This may be an odd topic in this forum, but what the hell. In a thread of mine, My non Trek starship, a remark was made in regards to whether my design reflected the right thinking for a more realistic combat vessel. I responded by saying that while my design had defensive capabilities it was primarily an exploratory ship. But it raised an interesting point. Since at least the '70s fans have focused greatly on starship designs that appear to be primarily combat oriented, particularly in regards to Trek. Why? Yes, TOS had combat elements in some of its stories, but the TOS E was predominantly an exploratory ship first and a combat vessel second. Militarism was played down. This approach was left behind to some extent in TWoK and the following films, but it was reintroduced in TNG. Then in DS9 they went for militarism again. Mind you, in fairness, DS9's Defiant was always meant to be a combat oriented ship in support of the storyline. But why such an overall focus on combat oriented ships by fans over the years? Any thoughts, anyone?
I think with the decline in general interest in the U.S. in the space program and other science endeavours, there has been a corresponding loss of interest in exploration in Star Trek. Also, combat can be exciting. Finally, as special effects became cheaper, more and more producers have included starship combat in episodes. So the overall interest in starship combat has increased significantly.
As Dayton3 said, as special effects have gotten more sophisticated and relatively less expensive, space battles between starships bristling with weaponry have become more common. Space battles can be dramatic and exciting and visually spectacular, especially on the big screen where spectacle is far more important to a successful film. I don't think there's any deeper philosophical mechanism at work here, except maybe a certain fanboyishness and tendancy toward "uber-coolness" among some who design ships in the fan community. Your average Trek movie just wouldn't be very interesting if the bad guys came along and opened fire and the best your hero ship could do is scan them really hard.
Also, when looking back in naval history especially battleships and battlecruisers were sometimes not only intimidation but extremely beautiful as well.
From an art perspective, it's easier to note the placement of weapons on the hull of the ship based on what we have seen. I can't think of one episode in the entire Trek universe where we are shown a sensor/scanner on the outside of a ship. All we basically have to work with is weapons, engines, deflectors, and windows.
It fits my overall theory about fan fiction, fan films and fan art. You create for yourself what you don't get from canon sources. True, the militarism is downplayed in canon trek, so fans that want more militarism compensate on their own.
I'd say TWOK-onwards and all the 70s/80s fanon material was the biggest influence here. Basically, a lot of fans got their ideas of how Starfleet worked from that particular source, eventually appying it to the TNG era. The Sovereign, Akira and Defiant class ships also contributed, adding pulse phasers, quantum torpedoes, excessive numbers of torpedo tubes, etc.
The seam along the outer edge of the Enterprise-D's saucer was full of sensor equipment. There was a lingering close-up in early season 2, in the introductory shot of Ten-Forward. More obviously, those large stretches of bumpy machinery on Voyager's hull were all sensors, too.
Starfleet was a military that had an additional scientific and exploratory mandate, which actually harkens back to the age of sail somewhat as far as military vessels doing a lot of the exploration. So, being a military, most of Starfleet's ships reflect this, except for some of the smaller, purpose-built ships like the Oberth class. And before anyone whines about not liking the idea that Starfleet is a military, all the arguments can be reduced to the fact that Starfleet has always been shown engaging in military conflicts and participating in military actions, not only in the various wars, but in all other uses of force used for anything other than the immediate defense of the ship. It's personnel have also been seen to participate in black ops.
If you look at the contents of TOS, it was very much a Cold War show in that most of the stories involved some kind of violence. It is very true that, canonically, TOS stressed exploration, outreach and non-interference, and that it did not excessively stress a militaristic aspect. Still, that's what everyone picked up on, post-TOS. TMP was about an alien invasion. TWOK was a huge step toward reshaping TREK, whether it was done intentionally or not (a super-powerful secret weapon, vetting a new junior command trainee through a combat simulation, dealing with essentially a terrorist attack) in the direction of a much more militarized Starfleet. I agree that waning interest in the Apollo missions is a factor here. But I also think that creative leadership had quite a bit to do with it. I don't think any of the movies (so far) or subsequent series has been nearly as groundbreaking/ambitious, relative to the time each made its debut. Let's face it, when Roddenberry, Coon, Fontana, Shatner, Nimoy, etc. were all relatively unknown before TOS, and hungry. They had drive, motivation and were willing to take risks. TMP and later were victory laps. Harve Bennett and Rick Berman inherited someone else's successful franchise, and simply sought to take advantage of TREK's ongoing success. They had little motivation to take risks or keep the trailblazing spirit of TOS alive. They put out fun, entertaining stories, but it was never the same again; TOS was a pioneer, where TNG was more about keeping the machine going. The Borg are a perfect example of this. "Q Who" represented a fresh idea in the TREK universe, a very alien concept that could not be dealt with in the conventional Cold War analogy. Then "The Best of Both Worlds" came along and the Borg were thoroughly conventionalized, becoming essentially a bulletproof military threat from afar. That cheapened the concept. I was extremely disappointed when "Best" debuted in '90. That summed up the post-TOS legacy.
I can't speak for most fans. All I can say is that my Trek-related focus remains on non-military ships... the NCC-1701 and NCC-1701-D. The rest is often enjoyable, but it's tangential to my main focus.
This is actually a pet peeve of mine and part of the reason I rarely design 'ships of the line' and instead focus on more utilitarian concepts. To me, the nuts and bolts of how a world functions an interacts in much more interesting than how many quadzillion transphasic-omega-death topedoes can be fired in a single burst from the obliterator-class uber dreadnought...well, you get the idea. Hence I get a little miffed when people ask why the Deneva only has once small phaser or why the Antares didn't have any torpedo launchers. Even when I do dabble in the odd bit of military grade hardware, I get no end of suggestions that would make something like a hopper (essentially an APC/Chinook) into a photon equipped floating death-mobile, than can land right on the enemy's heads and beam half an army into solid rock. You can't win!
You and me both, brother. It seems a lot of people scoff at ships when they're not armed to the teeth. As far as some people are concerned, everything has to have 12+ phaser arrays and 5+ torp tubes. I remember someone once suggesting I install quantum torpedoes and pulse phasers on a tanker.
Agreed with a lot of what is said above - but aren't we ignoring the root cause of starship design here? Not of any particular style of design, but the reason why the design work takes place at all? Ship designs from the 1970s on would largely be aimed at fitting the Trek universe available at that time. That is, not just the successful early 1980s movies with visually attractive space combat in them, but the main form of Trek adventures at the time: roleplaying games. A ship would be designed to act in the roleplaying environment, where the main job of a ship is to do space combat. Sure, a few of the more interesting games I've played would have featured the interiors of a starship, for that familiar "bottle show" feel. But designing those is an immense and rather unrewarding task. Most of the RPG entertainment comes from pitting "miniature" vessels against each other in combat maneuvers; those "miniatures" require specific weapon stats, but there is very little demand for sensor specs there, and virtually every mode of operation besides combat is handled by saying "and now your ship enters orbit" or "we scan the planet for dikironium" or "let's fly to Alpha Omega now". No need for "design" there, for rolling of the dice and seeing the little ship actually move. From the utilitarian point of view, then, a ship designed for the warm, fuzzy feeling of really having a starship of one's own to play with is a combat machine first, second and last... Timo Saloniemi
True enough. It must also be noted that much of this thinking may have been encouraged inadvertently by Roddenberry himself who made a reference in TMoST that Kirk's first command was a destroyer equivalent type of starship) and Franz Joseph's variant designs in his SFTM listing destroyer, scout and dreadnought class ships. But I think this goes beyond Trek and into other SF. Many fan designs in SF appear to focus on military vehicles.
I would argue the exact opposite; that Starfleet is primarily a scientific, diplomatic and exploratory institution with an additional military mandate. A supposition that seams to have been borne out on ENT, for whatever that's worth. As for the table top RPGs...I never have, nor do I think ever will understand those things. I had a mate in school who was very much into the Games Workshop stuff and he tried to get me into it a few times, to little effect. The sheer number of rule books he had just to play a damn game put me right off.
^^ While ENT got so much wrong that I dismiss it entirely. But I could envision a scenario where there could have once been two space services--one devoted to scientific pursuits (something like an advanced NASA with greater resources) and another concerned with security and defense functions--that were at some point folded into one service: Starfleet. In TOS there were references to UESPA and a more vague reference to the Space Service or something to that effect. Perhaps something like UESPA was merged with something like a United Space Services and then became known as Starfleet.
The FASA Role Playing Game did something similiar to their organizational background. Starfleet had Galaxy Exploration Command Military Operations Command Colonial Operations Command Merchant Marine Command. And starships would be frequently transferred between the various commands depending on their upcoming missions (though each command also had certain types of ships that they alone operated). For instance, you might see the Constitution class U.S.S. Lexington be assigned to conduct a series of exploration missions for the Galaxy Exploration Command, then see the same ship performing border patrols for the Military Operations Command later.
Certain Nebula-class vessels had that huge AWACS pod, and the Constellation class also had all sorts of sensor pods and emitters. I think the answer is simple though. Explosions are just "cooler" than scanning and discovering deep space phenomenon. It's also the same reason why muscle cars are more exciting than station wagons.
In-universe, what happened with Starfleet is obvious: the Borg scared the crap out of them. Before the Borg, the Federation thought they were pretty badass, that there wasn't much left to fear out there, that they could do their thing, boldly going and all. Then they ran into the Borg, who shrugged off the Enterprise like it was nothing, and decided that they needed to take a few more levels in badass. Before Wolf 359, it would seem the Federation was on par with the Romulans and Klingons in terms of military power. Then... they had a sudden immense buildup. New ship designs, new weapons systems. They were gearing up to defend against a threat with a very clear potential to destroy the Federation. At some point in the future, Starfleet'll calm down and be less blatantly gun-toting. These things are cyclical, methinks.