Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The USS Cerritos You Need To Know

Despite the ship's obvious TNG (and less obvious Wrath of Khan) inspirations, the USS Cerritos has a few distinctive qualities that are all her own. The squared off warp nacelles of the California-class are new to the Star Trek Universe, resembling neither the cylindrical warp pods of The Original Series, the oval-shaped nacelles of The Next Generation, or the long, sharp engines of the Discovery-era.

Again, according to Mike McMahan on "How to Kill An Hour":

I wanted the nacelles to be shaped more squarely than the smooth lines of the Enterprise-D’s nacelles. And I also didn’t want it to look like the NX-class where it was funky and early, and I didn’t want it look like a Sovereign-class, which is all fancy and shiny.

Another interesting quirk of the intentionally quirky starship is the placement of her name and registry number. These identifying markings have traditionally been located on the forward, dorsal area of a starship's primary hull, however the Cerritos' name and registry are on the dorsal, aft section.

Mike McHana explained the thinking behind the Cerritos' behind to Trekyards:

I wanted to put it on the back because it felt like this is a ship that will be towing other ships, that it will be doing work that. If you're on the Enterprise looking at it, you'll be seeing the back of the ship because it's kind of buzzing around and helping out... We were constantly doing a balancing act of what feels like Starfleet and what sort of feels like it's not as important as other ships and moving the registry and the name of the ship to the back of it was a subtle kind of design cue that this isn't the Enterprise, it's not Voyager. And then, just from a comedy point of view, we wanted it to look like a lower back tattoo. A name and a registry that might peek up from the waistband of somebody's jeans if they're picking something up.

In other words, the registry of the USS Cerritos, NCC-75567, is a tramp stamp.