User:EEMIV/Starship Enterprise

The Enterprise or USS Enterprise (often referred to as the "Starship Enterprise") is the name of several spacecraft, some of which are the main setting for various television series and films in the Star Trek franchise.

Star Trek and first six films (1966–1991)
Matt Jeffries designed the USS Enterprise for the original Star Trek television series (1966–1969). His experience with aviation led to his Enterprise designs being imbued with what he called "aircraft logic". The ship's registry number—NCC-1701—reflects Jeffries' aviation background:

"Jefferies ... based NCC on 20th century aircraft registration codes. In such 20th century usage, an "N" first letter refers to an aircraft registered in the USA. A "C" second letter refers to a civil aircraft. Jefferies added a second "C", just because he thought it looked better."

The ship's circular saucer section, twin cigar-shaped warp nacelles, and detached engineering hull are design features that persisted for many years in creating not only future Enterprise vessels, but also other Starfleet ships. The model's constituent parts cost under $600.

During the development of Star Trek: Phase II, illustrator Ralph McQuarrie proposed a redesigned Enterprise that featured a triangular engineering hull and flatter design. When Paramount Pictures decided instead to make a Star Trek film, Phase II resources were diverted toward creating Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). The transition to the film screen necessitated redesigning the Enterprise; Mike Minor, Joe Jennings, Harold Michaelson, Andrew Probert, Douglas Trumbull, and Richard Tyler redesigned the vessel while retaining the television series ship's overall shape. Ten years had passed between the cancellation of Star Trek and the franchise's film debut, but the significant internal and external changes to the Enterprise were explained in the story as being the result of an 18-month refit.

Filming the Enterprise's destruction for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock (1984) seriously damaged the filming model, in part because visual effects supervisor Ken Ralston wanted to see a more impressive successor Enterprise built. However, budget considerations led to the decision to repair the model and use it to depict the next Enterprise at the end of Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (1986). "-A" was appended to the "NCC-1701" registry to distinguish the new vessel from its predecessor, and the practice of appending a new letter to indicate successor Enterprises continued throughout later television spin-offs and films. The same model was used in the next two films, Star Trek V: The Final Frontier (1989) and Star Trek VI: The Undiscovered Country (1991).

Star Trek: The Next Generation and related films (1987–2002)
Star Trek: The Next Generation (1986–1994) required the design of a new, larger Enterprise that would house not only explorers and scientists, but also their families. The vessel would have a less militaristic tone than its 1960s-era predecessor; set 100 years after Star Trek, its design would reflect a century's worth of starship design improvement. Andrew Probert, who helped design a new Enterprise for Star Trek: The Motion Picture, designed the new vessel. Probert was interested in the design lineage from James T. Kirk's Enterprise to its 24th-century successor; his design—with registry NCC-1701-D—retains the familiar core elements from Matt Jeffries' original Enterprise: a saucer section, engineering hull, and two warp nacelles. Industrial Light & Magic created two shooting models of the ship; Greg Jein created another model in the show's third season.

For the third-season episode "Yesterday's Enterprise", Rick Sternbach designed the immediate predecessor to The Next Generation's Enterprise. He based his design from a sketch Probert created of his speculation about what the ship would look like. Probert's sketch had a highly curved engineering hull, but Sternbach made it entirely circular to meet a tight production schedule. Jein's shooting model cost $10,000 to produce.

thumb|The Enterprise-B in [[Star Trek Generations (1996) is a modification of the USS Excelsior model created for Star Trek III (1984). The thickened forward end of the engineering hull was created to allow that part of the ship to be damaged without harming the main shooting model. ]]

The Next Generation transitioned to films in 1994 with Star Trek Generations, and its opening sequence depicts the USS Enterprise-B. The Next Generation's observation lounge set initially included a mural of starships named Enterprise, with one silhouette matching the Excelsior-class outline introduced in Star Trek III. Production designer Herman Zimmerman used the Excelsior model as the basis for the Enterprise-B, depicted as the immediate successor to Captain Kirk's Enterprise-A. Zimmerman added hull details that could be damaged without harming the underlying miniature. The spacedock from which the Enterprise-B is launched is itself a modification of the spacedock frame created for Star Trek: The Motion Picture (1979). In addition to the physical model, Industrial Light & Magic created a CGI version of the ship for scenes near a luminescent energy ribbon, allowing for more dynamic lighting effects. Producers created a CGI version of the Enterprise-D for when it goes to warp speed, but mostly the Enterprise-D is depicted by one of the 6 ft physical models used for the television show. A 12 ft model of the Enterprise-D's saucer section was made to depict its crash landing onto a planet.

Print and other media
In 2000, Simon & Schuster released Enterprise Logs, a collection of short fiction that occurs on various vessels named Enterprise, including starships of that name. In 2011, they published a Haynes Manual about the Star Trek ships named Enterprise.

Impact and critical response
Star Trek author Jill Sherwin suggests the aging Enterprise in Star Trek III served as a metaphor for the aging Star Trek franchise.

As the result of a successful letter-writing campaign, NASA named the initial flight-test Space Shuttle Enterprise. In 1994, the aircraft carrier Enterprise hosted a Star Trek convention, and Star Trek memorabilia can be found throughout the ship.