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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.

27 of 99 comments (clear)

  1. Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago by dpilot · · Score: 5, Informative

    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.

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    1. Re:Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago by Teresita · · Score: 5, Funny

      If Lucas had created Star Trek rather than Roddenberry, then the Original Series model at the Smithsonian would have DS9 era warp nacelles ret-conned on it and the phasers could never be fired until the shields were below 50% strength because of course Kirk never shoots first.

    2. Re:Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago by NormAtHome · · Score: 2

      I saw it there around 1980, probably before the first restoration. It was great to see it but it was pretty dirty and didn't look very well kept. I hope this new guy takes good care of it.

    3. Re:Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago by plopez · · Score: 5, Funny

      If Lucas had created Star Trek; Uhura would've have been a northern European princess, Chekov a darkside villain, Kirk a 20 something whiny white boy, Spock a droid, and Scotty an ethnically insulting alien based on Mexican stereo types.

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    4. Re:Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago by NormalVisual · · Score: 3, Informative

      I saw it there around 1980, probably before the first restoration.

      The restorations took place in 1974, 1980, and 1991. I agree that the pre-1991 treatment the model got wasn't that good. As I remember they just hung it from the ceiling and mostly ignored it afterwards. The model had some major structural issues when Ed got hold of it, mostly because the model was designed to be mounted on a stand and couldn't deal well with the stresses from being suspended from above.

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    5. Re:Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago by FatdogHaiku · · Score: 4, Funny

      ...Kirk never shoots first.

      Uhura might have something to say about that...

      Kirk: This sort of thing . . . has never . . . happened . . . to me . . . before!
      Uhura: I just wish you could have held out until I removed my uniform...

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    6. Re:Saw it at the Smithsonian a few years ago by ConceptJunkie · · Score: 2

      Sounds a lot like JJTrek to be honest.

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  2. Zoolander by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

    What is this? A spaceship for ANTS?!

  3. Cecilia Gimenez by wylderide · · Score: 5, Funny

    She took a crack at restoring it, but it was deemed to be not entirely successful.

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  4. Event Horizon by ArcadeMan · · Score: 4, Funny

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

    1. Re:Event Horizon by NEDHead · · Score: 4, Insightful

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

  5. I'm just glad by Pikoro · · Score: 3, Funny

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

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  6. Re:Restoration by CohibaVancouver · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

  7. Re:Restoration by zippthorne · · Score: 2

    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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  8. Re:Restoration by NormalVisual · · Score: 3, Funny

    Not to mention you'll have the TSA rifling through your wallet's contents in the pattern buffer.

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  9. Re:Restoration by bruce_the_loon · · Score: 2

    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.

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  10. Crude? by fnj · · Score: 4, Interesting

    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.

    1. Re:Crude? by NormalVisual · · Score: 2, Interesting

      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 hero model built for "The Empire Strikes Back" was just jaw-droppingly gorgeous, and holds up to inspection from just inches away. 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.

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    2. Re:Crude? by Euler · · Score: 2

      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 materials were used. That weird screen-door protector perforated metal with the two different sized holes that was popular in the '60s and '70s... The body of it was mostly just plain surface, maybe wood or something easily workable.

    3. Re:Crude? by Dogtanian · · Score: 2

      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 HD.

      There were no doubt good reasons for shooting on film- either technical or aesthetic (film converted to standard-def video for transmission still looks different to natively-shot video)- but decades before HD was even a twinkle in anyone's eye, I doubt they were going to waste their limited TV budget on detailing they (reasonably) assumed no-one was ever going to see.

      I suspect that the original Enterprise model was more detailed as it would have been used a lot, and having a higher-quality model in the first place would give them more flexibility in terms of close-ups, etc.

      Compare [Star Wars movie props] 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.

      Bingo. I bet the one-off single-show models were done as well as required- and no more. (Particularly as ST:TNG was from the shot-on-film-but-mastered-on-video era that- ironically- gave poorer quality than the all-film ST:TOS).

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    4. Re:Crude? by hey! · · Score: 2

      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.

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  11. optimistic vision of a future by Fnord666 · · Score: 3, Funny

    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.

    --
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    1. Re:optimistic vision of a future by Beamboom · · Score: 5, Insightful

      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".

    2. Re:optimistic vision of a future by Dr.+Evil · · Score: 2

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

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

    3. Re:optimistic vision of a future by Anonymous Coward · · Score: 2, Interesting

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

      No, this was his vision of women in the future. The studio made him sex it up.

  12. Re:WTF by DanielRavenNest · · Score: 3, Interesting

    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.

  13. hang on a minute... by spike1 · · Score: 2

    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).