The new Enterprise design for the Star Trek XI movie strikes me as ungainly and a bit juvenile. It’s a suped-up super-deformed version of the beautiful starship design still admired by Star Trek fans.
Anyway, I don’t like to criticize something without offering an alternative, so here is my free-hand sketch of how I thought the new movie Enterprise ought to have looked. I only attempt to draw something about once every five years, so I apologize for the crudeness of the art and also for the scan quality.
My design adds a two-tone paint job (perhaps gull grey on top and bluish grey for the underside's darker color). Also, I would retain the bussard collector's rotor and colored sparks. The bussard collector is the forward engine cap, for the uninitiated among you. To me, that was perhaps the most hypnotic aspect of the original design.
Linked just below is an essay I wrote about the history of the Star Trek franchise.
18 March 2009