Star Trek: 10 Secrets Of The USS Kelvin You Need To Know
2. Kelvin Kitbashes
With so much time and energy dedicated to the creation of the USS Kelvin, Narada, Jellyfish, and Enterprise, the other ships in Star Trek (2009)'s fleet were sort of an afterthought.
According to ILM's Alex Jaeger:
JJ's attitude was "Don't spend a whole lot of time, just come up with a bunch of quick silhouettes"... We had the CG models for the Kobayashi Maru and the Kelvin, so we used that as sort of a kitbash set. I took all those parts and rearranged them into some familiar configurations.
As such, the ships that join the Enterprise as it warps to the defense of Vulcan are all essentially recombinations and remixes of the USS Kelvin.
These vessels – including the four-nacelled USS Newton, three-nacelled USS Armstrong, and double-nacelled USS Mayflower – were each constructed from the basic primary hull and warp engines of the Kelvin, another continuation of Star Trek's tradition of recycling anything it can to sell its vision of the future and come in on-budget.