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The New Enterprise Design

Outward Appearance - Sets - The Enterprise Size Controversy - Conclusion

Outward Appearance

November 2008. The day I have been dreading for months has come. Paramount has just revealed the first full image of the new USS Enterprise NCC-1701 to appear in J.J. Abrams' "Star Trek (2009)". Based on what little we could see in the first trailer of January 2008, I was prepared for a substantial redesign and for a much more stylish look. And so it happened.

Only the saucer underside and edge are similar as on the iconic starship I have come to love, albeit it is the wider saucer of the TMP version and not the one of the TOS ship as it should exist at the time of "Star Trek (2009)". The rest is very different than on any previously seen Enterprise, it only has roughly the same proportions as the original. The engineering hull is significantly moved forward, there are odd curvatures in the neck, the engineering hull and the nacelle pylons, and the nacelles themselves look a bit like those of the Enterprise-E, with an alien-looking curved backlit cowling.

"Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise - side view (Entertainment Weekly)

"Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise - head on (January 2008 teaser trailer)

Aesthetics The new design by Ryan Church is unsatisfactory. First off, irrespective of all continuity concerns, I simply don't think it is a great design. I concede that it is overall not quite the butt-ugly "Edselprise" that I saw in it at a first glance and that made me cry in terror. Still, the classic shapes of the saucer and the deflector don't mix with the stylish add-ons and the intricate curvatures. This way it appears like a kitbash, like an odd blend of the TMP Enterprise with an alien CGI ship of the week. The overall proportions are not sufficiently balanced, and the whole ship seems to lean forward too much. I imagine that the engineering hull including the nacelle struts should be moved back relative to the saucer, neck and nacelles to get its look "right". The engineering hull initially appeared to be too small relative to the saucer, but in hindsight I have to admit that the perspective of the photo was deceptive. Yet, the massive neck looks odd relative to the rather small engineering hull.

Overall, the design does not have the clarity that can be found on Jefferies' original Enterprise, on Probert's TMP Enterprise and Enterprise-D or, to somewhat lesser extent, on Eaves' Enterprise-E. It simply takes features that were deemed inevitable, such as the saucer and the protruding deflector dish (albeit the latter was heavily modified), and supplements them with stylish curvatures and decent hull greeblies as they are commonplace in modern sci-fi films. The Enterprises of the past were design classics in much the same fashion as a '57 Corvette or even an iPod. The new one reminds me of the design experiments of car manufacturers such as BMW or Renault in the 2000s, who added aggressively shaped headlights or "illogical" curved edges to otherwise conventional looking cars.

Technology The curved backlit cowling on the warp nacelles (the light obviously being warp plasma) that I already dislike for its mere look does not make much sense, as in this region of the nacelle we would expect the warp coils. And since these are always straight for all we know, having a warped plasma outlet is a useless fad. The movable segments at the aft end of the nacelles belong into the same category. It may not be a big deal considering that the warp nacelles of Voyager are even tilting in their entirety. Still, for 40 years Starfleet ships could go without moving parts and I think there is no reason to break with this tradition just for an additional cool visual effect.

Furthermore, while all other parts of the ship are more solid than on either the TOS and the TMP Enterprise, the nacelle struts are relatively thin compared to ships of other classes - especially considering that the new Enterprise is being built on the ground. But even worse, the pylons run into the engineering hull in the region of the shuttlebay. The pylon structure and the power transfer conduit have to continue somehow inside the ship. Although the cross-section of the new shuttlebay is relatively about the same as on the original and on the refitted Constitution (at Church's original design size of 366m), it may be further obstructed by the warp pylons. In the movie itself we get a glimpse of the open shuttlebay, where two rows of the large new shuttles are stacked on either side of the shuttlebay. A ship of 366m length would not be big enough for that. Anyway, on screen there is no sign of the power transfer conduits inside the shuttlebay, so it may work out after all, unless the CGI ship "cheats" in a way that the pylons simply do not continue inside the ship.

"Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise - completed
(modified by Jochen Gnida)

Continuity Sure, the new look of the Enterprise (and of pretty much everything else) is the result of Nero's manipulations of history. We've certainly had countless time travels in 40 years of Star Trek. Usually any damage to history was repaired in the end (such as the Borg attack on Cochrane's camp in "Star Trek: First Contact"), or it turned out insignificant enough to remain only a side note (such as Sisko's role as "Gabriel Bell" in DS9: "Past Tense"). This is very different in "Star Trek (2009)", because the alternate timeline created in the movie will persist. The new Enterprise is not reverted to the TOS version in the end, and pretty much everything that we know from the classic Star Trek will never happen in the Abramsverse.

If we leave aside the idea of an altered timeline for a moment, the new Enterprise discards the visual continuity that has been a part of the Trek lore for 40 years for all the reasons that I anticipated some time ago. I was prepared to see a restyled Enterprise that would look clearly more modern than the TOS ship. I was hoping for it to retain certain retro elements to set it apart from the 24th century design style and, perhaps even more importantly, from its own refit in TMP. But the underlying style of the new ship is the TMP saucer with indifferent alien-looking add-ons. The only retro element is the deflector dish. It could be any vessel in any later era, even an Enterprise-F or -G, under the assumption that starships shrink again in the early 25th century. While it undeniably still looks like a Starfleet ship, it does not fit into Starfleet's design lineage any longer.

Since it is a different timeline, the TOS Enterprise the way we used to know it has ceased to exist. For what it's worth, the new Enterprise could work half-way plausibly as a direct predecessor to the TMP Enterprise. While the proportions of the saucer are not exactly the same as on the TMP ship and the curvature of the saucer edge is different (more rounded), the window arrangement in the edge and the three horizontal stripes appear to be the same. It is also interesting to note that the saucer underside that used to be concave on the original and the TMP refit (missing the inner parts of the lowermost full deck) is now flush. Overall, the saucer could be easily the same as that of the TMP Enterprise, while the rest of the ship must have been scrapped in the course of the hypothetical refit.

Side note it has been a recurring nuisance for almost two years that the re-imagined Enterprise by Gabe Koerner was mistaken for the one to appear in the movie. Most fans presumed that the actual movie ship would be closer to the original. But now we are left with an even more radical redesign in several respects. Koerner kept the TOS saucer essentially as it was, and while his secondary hull is unnecessarily segmented and greebled, the elements roughly retain their basic dimensions, unlike on the new movie Enterprise.

Sets

Rather than the ship's exterior that didn't unpleasantly surprise me too much, its bridge set is a pathetic design. It is easily the most sophisticated and flashy looking bridge in the history of Star Trek. The set design is an unremarkable conglomerate of all kinds of styles previously seen on Trek, and not at all in the sense of a homage. It is playful with its huge TCARS-like (29th century) display that is being animated all the time (it must drive the crew crazy), with its complex and fragmented controls and with spotlights in every corner. It has large glass panes of the same kind that were deemed good enough only for the parallel universe versions of the Enterprise-D bridge. One (behind the desk) even has a totally pointless "printed circuit" decoration on it, of the kind that Mike Okuda routinely created for alien ships of the week. There is absolutely nothing on the bridge that is particularly reminiscent of the TOS era even if we don't expect total purism. Not the captain's chair, which looks like on the Defiant, not the railing, which is "fragile" like on the more recent bridge designs, not the ceiling (that we admittedly never saw on TOS), which looks like designed by Apple. The color scheme is an uninteresting post-TNG "cool white/blue". I have seen many bridges of the week that were better designed.

"Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise - bridge (publicity photo)

"Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise - bridge (publicity photo)

Even if we put up with the idea of anachronisms in the 23rd century in "Star Trek (2009)", the sophistication level on the new bridge just doesn't feel right. As much as I have always criticized Enterprise for having too advanced technology, at least it was reasonable as an intermediate step between the 21st and the 24th century. Kirk's new bridge, in contrast, looks like an overblown fanboy design set in the 25th century or beyond.

"Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise - engineering (screen capture by Ariane)

"Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise - engineering (screen capture by Ariane)

After actually seeing the movie I can't say that I like the bridge design better than on the photos. But with the hideous "brewery-style" engine room, which is ironically in strong contrast to the overly shiny bridge, I have a new all-time least favorite set design.

The Enterprise Size Controversy

The supersized Enterprise Like millions of other fans, I have seen "Star Trek (2009)". And like pretty much everyone else who cares about starship design I was totally convinced that the new ship has to be about the same size as the original Enterprise or the Enterprise refit from the Prime Universe: around 300 meters long. This is what the design clearly looks like, and there was hardly any real evidence in the movie to the contrary - except the extremely ugly huge engineering location (that almost everyone seems to hate anyway) and the scene when the shuttles with the cadets arrive at the ship. Here we can see how a dozen shuttles are stacked in two rows on each side of the shuttlebay. Since the new shuttles are more than 10m long, this shuttlebay must be at least 40m across, requiring an overall length of the Enterprise of more than 700m!

As usual, I decided to ignore the blatant mis-scaling in case of the shuttle shelves. It would not be the first time that the VFX team disregarded the design sizes as given by the designers, just for an additional dramatic impact. We all remember the Merchantman that appeared to be only shuttle-sized compared to a Klingon BoP in "Star Trek: The Search for Spock", and still no one claims that the ship is really that small. Or the Defiant in "First Contact", which was just some 50m long compared to the Enterprise-E. Or the big shuttles inside Voyager's shuttlebay, which could never pass the shuttlebay door. Or, in the most recent case, the Denobulan medical ship in ENT: "Cold Station 12" that must be some 20m long and almost as high, but fits into the shuttlebay of a Klingon Bird-of-Prey! All this we had to ignore because it was physically impossible. And so was the notion that some 24 big shuttles could be stowed aboard the new Enterprise.

But now the more or less official Enterprise Tour comes up with an overall length of as much as 2500ft (762m) for the new Enterprise. The Society of Digital Artists says that the length is 2357ft (718m). And Gizmodo Blog claims that the ship is 2379.75 feet (725.35 meters) long. And because it's apparently so much fun, the blog demonstrates how well the extremely oversized ship performs compared to other sci-fi franchises, at least size-wise. Finally, we have an extra feature on the Blu-ray disc that confirms the length of the new ship to be 2379.75 feet. Embarrassingly, on the comparison diagram with the TOS Enterprise that is supposed to make the huge size retroactively plausible the scale is totally off. The new Enterprise would be just 490m long if we chose to trust the depiction, rather than the figures!

Faulty size comparison on Blu-ray
(screen capture, special features)

Unlike these various statements insinuate, the ship has not been designed by Ryan Church to be that huge in the first place. In an interview for the Cinefex magazine #118, ILM Art Director Alex Jaeger says: "The reconfigured ship was a larger vessel than previous manifestations -- approximately 1,200-feet-long compared to the 947-foot ship of the original series. Once we got the ship built and started putting it in environments it felt too small. The shuttle bay gave us a clear relative scale -- shuttles initially appeared much bigger than we had imagined -- so we bumped up the Enterprise scale, which gave her a grander feel and allowed us to include more detail." So the ship was designed at 1200ft (366m) by Ryan Church, and was later scaled up by a factor of 2!

Size comparison with 302m, 366m and 725m Enterprise
(image by Bernd)

My above size comparison with correct relative scales speaks for itself. Everyone has to agree with me that, if we base our estimation just on the picture with the relative sizes, the true length of the new ship has to be much closer to 302m (my original assumption) than to 725m, and that Church's size of 366m works well. The 725m version is undeniably totally out of proportion.

There are no known cues in the model itself that would point to a ship much longer than 366m, which is no surprise because obviously the finished model has been scaled up. It is only possible that the skin of the CGI model and hence the level of detail of the hull plates with their "Aztec pattern" was scaled down relative to the TMP Enterprise refit to that end. After further inspection of the various features of the new Enterprise, the windows on a 366m Enterprise would be some 60cm tall, and the docking ports would measure a bit more than 2m. This is about the same as on Probert's Enterprise refit, on which parts of the new design, most obviously the saucer, are based. These features would become just too large on a 725m Enterprise.

So what can we make of the supersized Enterprise? Do we have to believe what the official sources keep telling us now that there are scenes in the movie (that we would otherwise ignore)?

Evidence of a smaller Enterprise There are many reasons why I have settled on the original design length of 366m as the true size of the ship.

• The sheer size of the Super-Enterprise is ludicrous. Had it been a fan design submitted to the JoAT, I would have declined it right away as a fanboyish übership irrespective of the excuse that it's a parallel universe, unless the designer had agreed to modify the size to something more reasonable. At 725m length the Enterprise would be 2.5 times as long as the original Enterprise, and it would have as much as 15.8 times its volume! The alternate ship would dwarf any known Starfleet vessel of the Prime Universe, including the biggest starship classes of the 24th century. Sure, there is no rule for the development of starship sizes over time. But the leap to 15.8 times as large vessels in this new universe is a stretch by any means, especially if we consider that many things (such as the senior crew) are still the same in spite of the huge historical and technological differences.
• The proportions of the saucer, neck, engineering hull and nacelles are somewhat different than on either the TOS and the TMP Enterprise, but overall still similar enough to put it into the same size range. In contrast, the designs of the much larger Enterprise-C (Ambassador class) and Enterprise-D (Galaxy) are visibly more compact, as we would expect from bigger ships because of the scaling issue. The big Enterprise-E (Sovereign class) is less compact again, but with its more streamlined hull the design takes a still different direction. Absolutely everything about the new Enterprise looks like on a small (300m-400m) ship, but we are supposed to believe that it is the same order of size as the Galaxy class!
• While their sizes are subject to vary considerably between different ship classes of different eras, we would not expect all kinds of mid-sized and well-defined details such as phasers, thrusters, impulse engines, deflector dish or bridge dome to change their sizes almost proportionally with the rest of the ship. This, however, would be the case on the "Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise at 725m. Agreed, the shuttlebay doors and the torpedo launcher look small relative to the rest of the new Enterprise, but they match the ones of the TMP Enterprise in size, if the new ship is 366m long (obviously because they have been designed that way). Even if it could be technically possible, the proportional upsizing of almost every feature goes against the notion that it is intended to be overall bigger. The upscaled design would have to establish *some* substantial visual difference to look bigger, but it doesn't.

Overlay of new Enterprise and TMP Enterprise
(image by Bernd)

• The visible window rows make perfect sense at 302m length, and still at 366m. There are two rows of windows in the saucer edge, whose arrangement is almost exactly as on the Probert Enterprise refit. Even the two darker stripes around the edge are nearly the same. Actually, this detail was the reason for me to believe that the saucer had to be the same size (before I came across the original design size of 366m, which would naturally increase the saucer too). This assumption made the new ship overall just a bit shorter (302m) than the TMP version (305m), and undoubtedly not by mere chance, although it turns out that Ryan Church scaled it up a bit. If the actual "Star Trek (2009)" Enterprise were more than twice as long, then the window arrangement in the saucer would be an incredibly stupid coincidence. It is already little useful to scale up hull designs as a whole. But the assumption that the windows would be still the same, leaving the new deck in between (the one behind the stripe) without windows, is extremely far-fetched. Yes, it is just a detail, but the window arrangement is a clearly visible detail and contributes greatly to the impression of the size of any ship. And with its saucer being an inflated Probert design without any changes to make the larger size plausible, it utterly fails at a length of considerably more than 300m. The same applies to the window rows in the neck and in engineering. They always leave "coincidentally" one deck between the rows on an alleged 725m ship without windows, hence indicating that it can only be half as long.

Deck structure of a 300m Enterprise
(image by bX)

• At more than 700m length, the ship would have overall just a handful of windows, and as already mentioned, exactly every second deck in the inhabited parts of the ship would be completely without windows. Adding more windows would have been crucial to insinuate a larger size (with a 5.6 times as large hull area), but overall the ship has rather fewer than more of them than the 305m long Enterprise refit.
• This Enterprise has evidently been built on the ground in its entirety and must have been lifted up into orbit somehow. The length of more than 700m would aggravate the problems of getting it up into space in one piece. The Enterprise would be 16 times as heavy as originally assumed and 8 times as heavy as designed. The larger the scale, the more likely the lever forces of the nacelles would break off the nacelle pylons already when the ship is standing on the ground (that is, if the nacelle support struts in the ship yards were taken away).
• When the Enterprise arrives at Vulcan, the ship runs into a debris field and almost collides with the saucer of the USS Mayflower NCC-1621, whose diameter is at least 150% of the Enterprise's. This saucer would have to be at least 500m across, and it would belong to a ship of more than 1000m length, provided that it has about the same basic structure as the 725m Enterprise. This is clearly another case of blatant mis-scaling, because no other Starfleet ship of the movie is substantially bigger than the Enterprise, and in particular the Mayflower is smaller, as we can see at the space station. But if the Enterprise is not much longer than 300m, it does not totally preclude the possibility that there are ships with bigger 200m saucers.

Enterprise and huge saucer
(screen capture)

• The shuttlebay with the stacked shuttles of 40m or more width is undeniably solid evidence for an upscaled ship of more than 700m. On another occasion, however, when Pike's shuttle is seen leaving the Enterprise at Vulcan, the shuttlebay doesn't look all that big. The shuttle may be some 6 meters wide, then the door opening measures some 10 meters. Perhaps a bit more, since the shuttle may already be a couple of meters ahead of the door. But overall the shuttlebay appears to be much less than 40m wide. In a direct comparison of the two screen caps it becomes evident that the scale of the shuttles (the same type in both cases) varies.

Enterprise - huge shuttlebay (screen capture)

Enterprise & Pike's shuttle (thanks to Belz...)

• When Kirk visits the building site, we can see workers close to the hull of the ship, one just in front of the nacelle and one on a bridge a couple of meters below the saucer. The saucer measures 669 pixels from the center to the lower edge. The height of the tiny human figure near the saucer is 18 pixels. Assuming that the worker measures 1.8m, this would give the saucer a radius of just 67m, which is an almost perfect match with the saucer of the TMP Enterprise! Again, this can't be a coincidence. The figure in front of the nacelle measures some 15 pixels, while the nacelle, at the same distance from the "camera", is 194 pixels high from the upper end of the pylon to the very top. The overall length of the ship would be barely 300m based on this comparison, but we would have needed to account for some parallax, so the ship may be actually somewhat longer, perhaps 366m as designed. -- In contrast, the teaser trailer of January 2008 shows workers on the nacelle, between the two fins at the aft end. The distance between the roots of the fins would be as much as 18m based on the visual evidence, and this gives us a ship of well over 600m length. It is obvious once again that the scale is not consistent, but the canon movie scene should overrule the teaser trailer, although the latter may have been made with the new "official" larger scale of the ship.

Comparison at building site (image by bX)

Comparison in teaser trailer (image by Bernd)

• As already mentioned, the visible windows on a 366m Enterprise would be absolutely reasonable. But what about the bridge windows that, as we can see from inside, are rather large? The combined window/viewscreen in front of the bridge occupies much of the set's height at the edge, but it doesn't reach from the floor to the ceiling. I estimate it measures about 6m by 2m. This window, like the port and starboard windows that appear to have the same sizes, is visible on the CGI model. In the teaser trailer we can see the bridge almost perfectly head on, at a certain distance from the "camera", so there is practically no distortion. The window does not occupy the whole deepening into which it is embedded. We can see a faint rectangular frame inside the more rounded contour of the cavity. But this narrow slit as visible on the model is not what we are shown in the close-ups. In order for the proportions to be correct, almost two thirds of this window must be submerged. The idea of a submerged window, however, does not comply with the take of Spock standing in front of a transparent window that is obviously not in the "basement", as well as with the look inside the bridge through the 6m by 2m window. But the latter have to be rated as errors in the post-production, because they don't reproduce the correct window proportions of the model. In case we decided that the entirely unobstructed view from the bridge window were the correct depiction irrespective of the inconsistency in the window width, the ship would have to be well over 1000m long! Anyway, the 6m by 2m mostly submerged window gives us an overall bridge dome height, measured from the hull surface in the upper third of the window to the very top, of barely 6.6m. The overall length of the Enterprise, based on this evidence, would be still some 450m, but nowhere near 725m. -- Also, while the bridge superstructure on a 366m Enterprise with submerged window would be already one deck high, there would be two full decks above the bridge on a 725m ship, the lower one measuring some 45m in diameter! What could possibly be located above the bridge?

Matching bridge window with exterior view (image by Bernd)

Bridge seen from outside (screen capture by Ariane)

Commentary I have come to terms with the new Enterprise. I have accepted it as an alternate-universe version. But that was under the precondition that the ship was still some 300m long. Aside from not making sense in-universe, there also a couple of real-world reasons why I hate the idea of the supersized Enterprise:

• From Matt Jefferies' original miniature to Doug Drexler's full-CGI NX-01 all Enterprises were designed, built and shown at a definite size, as it can be expected for a ship to bear the illustrious name, as opposed to an alien ship-of-the-week. The eighth Enterprise as designed by Ryan Church was originally 366m long and later scaled up at ILM without any changes to the design. The new huge size was made up way too late by people who apparently did not really have an idea what they were doing. Moreover, it was evidently insufficiently communicated and accounted for.
• The new Enterprise was designed by Ryan Church to make sense at 366m length. Moreover, he laid out the overall shape, the deck structure and even many details to be a tip of the hat to Andrew Probert's Movie Enterprise. The extreme retroactive upscaling of the vessel effectively invalidates many of the designer's efforts and his good intent.
• The absurd size is explained by Jaeger as having practical reasons. But it begs the question if someone in charge was of the opinion that Star Trek had to catch up with other science fiction franchises size-wise. Because other than squeezing in all the shuttles, which played no role in the story and could have been avoided, there is absolutely no reason for the extreme oversize of Star Trek's new lead vessel.

I will keep the size at 366m. Unless I want the new movie to decanonize itself with an absurdly sized new Enterprise, I will not accept the more than 700m length that ignorant people in charge of the visual effects, apparently with problems to understand that there is no size competition among sci-fi franchises, may have deemed necessary. In spite of everything, I have a desire to maintain the continuity of the old and the brand new Star Trek. And this is why I keep defending the new Enterprise design at its reasonable size. I firmly believe it is the lesser evil to ignore the just one or two scenes where the new ship appears to be monster-sized, rather than abandon everything I have ever read and written about starship design.

Two Kirks and their "Enterpriuses"
(image by Bernd)

As circumstantial it may appear to people who don't care for starship designs (or other technology), the size of the new Enterprise may be the final straw, it may mark the difference between a parallel universe within the existing canon on one side, and a complete reboot, a new science fiction universe in which different rules apply than in Star Trek so far. The USS Kelvin is another trouble spot. Because this ship, which predates the creation of the parallel universe from what we have seen in the movie, starts the trend of ships being much larger than any 23rd century vessel we know so far, including the Excelsior. It has a crew of 800, twice as many as on the original Enterprise 30 years later in the Prime Universe. Yet, it is supposed to be just a survey vessel.

Conclusion

In a comment at Entertainment Weekly, J.J. Abrams implicitly claims that the ship is still the same as a concession to the fans: "If you’re going to do Star Trek there are many things you cannot change. The Enterprise is a visual touchstone for so many people. So if you’re going to do the Enterprise, it better look like the Enterprise, because otherwise, what are you doing?" He seems to mean what he says without sarcasm, but exhibits a lackadaisical attitude about what he is doing. I am afraid that certain people, even some avid fans, rather trust such appeasing statements than their own eyes. The new ship is different. Very different than the TOS Enterprise, and even casual fans notice that. And if we believe the official sources, it is even supposed to be a lot bigger than it should.

The discussion about the new Enterprise reminds me of the "Akiraprise" controversy a couple of years ago. The new movie with its lead ship, however, has damaged Star Trek's continuity more fundamentally than Enterprise ever could. The "Akiraprise" NX-01, as much as I initially disliked it, could fit into the design lineage just because the series was set more than 100 years prior to TOS - at least visually it is not a big deal if we ignore the similarity to the Akira class. In "In a Mirror, Darkly" the Mirror NX-01 and the TOS Defiant even appeared side by side.

Because of my respect for The Original Series and the fact that it has the much older rights I may choose to give the reboot a lower weight than the classic production design. In my view not the old Star Trek but the new one is an alternate, a "second-rate" reality. In my Starship Database there is only a place for one "true" Enterprise NCC-1701, and it will remain Matt Jefferies' design. The Enterprise always looked as it did in TOS until the ship was refurbished for TMP, and anything weird that happens on the new Enterprise in the new movie does not affect what I see as the main Trek timeline, even if the latter has ceased to exist. I don't want myself to be spoiled by a mere fashionable new look and feel, regardless whether it comes as an explicit "reboot" or whether it is shamefully labeled as just another new timeline within the existing continuity.

It is not my intention to ruin everyone else's excitement about the new universe. Every generation has its Enterprise, and for the new generation the decision has been made that this time the new movie replaces the existing Star Trek much in the sense of a total reboot instead of carefully expanding it. I won't tilt against windmills, but I keep an unusually critical distance instead of being a part of the hype.

Regarding the size issue, I have made my point that there are many reasons not to believe in the foolishly upscaled design. In any case it is strange that, while there were several photos already available, no information was provided about the ship's size until directly after the movie release, and then it appeared almost simultaneously in different places. Well, they may have saved the "best" for last, but could it be that the producers were a bit afraid of the reactions on the size of the design, because they knew that they had ignored the geeks' expectations of consistency?

Credits

Thanks to Nick Corcoran for the Jaeger quote, to Geert for reminding me that lifting a 700m vessel would be a huge problem, to Dave Metlesits for the hint about the huge saucer, to bX for permission to use his size comparisons, to Brian Gordon for pointing me to the Blu-ray size comparison and to Belz... for the great find of the screen cap with Pike's shuttle.

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