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

The USS Kelvin was designed by production designer Scott Chambliss, illustrator James Clyne, and ILM concept artist Ryan Church, intended to be a much older generation of starship than the film's real star, the brand new, redesigned USS Enterprise.

According to Church, the ship's single nacelle configuration was meant to easily distinguish it from the Enterprise... and also look kinda bad:

I think virtually every combination of nacelle and fuselage and engine has been done by someone, so there's only so many combinations and arrangements we could come up with, but this one was as dumpy as we could make it look to differentiate it from the Enterprise.

Aside from looking "dumpy", it was also hoped the Kelvin would bridge the gap between audience's understanding of what ships are supposed to look like in the Star Trek Universe and what they would ultimately look like in the rebooted timeline. Concept artwork created by Ryan Church featured a smooth hull, bronze deflector dish, 1960s-esque Starfleet pennants, and general design aesthetics pulled straight from the TOS Enterprise.

While the finished starship featured The Original Series-style simplicity of form, a more complicated, "greebled" surface was ultimately chosen for the ship. ILM's Alex Jaeger said of the Kelvin:

On the Enterprise, all the panels sort of blended together, we wanted the Kelvin to look like some of the panels had been blown off in previous battles and then patched over.