The Kelvin Timeline Starship Thread

I'm not sure if the Kelvin Timeline ever got a proper Starship thread, beyond the various ones arguing over the size of Enterprise. So here it is, better late then never, a thread to talk about all the ships we'll probably never see again.... but it's a lazy Saturday and I clearly got nothing better to do.

I've gathered up a few pics of each of the major ships from the three films, incase anyone needed to jog their memory.

I myself absolutely love both the Kelvin herself and the Franklin.

The Kelvin, mostly because of the basic, almost utilitarian design. The rugged, high mileage Starship look has always been appealing to me. Both inside and out, I can buy that this Starship is a workhorse. Things are built and fixed to work, not look pretty.

The Franklin I love because it provides somewhat of a contrast to the NX-01. It's from the same era, but it looks like it was built and designed by a different design firm. It's a Ford to the NX-01's Chevy. I also love the history or the ship. It was the first earth ship to make Warp 4, but was quickly overshadowed by the Enterprise. It's glory diminished, it basically becomes canon fodder for the Romulan War.

I have many opinions on the others ships that I'm sure will come up in discussion, should this thread take off, but for now I'll leave my opinions on the Kelvin and Franklin.

U.S.S. Kelvin

The Narada

U.S.S. Enterprise (Star Trek '09)

Starbase and other Starships (Star Trek '09)

U.S.S. Enterprise (Into Darkness)

Mudd's Starship

Klingon D4 Class

U.S.S. Vengeance

U.S.S. Enterprise (Beyond)

Swarm Ship

U.S.S. Franklin

U.S.S. Enterprise-A

 

Shoutouts to:

• the amazing U.S.S. Vengeance
• the U.S.S. Newton
• ECS Kobayashi Maru (with central hull missed on most fan renderings)
• the barely-seen U.S.S. Salcombe

The truest kind of thread in the universe, sir.

 

I'm with you on the Newton, and all the Kelvin based designs. I'm forever hopeful that we'll see ships of this style again. There's always a chance we'll get one on SNW. Had hoped Picard would have the guts to show one at the museum, but alas....

The Kobayashi Maru also looked great for what little we saw of her.

With the Salcombe, I like the overall shape, though I find the design to be a little too busy for my taste, but that's me.

 

I always loved the bright, gleaming white/grey hulls of the ships in Into Darkness and Beyond.



The Into Darkness Armstrong variant looks so good with its roll bar curved to match the curvature of the saucer if that area was filled.

 

If there's one objective truth about the Kelvin timeline movies, it's that the hull of the Enterprise looks amazing. They absolutely nailed it.

 

I've never noticed that curved roll bar before! Looks great. Kinda adds a little bit of the curved look of the Enterprise to the older Kelvin like ships. Neat!

 

I mostly don't mind the designs but I'm not fond of the Starfleet ships being so much bigger, but I just ignore that and pretend they're around the same size. The way the Kelvin crew wait until the captain tells them to polarise the viewscreen instead of doing it themselves puzzles me. I do like their uniforms. The Narada is kinda wild and I only realised it's about 9 kilometres long. I thought for a bit it was around the same size as the Vengeance or maybe a couple of kilometres long. I hate the windows on the bridge of ships but I guess that's just as dumb as the bridge on the top anyway. The Franklin is pretty neat and it's about how long I imagined the NX-01 was originally and it's bridge seems way too big or spacious. In my mind Franklin was just a normal Freedom class ship that got a Warp 4 engine and that's why it's of note and there were other Freedom class ships as part of Earth Starfleet. But I never thought it needed to already be of note in the script anyway. If anything it should have just been some ordinary piece of junk who disappeared and what it's doing now in the script makes it noteworthy. I hated it sliding down a mountain to take off. What if it landed somewhere else that was flat? When it was originally the Pioneer and crash landed in a desert it just takes off from the ground. Should've done the same thing.

 

While the Enterprise is certainly considerably larger then usually depicted, at 725m, the Kelvin and other similar Starships aren't exactly huge. The Kelvin herself seems to have had its scale settled at 315m. Both the licensed model kit from Moebius Models and Eaglemoss show her at 315m. That's about as close to canon as we've ever gotten.

The Bridge window have grown on me to the point I now miss them when ships don't have them.

I like this theory.

 

Why not?

They did not know if they were investigating or not, since they clearly were just receiving word back from Starfleet Command.

One of the best.

 

Honestly, I love most of the Kelvinverse Starship designs, in the context that its a different timeline. They don't fit the Prime timeline at all and so I couldn't stand them if they were shoved in there (thats the reason I hate some of the DSC/SNW ship stuff), but taken on its own I like it. Take away the pointless windows (I'll always hate bridge windows), and the constant lens flare in the first two movies, and I don't think there is a single Starfleet ship I don't like. Sure, I'd prefer if they weren't ridiculously huge, and some of the interiors are not great (I hate the Enterprise engine room), but I think the general design style works.

My favorite design is probably the Kelvin, followed by the Franklin and the Enterprise (which I know kept getting modified, I just like it in general). The Vengeance is a bit ridiculous, but in a good way for a villain ship I wish we'd seen more of the Non- Enterprise/Franklin ships.

As for the non-starfleet ships, I mostly don't like them. I think that the klingon ship we see is just bad, if it wasn't vaguely BoP shaped you'd never know it was a klingon ship. The Narada just sucks, there shouldn't be a mining ship that looks like it could easily take on a Borg cube. Nothing else really sticks out from the Non-Starfleet stuff.

 

"Why not?" I prefer them to be the same size.
They could have turned on the sunglass shield by themselves.

 

Agreed! Those damn uniforms absolutely scream "50's sci-fi" and I love it.

Gotta hard disagree with you on that one. The Kelvin herself I think looks great as a early Federation, post NX, pre Constitution, especially the interiors.

I think it especially looks great as a post NX-01, pre SNW Constitution, but that's me!

 

The timeline divergence happens right at the beginning of the movie as the Kelvin arrives. So the design of the Kelvin and the crew uniforms were of course already established before the timeline divergence, in the Prime timeline.

 

Well aware. That's why I love the Kelvin. I just wish we saw her, or one of her similar ships at the Starfleet Museum.

 

Great thread, BTW!

The red-hulled USS Excelsior, Armstrong variant, as seen in STID, is an interesting one, I’d love to see more of.

Honestly, I still hold out vain hope that a fourth Kelvin-timeline Trek movie will happen…

 

Where can that be seen in STID?

 

Bottom left corner:

 

Not sure where exactly she is in the film, but I found this screenshot.
Then there's this from the art book that came out with Trek '09.

I always figured it was perhaps a Vulcan ship, much like the Intrepid in TOS.

 

Ha. Beat me to it. Never even noticed it down there.

 

I actually noticed that not long after posting. D'oh!
Was going to edit the post but got called away.