Annotations The "new" USS Enterprise NCC-1701 first appears in DIS: "Will You Take My Hand?". The ship was heavily redesigned (allegedly "to utilize 2018's VFX technology") and was also scaled up in order not to be dwarfed by the massive ship designs of the reboot series. Although the relative proportions are overall still roughly the same, there are considerable changes to all elements of the ship. The bridge module is flatter now (although on the ship as it must have looked in 2257 it should be taller than the familiar one on the series Enterprise from TOS). Actually, it looks like the whole deck 1 is missing, and the bridge is on what was deck 2. The Enterprise also has the customary bridge window of the Abramsverse and Discovery now. The saucer edge slopes up at 45° instead of previously 60°. The impulse engines have a very different shape on the redesign. The neck was shortened. The redesigned engineering hull is shorter and also less tapered and more rounded, like on the 2271 refit. Likewise, the new shuttlebay resembles the refit version, rather than the original. The same goes for the warp pylons, which are sloped and tapered instead of straight and rectangular, and were shortened just like the neck. They also sport a previously unseen slit. The redesigned nacelles only very roughly resemble the original ones. They incorporate elements familiar from Enterprise NX-01, and overall various add-ons the original Enterprise never had. Only the nacelle end caps are a small tip of the hat, as they look like on the pilot version from "The Cage" and "Where No Man Has Gone Before", with a flat sloped surface instead of the later "ball" of the series Enterprise. While the alleged intention of the redesign was to adapt the ship for an appearance on Discovery, all changes to the original Enterprise use retro elements that are rather reminiscent of the NX-01 and the Enterprise refit from TMP. Except for the possible bridge window, there is no "DIS style" in the redesign (no angular nacelles, no odd angles in the hull, no boxy add-ons), which raises the question why this ship had to be redesigned at all, rather than only refined with more details such as thrusters and visible hull plates. The customary blue lighting of space in the series would have done the rest to make it fit. And since the Enterprise retro redesign, as unwarranted it may be, arguably looks a lot better than most other DIS ships, it further calls the decision into question to alter everything else in Discovery so radically, "for a modern audience". Even though they may love TOS by their own affirmations, the makers of Discovery overwrite the visuals of TOS with their reinterpretations, including the new ship designs (not to mention new Klingons). As far as Discovery goes, the look of the TOS Enterprise has never existed. As much as we may still want to reconcile their new Enterprise (which looks good after all!) with TOS, it would make absolutely no sense if the ship had been extensively refitted between 2254 ("The Cage") and 2257 (DIS: "Will You Take My Hand?"), only to be reverted to the familiar look until 2264 (TOS: "Where No Man Has Gone Before"). Even if we decided to discard the visuals of the first pilot in favor of the rest of TOS, the new appearance of the Enterprise has too little in common with the ship as it looked in TOS. It already includes many cues of the 2271 refit ("Star Trek: The Motion Picture"). So it seems Discovery keeps the option to spare the TOS movie era (well, except for the size problem), but the series shows no mercy with TOS, whose designs are retroactively invalidated. Basically, all known Constitution-class ships should exist in the reimagination of Discovery. But only the USS Defiant NCC-1764 was confirmed. The wireframe diagram of the ship shown in DIS: "Despite Yourself" probably shows us the appearance of the ship after 100 years in Terran service, but it is clear that the Defiant must have looked just like the reimagined Enterprise when it crossed over to the Mirror Universe. Regarding the size of the redesign, my benevolent supposition was that "only" the deck heights were changed from 3m to 4m, which would have enlarged the Enterprise to 385m. But Eaglemoss gives us a length of 442m, which indicates that the deck structure must be very different too. The countless shuttles seen in DIS: "Such Sweet Sorrow II" and the absurd rollercoaster turbolift inside a huge empty space as seen in SHO: "Q&A" clearly require the reboot ship to be a lot larger than the original, and more than "only" 3 times in terms of internal volume. A behind-the-scenes video for season 2 shows a display with orthographic views and specifications of the "new" Enterprise. Here, the ship has the exact (small) hull dimensions of the original TOS Enterprise, although this is physically impossible because the proportions of the redesign are different, as evidenced by my comparison with the original. The ship on the display also has straight nacelle pylons like on the original Enterprise, although it appears with sloped pylons on screen. This display was not clearly visible in any episode though. See also Starfleet Ship Classes A-K

Class specifications Length: 442m