All language subtitles for The Center Seat 55 Years s01e09 Starships A to Z.eng

[Gates McFadden]
Star Trek,

science fiction's
most influential franchise,

has been around longer
and traveled further than any other.

Let's jump.

[McFadden] And it's all thanks to
a seemingly infinite armada of starships.

Nothing is more important than my ship.

[McFadden] From the original Enterprise
to its most distant relative,

Star Trek has been designing starships
almost as long as NASA.

[man] Liftoff.

[McFadden]
What started with plastic models

has evolved into
computer-generated wizardry.

And throughout it all,
an unmistakable design language

has been written in the stars.

The story of how those designs
came to be,

and came to be loved,

literally spans time and space.

Warp drive, Mr. Scott.

[McFadden] So beam aboard
and hold on tight

as we boldly explore
the starships of Star Trek.

And you can see it all from here
in The Center Seat.

All I ask is a tall ship
and a star to steer her by.

[McFadden] If you love Star Trek ,
you love starships.

You know, I love starships.
Star Trek loves starships.

[McFadden] The vessel that
virtually defined the look of a spaceship

for generations
began where Star Trek began:

with Gene Roddenberry.

[Michael Okuda]
Roddenberry knew that the ship

was an important character.

It had to be distinctive.
It had to be believable.

He knew if you didn't buy the ship,
you weren't gonna buy the series.

[McFadden] But the Enterprise
was hardly the first starship.

The word "starship"
had been around before Star Trek in books.

[McFadden] The first visualizations
of spacecraft were mostly saucers

or distinctly tobacco-themed.

Outer Limits, which was a couple years
before Star Trek,

and it's a cigar-shaped rocket...

...against a black duvetyn
with pinpricks in it for stars.

[McFadden]
Rockets for the Rocket Age.

[man] Liftoff.

[McFadden]
But with the Space Age now dawning,

Gene wanted something that
would take the audience further.

Gene didn't want it to look like those
rocket ships that everybody knows about.

He wanted it to be different.

[McFadden]
To let our imaginations take flight,

Gene brought in a man
who had experience of exactly that.

Roddenberry, he brought on
the art director Matt Jefferies

very early on to start
conceptualizing the ship.

[Matt Jefferies] Roddenberry,
about all he said was several don'ts.

"No flames, no fins, no rockets.

And one do is make it
look like it's got power."

And he walked out.

[McFadden] Well, Gene could afford
to be a little short with Matt.

He knew he had real-world experience
with magnificent flying machines.

[Doug Drexler] Matt Jefferies
was a flight engineer on a B-17.

Gene Roddenberry was a pilot
on a B-17 in the Pacific.

He worked on a lot of war movies,
drew ships,

designed a lot of airplanes
for movie productions.

[Okuda]
So he was an excellent choice.

He knew aircraft and he kept up
with space technology.

[McFadden] Gene and Matt combined
their own experience of military aircraft

with ideas emerging from
America's new national obsession:

the Space Race.

[Dr. Heinz Hoffmann]
When Man steps into his rocket ship

and leaves the Earth behind,

he must be well equipped to survive
in the hostile realm of outer space.

[Drexler] One of the things
that Matt and Gene looked at,

there was a series of television shows.

Now, here is a model, my design
for a four-stage orbital rocket ship.

The top section will consist of
ten crew members plus equipment.

And Collier's magazine
did a very famous series of articles

about how we're gonna go to the moon.

[McFadden] But Gene wanted something
to take the audience

further in their imaginations
than science could hope to go in space.

[Andre Bormanis]
It needs to look powerful,

it needs to look futuristic,

and it needs to look functional
like there is a sense behind this design.

So he went through
a painstaking iterative process.

[Dorothy "D.C." Fontana]
Old science-fiction magazines

that had spaceships on the cover,
different looks, different kinds,

and Roddenberry would look at them
and say,

"How about we try this,
but do this with it,"

and Matt would come up with something.

It had to be instantly recognizable,
which meant I was looking for shape,

but I didn't know
what the shape looked like.

[McFadden]
So Matt tried new combinations

of familiar shapes.

[Rick Sternbach]
You know, shiny saucers with a dome,

he started with those
sorts of shapes and textures.

[Okuda] And Roddenberry would say,
"I don't like that. This looks goofy.

I like a little bit of this."

[McFadden]
The process was hit or miss,

but even Matt Jefferies' rejected designs
were ahead of their time.

[Drexler]
Matt Jefferies' original shapes,

actually, instead of a saucer,
had a sphere out front.

The best shape
for a pressure vessel is a sphere.

And Roddenberry looked at that and said,
"Oh, yeah, you know, I like this.

I like that. I don't think I like
the sphere so much."

That got changed to a saucer,

but the saucer was on
the bottom of the engineering hull.

[McFadden] But the breakthrough
that made the Enterprise

was anything but technical.

Gene, I think, took and flipped it.

[McFadden] Even upside down
or from whatever angle,

Matt's design was majestic.

The ship didn't look like
the typical, you know,

silver sweptback-wing kind of spaceships.

The Enterprise
was something way different.

-[beeping]
-The Enterprise is not a want or a desire.

It is a mechanical device.

No, it's a beautiful lady and we love her.

[McFadden] We do indeed.

Gene finally had what he wanted.

The Enterprise would be a mix
of the old and the new.

[Drexler] They came up with
this incredibly original design

by combining elements
of science-fiction ships

that had become tropes
and turn them into something new.

You know,
the nacelles and secondary hull

are very much like
your standard cigar-shaped rocket.

And then they used a saucer,

a flying saucer like we saw
in Forbidden Planet.

[McFadden] But it wasn't just a hodgepodge
that happened to look good.

Matt's design work on Star Trek
was coming from somebody

who understood aeronautics
and space structures,

so he was able
to put together something

that was more believable than,
say, some other designers.

[McFadden]
So after dealing with the outside

of this soon-to-be-iconic starship,
Gene turned his attentions to the inside.

Because they didn't have money,
they couldn't go out

and buy expensive surplus
to make their switches on the consoles

and things like that.

They came up with the idea
of taking novelty ice cube trays

with all different shapes
and coloring epoxy,

pouring it in the trays
and when it's set, popping 'em out,

and now you had all these
really unusual-looking colored buttons.

They almost look like candy.

But they would catch the light
from overhead and they looked lit up.

[McFadden] Well, when television viewers
caught their first glimpse

of the USS Enterprise in 1966,
eyes lit up and imaginations sparked.

There was no doubt
who was the star of this show.

[John Tenuto]
The number one person to get letters

was not Leonard Nimoy or William Shatner,

but the Enterprise
received more fan letters

from kids wanting pictures
of the Enterprise

than any of the actors.

It changed everything
as far as people's expectations

in what spaceships,
"starships" look like.

That's...

The Enterprise.

[McFadden]
She truly has stood the test of time.

Something they designed in 1964
still stands

as an icon of science-fiction design.

Who doesn't know what the Enterprise is?
That famous silhouette.

It could be the size of a dime
and you knew what it was.

[McFadden] The starships of Enterprise,
Next Generation, Deep Space Nine,

and every starship
to take to the heavens since

owes something to the mothership.

Everything, it looks like a family.
There's a lineage.

[McFadden] Well, in 1979,
the Enterprise went somewhere

no Starfleet ship
was ever designed to go,

all the way to Hollywood,

as Star Trek took to the silver screen
for the first time.

Steady as she goes.

[McFadden] And for this new era,
a new Enterprise.

Production illustrator Andrew Probert
was among those charged

with improving
on Star Trek' s most emblematic design.

It was my first task on the Enterprise
to supply some detailing for the ship.

[McFadden] Collaborating with
production designer Richard Taylor,

Andrew's first instinct was to go big
for the big screen.

And I told Richard, I said,
"Let's go big with this thing."

And Richard said, "No."

[McFadden]
Richard Taylor wanted to stick

to Matt Jefferies'
original Enterprise concepts

for a Star Trek show that would show
the evolution of the Enterprise

but never quite evolved itself.

Phase two...

[Drexler] You could see
the original series Enterprise

evolve into
the motion picture Enterprise.

[McFadden] The reimagined Enterprise

would receive a new bridge,

observation deck,

and what any taxpayer expects
to see in fancy new military hardware.

We need more power.

[McFadden]
More firepower.

[Andrew Probert] I was actually able
to make the saucer bigger.

Richard said, "Okay,
now let's come up with a paneling."

[McFadden]
For the big screen,

small detailing
would give the ship a texture,

making sure the Enterprise
was ready for her close-up.

[Probert] It should look like
it's put together with little pieces

just to give it some scale
and help define the shape.

And I came up with what they call
an Aztec pattern for the saucer,

which is these interlocking pieces
that I thought would create

this kind of a tensile strength,
keeping this whole thing together.

[McFadden]
And propelling this whole thing

was a redesigned powerhouse.

[Probert] Richard Taylor actually wanted
to do the engines himself.

He said, "I know you're designing this,

but I wanna do the engines
because I have this idea."

[McFadden]
Richard's big idea

was to reshape
the Enterprise's trademarked nacelles.

[Probert] And so Richard designed
those new warp engines,

which I think are amazing.

[McFadden]
For the first time,

Enterprise's warp nacelles
were about to be warped.

At first, I was a little concerned
that we didn't have

those glorious
what we call Bussard collectors now.

That energy happening
in front of the nacelles, I love that,

but I think that that was a result
of Jesco von Puttkamer,

who was a NASA scientist
who was connected to Roddenberry

and said it suggested combustion.

[McFadden] So after consulting scientists,
the engines were bigger,

but the most appreciated upgrade
was more subtle.

[Probert] It also set the visual style
for the rest of the ship,

which was this kind of an art deco look.

The motion picture Enterprise
is so gorgeous, so elegant,

still reflects that respect
for engineering and believability.

It is the most exquisite model
of spaceship I've ever seen.

[McFadden]
And it was all thanks to designers

eloquently speaking
the design language of the original.

The original, Kirk's Enterprise,
had these dual red lines

going down the spine
of the engineering hull,

and I thought,
"Let's build on that

and actually use that
to enhance different details."

So we had 'em wrapped around
the phaser banks

and we had 'em wrapped around
the reaction control system,

with all of these beautiful lines
accentuating parts of the ship even more.

[McFadden]
The interior of the new Enterprise

opened up
a whole world of new possibilities.

The carbon units
use this area for recreation.

Then the script called for a rec deck.

[McFadden]
Floor-to-ceiling windows

that would offer
a never-before-seen starfield.

The production designer
at Paramount wanted there to be

this kind of a grandiose vision
out the back of the ship,

and he says,
"I want it in the rim of the saucer."

[McFadden] But Andrew wasn't letting
grand designs proceed

without acknowledging
certain engineering realities.

And I said,
"If you put the rec deck there,

people are gonna get really tan because
that's where the impulse engine is."

[McFadden] To avoid the new Enterprise
becoming a warp speed-capable sunbed,

the design was changed.

Scotty would have been proud.

I'm responsible
for the safety of this ship.

[McFadden]
Speaking of health and safety...

[Drexler]
If you look at the engine room,

they had people in anti-radiation suits
near the warp core.

That's a forced perspective
and they put children in uniforms

down towards the end of it so that
it looked like it was a long distance.

[McFadden] The Star Trek motion pictures
not only gave us a deeper look

into previously unseen corners
of the Enterprise, such as...

The Enterprise has a docking port
at the back of the bridge

so that people can directly access that,

and that's what, of course, Spock
used when he came aboard the Enterprise.

[McFadden] They also ushered in
a plethora of new starships.

[McFadden]
The Star Trek films filled our screens

with a range of
new 23rd-century starships,

expanding Starfleet
in ways we had never seen before.

The Reliant NCC-1864.

[McFadden] The unassuming Reliant

was strangely familiar

and yet radically different.

[Tenuto]
We really had never seen a starship

that wasn't the configuration
of a Constitution-class starship before.

[Okuda]
Coming up with a new Star Trek starship

is always a challenge.

It needs to fit into something that feels

like it's part
of the family of Enterprise,

but it also needs
to have a distinct identity.

It retains the idea of the Enterprise,
the two warp nacelles.

[McFadden]
But this humble ship

was about to turn the world
of Star Trek vessels on its head.

What's neat about it is
it's actually upside down in the movie,

based on its original design.

It was supposed to be
where the nacelles were above it.

[McFadden] Which was all every Trekker
had ever known about a starship.

Until that is, as you might remember,

producer Robert Sallin
had his way with it.

Yeah, I just flipped
the Enterprise upside down.

And so instead of having
the nacelles up here,

nacelles are down here.

[McFadden] Which wasn't just
a flippant decision, so to speak.

We had a good guy and a bad guy.

I said, "I want it to be
an obvious difference."

[McFadden] With the unprecedented
success of the motion pictures,

it seemed the bigger the movies got,
the bigger the starships became.

Would you look at that.

[McFadden]
And none was bigger than...

The Excelsior.

In the third movie, The Search for Spock ,
we introduced this ship, the Excelsior.

The Excelsior, which is supposed to be
the flagship of the Federation.

My God, that's a big ship.

Which is a big monster of a ship.

[McFadden]
The final design of this monster

was literally put in the hands
of director Leonard Nimoy.

The Excelsior, there was versions of it,
and we were making changes on the model.

Leonard, he would say,
"Let's try this, this, and this on this."

They'd take it away,
break it apart, bring it back in,

make another few changes,

and finally we had
an absolute final model.

[McFadden] The Excelsior needed
serious power under the hood,

which was easily achieved
in the script

by adding a single word to "warp drive."

She's supposed to have transwarp drive.

Aye.

And if my grandmother had wheels,
she'd be a wagon.

Prepare for warp speed,
standby transwarp drive.

[McFadden]
Scotty was right to be skeptical.

I guess it means faster
than warp drive. [laughs]

What can be faster than warp drive?

[McFadden] We wouldn't learn about the
details of transwarp power until later,

but we did learn that not all
Starfleet vessels are built for speed.

Federation science vessel Grissom
arriving.

The Oberth class
is a fun little ship.

[Drexler] You had the saucer
and you had the nacelles

and you had
that unusual secondary hull

that was like a boat hull
and it was dramatically different,

but you still went along with it.

[McFadden]
Everyone barring the Klingons,

who sadly took exception
to the Oberth class.

[speaking Klingon]

[McFadden] Of course,
when it comes to starships exploding,

there's one in particular

that even Gene Roddenberry
didn't approve of.

Computer. Destruct sequence one.

[McFadden]
In the film The Search for Spock,

Kirk destroys the Enterprise
to save his crew.

And if you think that was tough for Kirk,

spare a thought
for every hardcore Trekkie out there.

When I saw the Enterprise destroyed
in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock,

that was worse than seeing Spock die.

That was like a gut punch.
I mean, I felt that physically.

I know that Harve Bennett wanted there
to be spectacle and action in the picture,

but the part that hurt the most
was the destruction of the Enterprise.

And I never really recovered
from seeing the Enterprise destroyed

because to me the Enterprise is Star Trek.

What have I done?

[McFadden]
No, that's not the question.

What do you think of the Enterprise-D?

[McFadden]
That's the one.

With the return of Star Trek
to television in 1987,

the Enterprise was once again
reborn for a new age and a new audience.

The first live-action TV series
since the original,

Next Generation was set much later

and introduced us
to Picard's Enterprise-D.

My Enterprise is far superior.

[McFadden] The Enterprise almost
didn't make it to The Next Generation

for the unlikeliest of reasons.

[David Gerrold]
One day, Gene said,

"What if we don't have a starship
but just use long-distance transporters?"

I said, "Oh, hell no.
The star of the show is the Enterprise.

You gotta have that starship."

I was absolutely adamant,
so Gene dropped the idea.

[McFadden] Nope, the Enterprise
wasn't going anywhere except out there.

Engage.

[McFadden] This new Enterprise presented
its own unique design challenges.

How do you redesign the Enterprise
for a new TV series for Next Generation ?

How do you do that?

[McFadden] The Next Generation 's
starships were conceived

more than 20 years
after the original series Enterprise.

But in the Star Trek timeline,
they arrived almost a century later,

which created a problem for designers.

[Mark A. Altman]
Because the Enterprise, again,

is so recognizable and so beloved,

you know, what kind of changes
are you gonna make?

[McFadden] Before he was even hired
on The Next Generation,

senior illustrator Andrew Probert
was already working on that problem.

[Gerrold] Andy came to me and said,
"I've done some sketches

on what the Enterprise could look like
in Next Gen,

but I'm afraid Gene won't like 'em."

I grabbed him and I dragged Andy
and the sketches into Gene's office.

"Here's your new Enterprise."

Gene looks at it and says,
"Oh, that's good."

Well, it's a new ship.

[McFadden]
For The Next Generation...

But she's got the right name.

[McFadden]
...it wouldn't just be a new look,

but also a new form for Enterprise.

I made it organic because I feel
that an organic shape

is structurally more sound
than geometrics that are stuck together.

In my head,
it's made up of plastics and ceramics.

It's not steel, you know.

And who knows? In the future,
they're gonna have other materials.

And it's not welded together,
it's sonic-blended. It's not welded.

[McFadden] The result
was a sleeker-looking vessel

to be known as Enterprise-D.

And something else that I did was
I took the engines that were high

on the original Enterprise
and I dropped them down

to the center of mass
because it would have

a better propulsion balance
than being at the top.

From what I've seen, you've got
a fine ship. A real beauty here.

[McFadden] Andrew was letting
his imagination run free,

but what he was dreaming up
didn't come for free,

and Gene didn't want to pay.

I designed the ship for a crew
between 3,600 and 4,600 people.

And I told that to Gene and he said,
"No, we don't have enough money

to afford the extras that would
actually reflect that number of crew,

so let's say that the crew
has 1,100 people on it."

[McFadden]
Despite budget constraints,

Andrew did have one very enterprising idea
for his Enterprise.

We'll show 'em
what this baby can do, sir.

The ship has a battle section
that separates out of the hull.

[McFadden] What if the Enterprise
could make itself a smaller target

by dividing itself into two?

But even this radical idea
wasn't exactly new.

That's in the very first proposal
for Star Trek dated 1964,

is that the saucer could separate.

The reason they never did it
in the original is because of cost.

[McFadden]
This time, budget was not the issue.

Six-five-four-three.

[Probert]
This battle section as part of the saucer,

I even had a drawing
showing the engineering hull

going off to protect the saucer.

Separation successful, sir.

[McFadden] When it came
to breaking up the Enterprise,

producers had separation anxiety.

And they said, "No, the engineering hull
is the battle section.

The saucer separates to protect the crew."

[McFadden]
Which sounded reasonable,

but Andrew had a much more radical idea.

I said, "Additionally, what you could do
is just cloak the saucer

so it could go invisible."

And they said, "No, we can't do that."

[McFadden] Well, if the Enterprise
couldn't be invisible,

that just meant more opportunities
to admire its features,

which included a new way
to shoot the enemy.

Fire all weapons.

When I did the phasers
for The Next Generation ship,

I created that whole phaser strip.

They could actually follow
what they were shooting at.

It is a most lethal weapon.

[McFadden]
There was the art of war,

then there was the art on the wall.

[Probert] The set decorator
wanted to flesh out Picard's office.

So we thought, "Well,
let's have a painting of the ship..."

-[bell dings]
- "...like all captains usually do."

So Rick and I came up with this.
I did the ship and he did the background.

[McFadden]
Speaking of home decorating,

there was the small matter
of the new bridge.

Gene wanted a full overhaul,
telling designers...

[Okuda] "I want this to be simple
and elegant and minimalistic

to show how advanced this is,
to show how far technology has come

since the days of Captain Kirk."

[McFadden]
And so cool mid-century minimalism

became a little more touchy feely.

This was the handiwork
of scenic art supervisor Michael Okuda.

[Okuda]
I ended up with a plexiglass service,

behind which I had
a photographic transparency,

and behind that I had lighting gels,

which is certainly a lot cheaper
than drilling holes

and putting toggle switches and meters
and blinky lights.

[McFadden] This simple innovation
was so well-regarded

that panels became known
as Okudagrams, after their creator.

[Okuda]
That term, Okudagrams, was invented

first season
of Star Trek: Next Generation

by our set decorator John Dwyer,

who had been a set decorator
on the original series.

So for him to come up with that name,

at first I was kind of embarrassed,
but then I realized I should be honored.

[McFadden] The bridge of this Enterprise
was so new,

even Kirk might have struggled
with the user interface.

We put five workstations
back behind the command chair,

instead of all around,
and those five could address

everything that needed to be
addressed on the ship.

So technologically, we see
everything that surrounded Kirk originally

is now consolidated
down into those five stations.

I think the Enterprise-D bridge
is as classic

as the original series bridge is.

[McFadden]
With redesigned workstations,

Andrew's bridge still retained
a touch of business class for the captain.

What have they done to my ship now?

[Probert] Picard's command chair,
originally I designed it

so that it had little screens
that would pop up out of the armrests,

so all he had to do was tap them
and then these things would pop up.

I remember Kirk walking around in
the original series with a cup of coffee.

Forward readings, Mr. Spock?

[McFadden]
So cup holders for the center seat?

So therefore I put two food replicators...

-[bell dings]
- ...on the bridge...

-[bell dings]
-...which they never used.

[McFadden] Oh, and just some housekeeping
before we move on.

[Probert]
There is a bathroom on the bridge.

If you look at the bridge
from the viewscreen,

-the head is over on this side...
-[bell dings]

...opposite the door that goes
back into the conference lounge.

[toilet flushes]

[McFadden] Yup, Picard's Enterprise
seemed to have it all.

And just in case we forgot
how starships used to roll,

The Next Generation also
introduced us to yet another Enterprise.

The Enterprise-C that we see
in "Yesterday's Enterprise,"

it has been pulled from a different time,

but it is not a different
stylistic Starfleet ship.

Andy Probert had done
some early sketches

of what the C could look like.

We added new graphics
to the overhead panels.

The Enterprise-C
was certainly a new step

in starship evolution.

The Enterprise-C really has a way
of bridging the gap

design-wise between the Enterprise-B,
which we see in Star Trek: Generations,

and then of course with the Enterprise-D.

[McFadden]
Which was Picard's ship.

And if all these designations
are forcing you to relearn your ABCs,

relax, you're in good company.

[Scott]
One-seven-O-one.

No bloody A, B, C, or D.

[McFadden]
A, B, C, or D,

the Enterprise
has remained unmistakable.

[Altman] Star Trek
had a very good batting average

of making the ships feel germane

to the universe
and the design consistency.

[McFadden] It may surprise you to learn
that not all starships make it to space.

Please sit down.

[McFadden] Some just take up space
in the background...

-[bell dings]
- ...like this one,

the Stargazer, whose travels we only see
through the memories of Captain Picard.

In the ready room, we built a model
of Captain Picard's previous command.

[McFadden]
But even a fragment of the past

needs to embody
the Star Trek design tradition.

[Probert] So we put together a model
of what we thought this

deep space science vessel might look like.

It's the Stargazer.

[McFadden] In a world before CGI,

these starships were still handcrafted.

[Altman]
Literally, people taking model kits

and throwing them together
and creating new ships.

I would give almost anything
to command the Stargazer again.

[McFadden] Which gave designers
like Rick a chance to experiment.

There were only
two plastic kits out there.

One was the original series Enterprise,
which was deemed too old in design.

So I took two copies
of the refit kit, four nacelles,

you know, added some auto parts to it,
and our set decorator put it on the set.

[McFadden] Just as the Stargazer model
sits inside the Enterprise,

all Starfleet starships
stand in the shadow of the Enterprise,

the mother of all motherships.

As Star Trek and the Enterprise
continued to evolve,

so too did the storylines.

During one of Starfleet's
war-torn chapters,

Federation ships came under
unprecedented attack by the Borg.

Resistance is futile.

[McFadden]
Fortunately, one Star Trek writer,

initially for the series Deep Space Nine,

came up with something new
to bolster Starfleet's defenses.

We can and will defend ourselves.

The Defiant.

Tough little ship.

[McFadden] It could put the Borg
and anyone else in their place.

[Ronald D. Moore]
I decided that it was a prototype warship

that the Federation abandoned
'cause they don't really build warships.

You know, it's not really what they're
about, but they had built this one.

It's overgunned and overpowered
for a ship its size.

[Moore] And it was in danger
of pulling itself apart.

And I got to name it.

So I named it after the starship
from "The Tholian Web."

The Defiant.

She may have flaws,
but she has teeth.

To have a ship that was a Borg-buster
was exciting.

[McFadden]
Living up to its name,

the Defiant defied
Starfleet design conventions.

It didn't have the traditional
configuration of a Federation starship.

[McFadden] Maybe because this starship
was based on a Marquis fighter,

originally designed for DS9
by Jim Martin.

You couldn't find an airlock.
You couldn't find a phaser strip.

You couldn't find anything recognizable.

It was up to us
to turn it into a Federation starship.

[McFadden]
Doug and his colleagues

gave the Defiant
the unmistakable stamp of the Federation.

[Drexler] We would do that by putting
the name on it in a distinctive way,

that circular manner
that it is on the saucer,

to have the red stripes
with the Starfleet arrowheads on it.

[McFadden] But the new shape
had some defensive design elements

not normally seen
on Federation vessels.

The fact that the nacelles
are not mounted on pylons,

you wanna shield those things
so they aren't within enclosures.

A more militaristic vessel
than the Enterprise in the original series

or Next Gen or Voyager.

[McFadden]
The military-industrial complex

had finally caught up
with Starfleet hardware.

Likewise, Starfleet hardware
had to catch up

with Star Trek 's
increasingly war-torn storylines.

We have engaged the Borg.

[McFadden]
For the Battle of Wolf 359,

it was all hands on deck
to build enough starship models

for one of the franchise's
biggest conflicts.

And you start to get to these episodes
with these massive space battles.

The fight does not go well, Enterprise.

We're attempting
to withdraw and regroup.

[McFadden]
In an age before CGI,

each starship required a physical model
to be built and filmed.

[Altman] They're still shooting
miniatures, so they are literally going,

"Let's find every spaceship
we've ever built

that we can throw into this shot."

Fire.

[screaming]

[McFadden] By the time of Voyager ,
calm had been restored.

And after all that chaos, it was
a case of "I want my mothership."

It's the Voyager.

[McFadden] Believe it or not,

this imperious Intrepid-class vessel

began life like so many good ideas:

as a doodle.

[Sternbach] I started just doodling
and doodling and doodling,

and I eventually started
evolving the shape

of what we were calling the prototype.

[Bormanis] We had to come up
with a distinct look for Voyager,

and Rick Sternbach
was probably most responsible

for changing the configuration of Voyager
from what we were familiar with.

He really came up
with the distinctive look.

Voyager really could be thought of
as the Galaxy class' younger sibling.

[McFadden]
Star Trek is often its own inspiration.

What I did on the runabout,

I was actually borrowing bits and pieces
with the pylons and the nacelles.

[McFadden] But Voyager borrowed a little
from something a long way from deep space.

In fact, from deep water.

I made the nacelles nice and long,

almost like it was one of those ice boats
that you see on a lake.

Sleek, fast.

[McFadden] But Voyager's final shape
would have something to do

with a design built not for speed
but for comfort.

Jeri Taylor pulls me aside and says,
"Can you make it a little curvier?

Kind of like a Lexus."

[horn honks]

[Bormanis] Jeri Taylor wanted
to work some of that sensibility

into the design of the Voyager

in order to make it look
a little more contemporary

and a little bit ahead of its time.

Welcome aboard.

[McFadden]
But producers wanted Voyager

to do something
no starship or Lexus had ever done before.

One of the initial notes was that
something on the ship had to articulate.

[McFadden]
And this was not about warping the design.

It was about warp speed.

[Paris] If we don't get more power
to the warp drive,

we're all gonna have to get out and push.

[Bormanis] Each nacelle generates
a warp field that bends space and time

and creates this warp bubble.

You know, the idea
behind the pivoting nacelles

was that the strength of the field
is what determines how fast you go.

And maybe there are some ways of
changing the distance between the nacelles

that will make it easier
to achieve a higher speed.

You're cleared for launch.

Aye, Captain. See you at warp ten.

[McFadden]
Unlike this transwarp-enabled shuttle,

Voyager couldn't quite reach warp ten.

But it was the fastest starship
in the fleet.

Besides, in space
you can go too fast.

Traveling at infinite velocity
accelerated

the natural human evolutionary process
by millions of years.

[McFadden] That's right,
there was something very fishy

about Tom Paris
dabbling with transwarp drives.

[Chakotay]
There are traces of human DNA.

But I have to admit,
I'm not sure which one is the Captain.

[McFadden]
Not only could it go faster,

Voyager could also do something

no previous Starfleet vessel
ever really needed to.

We could land the ship.

Are you sure that's necessary?

[McFadden]
For the longest time, it wasn't.

Thanks to this contraption.

Energize.

[McFadden]
Originally conceived to save money

by enabling quick transitions.

The ship won't land,
but we'll transport several people down.

Well, that's a little difficult
for you to understand.

[McFadden] The beloved transporter
was finally made redundant on Voyager.

[Sternbach] Landing on
a planetary surface with Voyager

was something that came in
with some of the writers' notes.

[Bormanis] They didn't necessarily intend
for it to land on a regular basis,

but they wanted to give the captain
that option if it were necessary.

It was something that was rarely done

and something that was only done
in kind of extreme situations.

Prepare the ship for landing.

Captain, I think I should tell you,

I've never actually landed
a starship before.

That's all right, Lieutenant.
Neither have I.

Now, we weren't gonna see it for a while,
but I had to make sure

that the landing gear hatches were
at least, you know, in the proper place.

We're down.

Not bad for a beginner.

[McFadden] As Star Trek has evolved
with each new chapter,

its writers have set out
to break the rules.

[computer]
USS Prometheus.

Experimental prototype designed
for deep space tactical assignments.

[McFadden]
And in the case of the USS Prometheus,

to break the mold.

[Sternbach] The USS Prometheus
as a super-advanced Starfleet ship,

very secret,
stolen by the Romulans. [chuckles]

Engage the multivector assault mode.

[Sternbach]
Some of the writer notes

talked about the ship
breaking into five parts.

[computer]
Autoseparation in ten seconds.

"Oh, you mean
like Transformers?" [laughs]

Transform and combine!

And they knocked it back to three parts.

[McFadden] Because breaking the mold
doesn't mean you can ignore all the rules.

A ship in three parts
still has to conceivably hold together.

[Sternbach] Quite a fun task
to try to match up the hull sections

with, you know, turbolift connectors
and utilities connectors

and, you know, matter-antimatter conduits
and all that kind of thing.

But it worked.

[McFadden]
Starfleet ships may have

their longstanding features
to accommodate,

but there's a whole other category
of starships.

The alien ship is not pursuing.

[McFadden]
For these ships,

Star Trek designers
threw out the rulebook

because these ships belong to the ones
who don't play by the rules.

Hailing frequency's open, sir.

[McFadden] If Star Trek
would have us believe anything,

it's that we are not
the only ones out there.

[Tim Russ] If you are established
in the Star Trek world,

you have spacefaring civilizations.

They've traveled
from one star system to another.

Resistance is futile.

[McFadden] And those many alien species
we've met over the decades

have their own take
on what makes a good starship.

That fine vessel was Ferengi!

Every culture
that has come up with a spaceship

has a slightly different look.

[McFadden] And as impressive and advanced
as these designs may appear...

[Sternbach]
Klingon looks different.

Romulan looks different.
Cardassian looks different.

[McFadden]
At the end of the day,

their starships were designed
by plain old humans.

How boring.

[McFadden] Well, not boring humans,
brilliantly inventive ones.

Doing alien versions of things
required me to kind of think differently.

We don't want everything
to look like Starfleet.

Cardassian warships.
Galor class, type three.

Cardassians are a bit more brutal.

Cardassians are like
timber wolves, predators.

[Sternbach] If you look at
the Cardassian Galor-class cruiser,

it's different.

They don't have the same nacelles
that Starfleet does.

[McFadden] To find an aesthetic that
was both extraterrestrial and familiar,

Star Trek 's designers turned to nature.

Some of these
are inspired by animal shapes.

[Probert]
They needed a Ferengi ship.

It's like,
"Well, what's this gonna look like?"

Well, they described it a little bit.

And then the writer,
Herb Wright, said,

"Well, maybe it should look like
a horseshoe crab,

a big dome with these little legs
and stuff underneath."

So I started with that and then I gave it
an extension with a forward pointy area,

which reminded me
of earwigs or pincher bugs, you know,

which I thought were creepy.

[McFadden]
Some aliens took their inspiration

from higher up the food chain.

A Bird-of-Prey.

Klingon Bird-of-Prey became
one of the most significant ships

in the history of the franchise.

[Dax] This isn't a Federation starship.
This is a Klingon Bird-of-Prey.

We could have had an easy victory.

The Bird-of-Prey had to look like
it was a different society,

a different everything.

And it had to look alien
but not terribly alien

'cause it has to feel like it belongs
in that world that we're creating.

Klingon Bird-of-Prey, sir!
She's arming torpedoes!

Fire, Mr. Scott!

[McFadden]
The Klingons were not the only ones

that imagined themselves
as ruthless galactic hunters.

What will a Romulan ship look like?

They're painted
like a giant bird of prey.

[Probert] On the TV show,
the Romulan's actually had

a bird of prey
painted on the bottom of their ship,

so I thought, "Well, I'll just carry that
into The Next Generation. "

Romulan warbird
deep cloaking directly ahead.

[McFadden] When Star Trek
returned to television in 1987,

it brought starships
that we hadn't seen fly

since the original series,

and times had changed.

I thought the warbird
should actually be a vertical design,

so keeping the two warp engines
visible through these supports

that actually went around
and supported them all with a bird's head.

And I thought,
"If you had an enemy that was vertical,

there would be a visual conflict
in addition to the way it looked."

And Rick Berman, the producer, said,
"No, we'll keep it horizontal,

but make the head look more like a bird,
so it's more like a seagull, or, you know,

kind of a parrot-beak kind of face."

With a Romulan ship,
it's more of an art deco look.

[Probert]
But it is much bigger.

It's like 4,000 feet long

instead of the 2,000 feet
that the Enterprise is,

so it's a much larger ship.

[McFadden]
Big-screen Star Trek

delivered starships
on a scale we've never seen before.

Designs first imagined for
the original series by Matt Jefferies

were scaled up to take advantage
of the big-screen real estate.

Shall we raise our shields, Captain?

Never been this close.

[McFadden] And this bigger footprint
was made believable

by the smallest of details.

The fiber-optic lighting
that was in the Klingon warship,

all the little points of light
all over the surface of the hall

and then the areas
that were supposed to be the bridge

were single-source illuminating rods.

It made the scale of the ship
look very large.

[McFadden]
Inside the battlecruiser,

Andrew Probert imagined how
Klingons might design their defenses.

I'd been asked to create
concept designs

for the Klingon bridge
under Doug Trumbull,

and Trumbull wanted the Klingon bridge
to be all kind of dark and greasy

and smoky and have this suspension system
so like if the ship is hit really hard,

then the suspension
kind of shock-absorbs hard hits.

So that's why you have these
big piston-looking things on that bridge.

[McFadden]
Which may have been a Klingon idea,

but due to budget constraints,
it was borrowed to form

the torpedo bay of the Enterprise
in The Wrath of Khan.

[bell dings]

Fortunately, the Klingons
seemed to be cool with it.

-[choking]
-Give me Genesis!

[McFadden] Whatever the starship,
alien or Federation,

Star Trek has always endeavored
to make the fantastic feel plausible.

It had to feel like it could work.
There had to be a sense of reality to it.

[McFadden] Evolving bad guys' starships
over the years is one thing,

but in the early 2000s,
designers had a most unusual challenge.

The ship is not only from
another universe, it's from another time.

About a hundred years into the future.

[McFadden]
For Enterprise , the prequel series,

the task of making
a new starship believable

was made even more difficult
by the fact

that this Enterprise
predated Kirk's original.

[Bormanis] How do you make a show
look both 150 years in our future,

but 80 or 90 years
before the original series?

[McFadden] This was the challenge
faced by the designers of the NX-01.

This is Captain Jonathan Archer
of the starship Enterprise.

We've come from Earth.

It became my and Herman's job
to make it

as much like the original series
Enterprise as we could.

[McFadden] This new-old Enterprise
would be similar to its predecessor,

but very different in one key way.

It never actually materialized.

[Bormanis] We never even built
a model for Enterprise.

That was purely digital,
never built a physical model of that ship.

If we had to put the NX in a museum,
the Enterprise from start,

it would be a CD-ROM on a stand
with a spotlight on it. [laughs]

[McFadden] Of course,
starships aren't designed for museums.

This vessel, I give, she takes.

[McFadden] Like Kirk's Enterprise,
NX-01 had a military pedigree.

Targeting scanner still can't get a lock.

I'm gonna have to do this
the old-fashioned way.

-[man] Dive, dive.
-[klaxon sounds]

So Rick and Brannon
and Herman Zimmerman

toured a nuclear submarine
prior to starting to design NX-01.

Captain, can I have a word with you?

[McFadden] Taking design cues from
the Ohio-class submarine USS Florida

was a nod to Gene's original vision
of the Enterprise,

which also drew on naval themes.

[klaxon sounds]

[Bormanis] We wanted to make this ship
look less comfortable

because that tells you
it's more primitive, right?

Touches like in Archer's ready room,
he has to duck under a beam.

We have the evidence to back it up.

They haven't quite got that
spacious Captain Picard Enterprise yet.

This was right around the time that
flat-screen TVs were becoming popular.

And they said, "We'll put flat-screen TVs,
you know, throughout the bridge."

-Move into a stationary orbit.
-Aye, sir.

[Bormanis]
"And let's take graphics

that are sort of inspired
by the original series..."

Ah, yes.

"...and project those on those screens,

and that suggests
both the past and the future."

[Herman Zimmerman]
I bet we had

$4 million worth of TV equipment
all over the bridge,

and any other place that we needed 'em.

It was a culmination in my mind
of all the kinds of things

that I'd done and been exposed to
in this Star Trek universe.

[McFadden]
Drawing from real-world war machines

has always given Star Trek 's writers
a jumping-off point

for flights of fancy
about fancy flight

and how it might one day happen.

[Sternbach]
The scientific and technical help

that they got from the aerospace field

gave them
an actual propulsion system

where you started to hear about things
like matter and antimatter.

Matter and antimatter have a tendency
to cancel each other out violently.

[McFadden]
Ever since the original Enterprise,

Starfleet ships of all kinds have always
been powered by one very powerful idea.

Starfleet's specialty is antimatter power.

[Sternbach] Starfleet propulsion systems
involve matter and antimatter

reacting inside this big armored chamber,

and the energy is then fed out
to the nacelles.

[McFadden] And while it's certainly
served the Federation well,

science tells us there's a speed limit.

You cannot change the laws of physics,
I told him.

So according to
the special theory of relativity,

you cannot travel faster
than the speed of light in the universe.

The closer you get to that speed,
the more your mass increases,

and it would take
an infinite amount of energy

to accelerate to that point.

So you can't do it because
there's not enough energy in the universe.

[McFadden]
But that's kind of an inconvenient truth

when you need to boldly go somewhere.

So Star Trek needed to find a way,

and it did, with just two simple words.

Warp drive standing by.

Warp drive,
that was just made up, of course.

We don't know what warp drive is.

It may happened,
but we don't know what it was.

Humans have discovered
how to travel faster than light.

It just made it faster than light,

which was what we needed to do
to go through our galaxy, which is vast.

Then we used to sort of cheat Einstein.

[McFadden]
Fortunately for Starfleet,

it only required one little word
to achieve that.

[all] Engage.

[McFadden] And while this may look
like a stretch to nonbelievers,

there is actual scientific theory
about just that:

a stretch.

Space itself
can expand or contract

much faster than the speed of light,

and there is a way to expand space
behind you at, say,

a hundred times the speed of light,

contract in front of you
at a hundred times the speed of light.

[McFadden]
So maybe, just maybe,

Star Trek has been
ahead of its time all along.

Within your little bubble of space-time,
you may not be moving at all.

But the space around you is moving,
so, in effect,

you've traveled from point A to point B
at a hundred times the speed of light.

[McFadden]
Well, whatever the science,

when it comes to the starships
of Star Trek , there's one simple fact.

Wow, this is a starship.

Oh, it's really a darn beautiful ship,
isn't it?

Most people had never seen one.

[McFadden]
Now millions of us have seen starships,

and they have become part
of the furniture, quite literally.

[Altman] The Enterprises were displayed
in the Smithsonian Institute,

you know, the Air and Space museum.

The Enterprise is quite a ship.

[McFadden] It sure is,
and it's a name that has long inspired

through acts of bravery and exploration,

protection and raw firepower.

But it's the USS Enterprise NCC-1701
that's inspired humanity,

including actual human starship makers.

[Maria Jose Tenuto]
On September 17th, 1976,

they had the rollout
of the Space Shuttle Enterprise,

and in attendance
was Gene Roddenberry

and most of the cast
of the original series.

[McFadden] Be it the original
or any USS Enterprise,

in the words
of the great Captain Jean-Luc Picard,

let history never forget the name...

Enterprise.

[theme music playing]

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