Your best Enterprise?

[briggart]

I had not realized the D was so much wider than the others (and the E in particular).

 

[Corinnguard]

I picked the Enterprise E because of it's size and sleek looks. I wish the Enterprise F had gotten some live-action screen time.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

Left the J off the survey completely. It may only have a few moments on screen in that one Enterprise episode, but features more prominently in one of the ST:O storylines and represents the farthest point in the on-screen timeline with a confirmed Enterprise, which counts for something.

 

[Reynard]

I am an unrepentant TNG fan, so D.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

I had not realized the D was so much wider than the others (and the E in particular).

Never built the model kit, eh? It's really noticeable when you're hands-on with the design. The Enterprise-J has a similar "wide oval" style to it, but with an even larger saucer relative to the secondary hull.

 

[MarkB]

Never built the model kit, eh? It's really noticeable when you're hands-on with the design. The Enterprise-J has a similar "wide oval" style to it, but with an even larger saucer relative to the secondary hull.

Yeah, I had a model kit of the original and refit Constitutions plus the D, the scale is pretty impressive.

The Enterprise-D seems basically to be designed as a deliberate exercise in forced perspective, it looks really sleek and agile when filmed from the side, and loomingly-large when viewed from the front.

 

[Deset Gled]

Yeah, I had a model kit of the original and refit Constitutions plus the D, the scale is pretty impressive.

While I voted for the D (hail to the detachable saucer), I really appreciate the fact that they eventually started to go smaller with the G. It bothers me when everything new has to be bigger and bigger and bigger. The size trend they were on was clearly not sustainable for anything pretending to be an exploratory vessel.

 

[Ryujin]

Never built the model kit, eh? It's really noticeable when you're hands-on with the design. The Enterprise-J has a similar "wide oval" style to it, but with an even larger saucer relative to the secondary hull.

It's like POP! did a TOS Enterprise.

 

[Wofano Wotanto]

It's like POP! did a TOS Enterprise.

Yeah, the term "super-deformed" has been used for the J. I can't decide if it loops so far around that it's actually cool or not, but it hardly matters outside of the MMO, the actual on-screen time is minimal.

The size trend they were on was clearly not sustainable for anything pretending to be an exploratory vessel.

I mean, the D suffered from enormous mission creep and some design-by-committee problems as well that left it as a jack-of-all-trades and master of none. It was meant to serve as a showy flagship for peaceful diplomacy and sport enough combat potential to act as a warship to defend itself and others, while also hypothetically being able to conduct long-term scientific research missions with noncombatants and their dependents along and having the cruising range and warp speed to be useful in an exploration role and then having some role in planetary disaster relief operations and fleet command-control-communications functions. All of those are things Starfleet wants and (maybe) needs, but putting them all on one big, expensive platform was far less useful than spreading them over multiple more specialized hulls would have been. They could never build enough Galaxies to have one everywhere that their functions were needed, and the ships themselves were so complex that anytime they needed upkeep and overhauls it was a serious loss of fleet-wide capability.

They're just a boondoggle, impressive as they were. The ones that survived the Dominion War were probably massively rebuilt for more specialized roles that could take advantage of their huge hull volume and powerful engines, which probably meant a shift toward the actual long-range exploration & field research role the initial designers may have envisioned.

 

[briggart]

Never built the model kit, eh? It's really noticeable when you're hands-on with the design. The Enterprise-J has a similar "wide oval" style to it, but with an even larger saucer relative to the secondary hull.

And I had completely forgotten about the J. This thread had been eye-opening!