Tuesday, November 11, 2008

The Enterprise Revealed

From EW, the first look at the design of the Enterprise for Abrams' Star Trek reboot. The ship has a much slicker look while still clearly of the classic legendary design.

JJ Abrams wasn't a huge fan of the original Star Trek TV series as a kid, but he does have one unabashed gee-whiz Star Trek memory: watching the first feature film (1979's Star Trek: The Motion Picture) and marveling over the big reveal of the Enterprise during a long sequence in which James T. Kirk takes a slow-boat tour around the iconic starship. "The coolest thing about it—maybe the coolest thing in the movie—was when you flew around the ship, you could see all the different panels that made up the ship," says the director of the forthcoming Trek reboot, slated for a May 8, 2009 release. "It was the first time I had ever seen that level of attention, that love of detail, given to the tangible, practical reality of the ship."

Here, in this exclusive first look at Abrams' take on the Enterprise, you not only see his vision of the ship, but his attempt to evoke that sequence from the first film that so captured his imagination. If you're thinking, "Wow! It looks the way the Enterprise has always looked"—well look at the big Spock brain on you! Abrams wanted to take the original TV series Enterprise and the movie franchise Enterprise and fuse them together into a new yet familiar Enterprise. His ambition was a ship that felt very realistic, that could "stand up" to today's f/x standards—and beyond. "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?"

2 comments:

  1. The overall design is amazing, however the one thing that "sticks out" (full pun intended) is the way the saucer section and neck sit back on the secondary hull. It causes the deflector dish to stick out. All other incarnations of the Enterprise had the saucer/neck assembly to be more flush with the deflector dish and secondary hull. Otherwise, it's a beautiful ship. I love the update to the warp nacelles.

    ReplyDelete