Thank you to Titan Books for sending a copy of the Star Trek: Designing Starships Vol. 1: The Enterprises and Beyond in exchange for an honest review.
“Another Enterprise“? More like nine of them. They’re all in Star Trek: Designing Starships Vol. 1: The Enterprises and Beyond by Ben Robinson and Marcus Riley. Furthermore, the Enterprises are followed by spotlights on more than 20 other Star Trek ships, with behind-the-scenes information about their real-world creation and development.
The first in a (hopefully ongoing) series, this volume opens on the hero ship of hero ships before covering a wide and varied swath of spacecraft. Trekkies won’t want to miss this fascinating nonfiction opening survey of the ships of Star Trek.
Star Trek: Designing Starships Vol. 1: The Enterprises and Beyond
What can you expect from The Enterprises and Beyond? Each of the 33 ships that appear in this book has multiple pages devoted to it. For most ships, this means four pages, but very few get two pages, and a couple of headliners get more. Of course, the latter category naturally includes the original USS Enterprise.
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The visuals featured on these pages include a cornucopia of concept designs, from the first sketches to the finalized ships. These are supplemented with images of the ship models (physical miniatures up to a certain point and then computer-generated past the CGI threshold). In some cases, there are screenshots, too.
Meanwhile, each page also includes a written element. These are filled with interesting and enlightening information about the design of the ships. They include copious quotes from interviews conducted with those who designed the ships.
What ships are included, exactly? This volume covers many, from Star Trek: The Motion Picture, Star Trek: The Wrath of Khan, Star Trek: The Search for Spock and Star Trek: First Contact. There are also ships from Star Trek: The Original Series, Star Trek: The Next Generation, Star Trek: Deep Space Nine, Star Trek: Voyager and Star Trek: Enterprise. There are also the Enterprises from the abandoned 1970s movie and TV show. Aside from the Enterprises, these ships are not presented in chronological order. But if you read the book cover to cover, this keeps things fresh as you hop around the Star Trek universe.
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We Want Your Ship Pieces
If you are a Trekkie, you know that Star Trek ships have their own internal design language. This is especially true of Starfleet ships. Once you can identify the nacelles and saucer section, you can learn more details and spot those on other ships. Deflector dishes, sensor arrays, bussard collectors: the more Star Trek you watch, the more you learn about these individual pieces. This allows you to better understand the whole Franchise in the process.
Much of this is owed to Matt Jeffries, who is quoted multiple times in the book. As the designer of the original Enterprise, Jeffries is the progenitor of the fundamentals for the aforementioned “ship language.” This book will give you an even greater respect for what went into this watershed design. In a fascinating twist, you’ll see how some of his rejected Enterprise designs formed the foundation for many ships that joined the Franchise for at least 50 years afterward.
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Of course, you get plenty of non-Starfleet ships, too. This may be especially true for Voyager‘s ships, which are often novel because it was our first time seeing the Delta Quadrant. However, Voyager was also fertile ground for Starfleet and Starfleet-adjacent ships.
In a spotlight on Voyager‘s “speedboat” shuttles, it is stated that the episode “Threshold” necessitated the design of new Starfleet shuttles. There’s also the interesting case of the USS Dauntless, an alien attempt to create a fake Starfleet ship. This is even more engaging now that we’ve seen the actual Starfleet-designed USS Dauntless in Star Trek: Prodigy Season 1.
To Add to Our Ship Pieces
In addition to information about the ships, you also get a window into this era of Star Trek production. With 26 episodes a season, designers had to work round the clock to keep the supply of fresh ships flowing. Sometimes, this means coming up with clever workarounds. In one instance, an unidentified ship that made a cameo in Voyager was repurposed as a Romulan probe on Enterprise.
There are also Easter eggs revealed that you would probably never catch, no matter how many times you rewatch the episode or movie. One example: Picard’s former ship, the USS Stargazer, debuted on-screen in TNG Season 1’s “The Battle.” You may remember this. But what you probably don’t remember (and never realized in the first place) is that concept artist Rick Sternbach attached a small Japanese “transforming robot” to the Stargazer. While the addition looks like a sensor array, it’s actually an anime homage.
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Another piece of fascinating intel came from the pages on the Akira class. This class made its debut in First Contact. While it was only seen briefly, it became a fan favorite. But in fact, it was so popular that it directly informed the design of the NX-01 Enterprise. When they say, “It’s been a long road, getting from there to here,” they really, really mean it.
One more (because resistance is futile): there’s also a secret about the Enterprise refit from TMP. As revealed by art director Richard Taylor, the windows of the refitted Enterprise needed detail for the camera. To this end, they inserted small transparent images of the sets. However, as an inside joke, some of the windows have nonsensical images for a Starfleet vessel. These include photos of both Mickey Mouse and conceptual artist Andy Probert.
So We Can Have All the Ship Pieces
What about the book itself? This is a large hardcover. Both the dust jacket and the cover beneath are mostly black. The dust jacket includes a few images of ships, while the book features only the text. However, I really appreciated this volume’s design because it visually complemented my Hero Collector technical manuals for the Enterprise-D, Defiant and Voyager.
The spine of The Enterprises and Beyond matches the appearance of the technical manuals. They are all the same color and have the titles in similar fonts and positioning. They all feature the Starfleet Delta and Hero Collector logos. Finally, they are the same height. This means this nonfiction book perfectly complements the in-universe ship material. They all look great beside the not-quite-matching-but-still-complementary spine of my copy of the Star Trek: Lower Decks: U.S.S. Cerritos Crew Handbook.
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If you are a fan of Star Trek ships like I am, you’ll want to use your Spock-o-scope to examine The Enterprises and Beyond again and again. You will appreciate the wide swathe of ships covered and the insight it provides into the Franchise as a whole. While you will be left wanting to learn more about the ships not included here, this volume does contain a satisfactory number of ships. It’s just not feasible to put every Star Trek ship into a single volume. Probably not even for Q.
Have you previously had a chance to check out The Enterprises and Beyond? What Star Trek ship is your favorite? Which one do you want to know more about? Be sure to let us know what you think in the comment section.
Star Trek: Designing Starships Vol. 1: The Enterprises and Beyond is available at a local bookstore and/or public library near you today.
