Star Trek: Every Hero Ship Ranked Worst To Best

It was no easy task to create a successor to the original Enterprise for The Next Generation. It had to be new enough to show how far technology had advanced in the past century, but also similar enough to still feel like a Starfleet design.

The modelling crew behind the Galaxy-class Enterprise-D did a phenomenal job with showing a natural evolution of the old look. The Enterprise-D had the same general design as the original (with a saucer section, a neck, a secondary hull, and pylons connecting the warp nacelles), but everything was scaled up, made to look bulkier, and retextured. They also updated Starfleet interior design to be less industrial and more comfy, with carpeted floors and less harsh colours. The ship also featured a number of new inventions like the holodecks and phaser arrays, as well as the ability to separate it's saucer-section much easier than Kirk's Enterprise.

To summarise, the Enterprise-D did a perfect job of introducing fans into a new era of Trek without discarding what made the original aesthetic so iconic.