Star Trek: Designing Starships Volume 3: The Kelvin Timeline - Hardcover

Robinson, Ben

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 1858755387 ISBN 13: 9781858755380

Publisher: Hero Collector, 2019

Synopsis

The third volume in this acclaimed series focuses on the J.J. Abram's Star Trek films - featuring nearly 20 ships, including the new Enterprise!

Explore the process behind the creation of the ships features in the Star Trek, Star Trek: Into Darkness and Star Trek: Beyond films. This is the story of how some of the most talented designers in Hollywood created STAR TREK's starships from the first sketches to the finished models that appeared on screen.

This book covers nearly 20 new ships from the modern STAR TREK movies, from the new Enterprise to a fleet of Federation ships that was barely seen. Along the way it covers the thinking behind Klingon and Romulan ships and the heavily-armed U.S.S. Vengeance.

This third volume in the Designing the Starships series collects the profiles and design history from the rebooted Star Trek "Kelvin Timeline" film universe. The "Kelvin Timeline" is an alternate reality timeline in which the current Star Trek film universe operates. It is named after the ship captained by Captain Kirks father in the first of J.J. Abrams' Star Trek films, the U.S.S. Kelvin.

Ships included: U.S.S. Enterprise, U.S.S. Enterprise-A, Narada, U.S.S. Kelvin, Spock's Jellyfish, U.S.S. Yorktown Space Station, and many more. Includes 6 ships that were designed for the final sequence of Star Trek: Beyond which were not used and have never been seen before.

About this title

About the Author

Ben Robinson is best known as the man behind Eaglemoss's Official Star Trek Starships collection, which in the last three years has become the largest and best-regarded collections of model Star Trek ships ever produced.

He has been involved with Star Trek for 20 years. Ben was the launch editor of the huge Star Trek Fact Files reference work, which sold over 50 million units. Then he went on to edit the US Star Trek: The Magazine, which ran between 1999 and 2003. He has co-written two Haynes Manuals, the first featuring all seven Enterprises, and the second focusing on the Klingon Bird-of-Prey. Ben is particularly passionate about the writing, design, and visual effects behind the series. In the last two decades he has conducted extensive interviews with many of the most significant figures in the history of Star Trek from Dorothy Fontana and Matt Jefferies to Michael Piller, Ira Steven Behr, Ron D. Moore, and Bryan Fuller.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

DESIGNING THE ENTERPRISE

When STAR TREK returned in 2009, everything was updated including the famous starship, which was cooler than ever.

For many people the Enterprise is STAR TREK, so getting the design of the new version right was every bit as important as casting a new Captain Kirk or a new Mr. Spock. In many ways, redesigning it for the 21st century summed up the challenge the whole movie presented to director JJ Abrams – somehow he had to make it instantly recognizable, but at the same time it had to be modern and sexy. In essence this was the brief that he gave his production designer Scott Chambliss: design a new Enterprise that would be both similar and noticeably different to Matt Jefferies’ original. 

As Chambliss explains, Abrams stressed that while he wanted to make a tribute to Roddenberry’s original series, he wanted to do so without following slavishly in its footsteps. “At the same time, he wanted to embrace the inherent optimism of Roddenberry’s point of view. That was a great relief to me as I was concerned that JJ might take a more contemporary, cynical approach. It dovetailed nicely with my intention, which was to explore the strongest and most lasting futuristic thought and design from the era of the original series.”

With that idea in mind Chambliss and Abrams gravitated towards 1960s futurism as exemplified by the Finnish-American architect Eero Saarinen, who designed the TWA terminal at JFK airport. They decided that this 1960s vision for the future was exactly the look and feel they wanted to bring to their new STAR TREK universe, believing that this approach to the design would give the film a particular visual signature that would make it stand out against other movies. They also had the chance to revisit some of the ideas that had been behind the design of the original series, only this time with a much bigger budget. “Our task was to reinterpret what was essentially an original, lowish budget television- show design that was much too undeveloped to stand up to big screen requirements. Even before beginning the design process we knew that we had the opportunity to enhance the purpose, the functionality and the very industrial design of the ship inside out and from top to bottom.” But, Chambliss adds, they didn’t want to redesign things just to make them look cool and modern. “I felt it was important that – just as in the series – everything that could be seen on the ship needed to be readily accessible to an audience. Whether we understood the technology or not, visually the audience had to be able to grasp what the crew were doing and how it all added up to running a big space ship.”

Chambliss also developed an important principle that would inform the look of everything his team created. The movie featured three major cultures – Starfleet, Vulcans, and Romulans – each of which Chambliss reasoned would have their own approach to design.

Edition details

• Publisher: Hero Collector
• Publication date: 2019
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1858755387
• ISBN 13: 9781858755380
• Binding: Hardcover
• Number of pages: 184