Anyways, as someone old enough to have watched TOS the first time around (sob!!), it’s a bit disconcerting to see “canon” chucked out of the window with the design.

The ship looks like a hybrid between the TOS and the TMP versions with its aztec’ed hull and rectangular “vents” around the bridge and lower sensor array. In my opinion, given that the movie’s set some years before TOS, she should look like she was built between the time of NX-01 and Kirk’s command with features of both. The Enterprise we know from TOS was an early refit, if you like……my tuppence worth :)

2.) Going with this ‘altered timeline’ proposition… in “First Contact” Zephram Cochrane only got a fleeting glimpse- from a distance- of Picard’s sleek Enterprise E, which had only few similarities to it’s earlier predecessor in The Motion Picture. Granted, this experience may have been powerful enough to imprint itself on Cochrane’s memory forever that he drew what he saw… and thus became part of all future starship designs.

3.) Yet IF Picard and crew changed the past, they would have changed their own future. Upon return to their own time, these subtle, if not massive, changes would have been obvious. But we didn’t notice any. (The Constitution class Enterprise in the Fleet Museum would obviously have changed.)

4.) This leaves us with the idea that the designs of the original series never existed at all. Consequently, everything we see of that era portrayed in TNG, DS9 etc… were altered as well. Guinan (the long-lived bar keeper) would probably have some uncomfortable feeling something had changed.. was not “right.”

5.) Personally, I would think it completely okay to portray the early years of Kirk and Spock and stay within design canon. Keep the Matt Jeffries aesthetics, just them a more realistic appearance- more substantial. It’s all about how it’s portrayed. Clearly period films can be just as cool and interesting to today’s (intelligent) audiences as modern ones can be- without the need to revise their look. Give us some credit. We can honor a “less advanced” Trek as long as the characters, story and message are compelling, meaningful and exciting.

I recall a modernist artist making a trailer to a non-existant movie: “Gore Vidal’s Caligula” which looked so much like a real trailer it fooled folks… unitl Courtney Love pops up in the end of it as “Caligula” Oh- it is very adult so I do not advocate folks googling it if they are faint of heart. (Now, everyone will…)

New movie trailer?
My preference would be something new set after TNG… going back to the original just seems unimiginative. But- what’s done is done. I certainly look forward to the new film.

And it will work- we are familiar with the characters and are intrigued by how they will be different and how thye will be the same.

All this buzz attests to the marketing draw of going back to what is familiar rather than dazzling us with some fresh, clever, brand new Star Trek incarnation:

(my trailer opens with elephant screams and bits of Saint Saans “Rhondo and Cappricio” playing as the theme)

Star Trek – The Undiscovered Canon

wherin Captain Ka-Blarrrg (a three legged, sulfur breathing packmule) and his valient crew of the Enterprise Z (EnterpriZe?) must battle the natural forces of the universe to prevent the big bang from running out of intertia and reversing thus wiping out everything… oh and dramatic tension ensues as crewmembers use the transporter to expel bodily waste (that’s why they never use the potty)

We see shot of Enterprise Z looking like a cross between a blurry fractal (as parts of ship are made of Pure Energy) and a scorched Chevy Vega… crewmembers are accidently spilling out of the faulty dimensional turbolift and floating off in the vacuum of space… in which there is no sound…
An ensign with a normal, smooth forehead keeps saying, “these phasers are less cool than expected.”

And Carrot Top is in there somewhere… maybe a pivotal scene where he points at a Native American little person and yells “A red dwarf!”

at my trailer’s end, we see the lame time travel theme is back as the universe implodes shoving each and every historical rendition of the Enterprise into each other until Ka-Blarrg, Picard, Kirk, & Ferris Bueller’s pal are all stuck together with Naval English dudes and then…

Arthus C. Clarke appears and asks why the hell, as inventor of the communications satelite, didn’t anyone ask about me during the 2005 tsunami? Fade to black as Isacc Asimov’s voice is heard to say ‘Let there be light…”

Then a new sci-fi franchise starts… maybe something called “Star Brite.”

I kidd. And I do look forward to the new film, very much so.