>I know they do for me. The first time I saw the Defiant I
>thought, "Huh. When did Starfleet contract with the Corellian
>Engineering Corporation for their new destroyers?"

Yeah, I noticed the similarity, eventually. Enough that, after reading the writeup of the Defiant class in the DS9 Technical Manual, I decided to add some Defiant embellishments to a YT-1300 and see what came out. (Those who have read my first Stormcrow story have seen the result.)

>Not to mention nauseating. Ugh! The TNG-era starship
>designers really didn't do the world many favors. Defiant and
>Sovereign, and that's about it.

I never hated the Galaxy class, but neither did it ever do anything special for me like the Constitution class (my, that's a classy design), the Defiant (something about sheer brutality), the Sovereign (my first thought when I saw that thing: "DAMN!"; I later realized that it was because it combined everything I liked about the Defiant and the Constitution), and, to a lesser degree the Excelsior (though it's too chunky to have the grace of a Constitution or a Sovereign).

The remainder of the TNG-era ships... none of them appeal to me as a whole. I like certain things about some of them; the capabilities ("multi-vector assault mode") of the Prometheus, even though it looks like someone picked up an Intrepid and tried to make it look as intimidating as a Defiant and failed miserably, which is annoying, because it should have looked cool. The Intrepid class is another example, for that matter, of a design that should have been cool -- small, agile, that sort of thing -- but failed miserably. (The warp nacelles that fold upward are an idea that sounds like it might be cool, but looks rather silly in execution.) The Akira class looks rather nifty from some angles; at other times, it just looks dumb. (Though looking at it now brings the NX-01 to mind, which makes me like it a bit more.) I mostly like the Danube-class runabouts, though I wish they looked a bit more elegant and less blocky. Most other TNG-era ships are basically the designers throwing stuff together, and they look like it, unfortunately.

As for non-Starfleet ships... well, I particularly like the B'Rel-class ships, and other Klingon ships along those lines; the D7, it depends. Sometimes I look at it and rather like it; other times I look at it and it just feels indifferent to me. The Negh'Var class appeals to me on a sheer brute strength level, but lacks the grace of the B'Rel-type designs. The classic Romulan Warbird design I like, though I wish it had just a bit more grace to it; the D'Deridex class, I can take or leave. It's something that tries to achieve the same kind of brutal power as a Negh'Var or Vor'Cha, with a bit more grace, but doesn't quite pull it off (or anything else, for that matter, other than making me wonder what purpose that huge gap in the middle of the ship serves). I think the goal on that one was to update the original Warbird/Bird of Prey design, but fails miserably.

-- Sean --

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