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"Enterprise" too advanced for 22nd Century

Does anyone else think that "Star Trek: Enterprise" was too advanced for the 22nd Century?

From the sleek starship design of the Enterprise NX-01, which should have been more retro or more inline toward the pre-Constitution class, rather than the Akira-class looking one we got, to the 24th century style rank pips. Why would they use 24th century style rank rips? Couldn't the designers come up with a different rank pips for that period?

The uniforms were also wrong and ugly for the period. Should have been more like "The Cage" style era uniforms or completely different.

To the inside of the Enterprise itself. I think it was still far too sleeker. Although it did have push buttons like the Constitution class starship, the monitors and that were too advanced. The bridge resembled that of NASA control room.

Also, why did Captain Archer have a ready-room when Captain Kirk did not? They should have held their meetings in a briefing room or something similar.

It should've gone backwards, but instead they were stuck in the same 24th century style era. I think you can thank Rick Berman and Brannon Braga for that.

I hope non of my points were previously mentioned before.
I thought the designs and color schemes were more in tuned as a spin-off to First Contact and TNG universe. Everything about the NX-01 would've made Scotty jealous. Hard to imagine a 22nd Century Starfleet from ENT would end up like TOS.
 
I thought the designs and color schemes were more in tuned as a spin-off to First Contact and TNG universe. Everything about the NX-01 would've made Scotty jealous. Hard to imagine a 22nd Century Starfleet from ENT would end up like TOS.

No, it's because real life has advanced since the 60s.
 
I thought the designs and color schemes were more in tuned as a spin-off to First Contact and TNG universe. Everything about the NX-01 would've made Scotty jealous. Hard to imagine a 22nd Century Starfleet from ENT would end up like TOS.
So, he'd be jealous of a engine that can barely make Warp 5? A transporter only recently cleared for organic material? Polarized hull plating that's inferior to just about everyone's defensive shields? The primitive weapons? The protein resequencer? Unless he's developed a taste for antiques, I don't think so.
 
So, he'd be jealous of a engine that can barely make Warp 5? A transporter only recently cleared for organic material? Polarized hull plating that's inferior to just about everyone's defensive shields? The primitive weapons? The protein resequencer? Unless he's developed a taste for antiques, I don't think so.


What about Tom Paris he likes antiques?

Scotty I imagine would have just frowned, and I mean both versions of him.
 
Does anyone else think that "Star Trek: Enterprise" was too advanced for the 22nd Century?

From the sleek starship design of the Enterprise NX-01, which should have been more retro or more inline toward the pre-Constitution class, rather than the Akira-class looking one we got, to the 24th century style rank pips. Why would they use 24th century style rank rips? Couldn't the designers come up with a different rank pips for that period?

The uniforms were also wrong and ugly for the period. Should have been more like "The Cage" style era uniforms or completely different.

To the inside of the Enterprise itself. I think it was still far too sleeker. Although it did have push buttons like the Constitution class starship, the monitors and that were too advanced. The bridge resembled that of NASA control room.

Also, why did Captain Archer have a ready-room when Captain Kirk did not? They should have held their meetings in a briefing room or something similar.

It should've gone backwards, but instead they were stuck in the same 24th century style era. I think you can thank Rick Berman and Brannon Braga for that.

I hope non of my points were previously mentioned before.

Did you ever hear of a frame story? That is an almost totally obsolete storytelling technique used in old time stories like, for example, Frankenstein: or, The Modern Prometheus (1818), a short story that explains how the writer learned of the events in the main story.

When we read or watch a work of fiction, we suspend our disbelief and sort of kind of believe that the fiction is, in some sense, sort of real. But we don't forget about the real world. If the fictional setting of the story is too different from what we know of the real world there is a degree of need for an explanation for the differences.

If a story is set in the distant past, the frame story could be that an ancient manuscript telling the story has been discovered, or maybe that the writers read a bunch of history books written in ancient times that told the story. So if a story is set in the past, we can easily imagine a rather simple frame story that explains how the events are known in the present.

But if a science fiction story is set in the future, then the frame story that explains how events in the future became known in the past is itself a science fiction story involving time travel.

Since frame stories are rarely ever used, readers or viewers of science fiction stories set in the future are free to make up their own frame stories about how the future data became known in the present.

And such possible frame stories vary greatly in how much of what we see is "actually" true future data and how much is "actually" contemporary attempts to depict the future based on incomplete data.

On one extreme Star Trek episodes could be actual record tapes made in the future and edited in the present into episode or movie length. That would make them very accurate. On another extreme, Star Trek episodes might be based on mission reports from the future that were used to write teleplays, and all the visual and sound aspects of the episodes are contemporary attempts to depict the future and not really canon.

Therefore it is not wise to put too much trust in the visual aspects of science fiction movies and TV shows.

the sleek starship design of the Enterprise NX-01
doesn't seem very sleek to me. A ship travelling at a significant fraction of the speed of light like a starship using impulse drive or travelling faster than light like a starship using warp drive will probably destroyed by colliding with even a tiny speck of space dust. Hitting even a tiny grain of dust at such speeds will release energy comparable to an atomic bomb and vaporize the starship.

A starship should have a design that minimizes the cross section exposed to such collisions to minimize their probability. Thus a sleek starship should be a long narrow cylinder, ten or a hundred or a thousand times as long (or high) as it is wide. All Star Trek starships fail that sleekness test. So I don't see any reason to praise the NX-01 for a sleek design when it is just about as unsleek as any other starship.

the 24th century style rank pips. Why would they use 24th century style rank rips? Couldn't the designers come up with a different rank pips for that period?

Maybe the designers could justify their lazy reuse of the 24th century rank pips by claiming that the Starfleet uniform designers in the 24th century decided to revive the rank pips from the Enterprise era 200 years earlier, sort of like if the modern British navy decided to adopt uniforms from the Napoleonic Wars.

The uniforms were also wrong and ugly for the period. Should have been more like "The Cage" style era uniforms or completely different.

There is no accounting for taste and that includes fashions and the tastes of uniform designers - both fictional Starfleet ones and real life studio costume designers.

To the inside of the Enterprise itself. I think it was still far too sleeker. Although it did have push buttons like the Constitution class starship, the monitors and that were too advanced. The bridge resembled that of NASA control room

To me the interior of NCC-1701 is bridge is far sleeker and less cluttered than the interior of the NX-01 bridge. As for the style of the monitors and controls, that is a rather trivial matter.

I remember a science fiction novel by A. Bertram Chandler, possibly The Alternate Martians (1965) where the protagonists take their spaceship to Mars to do some research. But the Martian bureaucracy won't let them operate their spaceship on Mars until they rip out all their controls and replace them with the type of controls mandated by Martian regulations. As soon as the inspectors certify the controls as compliant with Martian regulations and leave, the heroes rip out the new controls and replace them with the old controls that they prefer.

Replacing the control systems of a starship is trivial compared to replacing the main engines. Therefore, it probably happens often as new theories of ergonomics, man-machine interaction, and psychology become fashionable among Starfleet control designers. The style of a starship's control systems does not indicate how advanced it is.

And since we don't know the frame story for Star Trek we have no way of no knowing how accurate the visual aspects of any series or movie are.
 
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Does anyone else think that "Star Trek: Enterprise" was too advanced for the 22nd Century?

From the sleek starship design of the Enterprise NX-01, which should have been more retro or more inline toward the pre-Constitution class, rather than the Akira-class looking one we got, to the 24th century style rank pips. Why would they use 24th century style rank rips? Couldn't the designers come up with a different rank pips for that period?

The uniforms were also wrong and ugly for the period. Should have been more like "The Cage" style era uniforms or completely different.

To the inside of the Enterprise itself. I think it was still far too sleeker. Although it did have push buttons like the Constitution class starship, the monitors and that were too advanced. The bridge resembled that of NASA control room.

Also, why did Captain Archer have a ready-room when Captain Kirk did not? They should have held their meetings in a briefing room or something similar.

It should've gone backwards, but instead they were stuck in the same 24th century style era. I think you can thank Rick Berman and Brannon Braga for that.

I hope non of my points were previously mentioned before.
..yes, Yes, But you cannot tell some of the geeks - "Oh, let's make it look MODERN!" (friggin' DUNSELS)... That, and the screw up with the Klingons (and the Borg, and the Ferengi, and, etc.) We're lucky that they got the NAME of the SHIP correct! I actually liked the design of the NX class (If I was a bit geekier, i'd probably buy a model, assemble it, and hang it from the ceiling). I also liked the uniform.. They COULD of come up with different pips, but atleast they were NOT atrocious like those RED uniforms used in the later TOS movies (WTH were they thinking?) ..instead of backwards, they went ASS BACKWARDS.
 
Anyone who says that a 2010s look is "too advanced" for a show set in the 23rd century is severely lacking a clue. Rather, the 1960s look wasn't advanced enough. Neither is the 2010s look, realistically, but it's the closest we can get, just as the '60s look was as close as they could get back then.
 
Anyone who says that a 2010s look is "too advanced" for a show set in the 23rd century is severely lacking a clue. Rather, the 1960s look wasn't advanced enough. Neither is the 2010s look, realistically, but it's the closest we can get, just as the '60s look was as close as they could get back then.

Honestly I don't think people get that.

60s Star Trek was a futuristic look at things done with what technology they had at the time, and it's a product of that time. Enterprise too was done with the production techniques available at that time and to me it reflects that. I think the ship and all its interiors look just right the way they are.
 
design cycles reach a certain level of maturity where the maximum usability and efficiency becomes understood.
The controls of a steam locomotive built in the early 1950's aren't all that different from one built in the 1830s', just more of them.

Apart from changes in materials and rigging choices, the crew of a small sloop from two hundred years ago could adapt to a modern sailing yacht with a small amount of famiarization time (not counting the auxiliary engine)

After some odd design layout choices in the 19th century, Panard et Lavessor more or less invented the radiator-engine-transmission,rwd, people on top in the back half, their stuff in the rear car layout we all know and recognize by the early 1900's.

computer gui systems havent changed all that much since the early 1980s when they were invented.

The 2200's won't look like anything we can imagine, probably. Enterprise went all in with the industrial look and the safety rails and it looks good, but apart from the computer screens, i dont know if it looks more advanced than the 60's-90's iterations.

Honestly I woud think in a ship where interia control can fail at any moment, and gravity is subject to some kind of plating, you'd want all hard surfaces and guard rails padded, not to mention with all the fans blowing air, you'd need something to keep the noise levels down.

to get an idea of the noise on a real spaceship, here's a great tour of the ISS by astronaut Steven Swanson
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design cycles reach a certain level of maturity where the maximum usability and efficiency becomes understood.
The controls of a steam locomotive built in the early 1950's aren't all that different from one built in the 1830s', just more of them.

Apart from changes in materials and rigging choices, the crew of a small sloop from two hundred years ago could adapt to a modern sailing yacht with a small amount of famiarization time (not counting the auxiliary engine)

After some odd design layout choices in the 19th century, Panard et Lavessor more or less invented the radiator-engine-transmission,rwd, people on top in the back half, their stuff in the rear car layout we all know and recognize by the early 1900's.

computer gui systems havent changed all that much since the early 1980s when they were invented.

The 2200's won't look like anything we can imagine, probably. Enterprise went all in with the industrial look and the safety rails and it looks good, but apart from the computer screens, i dont know if it looks more advanced than the 60's-90's iterations.

Honestly I woud think in a ship where interia control can fail at any moment, and gravity is subject to some kind of plating, you'd want all hard surfaces and guard rails padded, not to mention with all the fans blowing air, you'd need something to keep the noise levels down.

to get an idea of the noise on a real spaceship, here's a great tour of the ISS by astronaut Steven Swanson
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OK I just finished watching that and it was fantastic.
 
As times change things change what was something that was thought as far in the future become real now so when that happens you rethink what the future will be like and how it can look and the way things get done please keep this in mind thank you one and all
 
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When Tom Servo went all NX-01 with safety railings onboard the Satellite of Love
 
Does anyone else think that "Star Trek: Enterprise" was too advanced for the 22nd Century?

... which should have been more retro ...
I wouldn't have minded a more "clunky" starship, something that looks less refined. Mix together the International Space Station and a modern day submarine.

Compare a picture of the living quarters of the captain of a nuclear submarine, with Archer's palatial quarters.

Have the corridors three feet wide. Heavy doors that look like they could hold against a vaccum. Stairs and ladders, not elevators. Mysterious pipes and wire conduits simply covering the walls. Storage containers everywhere.

And a air lock door that locks from the inside.
 
I wouldn't have minded a more "clunky" starship, something that looks less refined. Mix together the International Space Station and a modern day submarine.

Compare a picture of the living quarters of the captain of a nuclear submarine, with Archer's palatial quarters.

Have the corridors three feet wide. Heavy doors that look like they could hold against a vaccum. Stairs and ladders, not elevators. Mysterious pipes and wire conduits simply covering the walls. Storage containers everywhere.

And a air lock door that locks from the inside.
Would have looked a lot like Firefly
 
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