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Sci-Fi

Original 11' Star Trek Enterprise Model Being Restored Again 99

Posted by samzenpus from the to-brightly-go-where-no-man-has-gone-before dept.
NormalVisual (565491) writes The original 11-foot U.S.S. Enterprise studio model from the original series has gone back into the shop again. The Smithsonian owns the model and has had it on display in a gift shop at the National Air and Space Museum for the last 13 years, but will be placed on display in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall in 2016, to coincide with the museum's 40th anniversary. In the meantime, the model will be undergoing its fourth restoration to address a number of issues. The last restoration in 1991 was performed by Ed Miarecki, a professional modelmaker well known for his work in "Star Trek: The Next Generation", as well as films such as "Event Horizon". This previous restoration had Trek fans up in arms owing to the paint job, which many feel doesn't represent the way the model looked originally. Hopefully this next restoration will bring her back to her former glory.
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Original 11' Star Trek Enterprise Model Being Restored Again More

Original 11' Star Trek Enterprise Model Being Restored Again

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  • Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago (Score:5, Informative)

    by dpilot ( 134227 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @09:59AM (#47901817) Homepage Journal

    We took the family to DC for a vacation, and of course one of the things I had to see was Smithsonian Air and Space. I didn't know that the original Enterprise model was there, and was surprised to see it on the lower floor.

    The next surprise was that the model was never finished. One side had all of the lights, striping, and everything. The other side had a little striping, and was otherwise pretty much blank. I remembered reading that in one of those books, and how all shots were of the finished side, or mirrored in post-processing.

  • Zoolander (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @10:02AM (#47901829)

    What is this? A spaceship for ANTS?!

  • Cecilia Gimenez (Score:5, Funny)

    by wylderide ( 933251 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @10:03AM (#47901831) Homepage
    She took a crack at restoring it, but it was deemed to be not entirely successful.

  • Event Horizon (Score:5, Funny)

    by ArcadeMan ( 2766669 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @10:04AM (#47901837)

    One of the best science-fiction movie ever made, if you stop watching before it all goes to hell.

    • Re:Event Horizon (Score:5, Insightful)

      by NEDHead ( 1651195 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @10:18AM (#47901919)

      Or, perhaps more objectively, one of the worst movies of all time.

      • No, that title belongs to Battlefield Earth. Event Horizon had the great idea of dealing with the "nothingness" in-between jump points, but they chose to go with a horror theme for that and that's what ruined it for most of us. Still a great sci-fi/horror movie, because horror movies don't have to make any sense.

        • Re: (Score:1)

          by Anonymous Coward

          You, SIr, have clearly not watched Manos: The Hands of Fate.

          Battlefield Earth is what happens when a religion is built suddenly using the cathedral model rather than over millennia using the bazaar model. You need your mythos to evolve over time until it becomes so convoluted that millions of people literally kill each other to death over the minutiæ, ignoring the white elephant excrement in the room.

      • Or, perhaps more subjectively, everyone is allowed to have their own opinion.

    • I'm glad at least one moderator got the joke.

  • I'm just glad (Score:4, Funny)

    by Pikoro ( 844299 ) <{hs.tini} {ta} {tini}> on Sunday September 14, 2014 @10:41AM (#47902029) Homepage Journal

    I'm just glad all of us Atheists will now have our own religious symbol to hang on the wall and worship.

  • Crude? (Score:5, Interesting)

    by fnj ( 64210 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @12:26PM (#47902605)

    Judging from STTOS on TV, the original model was almost toy-like crude. The STTNG model was much more convincing, and that one already looks pretty crude compared to a good movie. The modelwork in 2001: A Space Odyssey stll impresses.

    • Re: (Score:1)

      by Anonymous Coward

      What you say about 2001's models is true. The humans even seem life-like at times, which is no easy feat.

    • Re: (Score:3, Interesting)

      by NormalVisual ( 565491 )
      Models built for TV in years past often weren't built with much detail, simply because it wouldn't show up on screen anyway. That said, the TOS Enterprise did have a lot more detail than one would expect for a TV show (there are markings and such that are too tiny to see on TV), but it pales when compared to the Enterprise built for "The Motion Picture" which has much, much finer detail. A couple of years ago I had the opportunity to see a lot of the Star Wars filming miniatures - the Millenium Falcon her

      • Models built for TV in years past often weren't built with much detail, simply because it wouldn't show up on screen anyway. That said, the TOS Enterprise did have a lot more detail than one would expect for a TV show (there are markings and such that are too tiny to see on TV), but it pales when compared to the Enterprise built for "The Motion Picture" which has much, much finer detail.

        This touches on something I've mentioned previously- namely, why older TV shows shot and mastered entirely on film still aren't necessarily "HD", even though the medium itself *happens* to be capable of resolving that much detail.

        An HD production requires *everything* to have been done to HD standards. If not, it's quite possible that props, makeup et al that were only ever expected to look good on a standard-definition set of the time will show their deficiencies far more obviously under the scrutiny of

        • Bingo. I bet the one-off single-show models were done as well as required- and no more.

          The ones I was referring to specifically were props like phasers, tricorders, etc. that were used throughout the production run, but as you say, no studio wants to spend more money than absolutely necessary. If the prop guys can hack out 10 phasers in a day that will look acceptably on screen, instead of spending a day on each one making them museum-quality, it's not hard to figure out which route the studio will cho

      • Re: (Score:3)

        by hey! ( 33014 )

        Compare that to some of the ST:TNG props that I've seen that look fine on screen, but when examined closely look like someone gave a 5-year old a couple of shots of vodka and turned them loose with a paintbrush.

        There's a certain wonder to that too.

        I had the same reaction when I saw the ST:TNG props in person. You wouldn't buy a toy that looked that cheesy. The wonder of it is that the prop makers knew this piece of crap would look great onscreen. That's professional skill at work. Amateurs lavish loving care on stuff and overbuild them. Pros make them good enough, and put the extra effort into stuff that matters more.

        • And then on top of that, you have to admire the trust the actors had in their work. It's got to be hard to put on a convincing performance when holding one of those silly things, accepting on faith alone that it's going to look pretty damned good when it's in the can.

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Euler ( 31942 )

      Yeah, and when you personally see the TOS model it actually is very crude. ...they had no idea that the film prints would be scanned for high-def TV eventually.

      When I saw it around 2008 I had two thoughts:
      1) Why is something so iconic being given such outcast treatment in the basement of the gift shop? Yes it wasn't actually a spacecraft, but still deserving of attention compared to some random ejection seat or circuit board designed for a space probe.
      2) It was really crude.. Basic hardware-store type mat

    • In TOS, if watch The Doomsday Machine episode, it is obvious that the the damage Constellation had was caused by something like a lighter. There is some debate as to whether the model was actually one of those Revell models we used to get as kids at the local Gemco, or if it was the crappiest version of the full scale models. Given that it would be easier to generate those kinds of burns on a smaller Revell model, I would guess the former.
      • There is some debate as to whether the model was actually one of those Revell models we used to get as kids at the local Gemco

        It was a hacked-up AMT model, just like you'd get at the local hobby store. More than you'd ever want to know about the AMT kit can be found here [culttvman.com].

    • It seems kind of contradictory to hang the TV production model in the A&S museum, where people will complain about how simplistic the model is without understanding the nature of a TV model (ie, not meant to be seen other than in controlled TV shots on 1960s standard def television).

      The TV model should be restored as closely as possible to its TV version and then put in the Smithsonian wing that houses various forms of Americana so that it can be a proper historical relic.

      Then they should build a new mo

    • There are web pages out there about the construction of the TNG model ships. The large one was quite detailed but also very smooth. The painted detail didn't show up in SD, only on Blu-ray, and the model was too large and delicate to work with. So they built a cruder, less smooth, and smaller model. The big one had cracked by the time it was auctioned off. The TOS model seems to have been filmed only on 4 or 5 occasions: for the 1st and 2nd pilots, for Corbomite Maneuver stock shots reused throughout the s

  • optimistic vision of a future (Score:4, Funny)

    by Fnord666 ( 889225 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @12:47PM (#47902747) Journal

    unique for its optimistic vision of a future where men and women of all races and ethnicities, not to mention non-humans,

    Obviously created by a man whose "optimistic vision of a future" includes women wearing mini skirts and gogo boots.

    • Re:optimistic vision of a future (Score:5, Insightful)

      by Beamboom ( 2692671 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @01:25PM (#47902921)

      whose "optimistic vision of a future" includes women wearing mini skirts and gogo boots.

      To be fair, for a good many that's close to the very definition of an "optimistic vision".

    • Obviously created by a man whose "optimistic vision of a future" includes women wearing mini skirts and gogo boots.

      "I think I'm going to like History."

    • Re: (Score:3)

      by Dr. Evil ( 3501 )

      Compare the role of women in I Love Lucy to that of Star Trek.

      https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Desilu_Productions

    • Re: (Score:2, Interesting)

      by Anonymous Coward

      > Obviously created by a man whose "optimistic vision of a future" includes women wearing mini skirts and gogo boots.

      No, this [space-debris.com] was his vision of women in the future. The studio made him sex it up.

    • We have failed to uphold Brannigan's Law. However I did make it with a hot alien babe. And in the end, is that not what man has dreamt of since first he looked up at the stars? Kif, I'm asking you a question.

  • Pardon? (Score:1)

    by Anonymous Coward

    "The Smithsonian owns the model and has had it on display in a gift shop at the National Air and Space Museum for the last 13 years, but will be placed on display in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall in 2016, to coincide with the museum's 40th anniversary."

    Milestones of Flight? A model of something which has never actually flown and which doesn't actually exist?

    Ah well, I suppose it goes with those Creationist museums.....

  • Comment removed based on user account deletion

  • WTF (Score:1)

    by kuzb ( 724081 )

    >but will be placed on display in the Boeing Milestones of Flight Hall in 2016

    No. Fuck this. It's not a milestone of flight, and it doesn't belong there in the least.

    • Shot in the same studios as the lunar landings!

      Am I kidding?

    • Re:WTF (Score:4, Interesting)

      by DanielRavenNest ( 107550 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @07:10PM (#47904547)

      No. Fuck this. It's not a milestone of flight, and it doesn't belong there in the least.

      I disagree. The original Star Trek, which I watched as a child, was one of the inspirations for me getting into aerospace and later working on the actual Space Station. The milestone isn't a particular flight it performed, but how many people it inspired, who later achieved great things in aerospace. In a prior generation, Wernher von Braun read Astounding magazine *while working on the V2 rockets*. There has always been a strong connection between science fiction stories and bringing those stories to life later.

  • This previous restoration had Trek fans up in arms owing to the paint job, which many feel doesn't represent the way the model looked originally.

    Or did they feel it didn't represent the way it looked on TV?

    • Of course it doesn't look like it appeared on TV, but when he did the restoration, Ed left the top portion of the saucer as it was originally done, minus touch-ups to hide where repairs had been made. Comparing the top and bottom of the saucer, it's obvious that while the original paint scheme did have very faint grid lines and weathering, it wasn't airbrushed to the extent of being overbearing like he did to the lower saucer and most of the rest of the model. He also added details to the model that were

  • hang on a minute... (Score:3)

    by spike1 ( 675478 ) on Sunday September 14, 2014 @09:54PM (#47905201)

    40th anniversary?
    What is it commemorating, the animated series from the 70s?
    The TV show begain in the 60s so the 40th anniversary was around 2006 (or earlier if you want to count the cage).

    • It's commemorating the 40th anniversary of the present Air and Space Museum main exhibition hall, which opened on July 4, 1976.

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