Spacecraft in Star Trek

Various space vessels make up the primary settings of the Star Trek television series, films, and expanded universe; others help advance the franchise's stories.

[3] Series creator Gene Roddenberry wanted the ship's design to convey speed, power, a "shirt sleeve" working environment, and readiness for a multiyear mission.

[4] Roddenberry insisted the ship not have fins or rockets;[4] Jefferies also avoided repeating fictional designs from Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon, along with the real-world space exploration work done by Boeing, Douglas Aircraft Company, Lockheed Corporation, NACA, NASA, and Northrop.

[4] Although Jefferies wanted to avoid the cliche of a "flying saucer", the saucer-shaped upper portion of the hull eventually became part of the final design.

[4] Jefferies kept the exterior as plain as possible, both to allow light to play across the model and to suggest that the ship's vital equipment was on the interior, where it could be more readily maintained and repaired.

[7] Looking at an early balsa and birchwood model of the Enterprise, Roddenberry thought the vessel would look better upside down, and a TV Guide cover once depicted it as such; ultimately, however, the show used Jefferies' arrangement.

[2] Although initially lacking internal lighting, the tight budget ultimately allowed the model's starboard side to receive illuminated windows.

[2] The show's tight budget meant, more often than not, producers recycled models and footage, used cheaper animation techniques, or simply omitted the appearance of spacecraft.

Mike Minor, Joe Jennings, Harold Michaelson, Andrew Probert, Douglas Trumbull, and Richard Tyler redesigned the USS Enterprise while retaining the television series ship's overall shape.

William Shatner's and Leonard Nimoy's demands for "sky-high salaries" for Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986) caused the studio to plan for a new television series.

Roddenberry envisioned the new series occurring in an era when people were preoccupied with improving the quality of life, and he emphasized this point in calling for a larger, brighter, and less-sterile USS Enterprise than the ship in the original Star Trek.

[34] After rejecting the idea of using CGI for special effects and shooting miniatures, the producers hired ILM—which worked extensively on the Star Trek films—to build a pair of Enterprise models.

[38] To help avoid them, the producers reused and recycled sets, models, props, and footage created for the movie franchise;[19] the development of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine also saw resources being shared across the two television series.

[42] When The Next Generation depicts combat between spacecraft, it is usually single ship-on-ship; however, there are exceptions, such as a "Star Wars-like" battle in "Preemptive Strike" (1994) between numerous Maquis fighters and a Cardassian ship.

Dan Curry said that to conserve the budget for use on ships to be seen in close-up, small "worker bee" vessels not requiring significant detail were made out of cheap, everyday objects.

[46] The model was made for the 1984 theatrical film Star Trek III: The Search for Spock, where it depicted a ship called the "USS Grissom".

[46] As with the original Star Trek, budget concerns delayed the construction of a full-scale shuttlecraft set until a script made the shuttle an important part of the story.

Although the production designers gave the new spin-off a distinct look, Deep Space Nine used numerous ship models created for The Next Generation and, later, Star Trek: First Contact (1996).

The USS Enterprise-B in Generations is a reuse of the Excelsior model in Star Trek III, and its surrounding spacedock a reconstruction—with some flattening alterations—of the frame created for The Motion Picture.

Scenes involving the Enterprise-B and the Lakul in the Nexus energy ribbon were all computer-generated—in fact, no shooting model was ever made of the ill-fated El-Aurian refugee ship.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996) introduces the Sovereign-class Enterprise-E, conceived by production designer Herman Zimmerman and illustrator John Eaves as a larger, sleeker, faster-looking ship.

[65] John Knoll worked with visual effects art director Alex Jaeger to design and create a variety of new ships to populate the opening battle against the Borg.

[61] Knoll and Jaeger decided the new ships had to be consistent with Star Trek precedent, such as a saucer section and pair of warp nacelles,[62] but also could not look so similar as to be confused with the new Enterprise.

[61] With these requirements in mind, Jaeger reduced 16 initial designs down to four, and created computer-generated models of the Akira-, Norway-, Saber-, and Steamrunner-class ships.

In designing the ship, Eaves revisited the Klingon bird-of-prey concept created for Star Trek III, retaining the "hawklike head".

[59] By the time production began on Star Trek: Voyager (1995–2001), advances in computing allowed designers to create rough digital three-dimensional models of starships.

[69] Sternbach said the most important change in the process of creating spacecraft for the franchise was the increasing availability of CGI software and access to better-performing computers.

[75] Concept artist Ryan Church's initial designs were refined and developed into photo-realistic models by Alex Jaeger's team at ILM.

[79] Part of the disparity between the treatment of effects shots for the remastered Star Trek and the Blu-ray release of The Next Generation is due to film archiving.

[82] Similarly, Simon & Schuster held a contest to design the USS Titan, a science vessel commanded by William Riker about whom a series of novels has been published.

Matt Jefferies ' design of the USS Enterprise —featuring a saucer section, engineering hull, and external engine nacelles—established a design schema that influenced the Star Trek franchise's future television and film spin-offs. [ 1 ]
The original series' Klingon cruiser design was retained for the first Star Trek film, and the motif of a manta ray -type hull with a bulbous prow influenced the design of Klingon vessels in subsequent films and spin-offs. [ 2 ] [ 9 ]
Industrial Light & Magic 's William George based his USS Excelsior design on what he thought the Enterprise would look like if it were designed by the Japanese. [ 15 ] The model retains the distinct hull features of Matt Jefferies' Enterprise . [ 2 ] Redresses of the Excelsior model, and later digital versions, were heavily used throughout the franchise.
Star Trek Generations (1994) mainly features one of the original Enterprise -D models Industrial Light & Magic created for Star Trek: The Next Generation (1987–1994). [ 56 ] The model was rewired and resurfaced for film presentation. [ 56 ] Although a more-detailed Enterprise model was created midway through The Next Generation ' s run, one of the originals was used for the film because it was the only one capable of depicting the saucer section's (foreground) separation from the engineering hull. [ 57 ] Note the ship's twin engine nacelles—another feature retained from Matt Jefferies' original Enterprise design.
The Romulan Scimitar (left) and USS Enterprise -E in Star Trek Nemesis (2002). Designer John Eaves took inspiration for the Scimitar from the bird-of-prey created for Star Trek III (1984)—a ship originally designed with Romulans in mind. [ 59 ] The Enterprise , created for Star Trek: First Contact (1996), was designed by Eaves and Herman Zimmerman to appear sleeker and faster than its Next Generation predecessor. [ 60 ] Although both ships were mainly depicted by computer models in Nemesis , the climactic collision of the two was realized with physical models. [ 59 ]