Star Trek: Ranking The Main Bridges

Herman Zimmerman's bridge from Star Trek: First Contact, Insurrection, and Nemesis evolved over the years, but remains one of the most interesting hybrids of Star Trek's 1990s set design.

The bridge of the USS Enterprise-E retains the comfort and warmth of her predecessor, but owing to the new ship's greater tactical edge, there's a bit of the USS Defiant's utilitarianism incorporated into its design. Clearly built on a big screen budget, the Enterprise-E's bridge is lush and vibrant, replete with Michael Okuda's famous LCARS displays and signage, with one of the strangest and coolest new additions... or subtractions.

In Star Trek: First Contact only, the main bridge viewscreen of the Enterprise-E was replaced by a blank wall on which images were "holographically" projected. While this was an interesting and logical advancement in Star Trek tech, the producers ultimately decided that a blank wall taking up a quarter of the Enterprise-E's bridge set wasn't the greatest use of space, so a traditional viewscreen was added for subsequent features.

Minor changes were made to the set throughout its filmic legacy, including the addition of colorful highlights to match Star Trek: Insurrection's lighter tone, and the removal of much of the color to match Star Trek Nemesis' heavier one. Nevertheless, Zimmerman's Enterprise-E bridge is a great set and we should've spent more time there than just three movies.