Fascinating. A novel class in this case too, carrying the identifying quirks of the Suurok class (like the Ni'Var) into the TNG style, with that lumpy and layered look of the Klingon and Cardassian ships of the era. I wonder whether those pods are part of the functioning of the warp ring, and whether they count as nacelles, or if they're deflectors like I assume the grated trapezoids on the fuselage are? (I see there's a thin wing that loops around from the rear of the pods and connects in the back.) Or put more simply,
+ =
Good damn job LD. Even the interiors are based on Enterprise but updated including funky spherical consoles sort of like the Ferengi use, which is better than Discovery managed. I'm not even mad. That's such a perfect realization of the idea of "TNG-Voyager era Vulcan ship".
However, I've also just learned that there's a much worse one with seniority. Apparently I wasn't paying attention in TNG and DS9, and there are TNG-era Vulcan ships in there on a couple of occasions too, which they didn't have to creatively insert into the timeline at the time because it was just the present then. Looks like it was grey in all those appearances, but the model got painted in retroactive Vulcan bronze like the First Contact ship (and subsequently all other Vulcan craft) at some point before showing up in a Christie's auction?
And it's probably okay that these ugly mofos stay in the memory hole, being the first isn't a substitute for being the best. Except....
Obviously, they have the "annular warp drive", too, and this is the one that directly inspired the Enterprise design, which in turn inspired all the other Vulcan ships with the rings that show up in every subsequent era of Trek chronology from SNW to the Discovery future. Except ... it's not actually a
round ring. Enterprise took inspiration from this shape in TNG, and worked backwards to a more primitive version with the simple ring. That means the T'Plana type from Discovery was arguably
right in futzing with the shape in the TOS era (even if nothing else about that design is without sin,) because the ring was always meant to evolve into this Enterprise D deflector shape. Enterprise itself apparently complicates its own effort by showing off a future Vulcan ship as a schematic that has three actually-round rings from the distant future era that we now know as the middle of the Burn.
Round warp rings, I guess, are like round primary hulls in Starfleet, they play around here and there but just keep coming back to the classic.
Edit: I saw a reference to a painting in The Motion Picture inspiring the ring of the TNG ship design, but I checked and it's nothing, it is indeed a ship with a ring, but like in a NASA way, no indication it's anything to do with Vulcans etc..