20 Incredible Star Trek Concept Art Designs You Need To See

Another conceptual starship by John Eaves, the D4 class Klingon battle cruiser from Star Trek: Enterprise's first season episode "Unexpected" has a frustrating legacy.

Designed by Eaves and built by CG artist Pierre Drolet, the D4 (a precursor to the D7 of The Original Series) was actually fully finished by Enterprise's design team before it was rejected by the show's producers. According to the artists, the producers believed the ship should have more prominent windows, but because the concept and VFX artists were exhausted by the heavy workload from the show's pilot, the model was scrapped outright. Rather than use the 22nd century-appropriate D4 model by Eaves and Drolet, the producers opted to reuse the CGI files for the D7 battle cruiser built for Star Trek: Deep Space Nine and Voyager, creating a discontinuity in just the second episode of Star Trek: Enterprise.

Eaves was later allowed to design a proper 22nd century battle cruiser for later episodes of Enterprise and even submitted the design for use in Star Trek (2009), but the D4 ultimately never appeared on screen in any incarnation of the Star Trek franchise.