STAR TREK BEYOND Concept Art Reveals a New Starship

As you may recall, Omaze ran a wonderful multi-week fundraiser campaign bringing Star Trek fans a chance to take a trip to the Vancouver STAR TREK BEYOND soundstages, all while helping to earn money for several great charities around the world.

Aside from those few winners who made it up to British Columbia before production flew off to Dubai, there were plenty of other contributors who earned To Boldly Go pins, photos, special video messages, props from the film, and even concept art from preproduction.

Now, a few if of those fans who donated to the charity drive has unexpectedly received their STAR TREK BEYOND concept artwork, months ahead of the film’s July release — and it’s something hinted at in the BEYOND trailer released last December.

Fan and Omaze contributor DB Wilson received this framed 20″ x 36″ poster this week seemingly out of the blue, as the Omaze donation page (now closed) had advertised its shipment after the summer release of STAR TREK BEYOND.

This poster features the USS Franklin, a Federation ship that appears to be the setting of the opening shots of the BEYOND trailer, where the Enterprise crew reunite after their dispersal across the planet where their own starship has crashed.

An odd design not featured before in the Star Trek canon, this starship certainly falls within the design aesthetic thus far established in the two previous films – those blue-bussard-collector nacelle caps and exposed main viewscreen portal line up with Chris Pine’s Enterprise, but the Starfleet markings have a decidedly prime-universe look to them.

So is the USS Franklin an unexpected name to see in the BEYOND storyline? Well, not quite — December’s trailer already told us this ship exists.

Looking closely, one can see that the patch on Spock’s jacket reads USS Franklin.

Also, a brief shot of Simon Pegg’s Scotty passing by a systems monitor also seems to highlight the outline of a ship that looks very much like this poster image, in profile:

So what role does the Franklin really play in the upcoming film? Well, we don’t know specifically yet, but we can make an educated guess.

We know that the Enterprise destruction sequence happens in the early minutes of the movie, after the starship has left Starbase Yorktown. The crew is obviously scattered across the planet — the trailer features Chekov alone outside an escape pod, Scotty narrowly avoiding falling off a cliff, etc. — but the shots of the seemingly old-fashioned spaceship interior have the crew back together.

We’re assuming that is the Franklin, on the surface of the planet — and this old ship must be their ticket back into space.

Back in August we saw some of the cast on the hull of some kind of vessel — one that had faint English writing printed on that hatch cover — so that too is likely the Franklin.

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Here’s a closer look at the STAR TREK BEYOND logo used on the poster — not expected to be used in the upcoming marketing campaign — sporting the same design last seen at September’s press conference in Dubai.

The logo is seen here behind producer Jeffery Chernov at the Dubai press briefing.