The Crossfield class had a hard acceptance with the initial trailer which was ENT level quality... 15 years ago. But with refinement, and polishing, the class grows on you. Theeeen the 32nd century happens and I am once again bleh with the ship design. SHAPES. IN. SPAAAACE.
@@Daginni1 I don't think I'll ever accept the whole "detachable nacelles" thing, because it's totally ridiculous on so many levels. Does it look cool? Kind of, yeah. Does it make sense? Hell no.
@@ManabiLT It was not as nonsensical in future Starfleet design, as people think. My main issue with 32'th design is that it look even blander then original TOS ships. And they did have excuse for flat surfaces.
One thing that is very strange to me is the number of people who protest the Crossfield doesn't fit the original time period when the entire point of the ship was to be a test platform for experimental technologies. It is as if folks are unaware of how, in real life, prototypes and early experiments can appear not just years, but decades, ahead of later formalization.
@@paulrasmussen8953 the sr71 does not look like anything of its time, prototypes do not look like their conteporaries, that's why they're prototypes. when you wanna explore you don't just do the same shit as everyone, you do something different
I still say, to this day, that the fact that they haven't made an official pizza-cutter from the U.S.S. Discovery is a MASSIVE oversight in terms of marketing. Yes, I'm aware there's an Enterprise one, but the fact that the Discovery canonically has a saucer that *actually spins* means... Well, come on, you know where I'm going with this. :P
They're probably avoiding it because a lot of fans derisively refer to it as a pizza cutter ship. Making an _official_ USS Discovery pizza cutter would add fuel to that fire, even though it's their own fault people call it that.
I honestly figured that only Discovery and Glenn had the cut outs on the saucer, due to their incorporation of the Spore Drive. Other Crossfield class vessels would have a solid saucer, the idea being that when the Spore Drive experiments were set up, they just grabbed two Crossfield ships that were in production and altered their design to add the Spore Drive's cavitation system.
@@ObeMossop What is actually interesting is that SNW Crossfield is basically the TOS Miranda. Its design was also based on Phase 2 project for Enterprise. From Planets of Titans (usually refereed as Titan type). th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.opbxex0iXgXwzvQLhHVGhgHaDf Interestingly it actually also is seen in Wolf 359 www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/qualor/qualor2.jpg
The Crossfield-class is named for American naval officer and test pilot Albert Scott Crossfield, who became the first human to fly at twice the speed of sound.
My understanding is that *all* of Discovery's sister ships are naned for test pilots. A nice tribute to some of the often-overlooked heroes of flight and space exploration.
@@vic5015 they are. The Walker-class Named for NASA test pilot Joseph A. Walker, who flew spaceplanes for the United States in the mid-1960’s and became the first human to fly to space twice. The Nimitz-class Named for US Navy fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who was commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet in World War II. The Cardenas-class Named for US Air Force brigadier general Robert Cardenas, a pilot who had a notable career in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, served as a test pilot for the Air Force, and was assigned to notable posts over his career. The Hoover-class Named for US Air Force fighter pilot Bob Hoover, who escaped Nazi captivity in a stolen plane, tested supersonic jets, and has been considered by many to be one of the greatest aviators in history. The Magee-class Named for Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr., who also wrote the famed aviation poem "High Flight" which was most notably used by President Ronald Reagan when addressing the nation over the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986. The Malachowski-class Named for US Air Force pilot Nicole Malachowski, who became the first female member of the famed Thunderbirds acrobatic flying team. The Engle-class Named for American test pilot and astronaut Joe Engle, who test-flew the joint NASA-Air Force North American X-15 rocket airplane and the space shuttle Enterprise before eventually commanding the space shuttle Columbia. The Shepard-class Named for American test pilot and astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American and second human to travel into space, and later commanded the Apollo 14 mission.
I was sincerely hoping it wasn’t named after the so called crossed field antenna design from the 1980s. That was a piece of pseudoscience that was going to “revolutionize” communications.
😂 let's name a giant, slow, cruising science lab after someone who flew the fastest manned object ever made at the time. They really put fuck all thought into any narrative or universal consistency in Disco.
5:55 I love the level of detail you provide. You mention it's maximum warp factor, and then what scale it was following. That's amazing. Thank you for being so thoughtful and fastidious with the information. It's like, way more information than I would normally need to be a fan and just have fun, but sometimes I like to really nerd out and get into the details. Thanks for providing both.
I really appreciate them doing something different with the Discovery/Crossfield class. We see similar 'weird designs' crop up in recent history - something new that uses a radically different design philosophy to test out new ideas and technologies - and most of the time they wind up the way of the Crossfield in Star Trek, a design dead end that was too ambitious for its own good. It really fits the story of how the class was designed too - it was a testbed for radical new technologies and scientific advancement, built (or rebuilt maybe, since there's some conflicting information on the Crossfield's design and function) specifically for Spore Drive testing. Compare it to the early Rocket Interceptors of WW2 - they look weird compared to the conventional propeller planes, had promise and were ultimately discontinued when it was discovered that technology was impractical/dangerous (and were then overtaken technologically by Jets, which also looked weird compared to the conventional planes but are now seen as 'standard' because the technology worked and was reliable).
Those cavernous interiors get taken to their most ridiculous extreme in season 3 with that fight in the turbolift system, but one thing I’ve realised about that is that it was post-refit. By this time, the Federation had had TARDIS-style “bigger on the inside” technology for a couple centuries, as evidenced by that time pod in Star Trek: Enterprise.
@@casbot71 and with Voyager's shuttle bay you had the issues with size of it launching it's runabout styled ship. The Delta Flyer class. Was canonically too large to fit through it's main shuttle bay door in the aft.
I’d forgotten about the time pod. I just figured a lot of the engineering guts was deprecated, since instead of multiple huge warp cores it was just a fairly small orb.
I will defend Discovery for many, many things, but that bizarre minecart ride through an empty cavern inside a space ship is indefensible. It kills the scene as a pretty epic fight is set in a magic ship of holding.
I do like the perspective of the Crossfield as an overly-ambitious concept--aesthetically and functionally, that taught Starfleet what they DIDN'T want. Makes it more palatable that way. I will say, I liked the gold/bronze and even the 32nd century silver.
@@jeremydale4548 That's irrelevant. Gene did only have what he had available to him. And going forward into the motion picture he expanded upon what he started with... Then in TNG gave himself the leeway to push even further beyond what he made... But in doing so he created visual aesthetics for each period in time. TOS to TMP showed that he adhered to his own logic and instead of just making things more modern for no reason, worked to create reasons... A refit, ships a generation onward... Secret Hideout and Kurtzman don't do that. They don't care as much as Gene did in his showmanship and unlike Gene not liking it but going ahead anyway... Kurtzman and co just seem to throw anything at the wall to see what sticks. Gene was a man of his time who created a long running series that yes, if he were of this time he'd use modern day techniques and props... Duh? Who wouldn't. But he's not of this time and he set a standard in what is considered a futuristic period piece that is the equivalent of historic period renactments... You need to show the points in-between as to how they moved from one aesthetic to the others. The Enterprises of the Classic series showcases this well in terms of how they got from the Connie to the Galaxy.
I love the idea of starfleet experimenting with different fuels and different warp drives (like a long running “ Philadelphia experiment” in space). I would’ve liked if the subspace mycelial network had been explored for a whole season, and had been more of a threat (explaining why starfleet hasn’t tried it again or gone back there).
The ship, like the show itself; An ambitious project with mixed success, and questionable design choices. A show that's ahead of its time, but also an experiment that taught the studio some valuable lessons, even in failure.
Ahead in what way? Every social issue and political argument in ST:D was a ham fisted rehash of issues that had been done better by every other Star Trek show.
SNW is what STD should have been.. Instead we got different klingons,a klingon war, mirror universe, a giant tardigrade. Spock's sister who he forgot to ever talk about. And all that was delivered and cleaned up in just 15 epidoes. And then of course runs to the Enterprise because they couldn't help themselves.
@@insanehippiehippieinsane3828 Sometimes you need to be hamfisted with your politics, otherwise you get former actors forgetting the point and running their mouth like a fox news anchor on aderall
You make it sound like it was designed as less "starship" and more "floating university"... which honestly would be a really cool direction to take and would explain why it's such a different size from its contemporaries. Wish the show leaned into that.
I like to head canon that the discovery from the original teaser back in 2016 was the original design for the crossfield class as proposed by the Starfleet Design Bureau with perhaps the original USS Crossfield being made to those specifications. However, in the time between Crossfield's shakedown/testing the spore drive research occurred and the Discovery and Glenn, still being in the pre production, were refit to house the new drive. Further crossfields were probably made either to the original specifications or a mix of the two (without the spore drive) but overall very few were made because they were highly expensive, high maintenance craft.
My father was a Colonel in the US Air Force attached to the Defense Atomic Support Agency and the Special Weapons Project and worked on the XB-70 and was there when they removed all sensitive equipment many years later when it was put in the museum as he was the last living person who worked on the original project that could be there when it was all removed. He was able to see it fly one last time before being taken to the museum.
It's amazing to me that DECADES later Ralph Mequerie's old concept art is still being used to make incredible modern designs for Star Trek and Star Wars ships while other more original designs are so vapid and forgettable.
Why did the studio mandated no round nacelles? That just very oddly specific. I do hope we'll see a refit Crossfield on SNW next season. With the large internal volume, it can be used as cargo transport since it is now and out dated design. None of the early DISCO ships actually look that bad, just small little design decisions that made them look off.
Particularly with the 32nd century upgrades, perhaps the technology's shrunk even more thus making the ship even roomier. Between all that space and the Spore Drive, no reason that thing couldn't be ferrying stuff all over.
I'd love to hear your take on the Saturn class from the 32nd century. In STO it's one of my favorite ships. It's an odd design to be sure (though one of the only 32c. ships without detached nacelles) but as a ship inspired by the LHC, it seems to be built much more for genuine scientific experiments than the Crossfield class. As to the U.S.S. Discovery, I think a lot of the issues can be chalked up to Lorca. It's important to remember that he was a Terran the whole time - we never actually saw Prime Universe Lorca at any point in the show, that was ALL Terran Lorca. So while he may have been operating a Federation ship, he was never actually a member of the Federation, and never actually swore to uphold the Prime Directive. It's a cute little loophole that allows him to get away with what was done to the Tardigrade on his orders. And as to the spore drive, yeah, a lot of people can say a lot about it, and some of the criticism is justified. But I'll ask you this: what's better, a bad explanation, or no explanation at all? The fact that the Enterprise can somehow move at Transwarp Infinity whenever it is off screen (meanwhile Voyager takes a decade to cross a single quadrant) always bothered me. The Spore Drive at least gives SOME explanation for the plot convenience of "ship is wherever ship needs to be right now."
Discovery's spore drive did to warp travel, what the Holdo Maneuver did to hyperspace. Now everyone needs to explain why everyone else is just that pants on head stupid for not adopting it fleetwide as the primary movement method since it renders the warp core obsolete. Stick one in a starbase, there you go, instantaneous travel for a mobile structure, why even use a ship at that point if Starbase 47 can just spore jump to the location and send out a sea of shuttles to evacuate a colony.
@@nuclearsimian3281 It requires a navigator that most ships don't have, and the Federation isn't the Imperium of Man (usually) so they're not going to enslave a race of beings for it, no matter how useful it may be. The show made this pretty clear. Multiple characters asked the same question you're asking and the answer was always the same: Starfleet doesn't have an army of Staments. Now, presumably they COULD locate others throughout the galaxy who could navigate the mycellial network and convince them sign up for Starfleet voluntarily. It is reasonable to assume that Stements isn't the one and only human who could do what he does. But it's also likely that people with that capability are exceedingly rare and even if they found a handful more of them, they wouldn't have nearly enough to staff more than a couple dozen ships at most. As for why they can't jump a starbase, it was stated (may have been in STO rather than Discovery, I'm not entirely sure) that the Discovery itself is already pushing the size limitations of the mycellial network. In STO, J'Ula jumps a D7 class through the network accidentally and causes severe damage to the mycellial plane, as well as subspace. Thus, if you can't fit a D7 through it, you most certainly can't fit a starbase through it. There are issues with the Spore Drive - the entire concept of a magic mushroom realm that somehow parallels our own is batsh*t crazy, for one - but as long as we're analyzing it from an in-universe point of view, it has no issues. You have to be outside the IP looking in to see any problems with it. Meanwhile, the Enterprise going Transwarp Infinity when off screen doesn't make sense either in-universe or out. Thus, the Spore Drive is an improvement over the Plot Drive of hero ships past. EDIT: Also, keep in mind that Starfleet ROUTINELY makes one-off technologies that would render any alternatives obsolete, only to discover a fatal flaw later. The Phase Cloak on the Pegasus comes to mind as the prime example of this - it was simultaneously indisputably the best cloaking device ever created and also horribly flawed, leading to the loss of the vessel itself. You could ask the same question - "if this cloak makes you invisible AND invulnerable, why doesn't everyone use it?" - but you need only consult the wreck of the Pegasus for your answer.
The Holdo Maneuver has a simple explanation: Hyperdrives are resource intensive to build from scratch. Much like aluminum which takes many times more energy to refine from bauxite than it does to recycle, creating a new hyperdrive is resource intensive, however rebuilding or recycling one is much simpler. So destroying a hyperdrive in such a (presumably) irreversible way is essentially a massive waste of resources. Yes it can disable an entire fleet at once but they can simply be repaired and be back on their feet in a couple of months. It just isn't worth doing unless you're in the absolute most dire of situations. This goes doubly so if you don't control Corellia or some similarly large shipyard that produces hyperdrive capable ships. Also what the other guy said- If we were in the mirror universe the questions about the tartigrade and the myceleal network are reasonable, but in the prime universe the federation simply decided it was too far outside of their moral principles at the time (the prime universe in the wake of the dominion war may have made a different decision) once they learned that the tartigrade had higher sapience, and they just did such a thorough job of destroying what was, in the scheme of things, a very small experiment that nobody could replicate it.
This ship is proof that drugs and shrooms addictions are still a thing in the future, whoever came up with the design and the spore-thing was high on something.
Mycology in real life is STILL behind the other fields of biology because of how mushrooms got associated with psychedelics in the victorian era. Honestly, given how weird terrestrial fungus gets, the subspace mycelial network seems more likely than warp drive
One thing that still bothers me, as far as key writing around the tech and capabilities of the Crossfield class and, in particular, the Discovery: It’s called the Displacement Activated Spore Hub Drive - so why didn’t they commonly name it the D.A.S.H Drive? What on earth were these writers thinking, when they decided to have Stamets and other characters repeatedly name it, in their vernacular, as the Spore Drive? Clearly that’s not as clever as DASH Drive? And if DASH sounds “too cheesy” - why not at least lampshade that in dialogue?
For the cannon part it was confirmed to be cannon as the crossfield class appears in tng twice. Once in a Federation bone yard and the second at wolf 359. Although these are based on the battle of titans enterprise they are crossfield ships.
Pre seeing Discovery the teaser of this ship design appeared in STO and boy as there a kick off on the forum over it. I am not a Trekkie, my partner is, but I liked the game it was fun, but boy did the vitriol on the forums shocked me. It was only in context, a unique drive ship (spore) made sense there would be a unique design of ship to fit that roll.
If you assume the outer spinning ring was a add on to the design, and the original concept had just the inner saucer section, then it does look kind of in proportion. Could the extra long nacelles be excused as part of the Spore Drive system? In which case change them to a more standard nacelle common to the era and that's actually a plausible ship. It's an attempt by Starfleet to greatly increase usable internal volume with a wide secondary hull - Starfleet had looked at the Klingon D series and thought "that's a good idea." And it might be so for a science ship - all the science labs are in the secondary hull, and if anything goes catastrophic the saucer separates with explosive bolts and the crew not only jettison the engineering section, but all the science labs ... one of which is the source of the calamity. It's still better than a big canoe under the ship.
Personally I always think of the ship in a scaled down sense. It being that big just makes no sense. I also like to think that the reason it never took off in Starfleet was because of its design, the defective spore drive tech, and other factors. I also believe that the reason its hull looks the way that it does was not because it was a stylistic choice, but rather it was required to have a full made of bronze to allow the spore drive to work better. Though its “needle nose” nacelles do give it an impressive look. More regal, as if Starfleet was thinking of changing up their design language but had second thoughts and then abandoned the class completely.
It feels more at home in Star wars then Star Trek Remove the neck, saucer, pylons, and naccels and you have a star destroyer. Add to that the star wars like travel spore drive. It's like they was trying to turn trek into wars.
I suspect the minimal crew was more due to the secretive nature of its mission, and the high risk involved. This also means that after the time jump when much of the crew had either been lost or left behind they were operating at less than even a skeleton crew. I would have loved to have seen the shift schedule! Thus the wholly justifiable decision to make an ensign acting first officer, desperate times an all. I doubt anyone inboard was heart broken about being passed up as being promoted would remove them from their current post.
Those secondary tiny circles that look like auxiliary Bussards could be I guess some sort of warp plama torpedo launchers the placement then wouldn't be "as bonkers" if it was firing solid weapons from there.
I saw that scene. I can't help wondering if it was done, only because the normal path the torpedoes would have taken, was hidden by the angle the ship was filmed at, making it impossible for viewers to see them.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and executed and informatively explained in every detail way shape and form provided on this format and subject matter on the Crossfield class starship's indeed Sir, I myself have never been a fan of the long spindly looking warp nacelles and the bussard collectors, And what happens to some one if they get caught in the outer ring when it starts spinning when the spore drive is incorporated cause in the show you never hear them say to anyone to evacuate it whatsoever in any way shape or form!,🤔.
Yes but it's size means different phaser systems could be tested without compromising the base defensive abilities. Phasers are just a tool when not used in combat.
In fairness, Starfleet has a knee-jerk reaction to designating ship classes as warships. The Inquiry class was presumably a modular exploratory vessel despite the ship being armed to an almost absurd degree.
Regarding the presumed Crossfield from the Broken Circle, I have a theory. Assuming the Broken Circle were able to accurately recreate the craft and not simply kitbash a bunch of designs, what if Starfleet gave the class designation to a more contemporary ship with a similar profile in order to further bury the existence of the Glenn & Discovery?
@@enisra_bowman That could work too. Was kitbashing designs common in the TOS era? I know it was common place in the TNG-VOY era, but I'm still learning about the TOS era.
No. One of the newer shows, Picard or Lower Decks had a Crossfield class ship shown on a display. And Adm Vance had records on the Crossfield (but not about the DASH drive or real service records)
@@gabelogan5877 Sure, having the vessel declassified over a century later, appart from the giggle drive, makes sense. But as an immediate means to bury it's existence, it's still possible to have the class name given to a similar design and just say "we experimented with a new ship, went back to a more basic design, but kept the name" later on.
@@wolfpack_104 well, that is hard to answer, no, because they only had a small Handfull of Ships back then but then, they kitbashed on of the Tholian Ships into the Class J Type Ship in "A Way to Eden" by glueing some Warp Nacelles to it. But then again, they made the Romulans wear these Helmets since they didn't have the Budget for Ears. And i've meant it as In Universe Explanation why they looked the same
They should've stuck to the spycraft/experimental stuff and make it a section 31 ship and then go to the future ASAP, so it would've been the Federation's version of Philidelphia experiment. To me Episode 13 in season 1 was the perfect place to do that
Like you said head of it's time; this ship and show could have easily been in the 25 or 26th century and act out all it wanted, scaling and lore wouldn't have been broken - the 32nd Century by far is the best thing that happened to it in my opinion. Thanks for the video :)
For me, the scaling issue can be attributed to the same line of thinking as to why the contrast for the design of the ships vary between the original series and Discovery/Strange New Worlds. That it is our adaptation of the story being told and our interpretation for adapting it to television has led to the descrepancies. I mean the scaling thing is definitely a lack of thought by the studio though. Some of your in universe reasonings behind why the class is the way it is are good "no prizes" at explaining away studio decisions. Unless the class (or Discovery) was dimensionally transcendental as well.
Good luck with this one. I think it's a great design, but took a lot of comment flack when I put it in my video of top ship classes, based on on-screen utility shown. It's not pretty, but it is a heck of a ship, especially the 32nd century refit
She’s not a bad looking ship. It’s just weird that Production wanted to set her in the period that they did. I could easily see her as a post-Dominion War/Borg Invasion rebuke of the belief that StarFleet was now primarily a war fighting organization. And the idea that StarFleet could put so much thought into a ship and say “ah the hell with it. Forget the whole thing,” is just...weird. Granted, that’s kinda the Defiant’s backstory, but she was a small experiment. If memory serves, the Defiant still had her NX designation when Sisko pulled her out of mothballs. Discovery’s NCC, she and her sister ship were fully out and operating; then just got completely “forgotten.”
The Crossfield-class is a playable ship in Star Trek Online and has a small chance of appearing when a player purchases an add-on called the "Discovery Lock Box". The playable Crossfield comes equipped with the ability to use its spore drive to teleport the ship forward, unleashing a burst of mycelial energy that affects enemies' engines and leaving a payload of torpedoes to detonate in its wake, before teleporting back to its original position - evocative of the tactic employed by Discovery at Corvan II in "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry". The ability is referred to in-game as the "Lorca Maneuver".
The Shenzhou (Walker class) too. While I love _SNW,_ and I'm sure Michelle Yeoh would have been difficult to sign on for a full series, if we were going to have a _TOS_ prequel, I would have vastly preferred to follow the voyages of Georgiou and crew.
Having worked in oil field and for corporate companies. With family members in military service. Empty sections and pushing out a test experiment / war time / war crime era makes sense
If this vessel was built during wartime I imagine some admiral was trying to squeeze as much bang as he could, all the while appeasing the scientific branch and keeping with Starfleet mandate on not building warships even if that's exactly what was needed but I don't know. LLNP 🖖
I hope Lower Decks will mock the spacious and empty sets designed for our era of wide screen HDTV. Like two characters magically being able to have a conversation across a room the size of a gymnasium or someone having to walk and walk and walk and walk just to get to another station to do their job. That scene on the bridge where PIKE is having a Private Conversation and La'an has to walk across the bridge to Ohura's station. Whereas on the Original Series everything was 3 steps away.
Using their comm badges for conversations when they're in the same room would be a good way to mock that. Play it right with closeups of the two people talking and moving around for most of the convo, then do a reveal that they've been slowly getting closer to one another the whole time and are now literally walking past (or into) each other while still nattering away through the comms.
They ruined the design by interfering, the same way they ruined the concept of Star Trek, by interfering. I'm happy many people love it, but Discovery lost me utterly. It seemed so desperate to be new and different, that it treated its universe with contempt.
I remember a comment in season two opener , enterprise crew msn mentioned she was more expensive and had better technology than the enterprise. ( so this is wete the budget went )
Good choice not putting much focus on the 32nd century refit, because the roller coaster turbolift void is hard enough explaining without it becoming the nigh-impossible to explain Turbolift TARDIS
I am still amazed how many fighter-craft they managed to cram into the Crossfield and Constitution frame. They must have employed clown-car technology.
Enterprise revealed that 30th century Starfleet had access to "bigger on the inside" TARDIS like tech. So it's reasonable to assume the ship was upgraded with that tech. Although I doubt the producers and the Vfx producers knew that and just did what they wanted. I still have time retconning the ridiculous roller coaster
@@gabelogan5877 The problem is the "systems hub" existed in Discovery Season 1 and was also on the Enterprise, so it's not a 32nd century thing. And even in the 32nd century, the Turbolift fight was such an eye-rolling scene. "We can create vast expanses inside smaller objects, let's use it to create a mostly empty void."
@@marcusmanchester1995 lol nope. the 32nd century turboshaft was vastly bigger than what we saw in season 2. You could fit a galaxy class starship in there
@@gabelogan5877 Actually you could probably fit space dock in the 32nd century one. And to clarify, I know the 3rd season one is bigger, but that's not the problem, the problem is the hub as it existed in the first and second season is at least 3x as tall or wide as any part of the ship it could conceivably be in. And the schematics show it taking up the entirety of the neck, which isn't much wider than the length of a car, maybe 2 cars. But it's also far too tall or to long to fit in the saucer and too tall to fit in the parts of the engine section that are long and wide enough for it (and those sections have things there anyway). It's so poorly thought out.
I agree with a lot of your issues with the ship, though I don't even particularly like how it looks. Less so even once it's refit in the 32nd century. I liked a lot of the Starfleet ship designs in the first season of Discovery (even if they mostly looked like they should have come after TNG-Voyager, not before TOS), but the titular ship was one of the worst. The Magee class might've been the only uglier Starfleet ship (until they got to the 32nd century and then... oh boy).
That's a really cool ship design, shame you couldn't bloody see any of it in the first season because everything was so dark with crazy camera angles... I honestly thought the ship was just a weirdly modeled Constitution class for most of that season.
I really love the unique design of the ship, kinda fits with how quirky and experimental the characters and the show are. However id bet its closer to the size of the intrepid class. Otherwise theres gotta be a deck worth of space in between each deck for any of this to make realistic sense (but this is modern trek, realism is optional). Maybe more like 400m long?
The earlier design for the Crossfield Class at 1:11 is the design they should have stuck with, far more intriguing look. It looked so much better than the design they settled for.
Is there enough data for a video onthe uss vengeance? I know it's not from the best of the movies but it's my favorite star trek ship besides the prometheus, and I would love a breakdown!
Pause the video @1:28 and look closely at the inset image in the lower right... i see a basic Federation saucer and neck stuck on the body of a Star Wars star destroyer, sans its conning tower, with warp nacelles after a fashion, stuck to its sides.
If Star Trek Legacy gets green lit I would love to see a Section 31 ship drop in on the Enterprise G just to hear Seven get pissed about the spore drive and how it could have helped Voyager. End of the episode shows Section 31 Agents whipping any mention of them in the Enterprise's computers and releasing a gas that knocks out everyones memory.
There are only 180 crew members because when the captain calls for Black Alert she never gives time for people to clear the walkways before the saucer starts spinning. Most of the crew has been ripped to shreds....lol
Crossfield was most certainly "AHEAD" of its time even more so in the 32nd Century.... The Federation still had become too reliant on Warp Drive for FTL travel through the galaxy..
congratulations sir another great video indeed ! interesting desing features of this ship in my opinnion that delta shape planes if i could give that name whitout any function that hollow space on the saucer section in wich could be more space inside to crew quarters or other ship instalations its kind a weird ! but anyway great video sir !
Hey Ric, what do you think is required general knowledge from Starfleet Academy? Like what kind of stellar phenomena, mission reports, scientific theories, protocols, etc.?
Nor me BUT it does feel retro and I kinda think if they'd gone for a more TOS look, the shape would have started to make more sense and the ship would look better for it. But that's just a theory.
@@Zero41svFascinating. I had the opposite reaction. To me it just feels like one of those cars that try so hard to look cool that they end up looking completely ridiculous
@@Zero41sv I'm always glad to make people laugh :) But yeah, I don't think it's far away from a good design. Make the neck, secondary hull and nacelles a little less perfectly straight-lined, and I think you could have a solid design
I know you already talked about Torpedoes and Quantum Torpedoes but I was wondering would it be possible to somehow figure out the 30 second century Quantum torpedoes as in how powerful they are and how much more advanced they are because when Discovery got hit just buy two of them not only did their Shields get decimated but they're all got rocked it definitely seemed like three Quantum Torpedoes would have destroyed the discovery with its Shields up
Like so many things in std, It's not like it's a bad sci-fi ship. It's just a bad Star Trek ship. I could see that design working well in a cell shaded animated show.
Thank you, I like your approach on these aspects of the new canon material, also your conclusion here! Good work 🙂 I am not a fan of the new trek stuff, canon aside, what i disliked the most in discovery (i.e) were these unstable people on board, constantly fighting each other, seemingly unfit for deep space exploration.
Yup. Too much drama. Most modern TV-series' fall for this problem... Hell, its a trope at this point. And for some reason Sci-Fi series are even more prone to be like this, even bordering Grim-Dark levels of drama.
@@The_Keeper And part of the modern problem is that even if they work they get cancelled anyways. Stargate Universe for instance had basically Just gotten to the point where the characters were established, drama was done, and the real shit could start but, Bam. Killed it. All gaming companies want to make the next FIFA (Purely For Microtransactions) or GTA:V or COD. All movie/TV Show producers want to make the next GOT, or failing that, the Scifi folks would love to copy the BSG reboot (as is the case with Stargate Universe). Honestly, it's such a lack of talent and creativity that the mind boggles as to how the industries have managed to limp along for as long as they have...
"Ahead of it's time" sums up my objections to its design. It is NOT a ship of the 2240's/50's (especially with that idiotic "no round nacelles" dictate). I could see it as a ship of the 2300's (The Lost Years between TOS and TNG), maybe as early as the 2280's, given the aesthetic it shares with the Vulcan warpsled shuttle that brought Spock to the refit Enterprise, but NO EARLIER. It would also have to be highlighted as being a Vulcan design...but that wouldn't square with the ethics-violating experimental spore drive, now, would it?
180 crew...17 decks. So on average like 10 person...per deck. The ship would feel so empty. Same problem the D had. Such a huge ship, it could hold 5K people and only then would it look as busy as it appears in the show.
If only Starfleet had a third ship. They could have gone on a long range mission to _buy_ more advanced weapons technology from beyond the frontier, and then brought it back to be retrofitted into existing ships.
Weirdly odd how Starfleet just totally forgot about the existence of a ship that broke literally all records, was faster than Warp 10, had virtually zero range limit on its drive, and could have gotten Voyager home in the two weeks it took them to build the engine, but hey, that's why prequels are usually bad, unless its written to conform to already extant lore, instead of inventing more advanced tech that somehow got lost despite the sheer amount of recordkeeping and fame that a ship with every bridge officer getting a Medal of Honor had, that's some famous work right there, no way in hell that would have been forgotten about.
I did like them hanging a lampshade on it, with Admiral Vance disbelieving their story because you’d think they’d know about it by now if it were true. “Come on, an alternative to warp which handily beats everything we tried a century ago? And it’s almost a millennium old? Get outta here”
I actually love most of the Crossfield class. Even the spinning saucer. The scale and bizzarely vast interiors though feel like exactly what they are: interference from the producers in an attempt to capitalize on the success of the Kelvin timeline movies by capturing a similar aesthetic. I don't REALLY care too much about having to scale up other ships for visual purposes, like whatever. I like canon, but never let canon get in the way of improving a story. But the SPECIFIC design choices feel extremely Kelvin movies. Not that I even dislike those movies, I actually love them, too, but they are very different tonaly and aesthetically to Prime timeline Trek. And trying to put Kelvin timeline tones and aesthetics into Prime Trek ends up minimizing and sort of overshadowing what good things both the Crossfield class and the Discovery series bring to the table themselves. Basically, by interfering to try and recapture the Kelvin movies, they make Discovery feel like an out-of-place knockoff of them, which ends up overshadowing the things going for it, like the Crossfield's design being so designed by committee in a way that feels real, or the increasingly strong character writing.
I know a lot of people hated/hate the design of this ship, but honestly, I think it was a needed shakeup to the rather samey-same designs we'd seen repeatedly by the end of the voyager/enterprise E era. i love those in their own right, I'm just glad we got something new and different that still feels like something the federation would put out. And the design of the discovery no doubt had influence on the refreshed/updated designs in STO which ultimately gave Picard some great new ship designs. Also, I personally love the chonky elements of it, like the neck. Finally a necked ship with actually useful space and realistic sizing of the connecting structure!
The series was rocky but got better. What never improved though was the designs. Hated how out of time the Discovery ships were compared to everything else, even the 32c ships aren't that great
I am torn over the Crossfield design as well. I have come around to it in many ways thanks to getting a couple in STO and enjoying it there. The size issue I feel falls into the same headache as the USS Kelvin. I can somewhat handwave it as being a side idea and exploration by a Starfleet which wasn't actively at war at the time of initial development. And could even see a production Crossfield being reduced to be more in line with other ships of the time. Imagine a Crossfield science base akin to the old Expo or a flying Daystrom Institute which could travel around with 300+ crew carrying out a huge range of scientific endeavours. Maybe ship three would've been the USS Daystrom. And then the sheer size of the prototypes would also make sense when needing space for the spore farms onboard. I have also heard the line about the ship not being fully fitted out and although that can explain some of the silly interior views I feel that it would still have structural components so as to not twist itself apart under fire or jumps. Doubly so knowing that SIF systems would not be as advanced as future systems at least. And for anyone who really wants to get picky on the wide open expanse idea, remind them that the Enterprise E has a bottomless chasm for a lowest deck or near enough. At least when you want to fight with Ron Perlman and kick him off into it. (Just another reason to dislike Nemesis if we really needed it.)
I love the 2250 designs, square nacelles and having the nacelles below the hull or saucer. Which I know is an unpopular opinion but I think this ship is beautiful. Maybe its derriver from the same feelings of how everyone hates Preston Garvey and I love him.
Aesthetic taste can be pretty variable even if there are popular trends. I think I agree with you on some elements, but I guess the issue for me was the continuity. Enterprise nailed this, they knew they were a newer show but had to respect their place in the timeline if the franchise - so they didn't make their interpretation of the Enterprise a product of the time they made the show. I think if this design had more of a TOS feel to it, even if it was different, it would maybe have floated better - certainly for me. The angular shape looks like a somewhat retro design but then they didn't embrace that in the rest of the look. Still, it's cool you found designs you like 👍
Spore drive was an anomaly outside of star trek. Some drive that was both useful and so compromised not widely useful. Ship is ok if "science vessel" explains logic.
While i do like the ship, it never really fit into the time period IMO. I am glad they took it to the far future, the discovery fits pretty well there ironically enough fora ship from the second earliest show chronologically speaking
![Blox Fruits Dragon Rework Update [Full Stream]](http://i.ytimg.com/vi/EqDAp8udhm0/mqdefault.jpg)
It’s amazing how striking and dynamic this ship can look from some angles and so ugly, clunky and overdesigned from others.
The Crossfield class had a hard acceptance with the initial trailer which was ENT level quality... 15 years ago. But with refinement, and polishing, the class grows on you. Theeeen the 32nd century happens and I am once again bleh with the ship design. SHAPES. IN. SPAAAACE.
@@Daginni1 I don't think I'll ever accept the whole "detachable nacelles" thing, because it's totally ridiculous on so many levels. Does it look cool? Kind of, yeah. Does it make sense? Hell no.
Like alot of hypercar designs...
An easy solution (for me at least) is bend the secondary hull 20 degree each side, creating this V like wings, something that the glenn class.
@@ManabiLT It was not as nonsensical in future Starfleet design, as people think. My main issue with 32'th design is that it look even blander then original TOS ships. And they did have excuse for flat surfaces.
It’s really effective on Pizza Night
Someone actually did make an enterprise pizza cutter, so I’d really like to see a discover one as well!
Only if there are mushrooms on that pizza!
Now I'm picturing the Crossfield and a pizza as Pokemon. It's super effective!
Nut... 😆👏
@@SoaringEagle128I got the pizza cutter and it's awesome.
One thing that is very strange to me is the number of people who protest the Crossfield doesn't fit the original time period when the entire point of the ship was to be a test platform for experimental technologies. It is as if folks are unaware of how, in real life, prototypes and early experiments can appear not just years, but decades, ahead of later formalization.
Yes most of those still golow the era lines. This ship does not
@@paulrasmussen8953experimental fighter jets from the 50s IRL often looked more like 80s production jets than 60s production jets
@@paulrasmussen8953 the sr71 does not look like anything of its time, prototypes do not look like their conteporaries, that's why they're prototypes. when you wanna explore you don't just do the same shit as everyone, you do something different
@capnsteele3365 there is some theming that remains and the fact none of the console tech showsnup till post tng makes it all wrong
@@paulrasmussen8953 the weather outside is rizzy and fire is so skibidi, if I gyatt to go, ohio ohio ohio
I still say, to this day, that the fact that they haven't made an official pizza-cutter from the U.S.S. Discovery is a MASSIVE oversight in terms of marketing.
Yes, I'm aware there's an Enterprise one, but the fact that the Discovery canonically has a saucer that *actually spins* means... Well, come on, you know where I'm going with this. :P
They're probably avoiding it because a lot of fans derisively refer to it as a pizza cutter ship. Making an _official_ USS Discovery pizza cutter would add fuel to that fire, even though it's their own fault people call it that.
@@ManabiLT As if the entire media landscape these days isn't 90% lampshading their own jokes
Just make sure you are cutting a pizza with mushrooms on it, ya?
Official? Idk. But a company called Ukonic makes one (MSRP $26.99) that has me reaching for my credit card.
Yeah but if you were Kurtzman... Would you want your prize show to be a pizza cutter when your struggling with the anonym STD?
I honestly figured that only Discovery and Glenn had the cut outs on the saucer, due to their incorporation of the Spore Drive. Other Crossfield class vessels would have a solid saucer, the idea being that when the Spore Drive experiments were set up, they just grabbed two Crossfield ships that were in production and altered their design to add the Spore Drive's cavitation system.
Yep, especially since we didn't see a USS Crossfield as part of it.
I think you’re correct. We saw a crossfield class ship in SNW and it didn’t look like the discovery
@@ObeMossop What is actually interesting is that SNW Crossfield is basically the TOS Miranda. Its design was also based on Phase 2 project for Enterprise. From Planets of Titans (usually refereed as Titan type).
th.bing.com/th/id/OIP.opbxex0iXgXwzvQLhHVGhgHaDf
Interestingly it actually also is seen in Wolf 359
www.ex-astris-scientia.org/articles/qualor/qualor2.jpg
@@ObeMossopI don't think we can take that one as an indication since it was a Frankenstein ship built for a false flag operation.
And it may have been ID'd purely off of its transponder
The Crossfield-class is named for American naval officer and test pilot Albert Scott Crossfield, who became the first human to fly at twice the speed of sound.
My understanding is that *all* of Discovery's sister ships are naned for test pilots. A nice tribute to some of the often-overlooked heroes of flight and space exploration.
@@vic5015 they are.
The Walker-class
Named for NASA test pilot Joseph A. Walker, who flew spaceplanes for the United States in the mid-1960’s and became the first human to fly to space twice.
The Nimitz-class
Named for US Navy fleet admiral Chester W. Nimitz, who was commander-in-chief of the US Pacific Fleet in World War II.
The Cardenas-class
Named for US Air Force brigadier general Robert Cardenas, a pilot who had a notable career in World War II, the Korean War, Vietnam, served as a test pilot for the Air Force, and was assigned to notable posts over his career.
The Hoover-class
Named for US Air Force fighter pilot Bob Hoover, who escaped Nazi captivity in a stolen plane, tested supersonic jets, and has been considered by many to be one of the greatest aviators in history.
The Magee-class
Named for Royal Canadian Air Force fighter pilot John Gillespie Magee Jr., who also wrote the famed aviation poem "High Flight" which was most notably used by President Ronald Reagan when addressing the nation over the destruction of the space shuttle Challenger in 1986.
The Malachowski-class
Named for US Air Force pilot Nicole Malachowski, who became the first female member of the famed Thunderbirds acrobatic flying team.
The Engle-class
Named for American test pilot and astronaut Joe Engle, who test-flew the joint NASA-Air Force North American X-15 rocket airplane and the space shuttle Enterprise before eventually commanding the space shuttle Columbia.
The Shepard-class
Named for American test pilot and astronaut Alan Shepard, who became the first American and second human to travel into space, and later commanded the Apollo 14 mission.
I was sincerely hoping it wasn’t named after the so called crossed field antenna design from the 1980s. That was a piece of pseudoscience that was going to “revolutionize” communications.
The X-15 program I believe..and I don't know if it was Crossfield but the record for the X=15 was Mach 6.7
😂 let's name a giant, slow, cruising science lab after someone who flew the fastest manned object ever made at the time. They really put fuck all thought into any narrative or universal consistency in Disco.
5:55 I love the level of detail you provide. You mention it's maximum warp factor, and then what scale it was following. That's amazing. Thank you for being so thoughtful and fastidious with the information. It's like, way more information than I would normally need to be a fan and just have fun, but sometimes I like to really nerd out and get into the details. Thanks for providing both.
I really appreciate them doing something different with the Discovery/Crossfield class. We see similar 'weird designs' crop up in recent history - something new that uses a radically different design philosophy to test out new ideas and technologies - and most of the time they wind up the way of the Crossfield in Star Trek, a design dead end that was too ambitious for its own good.
It really fits the story of how the class was designed too - it was a testbed for radical new technologies and scientific advancement, built (or rebuilt maybe, since there's some conflicting information on the Crossfield's design and function) specifically for Spore Drive testing. Compare it to the early Rocket Interceptors of WW2 - they look weird compared to the conventional propeller planes, had promise and were ultimately discontinued when it was discovered that technology was impractical/dangerous (and were then overtaken technologically by Jets, which also looked weird compared to the conventional planes but are now seen as 'standard' because the technology worked and was reliable).
I like this take
Those cavernous interiors get taken to their most ridiculous extreme in season 3 with that fight in the turbolift system, but one thing I’ve realised about that is that it was post-refit. By this time, the Federation had had TARDIS-style “bigger on the inside” technology for a couple centuries, as evidenced by that time pod in Star Trek: Enterprise.
And the shuttle bay on Voyager.
@@casbot71 and with Voyager's shuttle bay you had the issues with size of it launching it's runabout styled ship. The Delta Flyer class. Was canonically too large to fit through it's main shuttle bay door in the aft.
I’d forgotten about the time pod. I just figured a lot of the engineering guts was deprecated, since instead of multiple huge warp cores it was just a fairly small orb.
I will defend Discovery for many, many things, but that bizarre minecart ride through an empty cavern inside a space ship is indefensible. It kills the scene as a pretty epic fight is set in a magic ship of holding.
@@AnonEyeMouse yeah, the way it’s shot is very silly indeed
I do like the perspective of the Crossfield as an overly-ambitious concept--aesthetically and functionally, that taught Starfleet what they DIDN'T want. Makes it more palatable that way.
I will say, I liked the gold/bronze and even the 32nd century silver.
The painful part is how close it is to being consistent with ST ship lore, but then failing for obvious production interference.
Mainly in the fact that this just isn’t what Gene had available to him at the time.
@@jeremydale4548 That's irrelevant. Gene did only have what he had available to him. And going forward into the motion picture he expanded upon what he started with... Then in TNG gave himself the leeway to push even further beyond what he made...
But in doing so he created visual aesthetics for each period in time. TOS to TMP showed that he adhered to his own logic and instead of just making things more modern for no reason, worked to create reasons... A refit, ships a generation onward...
Secret Hideout and Kurtzman don't do that. They don't care as much as Gene did in his showmanship and unlike Gene not liking it but going ahead anyway... Kurtzman and co just seem to throw anything at the wall to see what sticks.
Gene was a man of his time who created a long running series that yes, if he were of this time he'd use modern day techniques and props... Duh? Who wouldn't. But he's not of this time and he set a standard in what is considered a futuristic period piece that is the equivalent of historic period renactments... You need to show the points in-between as to how they moved from one aesthetic to the others. The Enterprises of the Classic series showcases this well in terms of how they got from the Connie to the Galaxy.
@@jeremydale4548 gene being away from star trek gave us the best series sets we ever had. bro gave us code of honor, that's all
I really like the ship when it's shown in the "hybrid" ENT and TOS color scheme. Really makes it look good, and with round nacelles, it'd look great!
If they were shorter, those nacelles are too long for their own good😂
I love the idea of starfleet experimenting with different fuels and different warp drives (like a long running “ Philadelphia experiment” in space). I would’ve liked if the subspace mycelial network had been explored for a whole season, and had been more of a threat (explaining why starfleet hasn’t tried it again or gone back there).
The ship, like the show itself; An ambitious project with mixed success, and questionable design choices. A show that's ahead of its time, but also an experiment that taught the studio some valuable lessons, even in failure.
Emphasis on the failure.
The show sucks. Nothing “ahead of its time” about sucking hard.
Ahead in what way? Every social issue and political argument in ST:D was a ham fisted rehash of issues that had been done better by every other Star Trek show.
SNW is what STD should have been.. Instead we got different klingons,a klingon war, mirror universe, a giant tardigrade. Spock's sister who he forgot to ever talk about. And all that was delivered and cleaned up in just 15 epidoes. And then of course runs to the Enterprise because they couldn't help themselves.
@@insanehippiehippieinsane3828 Sometimes you need to be hamfisted with your politics, otherwise you get former actors forgetting the point and running their mouth like a fox news anchor on aderall
It is a Tardis. Bigger on the inside than the outside and travels through time.
It could be as big on the outside. Just lacks anything to indicate scale. Like how houses tend to look bigger inside than out.
You make it sound like it was designed as less "starship" and more "floating university"... which honestly would be a really cool direction to take and would explain why it's such a different size from its contemporaries. Wish the show leaned into that.
So like a dedicated training cruise ship?
Dude, just go watch any of the ten thousand anime that are that exact concept.
I like to head canon that the discovery from the original teaser back in 2016 was the original design for the crossfield class as proposed by the Starfleet Design Bureau with perhaps the original USS Crossfield being made to those specifications. However, in the time between Crossfield's shakedown/testing the spore drive research occurred and the Discovery and Glenn, still being in the pre production, were refit to house the new drive. Further crossfields were probably made either to the original specifications or a mix of the two (without the spore drive) but overall very few were made because they were highly expensive, high maintenance craft.
My father was a Colonel in the US Air Force attached to the Defense Atomic Support Agency and the Special Weapons Project and worked on the XB-70 and was there when they removed all sensitive equipment many years later when it was put in the museum as he was the last living person who worked on the original project that could be there when it was all removed. He was able to see it fly one last time before being taken to the museum.
I saw it at the museum at Wright-Patterson, it is one of the coolest designs I've ever seen.
Fond memories of building the model kit as a kid. It was not, in hindsight, a very accurate model, but still managed to look cool.
It's amazing to me that DECADES later Ralph Mequerie's old concept art is still being used to make incredible modern designs for Star Trek and Star Wars ships while other more original designs are so vapid and forgettable.
Why did the studio mandated no round nacelles? That just very oddly specific.
I do hope we'll see a refit Crossfield on SNW next season. With the large internal volume, it can be used as cargo transport since it is now and out dated design.
None of the early DISCO ships actually look that bad, just small little design decisions that made them look off.
Maybe a CBS vs Paramount thing with the Abrams movies still ongoing
Particularly with the 32nd century upgrades, perhaps the technology's shrunk even more thus making the ship even roomier.
Between all that space and the Spore Drive, no reason that thing couldn't be ferrying stuff all over.
I think they just wanted to try something different
I'd love to hear your take on the Saturn class from the 32nd century. In STO it's one of my favorite ships. It's an odd design to be sure (though one of the only 32c. ships without detached nacelles) but as a ship inspired by the LHC, it seems to be built much more for genuine scientific experiments than the Crossfield class.
As to the U.S.S. Discovery, I think a lot of the issues can be chalked up to Lorca. It's important to remember that he was a Terran the whole time - we never actually saw Prime Universe Lorca at any point in the show, that was ALL Terran Lorca. So while he may have been operating a Federation ship, he was never actually a member of the Federation, and never actually swore to uphold the Prime Directive. It's a cute little loophole that allows him to get away with what was done to the Tardigrade on his orders.
And as to the spore drive, yeah, a lot of people can say a lot about it, and some of the criticism is justified. But I'll ask you this: what's better, a bad explanation, or no explanation at all? The fact that the Enterprise can somehow move at Transwarp Infinity whenever it is off screen (meanwhile Voyager takes a decade to cross a single quadrant) always bothered me. The Spore Drive at least gives SOME explanation for the plot convenience of "ship is wherever ship needs to be right now."
Discovery's spore drive did to warp travel, what the Holdo Maneuver did to hyperspace. Now everyone needs to explain why everyone else is just that pants on head stupid for not adopting it fleetwide as the primary movement method since it renders the warp core obsolete. Stick one in a starbase, there you go, instantaneous travel for a mobile structure, why even use a ship at that point if Starbase 47 can just spore jump to the location and send out a sea of shuttles to evacuate a colony.
@@nuclearsimian3281 It requires a navigator that most ships don't have, and the Federation isn't the Imperium of Man (usually) so they're not going to enslave a race of beings for it, no matter how useful it may be.
The show made this pretty clear. Multiple characters asked the same question you're asking and the answer was always the same: Starfleet doesn't have an army of Staments.
Now, presumably they COULD locate others throughout the galaxy who could navigate the mycellial network and convince them sign up for Starfleet voluntarily. It is reasonable to assume that Stements isn't the one and only human who could do what he does. But it's also likely that people with that capability are exceedingly rare and even if they found a handful more of them, they wouldn't have nearly enough to staff more than a couple dozen ships at most.
As for why they can't jump a starbase, it was stated (may have been in STO rather than Discovery, I'm not entirely sure) that the Discovery itself is already pushing the size limitations of the mycellial network. In STO, J'Ula jumps a D7 class through the network accidentally and causes severe damage to the mycellial plane, as well as subspace. Thus, if you can't fit a D7 through it, you most certainly can't fit a starbase through it.
There are issues with the Spore Drive - the entire concept of a magic mushroom realm that somehow parallels our own is batsh*t crazy, for one - but as long as we're analyzing it from an in-universe point of view, it has no issues. You have to be outside the IP looking in to see any problems with it. Meanwhile, the Enterprise going Transwarp Infinity when off screen doesn't make sense either in-universe or out. Thus, the Spore Drive is an improvement over the Plot Drive of hero ships past.
EDIT: Also, keep in mind that Starfleet ROUTINELY makes one-off technologies that would render any alternatives obsolete, only to discover a fatal flaw later. The Phase Cloak on the Pegasus comes to mind as the prime example of this - it was simultaneously indisputably the best cloaking device ever created and also horribly flawed, leading to the loss of the vessel itself. You could ask the same question - "if this cloak makes you invisible AND invulnerable, why doesn't everyone use it?" - but you need only consult the wreck of the Pegasus for your answer.
The Holdo Maneuver has a simple explanation: Hyperdrives are resource intensive to build from scratch. Much like aluminum which takes many times more energy to refine from bauxite than it does to recycle, creating a new hyperdrive is resource intensive, however rebuilding or recycling one is much simpler. So destroying a hyperdrive in such a (presumably) irreversible way is essentially a massive waste of resources. Yes it can disable an entire fleet at once but they can simply be repaired and be back on their feet in a couple of months. It just isn't worth doing unless you're in the absolute most dire of situations. This goes doubly so if you don't control Corellia or some similarly large shipyard that produces hyperdrive capable ships.
Also what the other guy said- If we were in the mirror universe the questions about the tartigrade and the myceleal network are reasonable, but in the prime universe the federation simply decided it was too far outside of their moral principles at the time (the prime universe in the wake of the dominion war may have made a different decision) once they learned that the tartigrade had higher sapience, and they just did such a thorough job of destroying what was, in the scheme of things, a very small experiment that nobody could replicate it.
This ship is proof that drugs and shrooms addictions are still a thing in the future, whoever came up with the design and the spore-thing was high on something.
Mycology in real life is STILL behind the other fields of biology because of how mushrooms got associated with psychedelics in the victorian era. Honestly, given how weird terrestrial fungus gets, the subspace mycelial network seems more likely than warp drive
the hypno disc reference makes me miss that show lol
One thing that still bothers me, as far as key writing around the tech and capabilities of the Crossfield class and, in particular, the Discovery:
It’s called the Displacement Activated Spore Hub Drive
- so why didn’t they commonly name it the D.A.S.H Drive?
What on earth were these writers thinking, when they decided to have Stamets and other characters repeatedly name it, in their vernacular, as the Spore Drive? Clearly that’s not as clever as DASH Drive? And if DASH sounds “too cheesy” - why not at least lampshade that in dialogue?
Shame the 2016 teaser and planet of the Titans Enterprise concept are not able to be used in STO.
That original art design was really pretty cool!
For the cannon part it was confirmed to be cannon as the crossfield class appears in tng twice. Once in a Federation bone yard and the second at wolf 359.
Although these are based on the battle of titans enterprise they are crossfield ships.
Pre seeing Discovery the teaser of this ship design appeared in STO and boy as there a kick off on the forum over it. I am not a Trekkie, my partner is, but I liked the game it was fun, but boy did the vitriol on the forums shocked me. It was only in context, a unique drive ship (spore) made sense there would be a unique design of ship to fit that roll.
Coincidentally saw hypodisk at a small show in the Banbury museum the other week
If you assume the outer spinning ring was a add on to the design, and the original concept had just the inner saucer section, then it does look kind of in proportion. Could the extra long nacelles be excused as part of the Spore Drive system? In which case change them to a more standard nacelle common to the era and that's actually a plausible ship.
It's an attempt by Starfleet to greatly increase usable internal volume with a wide secondary hull - Starfleet had looked at the Klingon D series and thought "that's a good idea." And it might be so for a science ship - all the science labs are in the secondary hull, and if anything goes catastrophic the saucer separates with explosive bolts and the crew not only jettison the engineering section, but all the science labs ... one of which is the source of the calamity.
It's still better than a big canoe under the ship.
Personally I always think of the ship in a scaled down sense. It being that big just makes no sense. I also like to think that the reason it never took off in Starfleet was because of its design, the defective spore drive tech, and other factors. I also believe that the reason its hull looks the way that it does was not because it was a stylistic choice, but rather it was required to have a full made of bronze to allow the spore drive to work better. Though its “needle nose” nacelles do give it an impressive look. More regal, as if Starfleet was thinking of changing up their design language but had second thoughts and then abandoned the class completely.
It feels more at home in Star wars then Star Trek
Remove the neck, saucer, pylons, and naccels and you have a star destroyer.
Add to that the star wars like travel spore drive.
It's like they was trying to turn trek into wars.
I suspect the minimal crew was more due to the secretive nature of its mission, and the high risk involved.
This also means that after the time jump when much of the crew had either been lost or left behind they were operating at less than even a skeleton crew. I would have loved to have seen the shift schedule! Thus the wholly justifiable decision to make an ensign acting first officer, desperate times an all. I doubt anyone inboard was heart broken about being passed up as being promoted would remove them from their current post.
More likely the only crew that could deal with Burnham's Mary sue nature.
Those secondary tiny circles that look like auxiliary Bussards could be I guess some sort of warp plama torpedo launchers the placement then wouldn't be "as bonkers" if it was firing solid weapons from there.
I saw that scene. I can't help wondering if it was done, only because the normal path the torpedoes would have taken, was hidden by the angle the ship was filmed at, making it impossible for viewers to see them.
🖖😎👍Very cool and very nicely well done and executed and informatively explained in every detail way shape and form provided on this format and subject matter on the Crossfield class starship's indeed Sir, I myself have never been a fan of the long spindly looking warp nacelles and the bussard collectors, And what happens to some one if they get caught in the outer ring when it starts spinning when the spore drive is incorporated cause in the show you never hear them say to anyone to evacuate it whatsoever in any way shape or form!,🤔.
"Science Vessel" - has twice the number of phaser banks as other ships
Blame the Klingon war, if not for that conflict it’s armament probably would have been half or less weapons
Yes but it's size means different phaser systems could be tested without compromising the base defensive abilities. Phasers are just a tool when not used in combat.
In fairness, Starfleet has a knee-jerk reaction to designating ship classes as warships. The Inquiry class was presumably a modular exploratory vessel despite the ship being armed to an almost absurd degree.
Regarding the presumed Crossfield from the Broken Circle, I have a theory. Assuming the Broken Circle were able to accurately recreate the craft and not simply kitbash a bunch of designs, what if Starfleet gave the class designation to a more contemporary ship with a similar profile in order to further bury the existence of the Glenn & Discovery?
or they scrapped the Crossfield Program and had some Saucer Sections left over, so could also a Excelsior->Centaur Thing
@@enisra_bowman That could work too. Was kitbashing designs common in the TOS era? I know it was common place in the TNG-VOY era, but I'm still learning about the TOS era.
No. One of the newer shows, Picard or Lower Decks had a Crossfield class ship shown on a display. And Adm Vance had records on the Crossfield (but not about the DASH drive or real service records)
@@gabelogan5877 Sure, having the vessel declassified over a century later, appart from the giggle drive, makes sense. But as an immediate means to bury it's existence, it's still possible to have the class name given to a similar design and just say "we experimented with a new ship, went back to a more basic design, but kept the name" later on.
@@wolfpack_104 well, that is hard to answer, no, because they only had a small Handfull of Ships back then but then, they kitbashed on of the Tholian Ships into the Class J Type Ship in "A Way to Eden" by glueing some Warp Nacelles to it. But then again, they made the Romulans wear these Helmets since they didn't have the Budget for Ears.
And i've meant it as In Universe Explanation why they looked the same
They should've stuck to the spycraft/experimental stuff and make it a section 31 ship and then go to the future ASAP, so it would've been the Federation's version of Philidelphia experiment.
To me Episode 13 in season 1 was the perfect place to do that
You know, it's kind of a guilty pleasure of mine.
Like you said head of it's time; this ship and show could have easily been in the 25 or 26th century and act out all it wanted, scaling and lore wouldn't have been broken - the 32nd Century by far is the best thing that happened to it in my opinion. Thanks for the video :)
For me, the scaling issue can be attributed to the same line of thinking as to why the contrast for the design of the ships vary between the original series and Discovery/Strange New Worlds.
That it is our adaptation of the story being told and our interpretation for adapting it to television has led to the descrepancies. I mean the scaling thing is definitely a lack of thought by the studio though.
Some of your in universe reasonings behind why the class is the way it is are good "no prizes" at explaining away studio decisions. Unless the class (or Discovery) was dimensionally transcendental as well.
Good luck with this one. I think it's a great design, but took a lot of comment flack when I put it in my video of top ship classes, based on on-screen utility shown. It's not pretty, but it is a heck of a ship, especially the 32nd century refit
She’s not a bad looking ship. It’s just weird that Production wanted to set her in the period that they did. I could easily see her as a post-Dominion War/Borg Invasion rebuke of the belief that StarFleet was now primarily a war fighting organization. And the idea that StarFleet could put so much thought into a ship and say “ah the hell with it. Forget the whole thing,” is just...weird. Granted, that’s kinda the Defiant’s backstory, but she was a small experiment. If memory serves, the Defiant still had her NX designation when Sisko pulled her out of mothballs. Discovery’s NCC, she and her sister ship were fully out and operating; then just got completely “forgotten.”
Hypnodisk reference appreciated
Yea it isn't a bad design but I really wish they stuck with the announcement design with the rectangular nacelles
The Crossfield-class is a playable ship in Star Trek Online and has a small chance of appearing when a player purchases an add-on called the "Discovery Lock Box". The playable Crossfield comes equipped with the ability to use its spore drive to teleport the ship forward, unleashing a burst of mycelial energy that affects enemies' engines and leaving a payload of torpedoes to detonate in its wake, before teleporting back to its original position - evocative of the tactic employed by Discovery at Corvan II in "The Butcher's Knife Cares Not for the Lamb's Cry". The ability is referred to in-game as the "Lorca Maneuver".
That’s honestly really cool. With how hard fights can be in the game, I certainly wish I could Spore Jump sometimes
Man, I did NOT even know about the scale issue in Disco. Wow.
The middle sphere looks like that old science ship too
I adore the discovery, such a gorgeous ship tbh
The Shenzhou (Walker class) too. While I love _SNW,_ and I'm sure Michelle Yeoh would have been difficult to sign on for a full series, if we were going to have a _TOS_ prequel, I would have vastly preferred to follow the voyages of Georgiou and crew.
Your kidding right?
Hell yeah! It’s a smooth look and like any good hero ship, it’s sturdy and can get its crew home
@@valor1omegait should not be inconceivable that other people can like what you don’t.
Having worked in oil field and for corporate companies. With family members in military service. Empty sections and pushing out a test experiment / war time / war crime era makes sense
If this vessel was built during wartime I imagine some admiral was trying to squeeze as much bang as he could, all the while appeasing the scientific branch and keeping with Starfleet mandate on not building warships even if that's exactly what was needed but I don't know. LLNP 🖖
I always assumed that Glenn and Discovery were newly build ships of an old class 10th design 30 & 31st ships built
It is stated that the crossfield class only started production in 2250
I hope Lower Decks will mock the spacious and empty sets designed for our era of wide screen HDTV. Like two characters magically being able to have a conversation across a room the size of a gymnasium or someone having to walk and walk and walk and walk just to get to another station to do their job. That scene on the bridge where PIKE is having a Private Conversation and La'an has to walk across the bridge to Ohura's station. Whereas on the Original Series everything was 3 steps away.
Using their comm badges for conversations when they're in the same room would be a good way to mock that. Play it right with closeups of the two people talking and moving around for most of the convo, then do a reveal that they've been slowly getting closer to one another the whole time and are now literally walking past (or into) each other while still nattering away through the comms.
They ruined the design by interfering, the same way they ruined the concept of Star Trek, by interfering.
I'm happy many people love it, but Discovery lost me utterly. It seemed so desperate to be new and different, that it treated its universe with contempt.
I remember a comment in season two opener , enterprise crew msn mentioned she was more expensive and had better technology than the enterprise. ( so this is wete the budget went )
I thought it was pretty ugly when I first saw it but honestly, it's grown on me.
I fart in jars and send them to my boss , he thinks it's Jimmy from the tech department 😂
Good choice not putting much focus on the 32nd century refit, because the roller coaster turbolift void is hard enough explaining without it becoming the nigh-impossible to explain Turbolift TARDIS
I am still amazed how many fighter-craft they managed to cram into the Crossfield and Constitution frame. They must have employed clown-car technology.
Enterprise revealed that 30th century Starfleet had access to "bigger on the inside" TARDIS like tech. So it's reasonable to assume the ship was upgraded with that tech. Although I doubt the producers and the Vfx producers knew that and just did what they wanted. I still have time retconning the ridiculous roller coaster
@@gabelogan5877 The problem is the "systems hub" existed in Discovery Season 1 and was also on the Enterprise, so it's not a 32nd century thing. And even in the 32nd century, the Turbolift fight was such an eye-rolling scene. "We can create vast expanses inside smaller objects, let's use it to create a mostly empty void."
@@marcusmanchester1995 lol nope. the 32nd century turboshaft was vastly bigger than what we saw in season 2. You could fit a galaxy class starship in there
@@gabelogan5877 Actually you could probably fit space dock in the 32nd century one. And to clarify, I know the 3rd season one is bigger, but that's not the problem, the problem is the hub as it existed in the first and second season is at least 3x as tall or wide as any part of the ship it could conceivably be in. And the schematics show it taking up the entirety of the neck, which isn't much wider than the length of a car, maybe 2 cars. But it's also far too tall or to long to fit in the saucer and too tall to fit in the parts of the engine section that are long and wide enough for it (and those sections have things there anyway). It's so poorly thought out.
I agree with a lot of your issues with the ship, though I don't even particularly like how it looks. Less so even once it's refit in the 32nd century. I liked a lot of the Starfleet ship designs in the first season of Discovery (even if they mostly looked like they should have come after TNG-Voyager, not before TOS), but the titular ship was one of the worst. The Magee class might've been the only uglier Starfleet ship (until they got to the 32nd century and then... oh boy).
That's a really cool ship design, shame you couldn't bloody see any of it in the first season because everything was so dark with crazy camera angles... I honestly thought the ship was just a weirdly modeled Constitution class for most of that season.
I really love the unique design of the ship, kinda fits with how quirky and experimental the characters and the show are.
However id bet its closer to the size of the intrepid class. Otherwise theres gotta be a deck worth of space in between each deck for any of this to make realistic sense (but this is modern trek, realism is optional). Maybe more like 400m long?
The earlier design for the Crossfield Class at 1:11 is the design they should have stuck with, far more intriguing look. It looked so much better than the design they settled for.
I haye both bit thay bersion was better looking
Would it be possible for you to do the Caelian class? It's now my new favorite ship to use.
Is there enough data for a video onthe uss vengeance? I know it's not from the best of the movies but it's my favorite star trek ship besides the prometheus, and I would love a breakdown!
Pause the video @1:28 and look closely at the inset image in the lower right...
i see a basic Federation saucer and neck stuck on the body of a Star Wars star destroyer, sans its conning tower,
with warp nacelles after a fashion, stuck to its sides.
That’s partly because the Star Destroyer design was also inspired by that original Planet of the Titans painting :)
you should've done a Spore Jump at the end of this...cause it was unique only for that ship
A class of this ship got conscripted into the Klingon War.
Later came the Crutchfield class, which had the biggest, cleanest bass in the galaxy
Hi rick why had nobody ever hered of discovary in cannon .
Is there a uss argyll ?
Great to Discover how this class works... 😏
If Star Trek Legacy gets green lit I would love to see a Section 31 ship drop in on the Enterprise G just to hear Seven get pissed about the spore drive and how it could have helped Voyager. End of the episode shows Section 31 Agents whipping any mention of them in the Enterprise's computers and releasing a gas that knocks out everyones memory.
Thank you Rick
There are only 180 crew members because when the captain calls for Black Alert she never gives time for people to clear the walkways before the saucer starts spinning. Most of the crew has been ripped to shreds....lol
I used to think the spinning was a "mirage" like the stretching warp effect until it was confirmed in dialogue that the ship actually spins. Wild.
@@CertifiablyIngameMust have really good inertial dampeners
Crossfield was most certainly "AHEAD" of its time even more so in the 32nd Century.... The Federation still had become too reliant on Warp Drive for FTL travel through the galaxy..
congratulations sir another great video indeed ! interesting desing features of this ship in my opinnion that delta shape planes if i could give that name whitout any function that hollow space on the saucer section in wich could be more space inside to crew quarters or other ship instalations its kind a weird ! but anyway great video sir !
Hey Ric, what do you think is required general knowledge from Starfleet Academy? Like what kind of stellar phenomena, mission reports, scientific theories, protocols, etc.?
STD is NOT CANON! Still love you videos and the work you do. Thanks!
Honestly even now I’m still not a fan of the flat drive section and rectangular nacelles
Nor me BUT it does feel retro and I kinda think if they'd gone for a more TOS look, the shape would have started to make more sense and the ship would look better for it.
But that's just a theory.
@@Zero41svFascinating. I had the opposite reaction. To me it just feels like one of those cars that try so hard to look cool that they end up looking completely ridiculous
@@stars9084 I actually LOL'd, you aren't wrong!
But I do still wonder if it could be redeemed with some changes
@@Zero41sv I'm always glad to make people laugh :) But yeah, I don't think it's far away from a good design. Make the neck, secondary hull and nacelles a little less perfectly straight-lined, and I think you could have a solid design
I will say I've gotten used to it a bit but to this day, I hate how long the warp nacelles are.
I know you already talked about Torpedoes and Quantum Torpedoes but I was wondering would it be possible to somehow figure out the 30 second century Quantum torpedoes as in how powerful they are and how much more advanced they are because when Discovery got hit just buy two of them not only did their Shields get decimated but they're all got rocked it definitely seemed like three Quantum Torpedoes would have destroyed the discovery with its Shields up
I did quite like this vessle... shame they barely did much more with the design :c
Especially considering this is the first Ralph Maquarrie inspired Starfleet ship design I've heard of (among others designers). Tis a shame
Shoutout to HypnoDisc!
Like so many things in std, It's not like it's a bad sci-fi ship. It's just a bad Star Trek ship. I could see that design working well in a cell shaded animated show.
I absolutely love the discovery era ships, I know most people don't like them, but still I love them
That's awesome.
I'm not much of a fan myself but if you get a kick out of them, I think that's a great thing.
Not everything is for everyone.
Thank you, I like your approach on these aspects of the new canon material, also your conclusion here! Good work 🙂
I am not a fan of the new trek stuff, canon aside, what i disliked the most in discovery (i.e) were these unstable people on board, constantly fighting each other, seemingly unfit for deep space exploration.
Yup.
Too much drama.
Most modern TV-series' fall for this problem... Hell, its a trope at this point.
And for some reason Sci-Fi series are even more prone to be like this, even bordering Grim-Dark levels of drama.
@@The_Keeper And part of the modern problem is that even if they work they get cancelled anyways. Stargate Universe for instance had basically Just gotten to the point where the characters were established, drama was done, and the real shit could start but, Bam. Killed it.
All gaming companies want to make the next FIFA (Purely For Microtransactions) or GTA:V or COD.
All movie/TV Show producers want to make the next GOT, or failing that, the Scifi folks would love to copy the BSG reboot (as is the case with Stargate Universe).
Honestly, it's such a lack of talent and creativity that the mind boggles as to how the industries have managed to limp along for as long as they have...
@@monkeymonk666 SGU is a very good example, yepp.
"Ahead of it's time" sums up my objections to its design. It is NOT a ship of the 2240's/50's (especially with that idiotic "no round nacelles" dictate). I could see it as a ship of the 2300's (The Lost Years between TOS and TNG), maybe as early as the 2280's, given the aesthetic it shares with the Vulcan warpsled shuttle that brought Spock to the refit Enterprise, but NO EARLIER. It would also have to be highlighted as being a Vulcan design...but that wouldn't square with the ethics-violating experimental spore drive, now, would it?
The original short-jump navigation didn’t require any ethics violations, so if you wanted to you could call it a Vulcan design which was then co-opted
That ship is grotesque.
agreed
180 crew...17 decks. So on average like 10 person...per deck. The ship would feel so empty. Same problem the D had. Such a huge ship, it could hold 5K people and only then would it look as busy as it appears in the show.
If only Starfleet had a third ship. They could have gone on a long range mission to _buy_ more advanced weapons technology from beyond the frontier, and then brought it back to be retrofitted into existing ships.
Weirdly odd how Starfleet just totally forgot about the existence of a ship that broke literally all records, was faster than Warp 10, had virtually zero range limit on its drive, and could have gotten Voyager home in the two weeks it took them to build the engine, but hey, that's why prequels are usually bad, unless its written to conform to already extant lore, instead of inventing more advanced tech that somehow got lost despite the sheer amount of recordkeeping and fame that a ship with every bridge officer getting a Medal of Honor had, that's some famous work right there, no way in hell that would have been forgotten about.
Because the ship is not canon. Ots part.of nu trek whos writing is so terrible.they can keep.theor own lore straight
I did like them hanging a lampshade on it, with Admiral Vance disbelieving their story because you’d think they’d know about it by now if it were true. “Come on, an alternative to warp which handily beats everything we tried a century ago? And it’s almost a millennium old? Get outta here”
I actually love most of the Crossfield class. Even the spinning saucer. The scale and bizzarely vast interiors though feel like exactly what they are: interference from the producers in an attempt to capitalize on the success of the Kelvin timeline movies by capturing a similar aesthetic.
I don't REALLY care too much about having to scale up other ships for visual purposes, like whatever. I like canon, but never let canon get in the way of improving a story. But the SPECIFIC design choices feel extremely Kelvin movies. Not that I even dislike those movies, I actually love them, too, but they are very different tonaly and aesthetically to Prime timeline Trek. And trying to put Kelvin timeline tones and aesthetics into Prime Trek ends up minimizing and sort of overshadowing what good things both the Crossfield class and the Discovery series bring to the table themselves.
Basically, by interfering to try and recapture the Kelvin movies, they make Discovery feel like an out-of-place knockoff of them, which ends up overshadowing the things going for it, like the Crossfield's design being so designed by committee in a way that feels real, or the increasingly strong character writing.
I know a lot of people hated/hate the design of this ship, but honestly, I think it was a needed shakeup to the rather samey-same designs we'd seen repeatedly by the end of the voyager/enterprise E era. i love those in their own right, I'm just glad we got something new and different that still feels like something the federation would put out. And the design of the discovery no doubt had influence on the refreshed/updated designs in STO which ultimately gave Picard some great new ship designs.
Also, I personally love the chonky elements of it, like the neck. Finally a necked ship with actually useful space and realistic sizing of the connecting structure!
Wrong
The series was rocky but got better. What never improved though was the designs. Hated how out of time the Discovery ships were compared to everything else, even the 32c ships aren't that great
It actually holds all of Coruscant in the inside of the ship
I am torn over the Crossfield design as well. I have come around to it in many ways thanks to getting a couple in STO and enjoying it there. The size issue I feel falls into the same headache as the USS Kelvin. I can somewhat handwave it as being a side idea and exploration by a Starfleet which wasn't actively at war at the time of initial development. And could even see a production Crossfield being reduced to be more in line with other ships of the time.
Imagine a Crossfield science base akin to the old Expo or a flying Daystrom Institute which could travel around with 300+ crew carrying out a huge range of scientific endeavours. Maybe ship three would've been the USS Daystrom. And then the sheer size of the prototypes would also make sense when needing space for the spore farms onboard.
I have also heard the line about the ship not being fully fitted out and although that can explain some of the silly interior views I feel that it would still have structural components so as to not twist itself apart under fire or jumps. Doubly so knowing that SIF systems would not be as advanced as future systems at least.
And for anyone who really wants to get picky on the wide open expanse idea, remind them that the Enterprise E has a bottomless chasm for a lowest deck or near enough. At least when you want to fight with Ron Perlman and kick him off into it. (Just another reason to dislike Nemesis if we really needed it.)
Yeah, haha I think that's about the nicest way to discuss it
It should have been an NX.
Nice to see that you are keeping up with your habit of half arsed research.
I love the 2250 designs, square nacelles and having the nacelles below the hull or saucer. Which I know is an unpopular opinion but I think this ship is beautiful. Maybe its derriver from the same feelings of how everyone hates Preston Garvey and I love him.
Aesthetic taste can be pretty variable even if there are popular trends.
I think I agree with you on some elements, but I guess the issue for me was the continuity.
Enterprise nailed this, they knew they were a newer show but had to respect their place in the timeline if the franchise - so they didn't make their interpretation of the Enterprise a product of the time they made the show.
I think if this design had more of a TOS feel to it, even if it was different, it would maybe have floated better - certainly for me.
The angular shape looks like a somewhat retro design but then they didn't embrace that in the rest of the look.
Still, it's cool you found designs you like 👍
Spore drive was an anomaly outside of star trek. Some drive that was both useful and so compromised not widely useful. Ship is ok if "science vessel" explains logic.
While i do like the ship, it never really fit into the time period IMO. I am glad they took it to the far future, the discovery fits pretty well there ironically enough fora ship from the second earliest show chronologically speaking