Thanks to Entertainment Weekly, you are looking at the first full image of the redesigned USS Enterprise from the new Star Trek movie (you can head over there for a larger version).
As a long time Star Trek fan, whose favorite series is the original, my from-the-gut reaction when I first came across this was:
That is one ugly ship.
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Here is what J.J. Abrams had to say in regards to the new design vs the original:
“If you’re going to do Star Trek there are many things you cannot change. The Enterprise is a visual touchstone for so many people. So if you’re going to do the Enterprise, it better look like the Enterprise, because otherwise, what are you doing?”
I don’t know… maybe it’ll grow on me or it will look awesome while in flight on the big screen, but at the moment it’s not doing it for me. While he went pretty “classic” with the saucer section (that’s “primary hull” for the Star Trek fans out there) the connecting pylon and the secondary (lower) hull just look… incongruous.
If I had to pick one word that comes to mind when I look at that image, it would be:
Taffy.
You know, that stretchy carnival candy? You get it warmed up and then you can pull on it and it stretches and thins? That’s what the secondary hull and the nacelles look like to me. The lower hull looks like it was molded out of clay, rolled between two hands and rolled narrower at one end.
Almost exactly one year ago I wrote a speculative post asking “How radical is the USS Enterprise Redesign?”
Pretty damned radical, it seems.
Here are some comparative images from that post to help put things in perspective:
The Original USS Enterprise NCC-1701
JJ Abrams’ Redesigned USS Enterprise NCC-1701
The USS Enterprise NCC-1701-A
Tell me the new design doesn’t look like the movie Enterprise saucer section tacked onto some completely different alien ship.
In another post, I tried to guess how a redesign of the Enterprise might equate to the modern trend of doing design updates of classic cars. As it turns out, I think my 1960s to 21st century Camaro comparison turned out to be the closest in design ideology:
Classic Camaro
Modern Camaro
At the time I wrote:
“Let me say that I think the new Camaro is really, REALLY hot and from a design standpoint pays homage to the classic version, but that degree of change for the Enterprise would be completely unacceptable.”
Oh well.
Or… is it just me? Do I need to give it time to sink in and see it in action? I’d like to hear opinions from both Star Trek fans and non-fans.
[UPDATE: Thanks to "Spockboy" check out this minor change to the design via Photoshop that makes the new NCC-1701 look FAR better by adding some bulk to the lower part of the ship.]
Star Trek opens on May 8, 2009.
Source: EW.com via FirstShowing.net
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275 Comments
I can understand that entirely, we’ve all been in this situation where out ‘fandoms’ get given a “reboot” of some sort and we have our misgivings about certain things. I just felt like giving an outsiders opinion.
Glad we could understand one another.
@joshi
Well I *did* want non-fans’ opinions so I appreciate your taking the time.
Best,
Vic
The design is WRONG.
For whatever reason, everyone that has helmed TREK after Roddenberry has somehow just decided that TOS does not and never did exist. TOS represents, to them, a design abberation.
BS. TOS IS TREK. Making the PRE 1701 look more like the A version simply ignores TOS, and since it is examining the TOS crew the entire thing makes no sense.
Dorks.
gah!
I’m a fan of TOS, and I have mixed feelings about this new design. For starters, I think the ship does look very cool, and I can see why Abrams chose this design. It looks enough like the Enterprise to get a pass, and I am fine with the design.
But I can’t get over the belly of the ship. I don’t like how front-heavy it looks, and I don’t like how the engines connect to it. Overall, as a spaceship, its very cool. As the enterprise, its acceptable at best.
Is it just me, or does this “redesign” look like it might have been based on the Enterprise C from TNG?
http://memory-alpha.org/en/wiki/Image:USS_Enterprise-C.jpg
Um, not my favorite design, but I suppose we’ll get used to it.
Yeah, the secondary hull and pylons look too “NURMy”.
Totally agree with you, Vic, about the “tiny butt”. That area where they join up needs to be more robust.
Here’s a good discussion thread from the 3D modelers over at Sci-Fi Meshes…
http://www.scifi-meshes.com/forums/general-discussion/52523-enterprise-revealed.html
being the somewhat avid fan of star trek(star wars wins barley)
the redesign did catch me off guard at first but i agree with joshi on many of his points and as far as the ibridge goes, in todays modern society with phones that can do all but wipe your ass(someone should work on that) you can’t present a movie about the”future” unless it looks like the future which means more advances in tech, so bones can not go around with a tri-corder the size of a boxing glove when we have similar tech at smaller sizes in todays life, and as far as the star wars references about the different tech between the prequels and original trilogy is this as all star wars fans should know the AT-AT,AT-ST, and other designs were designs that palpatine took form ancient sith desings which would explain the apparent step back in their look, and as far as the comparison between the naboo fighter and the x-wing thats like comparing a sedan and a sports car and if you look at the ARC-170S in episode III that is the predecessor of the x-wing and when looked at from that persecutive you can see that the x-wing is a much smaller and streamlined version of the ARC-170S
I prefer JJ’s version to Spockboy’s. His looks too much like a compromise between JJ’s version and the original. The fatness of the bottom does not flow with the rest of the ship lines.
There is a strong influence from the Enterprise C from The Next Generation episode – ‘Yesterday’s Enterprise.’
Might want to throw an image of that one up for comparison purposes too, Vic.
@hicks
Here’s the deal (and my logic): They could have made the bridge look hyper-modern but have kept a color scheme with at least a passing resemblance to TOS and TNG. I mean when have we EVER seen a blazing white bridge on a Federation ship? Ever? Hell, take the same damn one they have, transparent panels and all but change the colors to the blacks/reds/tans of the original and I would have been as happy as a pig at the trough.
As to the size of tricorders, communicators, etc. I believe that’s a straw man argument. I would counter that the devices can do so MUCH that they by design have to be a bit larger.
Everyone says “blah blah cell phones tiny blah blah.” Fine. Could your cell phone, WITHOUT cell towers, contact a ship in orbit? Do you think maybe we could excuse a Communicator not being the size of a pack of matches because it needs to be able to do what it does? Same goes for the Tricorder – it has such vast capabilities that to me it’s silly if they make it too small.
Vic
I am as hardcore a Star Trek fan as you will find. I didn’t finish DS9 or Enterprise (This due to not having TV for a few years), but otherwise loved all the different shows and movies (except I, V, and VII). I personally love the new design. I think it pays homage to the original while at the same time making it look like technology that COULD exist in the future, rather than something that looks like it was designed for the future in the 60s or even the 80s.
There was something else that bothered me about the new look that I couldn’t put a finger on till I saw spockboy’s fix!
The engines, support pylons (and where they connect top & bottom), and the tail of the secondary hull all look jammed forward. Was space dock too short?
When I saw his fix, it hit me: Animated series come to life! Very cool!
Nice touch spockboy!
Vic, I bet you didn’t like the design of the Enterprise-E when it was debuted in First Contact. If that’s so, I think I can understand your feelings a bit. It was so different than any other design as it was stretched out for a wide-screen format. I personally liked it the most out of the designs up to that point, but people who didn’t like that one tend not to like anything other than the perfectly round saucer, barrel-shaped secondary hull, and straw-shaped warp nacelle designs.
I just had a non fan (there is one in my house) tell me that she likes JJ’s look better than spockboy’s touch-up. She specifically likes the shape of the secondary hull. liking the subtle curve on the bottom. She thinks it looks sexy!
Oh! The shame of it!!
It is modern car design: they squashed in the engineering hull, and pushed the nacelles foward to give it that tiny car “sure, we’re really hip (except they’re not)” look. The Enterprise isn’t a sports car, not from any era: she’s a heavy cruiser. She’s a big, badass ship you don’t want to mess with (one of the early novels described her from a Romulan point of view: a war shield and two clubs [or was it spears]). This new thing inspires fear or awe in no one. Bummer.
Hey Vic did I miss something?
I don’t recall seeing any of the devices in the pictures released so far. But I agree with you, plus the things need to be big enough to operate in less than ideal conditions I would think.
@David
No we haven’t seen those things, but in Star Trek: Enterprise they made everything smaller than in the original show.
@Mark
I *still* don’t like the Enterprise-E.
Vic
I should start by saying that I consider myself to be a lifelong Star Trek fan even though I’m only 21.
I actually caught my first glimpse of this design last night and my first reaction was, “Why’d they do that?”. I didn’t like that they pushed the neck so far aft that it was nearly on top of the shuttlebay. And it seemed like the nacells were nearly touching the rear of the saucer section.
However, I looked at the design again later and thought, “that still does look like the NCC-1701″. I think I do need to give Mr. Abrams some amount of credit. JJ, I can easily recognize this as the original Enterprise even though you’ve changed a lot of the body lines and resized some of it. And wasn’t that the goal?
I loved the look of every Enterprise. Each was unique and set itself apart from other iterations. This one is easily recognizable as the original; (I direct your attention to the frontal lobes of the nacells as well as the exterior mounted deflector dish.) No it’s not exactly the same as TOS Enterprise, but what’d you expect.
This design satisfies the hardcores who wanted this to the NCC-1701 and the ‘new fans’ Abrams wants to bring to the base with an updated design with realistic design cues. Plus, we can’t see the whole thing with this one photo. Let’s see the whole thing in motion before we pass judgement. Bottom line; I can deal with it.
We had to know Abrams would re-engineer some things for the movie. And as Dr. McCoy once famously said, “I know engineers, they love to change things.”
Looks like the body of the Enterprise E, and the saucer section of a Starfleet Ambassador class ship, with a touch of the NSEA Protector thrown in for laughs…
Hey Vic the “NX Prometheus” in the Star Trek Voyager episode,”Message in Bottle” had a uber-white bridge but even that wasn’t as high tech as this new/old one…
I have a feeling that JJ’s attempt at making this film something “non-fans” can enjoy, could have been his biggest mistake!
I’m betting theres a Omega 13 reference in the film somewhere…
To me, its Star Trek DEGENERATIONS.
I hate JJ Abrams, Paramount e Mr Nimoy for this!!!
HONESTLY, IT LOOKS LIKE jj Blended the 2.
being that the one frome the original & from the old star trek films.
it’l grow on ya.
a ton of people hated voyger at first but after a while. people loved it.
so this new ship rendistion will hopefully grow on us.
I’ll need to see it in 3d before I can form an opinion.
Well, from a design standpoint, the article’s author has a point. It is an inconsistent design. An analysis of the ship’s new look reveals an obvious incongruity between the primary hull and the engineering hull. If the artists that designed the ship had added details to the saucer section to bring it in line with the look of the engineering section, there would be no problem. However, as it is the ship looks like a hodge podge of the TMP Enterprise saucer with the Reboot engineering hull. This much can be argued, other than that the ship looks not so bad given that it is an original design based on the Enterprise and Constitution classes.
There was no reason to change the original design too much… Well there WAS a reason. If they didnt make it different enough they would not sell new toys to kids….
Its all about franchise… and to hell with canon, or logic. The problem is that the guys who are workiing on this films are not super duper trek fans.
The guy made the horrific Tranformers for goodness sake! lol What do you expect? No… it was a bad choice.. given to a team will little or no understanding of the spirit of Trek…. and you will see that the bad ship design is only the tip of the iceberg… they will have stuff in the movie that will leave millions that know what TOS was scratching their heads…
I started to understand this from small details over the months that I have been following closely all the updates on trekmovie.com but now that the bad photos of the crew, the iBridge and now the Big-E is out, there is no doubt that these guys should be tarred and feathered for sacrilege of TOS. Like so many remakes or reboots (YES GUYS THAS WHAT IT IS), this one will be worse than the original.. simply becuase they have all the technology and money for effects and new designs.. but they lack the deep knowhow on how to make something GREAT. Thats what I admire about the people who put together TOS: They didnt have a lot of money, nor computers to design, but what they had was RAW POWERFUL TALENT and the KNOWHOW based on REAL artistic knowlage, something that has been lost in the new schools of art, like design or film. As a designer first trained to DRAW in a classical manner and THEN learned how to use computers to design, I understand how important this was for me. Just take a look at the TOS original scenes and compare them with the “REMASTERED” ones… Oh god.. they are HORRIBLE in color, lighting and more importantly COMPOSITION! LOL these guys have all the toys to make cool things, but what the lack is deep understanding of really the BASICS of making a thing good. And this stupid new enterprise is HORRIBLE …. its a disgrace .. bad design – bad design… period!
Like FlameStrike said, “It’s Transformers all over again.”
Yep, that’s one ugly starship design (with the exception of the Motion Picture saucer section).
@Spocks Brain
Well I was FULLY prepared for an updated look. What bothers me is that it seems like for some design aspects, where they could have turned right to make it more similar to the original they turned left instead.
Like I’ve said about the bridge, fine, keep the new design – just make it in tans, reds and blacks. It would still look cool for new viewers but would have (probably) satisfied the fans. As far as the ship, as demonstrated by the fan-tweaked versions over at TrekMovie, there are subtle changes that could have been made that would have been less “offensive” to TOS fans and quite frankly just would have made the ship look better.
I’m still holding out hope for this.
Vic
I’ve got to agree that the back end of the engineering hull just plain looks squashed, and with the deflector dish that far ahead of the neck it looks front heavy.
I suppose there’s something to be said for giving something new fans can enjoy, but I don’t see what was wrong with the old design. Enterprise proved (in one of its best episodes, “In a Mirror Darkly”) that the old style Constitution class can be spruced up very nicely for the current generation. Model the ship to bring out more details, and you can make the old designs look excellent. You can also improve the materials of the old bridge sets to make it look more modern while still having it look like it always did.
I wasn’t around for the first run of TOS. Wasn’t around for the first couple seasons of TNG, either. Still, I can’t see why they felt the need to modify the design to this extreme.
Then again, as I’ve learned more about this movie my catch phrase has become, “I’m not impressed.” Not that my opinion amounts to much, I know, but there’s my two cents, regardless.
790 and I were talking about this at MOVIEGUYS, and he brought up a really good point.
If time travel is part of the plot, while highly unlikely it is possible that there are multiple versions of the Enterprise, and what we’ve seen so far might not be all that is in the movie.
I know it seems far fetched, but it’s hope none the less.
@Jon
This is pure speculation but that is entirely possible. From the lips of Robert Orci in the comments over at TrekMovie.com:
“If you see the movie, you will either agree with our final solution, or you won’t. But it’s too early to tell right.”
Final solution… sure sounds like they have something interesting up their sleeves…
Vic
Yeah Vic I found out some stuff yesterday, but I can’t tell cause it would be too much of a spoiler…
Its gonna be a grand film, if they can pull it off… Still too early to tell if the hardcore fans will like it.
That’s something we won’t know until next year.
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