The Franz Joseph Fleet!

[Graham Kennedy]

Top Left : Constitution class Heavy Cruiser
Top Right : Federation class Dreadnought
Middle Left : Ptolemy class Tug / Transport
Middle Right : Hermes class Scout
Bottom : Saladin class Destroyer

[IanKennedy]

Nice. Although there's something wrong with the text on the top of the Ptolemy.

[Graham Kennedy]

Aha. I've got more than one version of the text turned on. Whups.

[Mikey]

Very nice. Plus, you have along the way created a new department of Starfleet!

"To boldly assign resources where no logistical officer has gone before!"

[Graham Kennedy]

I gotta tell you, I'm loving these TOS designs. Not just these specifically, but the general aesthetic of TOS. I'm getting reasonably good with blender, but I would still really struggle to do the compound curve shapes of something like a GCS - and a Sovereign would be far beyond me. But these ships are made of spheres, cylinders and cubes, essentially. Rounded edges, smoothed out, distorted... but it's all spheres, cylinders and cubes. It gives them a really clean, simple look. You can understand the shapes, get a feel for them. And the different iterations and arrangements of the elements make a kind of sense.

I would dearly love to see some version of TOS on screen with these and similar designs running around. When I think of how amazing it was to see the Defiant in In A Mirror, Darkly, or the Enterprise in Trials and Tribblations... those designs still work, even today. God, I'd love to see a series like that. If I ever had Bill Gates money I'd shell a few hundred million out to make the fan series of all time... it would be sooooo good!

[Mikey]

I think there is an unconscious tendency among many of us (myself included, because I certainly agree with you) toward nostalgia... or even more, the fact that the original instance of a thing sets the paradigm for that thing. In other words, there is very likely ingrained in us an unconscious idea that TOS designs are the "breed standard" for starships in 'Trek because they were the initial encounter we had with starships in 'Trek (you and I being close in age.) There has long been a feeling among our contemporaries that our first impression of the GCS was that it felt somehow ungainly or imbalanced, even though intellectually we knew such things didn't apply to a spaceship. That feeling was, I believe, less present among people for whom TNG was their first foray into Star Trek.