The arrival of Captain Pike’s USS Enterprise in “Will You Take My Hand?,” the finale of Star Trek: Discovery’s first season, heralded the largest stylistic collision between the 1960’s-era Star Trek production design and the styling used in the new series, as the Constitution-class ship featured many changes to the Matt Jefferies’-designed vessel.
Fan reaction to the ‘revised’ Enterprise was broadly mixed — ranging from elated surprise to strong disapproval — as the new look of the starship began to be scrutinized and compared to the original Star Trek model from “The Cage,” the refit Enterprise seen in Star Trek: The Motion Picture, and even to the Enterprise NX-01 from Jonathan Archer’s era.
As you may have seen reported over the weekend, a now-deleted Facebook post from Discovery concept artist John Eaves made mention of some of the design choices made during the time working on the new Enterprise model, and subsequent artwork created for the 2019 Star Trek: Ships of the Line Calendar which features the new version of the ship.
Some of that online conversation included comments indicating that the changes to the ship were “legal” mandates due to some sort of unspecified copyright issue pertaining to the classic Matt Jefferies design used in the Original Series, which quickly began to spread in the fan community as the topic began to circulate on social media and discussion groups around the web.
To get some clarity on the situation, we reached out to CBS and received this feedback from a Star Trek: Discovery representative today, stating that the Facebook discussion was incorrect:
CBS TV Studios does, in fact, have the right to use the U.S.S. Enterprise ship design from the past TV series, and are not legally required to make changes. The changes in the ship design [for ‘Discovery’] were creative ones, made to utilize 2018’s VFX technology.
The art that was used in the 2019 calendar is ‘concept art,’ which was completed long before the VFX process is completed.
As noted in the CBS statement, and by Eaves himself in the now-deleted post, there are some notable differences between the on-screen Enterprise and the version seen in the 2019 Ships of the Line Calendar, which Eaves explained in additional detail:
John Eaves: The changes between the two Enterprises are as follows: the [on-screen] ship has more [“Motion Picture”-era] struts than TOS struts, the main hull and nacelles are shorter and more plump, the deflector dish now has one antenna vs two [in the calendar image], the impulse module is thinner from side to side, the overall ship has a heavier plating detail, and the exterior has a more broader range in lighting and nacelle glow.
We expect to see much more of the revised Constitution-class Enterprise in Season 2 of Star Trek: Discovery, which spun back up for active production today.
Keep checking back to TrekCore for all the latest in Discovery news!
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