There are a lot of Star Trek novels that have the usual Expanded Universe problem of feeling a lot like fan fiction.  The Left Hand of Destiny isn't one of them.  It really should've been a movie or at least a miniseries.  The Qo'nos it depicts is a lot more varied than anything in the shows, from the less glamorous regions outside the capital like Martok's old digs in the Ketha lowlands, to a bigger cross-section of the Empire's population including the farmers and the poor right on up the social hierarchy to noble houses and would-be emperors.  You really get a good sense for Martok as the Klingon Empire's folk hero, like what Gowron and co. alluded to in DS9, and for the Klingons as a diverse people instead of a pack of foamy-mouthed blood knights like they so often were on TV.

T'Kuvma from Star Trek: Discovery reads a lot like a less compelling version of The Left Hand of Destiny's antagonist Morjod, who manages a pretty amzing level of magnificent bastardy on his own, never mind what his mother achieves by manipulating him.

 

1 hour ago, Sildani said:

It does. Didn’t know Martok himself could write! ;)

The original proposal for a Klingon Arthurian legend built around Chancellor Martok came from the Pocket Books editor (Marco Palmieri) working their Star Trek license, and he was the one who was able to get J.G. Hertzler involved in writing them.  He put in over two years on them and all of the actual story is his work, though Pocket Books brought in another writer (Jeffrey Lang) to do some cleanup on Hertzler's manuscript before it went to publication.

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On 5/11/2018 at 6:57 AM, tekering said:

Way to put 'em in their place, guy!  B))

I felt precisely the same -- the production design, the technology, and the Klingon redesign closely mimic the reboot trilogy -- until this beautiful lady showed up:

Dicoverprise.thumb.jpg.5b90fca58a57431c37556eb765aff3e7.jpg

Okay, Discovery is clearly a reboot of its own, so we can set aside all those nagging continuity issues.  This is neither the "Prime" universe, nor the Kelvin timeline; this is a new and different Trek universe again, where Sarek has an adopted daughter, Spock has a human sister, and Klingons are hairless.  So be it.

Oh, and way to put JJ in his place, guys.  :p

I've mainly ignored ST Discovery and this thread until those two pics, what's going on there?  I think I like what I see!

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1 hour ago, peter said:

I've mainly ignored ST Discovery and this thread until those two pics, what's going on there?  I think I like what I see!

We don't know yet... the USS Enterprise shows up in the last couple seconds of the Star Trek: Discovery season finale.

Whatever's going on is sure to be a bombastic VFX extravaganza, given reports that production of Discovery's second season opener exceeded its budget by a significant margin and may have adversely affected subsequent episodes in season two's first half.

All we know at the present time is that, after the USS Discovery successfully escapes from an unplanned detour into the Mirror Universe that was one massive and badly thought-out Writer's Saving Throw intended to make the crew look more heroic - or at least less like a pack of Villain Protagonists - by showing us their Evil Twins from the Mirror Universe being so cartoonishly villainous that even Lord Voldemort would agree they're overselling it, a distress call from the Enterprise is received and shortly thereafter the Big E herself sails into view.

 

(Seriously, if they hadn't tried to play it dead straight it would've felt like one of Voyager's The Adventures of Captain Proton segments with suspiciously high production values... that's how far over the top it was.)

 

 

57 minutes ago, Dobber said:

I can see that ship becoming TMP Refit more believably than the original.

That's some kinda heresy right there.

Plus it doesn't really look that modified... the only real structural differences are they changed the shape of the nacelle pylons and the impulse engines split in half.

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33 minutes ago, Seto Kaiba said:

That's some kinda heresy right there.

Plus it doesn't really look that modified... the only real structural differences are they changed the shape of the nacelle pylons and the impulse engines split in half.

I can kind of agree, in the structural sense.  If you accept that the entire saucer and warp nacelles were rebuilt in the refit, that secondary hull is a lot closer to the refit profile and style than the original TOS design.  The nacelle pylons look dumb with the nonsense cut-out section though.

However you slice it though, I'd take this design twice over the JJ-Prise any day.  :p 

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17 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I can kind of agree, in the structural sense.  If you accept that the entire saucer and warp nacelles were rebuilt in the refit, that secondary hull is a lot closer to the refit profile and style than the original TOS design.  The nacelle pylons look dumb with the nonsense cut-out section though.

However you slice it though, I'd take this design twice over the JJ-Prise any day.  :p 

Yup, this ones secondary hull is much closer in shape to the refit than the TOS Connie. To be clear I am a life long Trek fan and mean no disrespect to the TOS....but for ME...the TOS Enterprise has not aged well and never looked like it could believably be made into the Refit.

Chris

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18 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

I can kind of agree, in the structural sense.  If you accept that the entire saucer and warp nacelles were rebuilt in the refit, that secondary hull is a lot closer to the refit profile and style than the original TOS design.  The nacelle pylons look dumb with the nonsense cut-out section though.

However you slice it though, I'd take this design twice over the JJ-Prise any day.  :p 

The original Constitution-class USS Enterprise went through a bunch of refits over the years... which were the studio's way of explaining away the various modifications and refinements that were made to the Enterprise studio model and other alterations made for TAS.

The Star Trek: Discovery "Will You Take My Hand" CG model is now arguably the first refit that the ship was subjected to, since the pre-2254 Enterprise and post-2264 Enterprise look similar but not identical thanks to refinements made between the TOS pilot and series proper.

Launch Spec (2245): TOS "The Cage"/"The Menagerie" spec. (First Pilot)
1st Refit (~2255): DIS "Will You Hold My Hand" spec.
2nd Refit (~2265): TOS "Where No Man Has Gone Before" spec. (Second Pilot)
3rd Refit (~2265): TOS "The Corbomite Maneuver" spec. (First regular episode)
4th Refit (2269): TAS "Beyond the Farthest Star" spec.
5th Refit (2270): TMP spec.
"Explosive Remodeling": ST3 "Get out of there!" spec.

This DIS refit would be one of the more severe ones, right up there with TAS's major refit, but it's nowhere close to the scale of the 2270s refit having taken Enterprise all the way down to the bare spaceframe and totally rebuilt her.

Any classic Enterprise is light-years ahead of Jar-Jar Abrams' "a terrible transporter accident fused an Apple Store with a wastewater treatment plant" Enterprise.

 

I'll be really interested to see what they do with the Enterprise's interior... since the producers INSIST Discovery is part of the prime continuity and several prior shows including TNG, DS9, and ENT have showed the TOS aesthetic really was the style of the era.

Edited by Seto Kaiba
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Is the Discovery team really claiming that the ship is going to look like it did in TOS?? That is just silly, IMO of course. Especially if it went from the first pilot configuration then to this Discovery configuration then BACK to something that is basically the same as the previous version. I know there are differences between the the 2 pilot versions and the series version (bridge, bustard domes, Nacelles end caps, deflector dish, impulse engines, some markings lights and windows) but most people would have a hard time differentiating between them. While the Discovery version is CLEARLY different. My point is that if the producers are saying that their Enterprise is going to look like the TOS Enterprise, well......

Disovery just needs to embrace the VISUAL reboot idea. Still the prime universe just looks different due to when the show is made. Just like if this Discovery era is revisited in 30 years it would look different due to it being made in 2048.

Chris

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I'd be really interested to see a visual internal/external breakdown of what each of those individual refits addressed.  One thing that does strike me about the CG model is that the exhaust venting on the rear of the nacelles is getting closer to the multi-ported look of the model from "The Cage."

But yes, they might be refitting themselves into a weird corner, because the overall trend of those refits would mean the ship is going back and forth between styles multiple times, in no particularly timeline-relevant order. 

Now, maybe they'll attempt some story treatment to why the look changed back and forth.. I could see them trying to explain that the original launch spec was untested and unreliable, so they reverted to an older structural spec that looks like the NX-01, before going back to the original design once the technology was proven.  I'm not saying it's a good explanation, because a refit of that magnitude may as well be a different ship, but it wouldn't surprise me if they go with it.

On the other hand, maybe it is an entirely different ship somehow?  Trek has always had a love of parallel universes intersecting at the most convenient times. :p 

 

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At least for the TNG and DS9 shows going cheap was part of the deal.  DS9 also was splicing the crew into footage from the original show so they had no choice really.  TNG was using the bridge set from some display when they did that Scotty episode so they were saving money - and going for nostalgia +infinity in that episode anyway.

Ent - they had a choice but went with old style, did they use the sets from Star Trek 2 (with the Elvis impersonator that funds it?).  As an aside I'm going to visit those sets in the next few months.

 

Discovery seems to be planning on using the Enterprise in an ongoing fashion so will most likely be changing the look to match the new show with some nods toward the original.  

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35 minutes ago, Dobber said:

Is the Discovery team really claiming that the ship is going to look like it did in TOS??

As far as I know, the Discovery production staff haven't given that question a definitive Yea or Nay yet... but considering they went to the trouble of doing a largely faithful recreation of the exterior and the Shenzhou interiors (apart from the bridge) were pretty similar but without the eye-searing primary colors everywhere, it's certainly a possibility that's on the table.

 

 

35 minutes ago, Dobber said:

Disovery just needs to embrace the VISUAL reboot idea. Still the prime universe just looks different due to when the show is made. Just like if this Discovery era is revisited in 30 years it would look different due to it being made in 2048.

Considering that Star Trek: Discovery is a troubled production that's done a 180 from mocking the existing fanbase to laying on the fanservice with a trowel in the hopes of drawing them back, that may come back to bite them given that multiple previous shows and the relaunch novel continuity play the TOS aesthetics dead straight... the farthest apart of them being over 37 years after TOS.

If they're dead set on courting the existing fanbase to keep the show (and CBS All Access) afloat, the visual reboot idea would definitely be counterproductive.  It was screwing around with many time-honored Star Trek visual effects that drove many of them away in the first place.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

I'd be really interested to see a visual internal/external breakdown of what each of those individual refits addressed.  One thing that does strike me about the CG model is that the exhaust venting on the rear of the nacelles is getting closer to the multi-ported look of the model from "The Cage."

Ex Astris Scientia probably has most of it.

Most of it was fiddly exterior details and cosmetic polishing.  TAS was the biggest interior one, with the bridge gaining a second turbolift, a ceiling-mounted automated phaser turret for defense of the bridge against boarding parties, and a pseudo-holodeck recreation room complete with a strangely prescient the-holodeck's-broken-again episode.

 

 

20 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

But yes, they might be refitting themselves into a weird corner, because the overall trend of those refits would mean the ship is going back and forth between styles multiple times, in no particularly timeline-relevant order. 

They were pretty consistent until Discovery poked its oar in.

Such are the problems of doing a cosmetically advanced prequel in a franchise with a purely visual canon.

I suppose it could always be argued that the Discovery refit ultimately tried something that didn't work out structurally and they had to put it back.  It would hardly be the first time that Starfleet's engineers made a modification that nearly (or actually) managed to destroy the ship it was being installed on.  (Paging Dr. Daystrom.  Dr. Richard Daystrom, please come to the red courtesy communicator.)

 

20 minutes ago, Chronocidal said:

On the other hand, maybe it is an entirely different ship somehow?  Trek has always had a love of parallel universes intersecting at the most convenient times. :p 

If they were smart, they would've made Discovery a parallel universe and then nobody would have had anything to bitch about visually... but they got gunshy after the hostile reaction fans had to the J.J. Abrams parallel universe (now officially the "Kelvin timeline").

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1 hour ago, Seto Kaiba said:

Most of it was fiddly exterior details and cosmetic polishing.  TAS was the biggest interior one, with the bridge gaining a second turbolift, a ceiling-mounted automated phaser turret for defense of the bridge against boarding parties, and a pseudo-holodeck recreation room complete with a strangely prescient the-holodeck's-broken-again episode.

Wouldn't that turret have been really useful in ST:III? :lol: 

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Well if they are dead set on doing it, perhaps the Discovery era Refit can be considered the War time configuration...like the ship was in for a service and the war broke out so Star Fleet refitted her for a more combat-centric mission. With the war over, they could Refit her back to the more peaceful exploratory role the Constitution Class was meant to do.

Chris

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2 hours ago, Chronocidal said:

Wouldn't that turret have been really useful in ST:III? :lol: 

... and several hundred other Star Trek stories, to be sure.

For all their virtues, the UFP Starfleet is absolutely TERRIBLE at matters of internal security... brilliantly lampshaded by Worf on Deep Space Nine when he complained to Odo that his quarters being broken into wouldn't have happened on the Enterprise, and Odo immediately lists (from an apparently pre-prepared PADD no less) a bunch of different times that, on his watch, there were either robberies or hijackings of the Enterprise and Worf has to cut him off in mid-list to save face.  Automated defensive emplacements would go a LONG way towards fixing that, esp. since bridge chairs seem designed to make it hard to stand up and virtually guarantee the first one who tries gets shot.

Dukat's Counterinsurgency Program on Deep Space 9 proved precisely how brutally effective the idea is, having automated defensive weapons emplacements that can engage to keep attackers occupied or wipe them out entirely.

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Perhaps the cutouts in the nacelle pylons are there to decrease visual mass. 

As for automated guns, it’s precisely the reason that the Cardassians were willing to use them that the UFP never will. They’re optimistic and peaceful almost to a fault, and that’s reflected most everywhere you look in uniforms, ship design, and so on. That’s just what they do. They believe the best in beings, situations, and events, as much as it’s possible for them to do so.

Just remember the Andorian saying: “don’t push the pinkskins onto the thin ice.”

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32 minutes ago, Sildani said:

Perhaps the cutouts in the nacelle pylons are there to decrease visual mass. 

They're not doing a very good job if they are.

 

32 minutes ago, Sildani said:

As for automated guns, it’s precisely the reason that the Cardassians were willing to use them that the UFP never will. They’re optimistic and peaceful almost to a fault, and that’s reflected most everywhere you look in uniforms, ship design, and so on. That’s just what they do. They believe the best in beings, situations, and events, as much as it’s possible for them to do so.

Just remember the Andorian saying: “don’t push the pinkskins onto the thin ice.”

But the UFP has used them... that's precisely the reason it came up.  One of the less prominent additions to the USS Enterprise in TAS was an automated bridge defense system that took the form of a computer-controlled bank of phasers in the bridge's ceiling that would automatically subdue unauthorized personnel during an intruder alert.  They show up again during DS9's Dominion War arc as an anti-Founder countermeasure in Starfleet Headquarters disguised as a wall decoration intended to sweep rooms with a stun force beam for the purpose of detecting changeling infiltrators.  (A lot more benign, and a lot less versatile, than Dukat's replicator-based phaser units that could pop up anywhere a replicator was and deliver continuous phaser barrages at any setting up to disintegrate.)

I guess the real reason that Starfleet ignores the technology is that it'd make so many Star Trek plots impossible if Starfleet actually had interior defenses on its ships.

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Is TAS canon though? Really? Also, the UFP was in a declared war at the time. Much different than their usual state of being. Perhaps I should have not been so absolute by using “never.” 

Edited by Sildani
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