Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of Enterprise NX-01 You Need To Know

The world's first look at the NX-01 came in the summer of 2001 during the publicity blitz leading up the release of Enterprise on UPN. As part of the marketing push, TV Guide released a centerfold image featuring a top elevation view of the new NX-class Enterprise. While this first look was a mostly-accurate representation of the ship, it wasn't actually THE Enterprise the would debut in "Broken Bow".

With the art department still hard at work building the complex CGI model, Doug Drexler's early, low-res "approval model" of the NX-01 was used in much of the marketing for the show. This early model featured key differences from the ship that appeared on screen; according to Doug:

If you look at that compared to what was on the show: One it was brighter… But you’ll notice that the windows are a couple percent larger on that model and I liked that better, I thought it made the ship seem more vulnerable. Somewhere along the line they made the windows smaller

Despite the early NX never actually flying on screen, Doug's model was used in Michael and Denise Okuda's many graphic representations of the ship, most notably on the large flat screen monitor located at the back of the bridge and in engineering.