10 More Most Paused Star Trek Moments
6. Starship Graveyard
In Unification, the Enterprise visits the Qualor shipyards, which is a graveyard for old decommissioned ships to head to when their time is up. In a beautifully HD shot, the Galaxy-class ship enters orbit around the planet, revealing a glorious shot of a K'T'Inga Battlecruiser, along with some of the ships that had made their debut at Wolf 359, such as the Buran and the Melbourne.
However, in the middle-foreground of the image, there are some incredibly important ships in Star Trek's history in clear view. There are early working models that had served to inspire the final design for the USS Excelsior in Star Trek 3: The Search for Spock. Nilo Rodis had worked up several variations on the design with Leonard Nimoy back in 1984, before settling on the final on-screen version.
However, these ships never truly went away. The four-nacelled early version of the Excelsior is on clear view here to the port-ventral of the Enterprise. The other two early ideas for the Excelsior are also dotted throughout the graveyard. Then, just ahead of it and closer to the front of the image, one of the studio models for the proposed 'Planet of the Titans' movie was clearly visible. This ship was a concept for the Enterprise and had actually been on-screen back in the film, guesting as another vessel in Spacedock that was only just visible as the Enterprise returned home.