10 Obscure Star Trek Secrets That Took Years To Discover
2. The Argument Over The Upside Down Enterprise
The original Enterprise went through a lot of changes before the production team settled on the classic design we know today.
Matt Jefferies, the lead designer behind the ship, considered a ring-shaped ship (that later became canonized as the Enterprise XCV 330), and a more familiar design, but with a sphere replacing the saucer (a design that inspired the Daedalus-class). Eventually they settled on the shape of the ship, but one of the weirdest arguments between Jefferies and Gene Roddenberry was over the orientation of the model.
Star Trek: The Magazine Volume 1, Issue 10 included an interview with Matt Jefferies where he recalled showing Roddenberry the model for the first time (the smaller one, not the massive main model). He said that the model, unbalanced due to its weird shape, flopped upside down from the string it was hanging from. Apparently Gene loved the look of the Enterprise upside down, and Jefferies had a really difficult time trying to unsell him on it. Jefferies fortunately won the argument in the end, because, let's face it, the flipped Enterprise just looks so wrong…