Star Trek: 10 Secrets About The 25th Century Fleet You Need To Know
5. Sentries and Inquiries
Scouting around near Daystrom Station, the crew of the USS Titan-A encountered a couple of sentries in the form of the Echelon Class.
These might look oddly familiar and they should because they're a cut-down version of the Stargazer from season two. Cutting back to just a pair of upper nacelles, the Echelon Class is therefore a vessel unique to Picard. They would also turn up as part of the immense finale fleet where another slightly modified design appeared also.
Far from being consigned to the design bin, the infamous Inquiry Class would be back. There's no on-screen qualification as to whether it's still the most advanced ship type in the fleet but with a few years gap between seasons one and three it would be safe to assume it isn't.
The original Inquiry Class design had four variations on colour and nacelle shape and season two did a bit more work. What we mean by more work is that the Picard first season models were completely jettisoned and then the Tobias Richter Online models used in their place in all future appearances.
Major alterations were made including re-contouring the secondary hull, adjusting the shape of the warp engines, and putting a proper deflector in to replace the "air conditioning grate" as described by VFX artist Brian Tatosky.