Series creator Gene Roddenberry reviewed hundreds of science fiction magazines, dating back to 1931, to gather ideas about what he wanted Star Trek's main vessel to look like.

[14] He designed the Klingon starship seen in the third season by rearranging and changing the shape of Enterprise's basic modules: a main body, two engine pods, and a neck with a head on it.

[25] Anderson's team struggled to film the model in a way that suggested it was moving at tremendous speeds, as the producers wanted to avoid the cliched look of a spacecraft drifting through space.

[51] To keep the ship from looking too sterile, Mike Minor created paintings that hung in Kirk's quarters, the recreation area, and the upper rim of the bridge.

[53] Jefferies and associate producer Bob Justman walked through the production lots looking for "serendipitous items" that could be modified into set details to enhance the interiors.

[45] The production staff called the set the "Jefferies tube" as an inside joke, and the term is used in dialogue to describe similar crawl spaces in spinoffs.

[62] Ken Adam and Ralph McQuarrie designed a new Enterprise with a triangular hull that later inspired the appearance of the eponymous ship in Star Trek: Discovery.

[67] David Kimble created diagrams and deck plans for the updated Enterprise that were provided to model makers, toy companies, and other licensed product manufacturers.

[28][76] Effects supervisor Douglas Trumbull relit the ship as if it were an ocean liner, "a grand lady of the seas at night", because there would be no external light source in deep space.

[76] The Enterprise model was slightly refurbished for Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan (1982), with its exterior shine dulled and extra detail added to the frame.

[85] The smaller Wrath of Khan budget required the reuse of existing sets, but they presented challenges in realizing director Nicholas Meyer's desire for a "livelier" tone.

[85][86][87] Rear-projection systems for bridge displays were replaced with monitors looping taped material created by graphic designer Lee Cole at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

[69] Recognizing the plot of Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) was otherwise predictable, producer and screenwriter Harve Bennett decided to have the Enterprise destroyed.

[95] Director Nicholas Meyer wanted the Enterprise to feel grittier and more realistic for Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991), but realizing that vision was limited by the need to use existing sets.

[98] Producers working on the Star Trek: The Next Generation episode "Relics" (1992), in which Montgomery Scott visits a recreation of the Enterprise, initially planned to use the film-era set.

[99][100] The bridge was again partially recreated, with other parts added digitally, for the Deep Space Nine episode "Trials and Tribble-ations" (1996), in which the crew visits the Enterprise during the events of "The Trouble With Tribbles" (1967).

[102] Set designer Laura Richarz's biggest challenge was finding Burke chairs to populate the ship: she found just one, and the production team make molds to create more.

[102][104] Although the eight-foot film model's original pearlescent paint had been covered and it was redressed as the Enterprise-A, it was used as a referent for the CGI Enterprise created for the 2001 director's cut of The Motion Picture.

[117] Eaves created 10 relatively similar sketches that streamlined the original Enterprise to appear more consistent with Discovery's sleek aesthetic, and the team selected one to refine.

Production designer Tamara Deverell and her team wanted to honor the original bridge but needed to create the set using current techniques and to meet modern audience expectations.

The set maintained the original's layout and included references and details from Star Trek, such as Sulu's and Spock's console scanners, red bridge railings, and turbolift handles.

Throughout the first live action and animated Star Trek television series, Captain James T. Kirk commands the ship and its 430-person crew on an exploration mission from 2264 to 2269.

In Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country, Enterprise thwarts the renegade Klingon General Chang's attempt to disrupt a peace summit.

[143] According to Weitekamp, "The two Enterprises overlap, and are clearly related, but they do not map completely onto each other," and unpacking distinctions between them contributes to scholarly analysis of popular and material culture and of "this significant television artifact".

[14] Design expert Jonathan Glancey described the "convincing and exciting" Enterprise as having the same aesthetic appeal as the Concorde jet, B-17 bomber, and Queen Elizabeth 2 ocean liner.

[144] Harris included the Enterprise as one of the 50 most significant objects to appear in film, alongside the ruby slippers in The Wizard of Oz, the Maschinenmensch in Metropolis, and the Batmobile in Batman Begins.

[150][151] Entertainment Weekly wrote that, after being depicted as a complicated vessel requiring detailed care in The Wrath of Khan, it seemed "a bit loony" for the Enterprise to be operable by just a handful of officers in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock.

[156] In her biography of DeForest Kelley, Terry Lee Rioux calls the Enterprise a "mother goddess" who, consistent with "one of the oldest and highest myths" in humanity, sacrifices herself so her children, the crew, can live on.

"[160] Writing for Tor.com, Keith DeCandido praised Strange New Worlds' producers for balancing the Enterprise's original 1960s look with what audiences expect from modern productions.

[164] The USS Titan in Star Trek: Picard's third season draws inspiration from the film redesign, which producer Terry Matalas called "the best starship design ever made.