Standing aside from the STO implementation of the J, I think the look is exactly what that episode needed. The idea when it was designed wasn't for it to be aesthetically pleasing, because the aesthetics of ship designers in a couple century's won't be comparable to how it is now. It's fine if one doesn't like it, but we should all remember that wasn't the point.
For example, the Enterprise E was made to look badass on screen, which it does.
The J was meant to look alien and futuristic and confusing, which is does.
There's some podcast somewhere where drexler talks about rooms conforming to the user, the ship running off the brain power of occupants, thinking things and the ship making it happen. Now for me THAT is a trek i'd like to see.
First off, the ship itself is scaled to be 4-5 times that of a Galaxy Class (640 * 4 = 2560 meters, 640 * 5 = 3200 meters). At that scale, it's either half the size of the largest Borg Cubes (5000 meters) or larger then the smaller Borg Cubes (at 1500-2000 meters). Get the ridiculous yet?
No! Of course not lol! Because one ship is alot bigger than an arbitrarily chosen size for another? The galaxy is 640m but that's not 'too big' for you? At what point is a ship reasonable sized, and at what point not?
Think big! This ship isn't for exploring space, it's for
charting multiple universes! Probably spending decades moving from multiverse to multiverse, exploring and answering questions we can't comprehend even asking yet!
Whereas the end-D was a city in space, the J is a country, deep space tours don't last years, they last lifetimes. The people returning to base are the descendants of the ones that left.
I actually wish they had made it weirder. Imagine a ship that doesn't even occupy space for example, and exists only in subspace. How cool would that be!
