How Las Vegas Missed Out on a Life-Sized Starship Enterprise

T-Kir writes "Apparently 20 years ago, instead of the Fremont Experience, downtown Las Vegas was actually close to building a life sized version of the refit USS Enterprise, and would have — had it not been for the then studio chairman Stanley Jaffe nixing it at the final meeting. The project had support from Paramount licensing and then-CEO Sherry Lansing, the Las Vegas Mayor, and the downtown redevelopment committee, but not opinion of Mr Jaffe: 'I don't want to be the guy that approved this and then it's a flop and sitting out there in Vegas forever.' As a Trek fan, I'm saddened that this never got built because I feel that this would've appealed to a much wider audience than science fiction fans. Props to io9 for picking this story up."

Comments

RAGE!

[Anonymous Coward]

KAHN!!!

Really just as well

[SuperKendall]

While it sounds awesome, the guy who cancelled it is right on the money - it would have just sat there for some time languisingh after the novelty wore off for people.

Vegas already had the coolest Star Trek exhibit/show I've ever seen (Qwark's bar and two really well done shows). That is gone now. If those great shows could not survive, no way the Enterprise would have lasted.

Re:Really just as well

[El_Muerte_TDS]

Just like the novelty of the Eifel Tower, Liberty Statue, Tower of Pisa, etc. have worn off?

Re:Really just as well

[mikael]

Each one of those was an original masterpiece designed to be something different and never seen before. Usually it was built from state-of-the-art materials and construction techniques. The Eiffel Tower wasn't even intended to be a permanent structure.

A replica life size model of a TV series starship might work if it were part of an office block, startup incubator, luxury hotel or cinema multiplex. The exterior wouldn't diminish the functionality of the inside space, but the functionality would pay for the maintenance.

The best location in my opinion would be as part of an airport hotel or conference center. Imagine having your flight coming in through the fog or haze and the first thing you see is a spaceship coming into view like something out of the Wrath of Khan.

port.

Re:Really just as well

[mosb1000]

You know that would still be a big attraction today. But in 40 or 50 years, yeah, it would eventually become a giant eyesore.

TOS debuted in 1966, that's 46 years ago. It's as popular today as it ever was. At this point, it's safe to say it's a hallmark of science fiction. A life-sized replica would remain culturally relevant for much longer than 50 years. It's hard to imagine that people would ever look at it and say "what's that supposed to be?" and even if they did, it would be like looking at the Great Pyramid. Even though we don't really know what it originally meant, it's simply too large to be ignored.

People often bring up the idea that a megastructure may become an eyesore over time. I can't think of an example where that's been true. As far as buildings go, if it's huge and strange looking, people will be impressed buy it. It doesn't matter how old it is.

Re:Really just as well

[mosb1000]

Any kind of huge large vehicle would be an eyesore as it just doesn't fit in.

Have you ever been to Las Vegas?

People trying to claim a spaceship is on par with the pyramids, Eiffel tower or other things are letting their fandom get in the way of reality.

No one's saying this would be the next great pyramid (excepting your attempt to present such a claim as a straw man). Of course the two objects would be similar in scale. But people said the Eiffel tower would be an eyesore when it was built, and the people of Paris have not found it to be so. What I'm saying is that this story has repeated itself over time, and none of the things people have said were going to be eyesores have actually turned out that way.

Doubtless an ancient ancestor of yours objected to the building of the great pyramids claiming it would be an eyesore as well. And let's not forget all those idiots complaining about windmills. You aren't objectively looking at the situation, you are simply looking at a strange new idea and rejecting it because it doesn't fit with your existing world view.

Re:Really just as well

[Anonymous Coward]

Vegas did indeed have the coolest Star Trek exhibit/show. It eventually turned into a very expensive and poorly managed coolest Start Trek exhibit/show. When you charge in the neighborhood of the admission price of a full theme park for what IN a full theme park would be a couple of shows, you're not going to attract non-geeks and the generally curious. I went there every time I was in Vegas while it was there and I'm glad I did, but I also watched the prices go up, the quantity of shows go down, Quark's Bar always inaccessible because of being booked for a wedding or some "special event" or just plain closed early because somebody wanted to save payroll. My first visit, which was several years after the attraction opened, I had to wait in decently long lines to get in. The last couple of years--barely any, and I STILL couldn't get in to have a drink at Quark's.

Point is: it's not good to say something failed because people didn't want it. Management or lack of it has a LOT to do with stuff like that.

I've never had a desire to go to Vegas

[flogger]

But if there was a "Life-Sized" enterprise in which I could book passage (rent a room) and visit 10-Forward or see the bridge, I would make the "trek" to vegas. I am sure I am not the only tight ass that would do this... Flop? I don;t thin it would be, espesially if they built the Emporer's imperial cruiser next door and they had weekly geek fights to see which would win. :-)

Re:Fuck Paramount execs. Galactica FTW!

[Intrepid imaginaut]

Galactica was pseudo religious military wank with a dash of body horror and a vague stab at challenging social issues like racism to be honest, an homage to the Bush era.

Re:WHICH ONE?!

[eobanb]

D. The article makes reference to Ten Forward. Plus TNG was currently on the air at the time so it would have made the most sense.

Re:WHICH ONE?!

[PPH]

CVN-65.

oh forget that

[FudRucker]

sure it would look like the Star Trek Enterprise on the outside but once you get inside it then it will be like any other Las Vegas casino = full of slot machines, roulette wheels, blackjack tables etc...etc...etc... which would ruin the whole thing

http://i.imgur.com/kezWj.jpg

They are timeless and universal

[SuperKendall]

I would argue that each of those are more timeless and universal than the Enterprise would have been.

All of them except for the Pisa tower are far larger than the Enterprise would have been.

You know that the Enterprise would not have been built nearly as well as any of those things.

Also ALL of the things you list are nationally beloved monuments to the respective countries they are in, meaning there is money from a whole nation to take care of each of those national treasures. Can you honestly say with a straight face that a crumbling Enterprise in Vegas would draw the nation in to repair it as was done with the Statue of Liberty?

I mean, if you're going to go there then the parallel is that it would have been repaired by now, but you wouldn't be able to go to the bridge anymore. Well what the hell good is THAT???

Re:They are timeless and universal

[jedidiah]

The other guy was probably talking abut the REPLICAS of those things.

It's like you've never been to Vegas ever.

That and the guy from Paramount too. They're fine with blowing up a local landmark and puting a redundant Italian themed casino in it's place.

Re:They are timeless and universal

[pmontra]

All of them except for the Pisa tower are far larger than the Enterprise would have been.

I had to google the exact measures but the Eiffel Tower (320 m) is way bigger than the other two monuments (I've seen the three of them with my eyes). It's a little taller than what the Enterprise is long (286 m). The Statue of Liberty (93 m) is much smaller and the statue alone (46 m) without the base would be shorter than the Pisa tower (58 m). Check this for the relative sizes (Pisa tower not included).

Re:They are timeless and universal

[sjames]

Why not? We did it for the Washington Monument which is nothing but a giant rock dildo.

But it so perfectly symbolizes what the People have come to expect from D.C.

Re:WHICH ONE?!

[Tablizer]

Enterprise A? Or Enterprise D? The images from the site aren't showing up.

They're building a cloaked ship, whaddya expect?

Re:WHICH ONE?!

[icebike]

1701-D would have been huge, perhaps too large to be feasible, the !701-A was 289 M long, 72 M high and 127 meters wide which would make it a lot more feasible

" Feasible" isn't a word that comes immediately to mind as a limiting convept while walking around in Vegas.

Re:WHICH ONE?!

[ObsessiveMathsFreak]

1701-D would have been huge, perhaps too large to be feasible....

This is a point worth emphasising. The actual ships in Star Trek really are on an space age scale. The ship supposed to be over 1km long.

Rather than quote statistics, I'll just link to a Minecraft Megaproject video of a virtual 1:1 scale model of the ship (to 1m resolution). It's a lot bigger than the impression given by the Paramounts sets in the show. Seeing shuttle-bay 1 was an experience in itself, and illustrative of just how infeasible building such an object would really be.

Re:Geeks and Vegas don't mix

[modecx]

Quite the contrary, as you know, physicists are big into experimentation. Vegas would love to have the physicists, except... Well, you know how people sometimes get a little crazy on the Las Vegas booze, hookers and drugs scene, and cause a ruckus; there was one year the Physical Society's meeting happened to overlap with the pharmacist's and psychiatrist's conventions...going on, oh about 50 years ago now.

Now, some people are bound to call me a liar, or say I have a runaway imagination, but buried in a vault somewhere under Washington, there's a classified briefing my grand-pappy told me about--he was a fed you see--and if you go down to the FBI office and ask someone, they're going to deny it and look at you like you're some kind of lunatic. And if you press 'em on it, they're going to call the cops and people with white coats. That's when you know you've got 'em in a lie, it's right in the secret FBI training manual under Chapter 11, Deny, Divert and Attack! You know, so you'd better not. Ask anyone that is.

Anyway, to make a short story long, many of the physicists, pharmacists, and psychiatrists shared the same hotel, and as is always the case in a large enough group of people, some of the pharmacists were into the...recreational side of their business, and the psychiatrists, well, you know how they always want to know what makes people tick.

As a prank, and to get the physicists to loosen up, the pharmacists slipped a bunch of amphetamines and the psychiatry researchers' LSD into the physicists' punch bowl. Nobody knows how they did it, but the hopped-up and wigged-out physicists spent the next five days straight in the conference room where they built at life size, fully functional replica of Big Boy, right there in Sands Hotel.

Now, this was also about the time the Roswell aliens escaped Area 51, the aliens kidnapped the atom bomb and held Las Vegas as ransom for their flying saucer and took Humphrey Bogart hostage...but I digress. That's a whole 'nother story, and if I told you I'd have to kill you. So, in a nutshell, that's why LSD research was banned, because when you mix physicists with amphetamines, LSD, and spiked punch, doomsday almost happens, and aliens fly off with Humphrey fucking Bogart. We just can't take the chance.

Re:WHICH ONE?!

[Jeff DeMaagd]

According to a page I found on the Internet, "D" is 642.5m long. But point taken, still big though. I don't know if that would have been profitable to build well.

The quote in the article:
"I don't want to be the guy that approved this and then it's a flop and sitting out there in Vegas forever."

Nothing in Vegas stays forever. It's usually demolished to make way for the next thing, it doesn't matter if the building is steeped in history, if it's not profitable enough, it goes.