For a long time I have been under the impression that the TMP refit Enterprise was desgined by Richard Taylor with refinements by Andrew Probert. As I transition from drafting the TOS Enterprise and begin heading toward the TMP refit, I decided to first visit the Phase II design. I had previously made a layered drawing with the TOS design, Franz Joseph's design, and the refit design. The changes are interesting. Today I inserted the two Phase II drawings (there is the early drawing and one updated to reflect changes as the physical model was built. It just blew my mind away. All Richard Taylor did was to change the pylons, nacelles, and hanger. The lines are virtually identical. That means that our dear Matt Jefferies is really responsible for the design of the refit. He expanded the saucer, he enclosed the deflector dish, he extended the neck and drew the lines. Richard Taylor redid the pylon and nacelles and changed the hanger and the Andrew Probert redid the Bridge and B/C deck, lower sensor dome, and the details around the Deflector. Plus the design went from smooth gray finish to paneled pearl white.
So while that particular part kind of surprised me and rewrites the design credit for the refit, we have to go back further than that to fill in all the pieces to the design history. Some things go back to the TOS production and the earliest drawings of the Enterprise. What we think of as the classic TOS Enterprise lines (and I reject the newer Star Trek's attempts to refresh the design and am ignoring them) were the combined effort of Jefferies and Richard Datin. Datin simplified the shapes (in some ways) when he created the 3 foot model and further refined them for the 11 foot model. Jefferies drawings of the ship that appeared in a couple of episodes and The Making of Star Trek showed a slightly different design.
The very straight lines of the series (and even the AMT kit) have an additional curve added. This drawing has a more pronounced curve than Jefferies original drawings, but he always had the secondary hull a bit curvier than how it was built. Franz Joseph gets into the picture in 1974 with his Booklet of General Plans and in 1975 with his Technical Manual and he used that curve, adding some bulk and shape to the secondary hull. Jefferies drawings are also the source of the B/C or decks 2/3 bulge having a more rounded shape in back than the tear drop as Datin built it.
So we arrive at Phase II. Matt Jefferies was working on Little House on the Prairie and found time to design a new Enterprise. There were a few steps in the middle involving Mike Minor (who maybe should get the credit for going from a dish sticking out to an enclosed dish and changing the engines), but the major design changes came from Jefferies. This time his drawings were large and detailed and he went so far as to create the deck layout and included a figure for scale. His initial drawing went to the model builders, Don Loos and Brick Price. Between them we got this:
The ship is roughly the same length as the TOS Enterprise, but the saucer and secondary hull, even the neck, are larger while the nacelles are shorter. All the major design elements of the TMP refit are in place.
Then Phase II morphed from a series into a movie. Better sets and models were needed. The work did not entirely go to waste. The Phase II model would get one brief moment onscreen as a stand in for the refit when the Enterprise blew up and burned in Star Trek III.
It fell to Richard Taylor to carry the design forward. I have always assumed that he started from scratch. It turns out that like the Klingon ship, which has a similar design history, Taylor took the existing design and went forward. He took on redesigning the warp nacelles and came up with this:
The differences melt away when you put the images together.
Virtually the entire surface has been altered, but the basic shape that lies under them has remained the same. We've gone from rectangular windows to round, a new impusle engine, new photon torpedos (for Phase II that was the phaser), adopting the Franz Joseph phase banks, the new round airlocks, boxing in the bridge turbolifts, and redrawing the deflector grid. When the production shuffled around and Andrew Probert came onboard, we got the final changes that mask the features further, but not the shapes of the hull.
Anyway, I'm starting this thread because I intend to redraw each of the Phase II, Taylor, and final refit versions. I'm going to start with the basic shape that each share and then split the file to finish each separately when they details start to branch apart.
So while that particular part kind of surprised me and rewrites the design credit for the refit, we have to go back further than that to fill in all the pieces to the design history. Some things go back to the TOS production and the earliest drawings of the Enterprise. What we think of as the classic TOS Enterprise lines (and I reject the newer Star Trek's attempts to refresh the design and am ignoring them) were the combined effort of Jefferies and Richard Datin. Datin simplified the shapes (in some ways) when he created the 3 foot model and further refined them for the 11 foot model. Jefferies drawings of the ship that appeared in a couple of episodes and The Making of Star Trek showed a slightly different design.
The very straight lines of the series (and even the AMT kit) have an additional curve added. This drawing has a more pronounced curve than Jefferies original drawings, but he always had the secondary hull a bit curvier than how it was built. Franz Joseph gets into the picture in 1974 with his Booklet of General Plans and in 1975 with his Technical Manual and he used that curve, adding some bulk and shape to the secondary hull. Jefferies drawings are also the source of the B/C or decks 2/3 bulge having a more rounded shape in back than the tear drop as Datin built it.
So we arrive at Phase II. Matt Jefferies was working on Little House on the Prairie and found time to design a new Enterprise. There were a few steps in the middle involving Mike Minor (who maybe should get the credit for going from a dish sticking out to an enclosed dish and changing the engines), but the major design changes came from Jefferies. This time his drawings were large and detailed and he went so far as to create the deck layout and included a figure for scale. His initial drawing went to the model builders, Don Loos and Brick Price. Between them we got this:
The ship is roughly the same length as the TOS Enterprise, but the saucer and secondary hull, even the neck, are larger while the nacelles are shorter. All the major design elements of the TMP refit are in place.
Then Phase II morphed from a series into a movie. Better sets and models were needed. The work did not entirely go to waste. The Phase II model would get one brief moment onscreen as a stand in for the refit when the Enterprise blew up and burned in Star Trek III.
It fell to Richard Taylor to carry the design forward. I have always assumed that he started from scratch. It turns out that like the Klingon ship, which has a similar design history, Taylor took the existing design and went forward. He took on redesigning the warp nacelles and came up with this:
The differences melt away when you put the images together.
Virtually the entire surface has been altered, but the basic shape that lies under them has remained the same. We've gone from rectangular windows to round, a new impusle engine, new photon torpedos (for Phase II that was the phaser), adopting the Franz Joseph phase banks, the new round airlocks, boxing in the bridge turbolifts, and redrawing the deflector grid. When the production shuffled around and Andrew Probert came onboard, we got the final changes that mask the features further, but not the shapes of the hull.
Anyway, I'm starting this thread because I intend to redraw each of the Phase II, Taylor, and final refit versions. I'm going to start with the basic shape that each share and then split the file to finish each separately when they details start to branch apart.
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