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Original 11' Star Trek Enterprise Model Being Restored Again
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.
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.
The living have better things to do than to continue hating the dead.
What is this? A spaceship for ANTS?!
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She took a crack at restoring it, but it was deemed to be not entirely successful.
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One of the best science-fiction movie ever made, if you stop watching before it all goes to hell.
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I'm just glad all of us Atheists will now have our own religious symbol to hang on the wall and worship.
"Freedom in the USA is not the ability to do what you want. It is the ability to stop others from doing what THEY want"
Why is it that if you copy something it's called a fake, but if you also destroy the original it's called restoration?
Interestingly, that's how transporters might eventually work:
Scan you, transmit scan data, reassemble you at the other end based on the data, confirm checksum, then destroy original.
That won't work. Even if you create a will leaving everything to your clone-copy, anytime you travel your clone-heir would be stuck in probate for months afterward and the government would demand a huge cut of your net worth.
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Not to mention you'll have the TSA rifling through your wallet's contents in the pattern buffer.
Please stand clear of the doors, por favor mantenganse alejado de las puertas
It takes that long because trying to keep every tiny porthole and edge in the exact same place, and the paint work the specific colour so that that geeks and nerds don't write up 1000 pages on their blog about the horrific damage and destruction.
It took a couple of weeks to build because the model maker had a rough guide of x decks and y windows and slapped it together from bits and pieces and painted it to work on the screen. The poor restorer has to keep that work accurate.
Trying to become famous by taking photos. Visit my homepage please.
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.
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.
'The tyrant will always find pretext for his tyranny.' - Aesop's Fables
Then you risk having two copies...
Scan you, destroy the original, transmit scan data, reassemble you at the other end. That's the only way to be sure... and would explain all the "transporter accidents"
"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.....
"The ship was a model as big as this, a very clever deception indeed!"
You are not alone. This is not normal. None of this is normal.
Shot in the same studios as the lunar landings!
Am I kidding?
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
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?
systemd is Roko's Basilisk.
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.
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 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 model of the Enterprise with all the detail people have come to expect for A&S.
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 series, maybe something later in the 1st season, and for some 2nd season stock shots that replaced the older ones. The film grain on all but the last batch hides the fact that the model has little detail. The movie models in auction photos online look like works of art, mostly due to the paint jobs.
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.
What does this have to do with the clone-copy continuity problem?
To take the bait, though, how are libertarians of all people going to be seen as a source of oppression?
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