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

With the script for "Battle at the Binary Stars" calling for a slew of Federation vessels to face off against the Klingons, John Eaves worked not just to bring the USS Shenzhou to life, but also an entire fleet of brand new starships. According to Eaves:

Whenever we were waiting for feedback on the Discovery and the Shenzhou, we'd do concepts for fleet ships on the side. I'd keep drawing those and we ended up with 60 or 70 of them... I think they said they were goin to take six or seven of the fleet ships and build them. If I'm not mistaken, Bryan Fuller picked all the fleet ships and he'd always go for the more unusual shapes.

In order to explain the enormous differences between these ships' configurations as well the departure from Star Trek's previously established 23rd century aesthetics, Eaves worked with production designer Todd Cherniawsky to come up with a backstory:

We eventually came up with the theory to explain why these new ships didn't have round nacelles and looked bit out of place. We came came up with this idea that it was like the old Edwards Air Force Base in the 40s. All these companies were creating these new X-planes and, even though the purpose was the same, they all looked drastically different. So we created this whole scenario that this was like an experimental stage. Up to that point the Vulcans had been influential on matters of ship design, but now the humans had decided they had enough of that influence and they wanted to go on their own.

Consistent with that ethic, Eaves and Cherniawky named each new class of ship after test pilots, X-plane pilots, and astronauts, choosing to dub the USS Shenzhou a Walker-class starship, named for American astronaut and X-15 test pilot, Joseph A. Walker.