Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The USS Excelsior

Would you look at that.

The USS Excelsior was introduced in Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as the hot new starship in the fleet; "My friends, The Great Experiment."

While it was arguably an adversary to the quainter, OG movie Enterprise, the Excelsior's sleek design was a hit with fans and remains one of the most popular and recognizable starships in the Star Trek Universe... Scotty's reservations aside.

The Excelsior herself only appeared in a handful of films and a single episode of television, but her sisters in the Excelsior-class line of starships enjoyed unparalleled ubiquity in the franchise, notably showing up in countless episodes of Star Trek: The Next Generation, Deep Space Nine, and Voyager, as basically any old Federation vessel, and appearing in Star Trek Generations, gloriously slash cost-effectively redesigned to portray the USS Enterprise-B.

The USS Excelsior entered the Star Trek canon a whopping 37 years ago (and hasn't been seen on screen since 2001) but it has left an indelible impression on the franchise, influencing everything from the design of the USS Enterprise-E from Star Trek: First Contact to technology in JJ Abrams' 2009 Star Trek reboot.

She also happens to be one of the most requested starships in the TrekCulture YouTube comments section, so let's voyage to the Beta Quadrant, catalogue gaseous anomalies, and explore these ten secrets of the USS Excelsior that you need to know.

The USS Excelsior (initially called the USS Valiant) was described in the script for Star Trek III: The Search for Spock as "the new Queen of Space" and "a super starship".

Unlike previous Star Trek ships which had been designed through a series of back and forths between concept artists, producers, and VFX artists, the bulk of the design work for the Excelsior was done by the model shop at Industrial Light & Magic. In this capacity, ILM eschewed the creation of dozens (or even hundreds) of conceptual drawings in favor of building numerous study models, many featuring radically different configurations from the refit Enterprise but all reflecting the script's mandate for a "clearly bigger, sleeker, and very new" vessel.

Presented with these study models, Search for Spock director Leonard Nimoy selected the ship most recognizably Starfleet, but with a twist.

According to ILM model maker Bill George, the starship configuration Nimoy chose had some very Earthly roots:

At the time I was really into Japanese design, so I thought, "OK, what would the "Enterprise" look like if the Japanese designed it?" That was the basis of what I came up with for the "Excelsior".

Due to the difficulties with the cumbersome refit Enterprise model built by Magicam for The Motion Picture and the lessons the ILM model shop learned themselves constructing and filming the USS Reliant for The Wrath of Khan, the Excelsior miniature was built using lightweight materials which made it easier to move, mount, and photograph.