Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of Strange New Worlds' Enterprise You Need To Know

10. They Love To Change Things

The redesign of the USS Enterprise was a massive undertaking and a labor of love by several behind-the-scenes staff members late in the production of Star Trek: Discovery's first season.

Veteran Trek illustrator John Eaves along with concept designer Scott Schneider, VFX art director William Budge, and production designer Todd Cherniawsky collaborated to flesh out as much of the Enterprise as they could, despite a meager 18 seconds of screen time in her first appearance in Discovery's first season finale.

Changes made to Matt Jefferies' original design included tweaking her proportions to reflect the elongated look of the starship Discovery, the application of more convincing and detailed hull paneling, glowing engine grilles (an element Gene Roddenberry had wanted for TOS), and modifying parts of the ship to match the standing USS Discovery sets which would double for certain parts of the Enterprise's interior. The ship was also regressed in appearance in an effort to make her feel slightly less advanced than her sleeker 1960s configuration, with several elements of the 22nd century Enterprise NX-01 (hull plating, color, and engine details) incorporated throughout.

In-universe, the thinking was that Kirk's Enterprise would evolve from the starship featured in Star Trek: Discovery, with elements like the impulse deck, warp nacelles, and bridge all considered replaceable parts which could be updated and refined to someday look like they did in TOS. According to John Eaves:

We were trying to do things that implied that it could transition to the original Matt Jefferies ship later on. We wanted to create links with ships that had come before.