While I would love to dive into and give my two cents on the quality of Star Trek: Discovery as a show, the blog’s not really a place for that. I’ll comment on the designs of STD instead, similar on what I did for Star Wars. Well, the title really says it all, doesn’t it? Well, I’m going to give it a shot and aim to veer away from comparing too much to old Trek shows, mainly because this is a reboot all things considered and because all the designs are far too advanced for its time period. I’ll also concentrate on the Federation designs, because I don’t want to lose my mind with the Klingon’s.
I’ve seen some people on the ‘net using busy and complex designs as synonyms to each other. This isn’t the case. Busy design just means there is a high amount of unnecessary details, lines, cuts and whatever else elements that simply don’t sit right. There are some designers who can make busy work extremely well, but it’s usually the first way to fill in “blank” space rather than working over the designs overall.
The uniforms and force fields are probably a good example of this. The uniforms don’t look too bad at a distance, but whenever we get a close-up, we see that nothing on it looks set-in. Every surface has a texture of some sort on it.
The above shots shows three things; the areas on her sides are riddled with smaller Federation symbols for whatever reason, the Federation badge itself is split into two for no reason and houses ranking pips. Pips, which would’ve been great on the collar, but the collar is now wasted to look funky with its asymmetric design. This asymmetry forces the zip to be on her right side more, but as seen from this shot, it still angles towards the middle of the jacket. It looks stupid. If the jacket had been single-breasted, this would’ve worked. Hell, it would’ve looked great even. Now, with the symmetrical stripes on the shoulders and itty bitty Starfeet logos on the sides, it looks someone botched their day at the clothes workshop and called it a day.
Pants on the other manage to look like uniform pants a bit more, but the unnecessary zippers on the sides look stupid. This sort of vertical pocket is not very practical, so maybe it’s to let some air in. The stripes on the shoulders continue down the pants’ sides, which we don’t see here, but at least they’ve consistent with them. The boots look pretty terrible, with soles jumping out like they were just attached to a pair they didn’t belong to. Let’ not forget that even the boots have Starfleet logo on them. Twice.
Here also get to see the stripes running on the side of the pants.
The only time the uniform looks good is when it’s straight. Any other time there’s a wrinkle or its twisted by a body movement, it looks pretty terrible. All because all the things that should line up don’t, and the texture gets all messed up. The Starfleet symbols don’t help in this at all, and their removal would make the uniform look lots better. Centering the zipper would help a lot too, or at least making it straight.
The force field is a another good example of this. Let’s pass the whole thing that safety force fields didn’t exist at this point in the timeline like they’re portrayed here, and let’s ask why the hell it has all those little lines running in it. There is no logical reason for it other than separate it from other force fields we’ve seen thus far, and certainly does not look like the ones in any Star Trek. It’s a good example of business for its own sake. I could touch upon Klingon designs and all other examples I could muster, but we’re going to go over the word limit as is, so let’s move on.
If the designs aren’t busy to be filled with something, they’re nonsensical and impractical at best. Chairs are always a good example.
The chairs we see here are actually a contrary example of busy design, but they’re a good example of a chair that would be horrible to sit on. Because they’re made from one large piece, there is nothing to adjust on them. The edges are hard and the cushioning looks inadequate. These are the chairs used in classrooms and the like, where you have to have a universal, cheap as hell chair, except even those tend to have some angle to allow natural back curvature. These would make your back ache.
Then again, not everybody has a chair and there are no seat belts. That’s a terrible position to work your whole day. The fact that the station is not adjustable to height means it’s designed for human use, which is a terrible oversight in a universe where aliens serve on Federation vessels. Also notice how w i d e the captain’s chair is
Also notice the paneling in the room filling each and every surface, except the floor which has a carpet, further mudding the scene down. It’s also in a Dutch angle, making it look terribly shot. Straightening it makes a better shot, even if you have to crop stuff out.
A trope in science fiction is that screens are transparent. Considering nobody really would like a transparent screen with high-brightness visuals on it, SF really should get away with it. But a massive screen with unnecessary borders, information and statistics you can’t even see?
Darkening the bridge is another trope that should be dropped, because nothing sounds better than having bright as hell panels in front of your face and then have the room darkened, blinding you for a time. Just like the Dutch angle.
There are two problems with screen like this. First is that nobody is able to see the information on the screen, not even the viewer. The only valuable information that’d be nice here is the meter running at the top of the screen, except it’s relevancy changes all the time, and all the people who needs this information sees it more relevantly on their station. The information on either side of the screen is largely irrelevant, just as is the larger information charts on the right. Hell, the square in the middle functions as some sort of shield against brightness differences, but it actually turns the brightness up, not down. I thought it was some sort of zoomed-in window, but the space in there clearly isn’t zoomed in and we saw that zoom-in function looked completely different. I don’t know what the hell it is, but it’s absolutely nonsensical and impractical. Drop the excess stuff allow the view screen function as a giant window. You get all the data on your stations.
I don’t really need to put different snaps up on how the design are lacking imagination. All the designs, from lighting to chairs, clothing and even colour choices scream of generic science fiction show. Without the Starfleet symbol floating anywhere, on the costumes, this would fit any science fiction show out there. The design work is lacking that heart. It’s not necessarily even lacklustre, but it’s very safe and sits nicely in the middle-ground of being forgettable. The photography and the way scenes are shot doesn’t help the matter at all. The series’ designs are already finished, and unless they managed to revamp things, it’s still gonna look terribly dull.
Let’s not forget the terrible desktop lamps we have here and that Sarek’s hologram is sitting on a table he should not know exists there. Does he know there was a table there and has an exactly same height table at the exact same spot at his house to sit on whenever Michael calls him? Maybe I should come back to this and do a comparative technology level review after the show’s over
What common element is shared between Star Wars and Star Trek? Well, the title spells it already. With the Star Trek Discovery test footage revealed, the first reaction to many was Is that the Enterprise from Planet of the Titans? Those who are into Trek at least asked, and for a good reason. The title ship does indeed look like it was lifted from McQuarrie’s concept design for the refitted Enterprise.
Aaltomies 
